magazine archive
magazine archive
Russ Mould
Which chancellors of the exchequer have been best for the UK stock market?
Thursday 24 Jul 2025Winston Churchill was chancellor of the exchequer from 1924 to 1929, and he presented five Budgets to Parliament during its term in office. He targeted pension reform, the protection of wages from inflation and growth above all else, in uncanny echoes of the current chancellor’s programme. He also...
What should investors do about the dollar’s dive?
Thursday 10 Jul 2025There are two ways to look at the second Trump presidency. The first is, there are already only three-and-a-half years to go, while November 2026’s mid-term elections will have a big say in how much, or how little, Trump can get done. Even a modest swing towards the Democrats would hand them...
How to tell if gold is getting expensive
Thursday 26 Jun 2025Gold bugs will be beside themselves as the precious metal pops above $3,400 an ounce, taking its one-year gain to 46% (in dollar terms), and tries to set another all-time high in response to ongoing worries about inflation, government debt and now fresh tensions in the Middle East. Having spent...
Is the US treasury market about to go on tilt?
Thursday 12 Jun 2025The White House’s trade policy hokey-cokey continues, with new duties on steel and aluminium, even as the 9 July deadline for the nation-by-nation reciprocal tariffs draws ever closer. Stock markets are still assuming we are past the worst, given the furious rally from the lows on 8-9 April, barely...
Why Japan could yet affect wider markets’ mood
Thursday 29 May 2025Moody’s downgrade of its rating of American government debt by one notch, to the second-highest mark of Aa1 from the highest of all, AAA, is not causing too many market ripples, and nor should it. Fellow ratings agency Standard & Poor’s made this move back in 2011, after all, and Moody’s action...
Chip stocks can show if the economy (and stock markets) are cracked (or not)
Thursday 15 May 2025Trade deals, talks with China and even the reversal of the Biden administration’s restrictions on exports of advanced silicon chips all help justify the furious rally in global share prices from the early-April lows, which means most, if not all, of the losses in major headline indices are now...
Have Trump’s first 100 days taken us back to the 1970s?
Thursday 01 May 2025Much as this column would like to offer something which does not mention words such as ‘Trump,’ ‘trade,’ and ‘tariffs,’ it is rather difficult to do so and at least the approach of the 100th day of the president’s second term in office gives us chance to take stock. As we go to print, Trump’s...
Time for a new era of an unexceptional America?
Thursday 17 Apr 2025When a presidential social media post is capable of sending stock, bond, currency and commodity markets spinning, up or down, there is a danger that any article, podcast or comment has a limited shelf life. Even this is of value in some ways, as it makes it clear that no-one – but not one – knows...
What does gold see that equities and bonds do not?
Thursday 03 Apr 2025Stock, bond, currency and commodity markets continue to try and second-guess the implications of president Trump’s trade and tariff policies. It’s hard to be dogmatic – which may be part of the problem – but all we can probably say with any certainty is 2024’s surge in US equity valuations...
Why markets need more conversation and less action
Thursday 20 Mar 2025A second wobble in US equities in seven months, following the summer squall of last August, is creating a fair degree of noise, if not panic. Dyed-in-the-wool bulls will assert that the S&P 500 is down by just 9% from its high (at the time of writing), while even the Nasdaq’s 13% slide is no...