Hrkn to .. The Financial Outlook for Personal Investors

For Simon Rose's last discussion with Russ Mould of A J Bell, Russ looks at the tentative bid for FTSE 100 stock Segro, once a warehouse REIT, now moving into data centres. It's the 16th bid for a UK property company in the last four years and yet UK investors don't seem interested in UK commercial property. The 10-year gilt yields 4.7% against a sector yield of 6.3%. Does that premium compensate...

Yana Mihaylova of Edison Group focusses on XP Factory, a £32m AIM stock which is the market leader in escape rooms with Escape Hunt and also operates Boom Battle Bar. They are making a strategic shift from the latter to the former. Escape rooms are significantly cheaper to set up and run than the bars and are more profitable, so the shift makes sense, particularly given rising employment costs. Th...

Russ Mould of A J Bell discusses the quarterly reshuffle of the FTSE100 constituents. Coming in at the end of June are Computacenter, Investec and Aberdeen. Investec is the second bank to enter this year while Computacenter is felt to be an AI play. Out go Berkeley Group, Rightmove and Mondi, indicating sentiment turning against real estate and property. Investors often find companies moving up to...

Neil Shah of Edison Group returns to the topic of Games Workshop. The recent trading update of this small cap that has grown into a FTSE 100 share significantly beat expectations. It is growing so strongly that it has already beaten Edison's analysts' 2027 numbers. The company benefits from loyal consumer demand, is still expanding geographically and will benefit from the forthcoming linked Amazon...

For once, Russ Mould of A J Bell talks politics. With the prospect in the offing of the 8th mid-term Prime Minister since 1962, how much attention do markets pay to such things? Rather less than you might think, concludes Russ after crunching the numbers. Although the results vary, by and large the equity market doesn't seem to be particularly threatened, while gilt market yields on every occasion...

Finlay Mathers of Edison Group explains why MP Evans and AEP fell so heavily this week. Both produce crude palm oil, which estimates say are in roughly ⅓ of the things on supermarket shelves, even shampoo. The Indonesian President is to centralise product exports through a state-run company which investors fear will produce bottlenecks and distort prices. Both companies, however, say they sell to...

Russ Mould of A J Bell says that the UK 10-year gilt, yielding over 5%, is the highest since 2008. Although that was normal in the Blair years, things are different after 15 years of financial repression with inflation consistently above target and debt levels everywhere far higher. If Starmer and Reeves are replaced, we'd have the 7th PM and 9th Chancellor in 10 years. In the G20 only emerging ma...

Liam O'Byrne of Edison highlights Seraphim Space Investment Trust, which has a diversified portfolio of primarily private space technology companies, businesses which would otherwise be very hard for investors to reach. The shares have risen over 300% in a year, an amazing re-rating with its one-time 70% discount turning into a 56% premium. Despite the rise, there are several positive catalysts ah...

Russ Mould of A J Bell says that oil briefly touched $125 a barrel because the "blockade of the blockage" is cutting off 1/5 of the global supply. However, he points out that this is a paper future oil price. The current price is higher, as one might expect with tight supply. There are, of course, other types of oil which are currently much cheaper because they go nowhere near Iran. The equity mar...

Russ Mould of A J Bell says that the S&P 500 has just set a new all-time high, with the UK getting close too. Despite the war in in the Middle East, markets must believe that they've seen it all before and that the war won't last long. But there are longer-term issues to address if not, including the status of the dollar, supply chain issues and national security, with a move from Just In Time to...

Finlay Mathers of Edison Group highlights Billington Holdings, a steel specialist with a market cap of £50m which makes frames for large buildings. Listed on AIM, it restructured and consolidated operations last year, increasing capacity. Recently it has won a raft of new contracts. The company focusses on training its own staff, has a strong balance sheet with zero debt and will report results in...

Russ Mould of A J Bell marks the first anniversary of Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs. The overall impact hasn't been as great as feared at the time, with tariffs settling around 10-13%. Since then, the dollar has gone down, US equities have underperformed and US bond yields have generally gone up. The concept of the US being the only game in town has been reassessed, while supply chain managemen...

Chloe Wong of Edison Group discusses P Z Cussons, best known in the UK for brands like Imperial Leather and Carex. But this 140-year-old firm has a large international portfolo of consumer goods. Recently it has been concentrating its activities and geographical areas while reducing the number of brands. It has also increased its emphasis on marketing. With a 5% yield, it's a dependable stock in t...

Russ Mould of A J Bell says that in the past five years, banks have been the second best UK performers after Aerospace & Defence. The five in the FTSE are forecast to generate almost a quarter of its profits for 2026 and pay out a fifth of its dividends. This year, though, the banks are in the middle of the pack and down for the year. They certainly earned their run, making record profits when, ha...

Liam O'Byrne of Edison looks at Greggs, the leading on-the-go food retailer, which has a £1.75bn market cap. Their full-year results showed operating profits dimming a little although like-for-like sales and market share were up, despite a gently-declining market. The company expands in such an efficient way that it is reasonable to be optimistic about the company's future. Edinburgh Worldwide Inv...

Russ Mould says that investors can't ignore what is happening in the Gulf, which has seen a jump in volatility and sharp declines in some of the investments that been doing best but which had little downside protection. Despite this, the broader US market is roughly where it was a week before. Oil is up by a fifth, but that is still much less than during other Middle Eastern crises. For investors,...

Finlay Mathers of Edison says that BP is going through a strategic reset. Its full year results show a strong underlying performance. There's a big divestment programme under way. Buybacks have been suspended to strengthen the balance sheet while Capex has been trimmed as the company refocusses on what it does best. Wheaton Precious Metals is a $70 billion company and yet it only has 44 employees....

Russ Mould of A J Bell says that AI interest has switched from looking for winners to searching for potential losers. But it's been indiscriminate and has included quality software services and data analytic companies. They have a walled garden of data, sticky customers, high margins, predictable cash flows and consistent dividend growth. In fact, their share prices peaked last year, probably beca...

Liam O'Byrne of Edison Group highlights HG Capital Trust, a £2bn private equity investment trust in the FTSE 250 which specialises in unquoted software companies in Europe and North America. It was recently hit by the widespread worries about AI's effect on software businesses but in fact most SMEs don't have the ability or confidence to develop their own in-house software and, as a result, HGT's...

Russ Mould of A J Bell discusses the precious metals meltdown and the ongoing volatility, with silver diving from $122 to $72. He reminds us, though, that both gold and silver are still up 9-10% in a month. Russ runs through the things that might have caused the collapse, including Trump's appointment to the Fed chair, that things had gone too far too fast, that leveraged positions were flushed ou...

Liam O'Byrne of Edison Group says that leading London estate agency Foxtons are at the crossroads of an exciting new chapter. They have set a much more optimistic growth target and are expanding beyond the London area, which could be the precursor to a wider rollout. They have a very rich historical database which is being leveraged with AI to outpace the opposition. He also highlights Baillie Gif...

Russ Mould of A J Bell asks what lessons we can draw from Donald Trump’s speech at Davos, an event Russ would normally ignore. We know Trump likes to deal and to keep the US stock market happy and running hot. We can probably expect market volatility and there are indications that it makes sense not being too over-exposed to US equities. Investors keen to protect themselves should opt for shares t...

Neil Shah of Edison Group says that Greggs' shares are off almost 40% over the past couple of years. Like other fast food companies, weight loss jabs are having an effet on their business. But the recent Q4 update confirmed that the company will meet their profit expectations and the management team has a great track record of executing growth. Although they could simply farm their estate, further...

Musing on President Trump's interest in Venezuela, Russ Mould of A J Bell believes that second-guessing geopolitics is brutally difficult, although he can see why defence stocks are back in vogue. While Venezuela's oil has been much discussed, the United States doesn't really need more oil, thanks to shale. However, China does, which might make the country seem more interesting to Trump. However,...

The big stories of 2025 – Trump and AI – are likely to feature heavily in 2026, says Fergus Caheny of Evelyn Partners. Will the eye-watering expenditure we have seen produce enough profitability to justify the high ratings? He does not feel prices are yet in bubble territory but thinks the baton will change to concentrate on those companies that supply this year's AI winners. With the American mid...