magazine archive
magazine archive
Russ Mould
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...
What do Biden’s blunders mean for US bonds?
Thursday 11 Jul 2024The debate over the mental acuity of Joseph R. Biden and his physical readiness to take on a second, four-year term as American’s forty-sixth president at the age of 82 (as he will be this November) is unlikely to abate any time soon. The Democratic Party has until its convention in Chicago,...
Will the third plenum prime fresh interest in China?
Thursday 27 Jun 2024For all of its current challenges, China’s economy is still the second largest in the world, trailing that of only America. According to data from the International Monetary Fund, Chinese GDP had from $1.2 trillion in 2000 to almost $18 trillion in 2023 (and thus as big as Germany, Japan, India,...
Come back Sir John Barnard, all is forgiven
Thursday 13 Jun 2024Here we go again. Shares in GameStop (GME:NYSE) are surging, US equity markets are setting new highs and a lowly reading on the VIX index suggests investors are confident that volatility will remain low and equity markets buoyant. This is all barely three years after the year GameStop melt-up (and...
How to assess the market cycle
Thursday 30 May 2024This column has no axe to grind with Nvidia (NVDA:NASDAQ) and – like everyone else – it continues to be both surprised and impressed by the growth that the semiconductor specialist is generating, thanks to the competitive position it is crafting itself in providing silicon chips that power the data...
Time to follow the money
Thursday 16 May 2024The American financial markets writer and publisher Jim Grant once observed that: ‘Successful investing is having everyone agree with you …. Later.’ This makes perfect sense, as it distils the concept of going against the crowd to buy cheaply and then sell expensively to lock in the gain and the...
Why the FTSE 100 is finally finding some friends
Thursday 02 May 2024The FTSE 100 is not the best-performing major stock index in the world this year – that honour lies with Japan’s Nikkei 225, which is up by 12% in local currency terms – but the UK’s premier benchmark is (finally) setting new all-time highs, at least when measured in sterling. The picture does not...
Beware the bear (steepener)
Thursday 18 Apr 2024One of the most intriguing facets of financial markets of the past two years has been the differing messages offered by bond yields and share prices. The bond market, via the so-called inverted yield curve, has been predicting a recession. The stock market has instead priced in a cooling in...
What a commodities price surge tells us about Nvidia and the markets
Thursday 04 Apr 2024While the relentless advances in Nvidia (NVDA:NASDAQ) , Bitcoin and US equities continue to grab most of the headlines (and that is not forgetting new all-time highs for headline stock indices in France, Germany, Taiwan, Australia and Japan), one asset is outstripping them all so far in 2024 – and...