Russ Mould is AJ Bell's Investment Director. He has a Master's degree in Modern History from the University of Oxford and more than 30 years' experience of the capital markets.
He started out at Scottish Equitable in 1991 as a fund manager, where he had responsibility for the Nordic and Swiss equity markets. In 1993, Russ joined SG Warburg, now part of UBS investment bank, and worked there as an equity analyst covering the technology sectors for 12 years. He has also worked on IPOs and M&A deals. Russ was voted best analyst in the semiconductor sector in 2001 by Institutional Investor and reached the level of Managing Director in 2003 when he became head of UBS' global semiconductor research effort.
A member of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (MSCI), Russ is responsible for providing written and video content for customers and clients. He also helps to build the company’s profile in print and broadcast media as part of AJ Bell's wider PR and brand team, working alongside the Investment Committee.
Russ joined Shares Magazine as technology correspondent in 2005 and took on the post of Editor in 2008. He was appointed as AJ Bell's Investment Director in 2013 following the company's acquisition of Shares' parent company, MSM Media. Russ regularly creates content across the AJ Bell website, including the Daily Market Update and Chart of the Week, and he hosts his own 'Breaking the Mould' weekly video series.
Outside of work, Russ is a qualified cricket coach, Italian speaker and avid fan of Doctor Who and NFL.
7 September 2022
Why the strong dollar could be a source of concern for investorsWhile UK-based investors will be well aware of how weak the pound is against the US dollar, languishing near $1.15 and its lows of early 1985, sterling is not the only currency whose decline against the greenback is gathering pace.
The DXY index, which measures the value of the dollar against six major currencies, stands at its highest level since...
1 September 2022
US earnings forecasts creep down as costs creep upTuesday’s batch of economic data from the US may ease fears of a recession, as job vacancies rose, consumer confidence rebounded and house prices stayed firm, all eyes will now switch to Thursday’s manufacturing data.
The Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for manufacturing is on a long losing streak that goes back...
25 August 2022
UK mortgage approvals and US jobs data UK mortgage approvalsJune’s mortgage approvals figure was 63,726 according to the Bank of England. That undershot economists’ forecasts, representing the seventh time in twelve that approvals had fallen month-on-month and the eleventh consecutive year-on-year decline.
Perhaps most tellingly, that figure also undershot the 12-month average that...
4 August 2022
BP's bumper profits and a buyback bonanza for the FTSE 100The debate over the rights and wrongs of BP’s bumper profits will run and run but, from the narrow perspective of investment, the oil major’s latest share buyback means FTSE 100 members are on track to return record amounts of cash to their shareholders in 2022.
A forecast aggregate dividend pay-out of £85 billion almost matches 2018’s peak of £85...
3 August 2022
HSBC ends reporting season for Big Five FTSE 100 banks in styleThe combination of rising interest rates - and therefore improving net interest margins – alongside cost control and low expectations means that HSBC’s second-quarter results are pleasing investors and adding a final polish on reporting season from the Big Five FTSE 100 banks.
Profits and cash returns have either met or beaten forecasts, and only...
28 July 2022
Unilever's brand power helps it push through hefty price rises to consumersCompanies with strong brands are often seen by investors as a good hedge against inflation, because those brands command customer loyalty and sticky customers are more likely to pay up for the products and names they cherish.
Unilever’s first-half results go a long way to supporting that theory, because profits are up despite input cost increases...
27 July 2022
Walmart issues profit warning as it suffers from inflation, excess stock and pressure on consumer spendingWhen one of the world’s largest retailers dishes out a profit warning, investors really need to pay attention and Monday’s trading alert from Walmart offers evidence of three trends to ponder.
And all three may prove just to be just as important on this side of the Atlantic, so anyone with shares in leading UK-based and UK-listed retailers has some...
22 July 2022
FTSE 100 firms on track to pay £85bn in dividends & could surpass record set in 2018The FTSE 100 is now expected to yield 4.2% in 2022, thanks to the combination of share price falls and increases in dividend forecasts. The index’s total dividend pay-out is expected to reach £85 billion in 2022 excluding special dividends, up from £78.5 billion in 2021.
It means total payments could surpass 2018’s record, although the current...
8 July 2022
A change of Chancellor and what history tells us about their influence on marketsThe outgoing Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, may wish he’d been dealt a better hand. Brexit, covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine all meant that global events had a huge influence on the UK economy and the nation’s finances.
Given the events of recent days, it is hard to know precisely how long the latest appointment to 11 Downing Street, Nadhim...
7 July 2022
How the stock market responds to a change of Prime Minister mid-termIn the end Boris Johnson should - just - outlast Theresa May’s stint as Prime Minister, but financial markets are now wondering who will come next and what policies they will bring with them.
The FTSE All-Share is up, and the pound is making minor gains against the dollar and euro as investors consider who the next PM will be and hope for greater...
30 June 2022
Hunting shares get drilled even as firm predicts return to the blackA blossoming order book, an upturn in business in the USA and management’s forecast of a return to a net profit in 2022 are not proving enough to support shares in Hunting as financial markets continue to fret about a recession and a possible drop in demand for oil. A cash outflow in the first quarter of $38 million is also spooking investors.
Bot...
20 June 2022
How Brexit vote has shaped markets six years onIt is almost six years since the UK’s Brexit vote on 23 June 2016. As the Government prepares to scrap its own Northern Ireland protocol, GDP growth figures totter and energy and food security become hot topics, investors and savers are still trying to pick through the noise to work out whether they are better off or not.
The pandemic, Russia’s...
16 June 2022
How UK shares have fared during rate hike cycles as Thursday's BoE decision awaitsThe Bank of England may be moving more slowly than the US Federal Reserve when it comes to raising interest rates, but the UK’s central bank is still expected to raise the cost of borrowing for the fifth time when it meets on Thursday,
There have been eleven previous upcycles for UK interest rates since the inception of the FTSE All-Share index in...
10 June 2022
Inventory woes as Target misses again, highlighting risk to US profit forecastsA second profit warning in three weeks from US retailer Target would have been no surprise to anyone who could read a balance sheet, because the firm’s inventories were growing so much faster than its sales.
Unless customer purchases picked up speed – a risky bet, given surging fuel, food and energy costs – Target was in danger of having to...
27 May 2022
Snap share price badly bruised by Apple’s new privacy policyYou can tell a share price is in trouble when even a drop of 25% is hard to spot on the chart and Snap’s pre-market plunge is just such an example.
The self-styled camera company’s stock now trades below the March 2017 flotation price of $17 and is down by some 80% from its September 2021 peak after a profit warning for the second quarter that...
19 May 2022
US margin debt falls again as investors’ appetite for risk recedesAccording to the latest set of data from American market regulator FINRA, margin debt – the amount of money borrowed by either professional or private investors in the US – has just fallen for the seventh time in ten months. Even the pandemic could not force such a retrenchment, so perhaps this is a sign that the mood music is changing.
Meme...
19 May 2022
KKR fires up a bid for power plant play ContourGlobalPower utility ContourGlobal has hardly blown out the lights since its listing on the London Stock Exchange in November 2017 but a bid from private equity for the power utility offers a reminder of valuable lessons for investors.
First, cash flow is king. Second, investing for yield and income can bring its long-term reward to patient portfolio...
11 May 2022
BP’s plans mean FTSE 100 share buybacks are on track to set new-all time high in 2022The debate over BP’s bumper profits and the rights and wrongs of a windfall tax looks set to continue but the facts of the matter are that the oil major’s latest plans to return cash to its investors mean the FTSE 100’s members are poised to set a new all-time record for share buybacks in 2022.
BP’s plan to buy back $2.5 billion of stock in the...
6 May 2022
Why Wednesday’s post-Fed rally may have been a bear trapWhen Jack Nicholson was playing The Joker in Tim Burton’s first Batman film in 1989, he was so well paid that he reportedly told a fellow cast member after just a week’s shooting, ‘Ah well, that’s another Matisse.’ Financial markets are starting to rack up some big numbers, too, but in this case the money is flowing out, not in.
After Thursday’s...
5 May 2022
Tough times ahead for Next and Shell profit beats expectations amid windfall tax talk“Markets have been fearing interest rate hikes for some time, so it is understandable to question why equities soared after rates went up. It’s also more confusing when you consider the Federal Reserve pushed through twice the level of rate hikes you would normally expect from a central bank meeting,” says Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell...
28 April 2022
Five questions that Amazon must answer in its first-quarter resultsAmazon’s fourth-quarter results for 2021 were weak, guidance for the first-quarter of 2022 was poor and the gambit of a stock split coupled with a $10 billion share buyback has subsequently failed to support the shares.
They are down by more than a fifth from their all-time high of last July, to technically leave them in a bear market, and in...
8 April 2022
FTSE 100 forecast to deliver a 5.4% total cash return in 2022The FTSE 100’s total dividend pay-out is expected to reach £81.2 billion in 2022, compared to £78.5 billion in 2021, equating to a yield of 3.9%. Total payments peaked at £85.2 billion in 2018 and 2022 is expected to get closer to that mark.
Ninety-seven FTSE 100 firms are expected to pay a dividend in 2022, against 91 in 2021 and 85 in 2020, as...
24 March 2022
What does US bond market blitz mean for stock markets (and the economy)?It was former US President Bill Clinton’s economic adviser James Carville who said that if he were reincarnated, he would like to come back as the bond market because then ‘you can intimidate everybody.’ Now that US bond yields are surging and prices are falling, stock market investors need to seriously think about whether it is time to be...
28 January 2022
IG Design’s American dream turns into a nightmareA second profit warning in four months is tearing a big hole in the share price of greetings cards, crafting, gifts and gift wrapping specialist IG Design.
Supply chain problems, higher raw material prices and higher shipping and fulfilment costs have been compounded by drop in demand for crafting in the USA as lockdowns have eased and Americans...
21 January 2022
Share prices stumble after just two months of less loose policy from the FedWell, that didn’t take long. The Fed began to pump less Quantitative Easing (QE) into the financial system in November and the stock market’s wheels have started to wobble after barely two months of less cheap money, let alone move to withdraw it.
Investors are already starting to ask themselves how much the US Federal Reserve can do to tighten...
13 January 2022
Vistry shares unmoved as remediation cost worries chip away at confidenceA 41% jump in completions, firm selling prices and growing confidence in its mixed-tenure Partnerships operation mean that housebuilder Vistry is reaping the benefit of strong demand for housing, Government support for the industry and 2020’s £1.1 billion purchase of Galliford Try’s housing and regeneration business.
However, the share price isn’t...
22 December 2021
The five investment trends that really mattered in 2021 (and that could influence 2022)The past 12 months have been a bit of a mixed bag from a portfolio point of view. The American, Indian, German and French stock markets all set new all-time highs in the fourth quarter, the FTSE 100 has provided a double-digit percentage capital gain (with dividends on top) and oil surprised with a near-40% gain – but Brazil and China are down for...
17 December 2021
Dividend estimates stall but FTSE 100 forecast to yield 4.1% in 2022The FTSE 100 is currently expected to yield 4.1% in 2022, helped by the second annual increase in a row after 2020’s sharp decline. The index’s total dividend pay-out is expected to reach £83.2 billion in 2021, compared to £61.8 billion in 2020, excluding special dividends.
These articles are for information purposes only and are not a personal...
27 October 2021
Prosecco budget delivers cheer for pub groups and housebuildersThis was a Budget for lower paid workers, drivers and boozers, with a large increase in spending on public services. In many ways it was like watching austerity in reverse. Overall the policy decisions represent a £75 billion giveaway over the next five years. Make no mistake there is a cost to this, but many of the painful decisions that paved the...
11 October 2021
FTSE 100 dividends in touching distance of pre-pandemic peakThe FTSE 100 is currently expected to yield 4.1% in 2021, helped by the first year of dividend growth since 2018. The index’s total dividend pay-out is expected to reach £84.1 billion in 2021, compared to £61.8 billion in 2020, an increase of 36%.
Total payments peaked at £85.2 billion in 2018 and 2022 is expected to get tantalisingly close to that...
1 October 2021
S&U shows the benefits of keeping it simple as profits and dividend rise“Lower loan impairments as the pandemic’s impact starts to ease, prudent lending policies and a new online portal all mean that specialist finance provider S&U is making the most of an upturn in demand for both cars and property refurbishments in the UK,” says AJ Bell investment director, Russ Mould.
“Profits are up, the dividend is growing again...
15 September 2021
Muted market response to iPhone 13 is the rule, not the exceptionApple’s shares didn’t do much at all in response to boss Tim Cook’s launch of iPhone 13 and updated versions of its Watch and iPad, but this seems to be a normal trading pattern for product releases from the tech giant and as much the result of the old formula of ‘buy on the rumour and sell on the fact’ as anything else.
In the six months before...
3 September 2021
Tax and cost worries weigh on Barratt sharesPerhaps it is down to concerns over the expiry of the stamp duty tax break in October, or worries over an increasing reliance on Help-to-Buy, or the potential impact of the proposed April 2022 launch of the Residential Property Developer Tax, but investors do not seem unduly moved by Barratt Developments’ strong full-year results.
Perhaps it is...
19 August 2021
Five ways to take the markets’ temperatureThe FTSE 100 continues to paddle very gently upwards, having reached an 18-month high in August, but the UK’s benchmark index still stands some 8% below its May 2018 peak of 7,779, in contrast to America’s S&P 500 and Europe’s Stoxx 600 which can point to a series of new all-time highs over the summer.
Yet the FTSE 250 and FTSE Small Cap indices...
18 August 2021
Persimmon plots its way to future growthSome economists may be tempted to argue that the housing market is broken having gone through the cycle outlined by former US President Ronald Reagan, who once slammed typical cycle of Government economic policy as a case of ‘If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it keeps moving, subsidise it’.
Yet the management team of...
13 July 2021
Post pandemic rebound of £15.2 billion for FTSE 100 dividendsThe FTSE 100 is currently expected to yield 3.7% in 2021, helped by the first year of dividend growth since 2018. The index’s total dividend pay-out is expected to reach 76.9 billion in 2021, compared to 61.5 billion in 2020.
That equates to a 25% or 15.2 billion post-pandemic rebound, with analysts forecasting a more modest 2.9 billion or 4%...
9 July 2021
Why it is too early to say the inflation trade is overThe Federal Reserve’s allegedly hawkish tilt at its June policy meeting and insistence that the current inflationary spike is ‘transitory’ is giving markets pause for thought and prompting more cautious investors to argue that the shift to cyclicals and ‘value’ stocks is over, says AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.
But it may still be too...
9 June 2021
Cevian looks to shake up Aviva’s cash return plansAviva’s chief executive Amanda Blanc may be feeling a bit miffed that Cevian is calling for change at the life insurance giant, especially as she can point to a string of disposals, her own promise of enhanced cash returns and a share price that is trading at an eighteen-month high, says AJ Bell Investment Director Russ Mould.
But Cevian’s call...
26 May 2021
Royal Mail looking to send Renishaw back to FTSE 250 in latest quarterly index reshuffleThe latest FTSE 100 reshuffle, the results of which are due to be announced after the close on Wednesday 2 June, could be relatively quiet this time around, with just one demotion and one promotion.
Royal Mail and Renishaw are the two firms that look most likely to swap places, although cybersecurity specialist Avast, engineer Weir and even Real...
20 May 2021
Why stock markets are worried about inflationEven a reading of 1.5% inflation in the UK’s consumer price index is giving stock markets the jitters, although that it still a very, very, very long way below the sort of levels which gave investors terrible trouble in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Back then inflation, as measured by the retail price index (for which there is a longer dataset), was...
5 May 2021
FTSE 100 dividend payments swamp cuts and cancellations in AprilHSBC may have disappointed a few optimists who had been hoping for a first-quarter dividend, and BP unveiled a fourth straight year-on-year cut. But the oil major’s move surprised no-one, the bank dangled the possibility of an interim payment, and overall in April UK-listed firms that made or restored payments to investors hugely outnumbered those...
26 April 2021
IMI share buyback takes total this year to over £4bnIMI’s announcement of a £200 million cash return to its investors, alongside an upbeat trading statement, takes the total value of share buybacks announced in the UK this year over the £4 billion mark. A bounce in IMI’s shares suggest that shareholders are happy about the prospect of the windfall and the confidence in the future that it signifies...
21 April 2021
A big week for the big five FTSE 100 banksAll of them are back on the dividend list, three are already buying back shares and the sector ranks as the third-best performer within the FTSE 350 in the year to date, so next week’s results from the Big Five banks will be a key test of their apparent return to favour, and whether it can last. All of this quintet are due to report first-quarter...
15 April 2021
What would help the FTSE 100 get above 7,000 and keep goingAt face value, it does seem odd that the FTSE 100 is trading above its pre-pandemic levels, even if the number of daily new covid-19 cases are back to where they were last March and last September and the vaccination programme continues apace.
But it does make sense if you think that the consensus earnings forecasts for the index are going to be...
7 April 2021
FTSE 100 Dividend tap being turned back onCurrent consensus forecasts show that the FTSE 100 is set to deliver its first year of dividend growth since 2018 this year, with a £74.3 billion payout enough to equate to a yield of 3.8%. That compares to a payout of £61.4 billion for last year which, if confirmed by company announcements, would be the lowest figure for the FTSE 100 since 2013.
...
10 March 2021
Is the share buyback back in fashion?The announcement this week of share buybacks by Balfour Beatty and Domino’s Pizza, as well as plans for such a scheme at Gamesys and intentions to ask for shareholders’ permission to buy back stock at IP Group, all suggest that this way of return capital to shareholders is back in fashion.
Shareholders must now decide whether this is a sign that...
9 March 2021
Investors still preferring jam today to jam tomorrow as the Dow outperforms the NASDAQAmerica’s Dow Jones Industrials set a new intra-day record high on Monday while the NASDAQ Composite slid into correction territory, just over 10% below its mid-February closing peak, to once more raise the issue of whether investors are now preferring ‘value’ stocks – which potentially offer rapid growth today – over ‘growth’ names, which are...
5 March 2021
Is Deliveroo turning up just as the IPO market turns down?The bears may now be marching two by two toward Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovations Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), which is down by 20% from its highs, and those who are looking sceptically at global stocks will be also be growling a bit more loudly about initial public offerings (IPOs) and market newcomers.
This makes the timing of the Hill Review...
1 March 2021
FTSE 100 dividends paid and restored now exceed value of cuts since the pandemic beganLily James, Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes may be gripping the nation in the Netflix film The Dig, but it is treasure of a different kind that is keeping investors interested in the UK stock market, after a bumper month for dividend payments in February.
Payment declarations came to £14.6 billion, while a further £5.2 billion worth of dividends...
23 February 2021
‘Value’ continues to outperform ‘growth’ as NASDAQ stumblesThe NASDAQ Composite’s second worst daily decline of the year, and its third one-day slide of more than 2%, may be a further sign that investors’ love affair with technology stocks is just cooling a little as they look for ways to play a post-pandemic upturn.
Gathering concern over inflation, as wage growth accelerates, commodity prices surge and...
