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.
23 December 2020
World Investment Outlook 2021 – Chapter Six: Japan PoliticsIt was doubtless a frustrating way to go, but politics has always been that way. One short year ago, Shinzō Abe was looking forward to hosting the Tokyo Olympics in July 2020, perhaps the crowning moment of his career, having just become Japan’s longest-serving, modern-day Prime Minister (PM). The Olympics were postponed and Abe had to...
17 December 2020
FTSE 100 dividends forecast to grow by £10.9 billion in 2021There is no doubt that 2020 has been tough on income seekers. In total, 53 current or former members of the FTSE 100 index have cut, deferred or cancelled over £37 billion of dividend payments in calendar 2020 thanks to the covid-19 outbreak and subsequent recession.
Yet the news flow is starting to improve. Fifteen FTSE 100 firms have either...
15 December 2020
London’s woes weigh on Shaftesbury’s rents, dividends and share priceBen Affleck is planning to direct ‘The Big Goodbye,’ a film based on a book about the making of the classic 1974 Roman Polanski and Jack Nicholson movie ‘Chinatown,’ but investors do not seem to be looking at Shaftesbury, the owner of large chunks of London’s Chinatown, with anything like the same degree of reverence or affection. Even though...
10 December 2020
The FTSE 100 has a chance to challenge its all-time high in 2021The FTSE 100 is back where it was in summer 2016, and still languishes below the peaks of 2007 and 1999, while the pound trades near five-year lows against the dollar and close to a ten-year trough against the euro. It is therefore deceptively easy for value-seeking contrarians to make a case for a UK stock market which has underperformed and feels...
8 December 2020
GB Group shows it is still in the right place at the right timeOctober’s trading update had already hinted that these interim figures from cybersecurity specialist GB Group would be strong and they have not disappointed. The company is well placed in what remains a rapidly-growing industry as identity and location detection and fraud protection become ever more important as more and more of the world’s...
2 December 2020
Why the Santa Rally is more fact than fictionIn his novel Pudd’nhead Wilson the American writer Mark Twain cautioned about October, saying: ‘This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.’ Yet even he might have to admit to December’s festive charms, as it is...
1 December 2020
FTSE 100 bosses still outlast football managers despite management merry-go-round in 2020You would have thought that investors would have wanted managerial stability in 2020 of all years, given the challenges which have been thrown at companies from all angles, but David Lamont’s arrival as the new chief financial officer at miner BHP Group today marked the forty-fourth change in either chief executive or head of finance at FTSE 100...
25 November 2020
Run of takeovers suggests UK stock market is still cheapThe confirmation of a bid for AA, an approach to GoCo and a raised offer for Elementis make it 14 takeover deals in just over a month, to suggest that someone, somewhere thinks there are some UK-listed companies going cheap. The average premium offered for the targets is 46% so any investors who owned some of them will be feeling pretty happy with...
18 November 2020
Bitcoin: up and up it goes (until it blows…again?)Gold is holding firm around $1,900 an ounce and silver is hanging on to what looks like an upward trend at just shy of $25 an ounce but it is Bitcoin that catches the eye, which is now trading above $18,000, only a fraction below its December 2017 highs. The cryptocurrency is up by more than 150% this year and can point to a 60% gain since August...
2 November 2020
Second English lockdown fails to spark fresh FTSE sell-offThe UK’s stock market seems to be taking the imposition of a second lockdown in England pretty calmly, all things considered, and there are three possible reasons why this may be, even if at first sight a fresh halt to most economic activity is not likely to helpful to companies’ profits, cash flows or valuations.
The first is that the bulk of the...
