Shares magazine
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Russ Mould
Will equities (ever) give in to rising bond yields?
Thursday 28 Nov 2024The first Budget from a Labour Government in 14 years continues to stir heated debate and sceptics readily point to the increase in the yield in the UK’s 10-year gilt to a one-year high to support their case that chancellor Rachel Reeves is on the wrong track. It does not look great that yields are...
Revisiting the Triffin dilemma as Trump's election victory sees dollar soar
Thursday 14 Nov 2024Fans of Gene Roddenberry’s long running Star Trek television and film franchise will know that any would-be captain of a Starfleet vessel had to complete the so-called Kobayashi Maru test, a simulation from which there was no way out, to see how they responded to extreme pressure. The first captain...
Falling oil and share prices may be lulling investors into a false sense of security
Thursday 31 Oct 2024Equity markets are buoyant, fixed income markets seem more nervous judging by the way yields are rising (at least for government-issued in the developed West), and commodity prices continue to march to their own beat, with gold and silver surging, industrial metals largely flat and oil and gas...
Is it time for emerging markets to pop higher?
Thursday 17 Oct 2024In the coming week (22-24 October), Russia will host the latest annual BRICS summit in Kazan. For all that one of the meeting’s key goals is to tackle neglected tropical diseases, few investors may be inclined to pay attention, not least given the economic sanctions imposed upon the host nation...
Why America’s interest bill is so important and why no-one is talking about it
Thursday 03 Oct 2024The US Federal Reserve is cutting interest rates for the first time since the pandemic-poleaxed year of 2020 in a welcome (and necessary) affirmation of the equity markets’ bullish narrative that inflation will cool, the American and Western economies will enjoy a soft landing (if they suffer any...
Stodgy sectors come to the fore in 2024
Thursday 19 Sep 2024This column is no adherent to ‘efficient market hypothesis’, not least because there would not be equity booms and busts, or even marked day-to-day volatility, if investors really knew what was coming around the corner – it simply would not be possible to make a profit if everything was perfectly...
How to ride central bank rate cut cycles (without falling off)
Thursday 05 Sep 2024Interest rate cuts in the month of August in the UK, Sweden and New Zealand, to name but three, take the global total to 108 this year, according to the website www.cbrates.com . That is more than 2022 and 2023 combined, and the US Federal Reserve is now dropping very unsubtle hints that it will be...
Why chip stocks need to keep cooking
Thursday 22 Aug 2024Regular readers of this column will be well aware of its faith in the Philadelphia Semiconductor index, or SOX, as a valuable indicator to follow and after the summer stock market stumble the 30-stock benchmark is well and truly in the headlines. At its early-August low, the SOX had lost 25% of its...
Why the yen holds the key to markets and what may lie ahead
Thursday 08 Aug 2024A market storm is emerging from a seemingly cloudless summer sky. The question now is whether this is just a tempest in a teapot, and the result of thin trading volumes as the big hitters head to the beach and leave deputies and juniors in charge, or whether it is the harbinger of a more serious –...
Are UK equities ready for a return to favour with global investors?
Thursday 25 Jul 2024As fund management legend and Vanguard founder John Bogle once noted: ‘The stock market is a giant distraction from the business of investing. In the long run, investing is about the returns earned by businesses not the stock market.’ In other words, sentiment may drive prices in the near term but...