magazine archive
magazine archive
Russ Mould
The FTSE 100 stocks with the most buy or sell ratings at the start of 2021
Thursday 14 Jan 2021The UK stock market is off to a flier so far as 2021 is concerned. The FTSE 100’s 6.4% gain between Monday 4 and Friday 8 January represented the index’s fastest ever advance over the first five trading days of a new calendar year. One question to address now is whether this sets the trend for the...
Is food one reason why inflation could crop up in 2021?
Wednesday 23 Dec 2020A month ago ( Shares , 26 Nov 2020 ) this column flagged how commodity prices were rising and how this could be a possible harbinger of inflation, whether it was down to near-term factors such as a La Niña weather pattern or something more deep rooted. The answer will only become clear with the...
The outlook for FTSE 100 dividends in 2021
Thursday 17 Dec 2020It is unlikely that too many investors will make listening to more announcements from regulators one of their New Year’s resolutions, but no-one could accuse the Prudential Regulation Authority ( PRA ) of playing Scrooge, at least not this December. Granted, the PRA may have wounded a few income-...
What is the yield curve telling investors?
Thursday 10 Dec 2020No investment indicator is infallible – if it were, none of us would be working and all of us would be playing the markets (only to find, ultimately, that there would be nothing in which for us to invest except each other’s investments). However, one which is generally held to stand the test of...
What the dollar’s decline may mean for markets
Thursday 03 Dec 2020It wasn’t always easy to understand what US president Donald Trump wanted, but at least he was consistent about the dollar. He spent much of his four-year tenure in the White House complaining about how the greenback was too high and ultimately he got his way, even if he may have finally come...
Why commodity prices seem to be full of beans
Thursday 26 Nov 2020One of the fiercest debates of 2020 from an investment perspective remains whether inflation, stagflation or deflation will be one result of the pandemic and some of the policies deployed in response to it. No-one knows the ultimate outcome – not even central bankers, who, if they did, would not be...
How does the UK escape from its debt trap?
Thursday 19 Nov 2020This week’s column comes in response to a number of questions from a reader about the national debt, how the Government funds it and what the implications are for investors’ portfolios. The last numbers with which we can work are those presented in the Budget of March 2020, although the world...
Why Turkey could still trouble global markets
Thursday 12 Nov 2020It may seem churlish to worry, given the enthusiastic response the markets are giving to news of the Phase III Covid-19 vaccine trial by Pfizer and BioNTech, but investors need to keep an eye on Turkey once more. The Turkish lira is on the slide and Ankara is facing what could yet become its second...
Why it helps if chip stocks show some sizzle
Thursday 05 Nov 2020The heavyweight sextet of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Netflix are not the only names that matter in the broad technology sector. Granted, Amazon and Apple are among the 20 best performers in America’s benchmark S&P 500 index so far this year, but so are several other tech...
The factors that could make value outperform growth and tech
Thursday 29 Oct 2020Tesla wiped the floor with analysts’ consensus forecasts for its third-quarter results and Netflix missed, to get the reporting season off to a mixed start for momentum-fuelled technology stocks. Netflix’s shares sagged and Tesla’s advanced only modestly to again raise the issue of valuation and...