Bruce Packard

Financial Analyst, former management consultant, equity research analyst Bruce Packard started his career at Credit Suisse followed by various banks and stockbroking firms before quitting The City to work in financial PR, Litigation finance and finally financial education. In 2008 he predicted the nationalisation of the UK banking industry.

I’m a self-invested, low frequency, buy and hold investor focused on quality. As well as writing for ShareScope I like to capture my financial analysis and non-conformist thoughts on my own blog brucepackard.comI also used to own a craft beer bar in Berlin and for fun play beach volleyball (unlikely to turn professional though). 

Weekly Commentary 06/09/21: The Decline in r

The FTSE 100 was up less than half a percent last week to 7,164, towards the top of the trading range that it has occupied since early May. The Nasdaq 100 was up +1.1% ahead of the S&P500 +0.6%. The China 50 was one of the best performing major indices up +2.8% to 18,291 as

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FAMANG share price over 10 years SharePad

Weekly Commentary 16/08/21: The S&P494

Bruce looks at how stock market indices can be skewed by a few large winners.  The same goes for portfolio returns.  Stocks covered this week are BOTB’s profit warning, plus H1 results from Clarkson, Ocean Wilsons and Georgia Capital.  The FTSE was up +1.0% to 7,193 last week, outperforming the S&P500 which was up 0.5%

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Weekly Commentary 02/08/21: Credit and Contagion

The FTSE 100 bobbled about just above 7,000 last week. Nasdaq 100 was down less than half a percent, as strong results from Alphabet, Microsoft and Apple all beat analyst forecasts on the top line. This was offset somewhat by Amazon, which reported sales growth slowing as lockdown measures eased. Maybe Jeff Bezos has timed

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Weekly Commentary 26/07/21: Red flags from China

Markets sold off at the beginning of last week, with the FTSE 100 falling to 6,849 before recovering to above 7000 at the end of the week. We saw similar sell offs in the Europe and the US markets, including Nasdaq which was down -2.5% early last week, which seems odd if jitters were caused

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SharePad multi graph feature

Weekly Commentary 19/07/21: $7trillion price of stability

The Bank of England released its twice yearly Financial Stability Report last week. The report says that UK bank balance sheets are in much better shape than the 2007-8 crisis and they expect impairments in 2021 to be lower than the £22bn credit losses taken last year. The “guardrails” against shareholder dividends have now been

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Weekly Commentary 12/07/21: Beware the prudent man rule

Just as I thought the FTSE 100 was breaking out of its trading range 7000-7200 markets dipped at the end of last week to leave the FTSE at 7084. The US 10 year Government bond yield fell to 1.33%, down from a peak of 1.74% at the end of March, suggesting that bond markets have

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Weekly Commentary 05/07/21: Management Departures

The FTSE 100 at 7,145 appears to be breaking out of the trading range that it has occupied since the beginning of May. The S&P +15% since the start of the year, is still ahead of the Nasdaq +13% although last week the latter was closing the gap, reporting a positive +1.5% gain. Amazon is

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Weekly Commentary 28/06/21: A year of two halves?

The FTSE 100 is up +10% since the start of the year, currently at 7,120. The best performing stock in the FTSE 100 in H1 was Royal Mail +72%, followed by Entain +61% and Ashtead +57%. The worst was Fresnillo -29%, the Mexican based silver miner. This was followed by food retailers: Tesco -24%, Just

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Weekly Commentary 21/06/21: Diamond hands vs 10x Future

The FTSE 100 finished the week flat, ending at 7,130. Both Nasdaq and the S&P500 also moved less than 1%; it was almost as if the sun was shining and traders were watching football matches. There were more significant moves in Govt bond markets, the US 10y bond yield rising to 1.57%, responding sharply to

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