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Russ Mould
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...
Why the Federal Reserve may be in a sticky situation
Thursday 21 Mar 2024This column is being written just before the next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on 20 March and the working premise is that chair Jay Powell and his colleagues at the US Federal Reserve will leave the headline interest rate unchanged at 5.50%. If that does not turn out to the case...
How gold and emerging markets are warning about US debt growth
Thursday 07 Mar 2024Warren Buffett’s antipathy toward gold as an investment is well known, thanks in part to a speech the Sage of Omaha gave at Harvard in 1998. Buffett acidly asserted that: ‘Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people...