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.
5 May 2015
Consider the passive optionFor this week’s edition this column is indebted to the London Stock Exchange for pointing out that the UK’s first Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) has just celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. iShares FTSE 100, which comes with the ticker ISF, began trading in London in late April 2000. The instrument now has £3.8 billion of assets under management and...
29 April 2015
Election 2015: how the ballot could bother the marketsEquity, bond and currency markets remain in thrall to the General Election as the leading parties' campaigns grind remorselessly toward the actual ballot on 7 May. Who will be the nation's Prime Minister after the poll is still open to doubt and the consensus view appears to be a coalition is inevitable, even if no-one knows which parties may be...
24 April 2015
Dollar continues to call the shots worldwideSaint Augustine of Hippo is well-known for works such as Confessions and The City of God but the fourth century AD Christian theologian may be most famous for his prayer “Grant me chastity and continence but not yet.” Uttered as he looked to embrace Christianity and the priesthood – and thus celibacy – these few words highlighted Augustine's choice...
20 April 2015
Little fish can be sweetSmall cap stocks tend to outperform while the good times roll, bulls are in charge and risk appetite is elevated. The chart below shows how the FTSE Small Cap index has left the FTSE 100 for dead during the course of the bull market which began in March 2009 and even the AIM All-Share has (just) managed to outpace the UK's megacap benchmark.
Mid -...
10 April 2015
Markets continue to follow the moneyThis month (4 April) marks the second anniversary of Japan launching its own version of Quantitative Easing (QE). When the scheme was first announced by Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, the idea was to let QE run for two years and then stop. That deadline now looks to have been quietly dropped, especially as Kuroda actually sanctioned an...
3 April 2015
Use the SOXX to test market's appetite for excitementOne of the tracks for which singer-songwriter Ian Dury was best known was Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll and when it comes to testing the market's appetite for a little excitement, advisers and clients just need to substitute for the first word for the Philadelphia Semiconductor index – or SOXX – to get a fair gauge of the market mood.
Technology...
27 March 2015
Portfolios need more virtues than just patienceThe financial markets continue to digest the implications of the policy meeting of the US Federal Reserve (18 March), which saw chair Janet Yellen drop the word “patience” from the central bank's carefully crafted outlook statement. Fed-watchers interpreted this to mean Yellen would not be sanctioning an interest rate increase at either of the US...
25 March 2015
Portfolios need more virtues than just patienceThe financial markets continue to digest the implications of the policy meeting of the US Federal Reserve (18 March), which saw chair Janet Yellen drop the word “patience” from the central bank's carefully crafted outlook statement. Fed-watchers interpreted this to mean Yellen would not be sanctioning an interest rate increase at either of the US...
20 March 2015
Watch what the smart money is doing“I am convinced that if it [the price system of a free market] were the result of deliberate human design, and if the people guided by the price changes understood that their decisions have significance far beyond their immediate aim, this mechanism would have been acclaimed as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind.”
Thus wrote the...
20 March 2015
Round up of the Budget and what it means for youGiven the General Election is less than two months away, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne was always going to try and curry favour with this Parliament’s final Budget. A number of new tax breaks were definitely welcome although the 59-minute speech was not all good news for savers, even if the stock market liked what it saw, judging by...
