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.
30 September 2020
Presidential debate revives bad memories of hanging chads and sliding marketsWith Joe Biden leading in the polls, President Trump seems determined to take to heart Dylan Thomas’ cry ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ and his aggressive stance and apparent determination to challenge the election result – should he lose – will put financial markets on edge. The prospect of a contested result will stir bad memories of the...
23 September 2020
Rising dollar dulls the appeal of goldGold bugs may be getting nervous that they are about to be squashed by a rising dollar, as the precious metal’s price is now trading back below $1,900 an ounce. Precious metal miners Fresnillo, Polymetal, Hochschild and Centamin are all languishing at the bottom of the FTSE 350’s performance today. A bouncy buck is traditionally seen as bad for...
17 September 2020
Central bank policy pummels banking stocks (again)HSBC, Standard Chartered, Barclays and NatWest are all toward the bottom of the performance list in the FTSE 100 in early trading after the latest monetary policy statements from the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan, as both authorities promise to anchor interest rates at record lows. The Bank of England, already debating the merits of...
15 September 2020
Why has the UK stock market done so badly since the 2016 Brexit vote?Whatever their views on the political, economic and social rights or wrongs of Brexit, and whatever their views on the Government’s latest negotiating tactics and Parliamentary manoeuvrings on the topic, all investors have no choice but to agree on one thing – the UK equity market has been a terrible performer since the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016...
9 September 2020
What could make ‘value’ stocks finally outperform tech and ‘growth’ once more?Warren Buffett once noted that ‘A pack of lemmings looks like a bunch of rugged industrialists compared with Wall Street when it gets a concept in its teeth’ and those investors who piled in to tech stocks must now ask themselves why they were buying and what they should do after three days of sharp falls.
If they were just buying because they...
2 September 2020
Barratt makes sure its balance sheet stays as safe as housesBarratt’s confirmation of its decision of 6 July to cancel both its planned second-half and special dividends for fiscal 2020, saving some £375 million in the process, may surprise some but the house builder’s reticence to lavish cash upon investors – at least for now – makes sense for several reasons. The early share price gains suggest that...
18 August 2020
Coal burns a hole in BHP’s dividend while Persimmon rebuilds its pay-outA plunge in profits at its coal and petroleum divisions have prompted miner BHP to cut its second-half dividend by 30%, although income-seekers will take some comfort from house builder Persimmon’s return to the dividend list.
As the first-half results season draws to a close, 31 FTSE 100 firms have cut, cancelled, suspended or deferred their...
14 August 2020
Should you recession proof your investment portfolio? Stocks and funds to considerInvestors need to be a bit wary of piling into so-called recession-proof stocks for two reasons.
First, as the economist Joseph Stiglitz once noted, ‘the only perfect hedge is in a Japanese garden’ and something can still go wrong at a company even if its business is, in theory, fairly insensitive to the cycle. Competition can arrive, the regulator...
11 August 2020
Derwent London’s dividend provides another capital returnAnother dividend hike, which adds to a formidable run of increases that runs back well over 20 years, suggests that Derwent London has every confidence in its £5.4 billion portfolio of prime properties in the nation’s capital, even if investors are still unsure of the long-term outlook for office space. To back up management’s dividend decision...
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29 July 2020
Investment bank can’t help Barclays beat the bad-loan bluesWho on earth would want to be a bank in the current environment? Banks are the fourth-worst performing sector in the FTSE All-Share this year (out of 39) and Barclays’ interim results show many of the reasons why: rising bad loans thanks the pandemic and associated economic downturn, pressure on net interest margins thanks to record-low interest...
