There are a select few stocks on the ASX that boast true market darling status. Whereas other stocks sell off at the hint of bad news, market darlings seem to emit an aura effect on markets that itself attracts investment. Biotech company CSL is arguably the Aussie market’s preeminent market darling, having returned 5,741% since inception. For a while, it seemed like CSL could do no wrong. But even royalty can be dethroned... Today’s guest is Ray David, Portfolio Manager and Partner at Blackwatt...
Aug 18, 2023•45 min•Ep. 174
Livewire Live is an investor event like no other where Australia’s most experienced investors will debate the critical topics in markets right now. It is set to be an unmissable event with an exceptional lineup of speakers and innovative formats. Tickets will sell out, secure your spot here . Speakers We will be announcing additional speakers in the coming weeks. Robert Millner, Chairman, Washington H Soul Pattinson Bobby Yazdani, Founder & Partner, Cota Capital Andrew Clifford, Co-founder, ...
Aug 16, 2023•7 min•Ep. 175
There is a good reason why Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, maintains a 16% allocation to private equity. Returns, returns, returns. Private equity, and the lucrative returns it offers, has traditionally been the restricted domain of institutional investors and off limits to retail investors. Ellerston Capital's JAADE Private Assets Fund bucks that trend by offering retail investors exposure to unlisted Australian growth companies. Like private equity, JAADE’s managers act as ...
Aug 11, 2023•45 min•Ep. 173
If there is one request that we repeatedly receive from our audience, it’s that you want more content on the wonderful, often under-covered world of microcaps. It makes cents (literally). These stocks usually fly under the radar of the masses, providing diligent investors with the opportunity to invest in mispriced stocks and generate capital growth over the long term. However, investing in this area of the market comes with its risks. In 2022, the S&P/ASX Emerging Companies Index suffered a...
Aug 04, 2023•39 min•Ep. 171
Value investing is all about buying stocks that are trading below their intrinsic value. In practical terms, that often involves investing in companies and sectors that have been shunned by the market due to particular macro headwinds. "It should be no surprise as to where the pockets of opportunity are," says Tim Carleton , Auscap Asset Management CIO and today's guest on the Rules of Investing. "They're in the more cyclical sectors that people are most concerned about from an earnings perspect...
Jul 28, 2023•49 min•Ep. 170
A year ago I sat down with Oscar Oberg, lead portfolio manager at Wilson Asset Management. His thesis then was that small caps were beaten down and due some mean reversion. Alas, small caps haven’t done much since then, with the Small Ords returning 3.91%. Yet Oscar’s thesis also remains unchanged. In fact, it’s gotten stronger! Not only is he positioning for a rebound in smalls and microcaps, he’s doing it with overweight exposure to consumer discretionary, a sector that has been tarred and fea...
Jul 21, 2023•43 min•Ep. 168
Last month, Fidelity marked the 20 year anniversary of its Australian Equities Fund. The fund has consistently outperformed its benchmark, the ASX 200 Accumulation Index, netting over 11% per annum. Paul Taylor , Head of Investments at Fidelity International, has captained that ship from inception to now. The fund's generated 11% per annum over the two decades, through some of the worst crises markets have dealt with. The Global Financial Crisis, the European sovereign debt crisis, COVID-19, and...
Jul 15, 2023•51 min•Ep. 167
In sports, players deemed to be "all rounders" don't usually dominate headlines and highlight reels. Yet, over the course of their careers, their flexibility and consistent performance can prove invaluable. The same can be said of investing. You have growth managers, value managers and everything in between. When market conditions are favourable, they're on. But when markets favour another style, they take a back seat. Sometimes for a decade or longer. Today’s guest is Blake Henricks, portfolio ...
Jun 30, 2023•38 min•Ep. 164
If you are feeling confused right now, you can rest easy knowing you are not alone. Since the beginning of the year, investors have been bombarded with a cacophony of conflicting market commentary on where best to invest. The indicators themselves, such as the VIX Index, the Coppock Indicator, and various sentiment surveys, also seem to be pointing in opposing directions. For equities-focused fund managers, there’s plenty of opportunity hidden within the world’s major indices. For fixed income i...
Jun 23, 2023•34 min•Ep. 162
Dividend-paying equities have long formed the backbone of retirees’ portfolios. And the historic stalwarts of these portfolios are well known. BHP, Telstra, and Commonwealth Bank, to name a few. You might be mistaken for thinking that equity income portfolios are therefore set and forget propositions, made up of a limited number of dividend darlings that will pay out into perpetuity. But you’d be wrong on both accounts, according to today’s guest. Dr Don Hamson is the founder and managing direct...
Jun 16, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 159
Few of us would’ve predicted that by June the S&P would not only be positive, but up over 11%. On face value, a healthy market. But dig a little deeper, and it quickly becomes apparent that this performance has been carried by the big mega-cap tech stocks. Such is their performance, and the lack of performance by the rest of the index, that Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Nvidia now account for a third of the S&P500. This all begs the question: what next? Do these mega cap stocks sell off...
Jun 09, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 158
Fixed income has always served a defensive role within investor portfolios. Normally, when growth is down and risk assets underperform, fixed income outperforms. That’s under normal circumstances, though. In 2022, the Bloomberg aggregate bond index lost 13%. Why? Introduce inflation, and the higher rates employed to combat it. When this happens, risk assets and fixed income fall in lockstep. But those dark days seem to be behind us. We’re now at or near the peak in interest rates. So with bond y...
Jun 02, 2023•29 min•Ep. 155
Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank of Australia was forced to cough up internal documents under Freedom of Information laws. This included an internal modelling exercise from September 2022, which revealed the risk of an Australian recession could be as high as 80% by September 2024. Meanwhile, a recent Bloomberg survey of 14 economists saw the probability of a recession in Australia climb from 35% to 38% in April. Investors themselves, through their positioning, seem to be suggesting the same...
May 26, 2023•47 min•Ep. 154
Investing hasn’t been easy these past few years amid a pandemic, soaring inflation and monetary tightening. The ASX200 did 1.4% in 2020, 17% in 2021 and then -1% last year. Hugely volatile. But it's in times like this when the cream rises to the top. As most fund managers struggle to match the benchmark, Datt Capital’s Absolute Return fund has returned an enormous 25% per annum over the last three years. It's a staggering performance that most fund managers would give their left arm to get. In t...
May 19, 2023•36 min•Ep. 152
In the world of investing, listed markets dominate the airwaves due to their ease of access, broker coverage and liquidity. For that reason, unlisted shares can often take a back seat. But companies aren’t born on the listed markets. Many of the best opportunities exist in the unlisted, pre-IPO space. Today’s guest is Dane Roberts – a portfolio manager at Fifth Estate Asset Management. Fifth Estate invest in pre-IPO, IPO, unlisted and listed microcap and small cap companies. Its first fund was l...
May 05, 2023•41 min•Ep. 150
When volatility rattles markets, micro caps and small caps typically suffer the biggest drawdowns. But markets have a reliable habit of reverting to the mean sooner or later. That’s very good news if you’re investing in small caps, arguably, now! This week’s guest is Matthew Booker, portfolio manager and co-founder at Spheria Asset Management. Matt’s managed small company portfolios for over 15 years, consistently outperforming the index. The Spheria Australian Microcap Fund has outperformed the...
Apr 21, 2023•39 min•Ep. 149
Some fund managers don't freely disclose how they go about business, for fear of losing a competitive edge (or maybe letting on that they don't have any edge at all). Then there's the other school of thought - tell investors how you operate, what you're thinking, and forge ahead as a thought leader. Then, if you're worth your salt, investors pick up what you're putting down and entrust you to manage their capital. Today's guest on The Rules of Investing occupies the extreme latter end of that sp...
Apr 14, 2023•54 min•Ep. 147
We all know the stats. Over the long term, the majority of active investment managers will underperform their benchmarks. According to SPIVA data, more than 78% of funds underperformed the S&P/ASX 200 over the past decade, while more than 91% of funds underperformed the S&P 500 over the same time period. These rates improve significantly over shorter time horizons, with 42% of Aussie managers outperforming their benchmark over a one-year period, and 49% of US-based managers doing the sam...
Mar 31, 2023•43 min•Ep. 146
Events of the past few weeks have cast doubt over the stability of the financial system. First Silicon Valley Bank and its troubled regional banking peers, then Credit Suisse. In typical fashion, the US Federal Reserve has stepped in to backstop the sector. In the case of Credit Suisse, UBS scooped it up for cents on the dollar. These events have changed the way corporations perceive risk, according to this week's guest on the The Rules of Investing John Ayoub, Portfolio Manager for the Wilson A...
Mar 23, 2023•38 min•Ep. 144
On this week's episode of The Rules of Investing, Livewire's David Thornton sits down with Alan Kohler AM, one of the country's preeminent business journalists. Alan first cut his teeth in 1969 as a cadet at The Australian. From 1985 and 1988 he served as editor of the Australian Financial Review, and was editor of The Age from 1992-1995. In 2007, together with Robert Gottliebsen and Stephen Bartholomeusz, Alan founded Australian Independent Business Media, publisher of Business Spectator and Eu...
Mar 09, 2023•27 min•Ep. 142
The Smorgon family is one of Australia’s great wealth building stories. The family emigrated from Ukraine in 1927, opening a Kosher Butcher shop in Carlton soon after. Through the 1930s, the family expanded into wholesale meat and canning industries and, by the time the decade was up, were exporting meat and canned fruit goods to the United Kingdom. Victor Smorgon AC and the family established Smorgon Consolidated Industries in 1942, and this is when things really started to take off. In the 50s...
Feb 24, 2023•33 min•Ep. 141
Today’s guest on The Rules of Investing will be very familiar to subscribers of Livewire. Christopher Joye co-founded Coolabah Capital in 2011, and it's since grown to house about $7 billion in funds under management. Coolabah is a leading active credit alpha manager, with 28 portfolios across institutional and retail mandates. Chris has storied history analysing Australia’s property market. In 2008, when the world was in the throes of the GFC, the Australian Government ploughed $15 billion into...
Feb 09, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 139
If there's one group of people who cop a lot of flak in financial markets, it's central bankers. Whether you believe they get too much or too little of it, they're the ones who print the money and make decisions that influence the wallets of billions of people. That was particularly true in 2022, as many on the economic spectrum were caught unawares by the surge in inflation (and its persistence thereafter). And depending on which central bank you most closely watch, they may also provide intent...
Feb 05, 2023•26 min•Ep. 138
We’ve got a slightly different episode for you today on The Rules of Investing. A departure from the norm! A lot has been said about the change from growth investing to value investing. This shift has been easy to see in aggregate. In 2022, the MSCI world growth index was down 29.05%, compared to just -6.5% for the MSCI Value index. But indices are just that - aggregates. They do little to explain the why behind the what. Why has this shift occurred? What signals should investors watch? How shou...
Feb 02, 2023•46 min•Ep. 137
Professional investors have been banging the quality drum with intensity since since the June sell-off. It makes a lot of sense. In today's market turbulence, the companies that will survive (and thrive) need strong balance sheets, consistent earnings and high return on capital. All the good stuff. But that alone doesn't make them good investments. Quality companies only make sense if you buy them at a good price. Today's episode of The Rules of Investing features a Livewire favourite: Steve Joh...
Jan 19, 2023•40 min•Ep. 135
The Rules of Investing is done for another year. But fear not! For those looking for some summer listening we’ve got a fresh Series of Success and More Interesting Stuff going live right now. Search for Success and More Interesting Stuff on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Podbean.
Dec 21, 2022•2 min•Ep. 133
When volatility strikes, investors invariably become more reflexive and less disciplined. But investing with reckless abandon is almost certainly going to lead to bad outcomes. Experienced investors stick to the game plan - a game plan borne of experience and a process that's been tried and tested through the full business cycle. On today’s episode of The Rules of Investing, David Thornton sits down with Matt Williams from Airlie Funds Management. Matt cut his teeth in 1993 when he joined Perpet...
Dec 16, 2022•30 min•Ep. 132
Growth investing has ruled the roost for the last decade. If you wanted astronomical gains, Big Tech was the train you needed to be on. Didn't matter which carriage, they were all coupled together. But that all went belly up this year, with the growth-focused Nasdaq losing roughly a third of its value thanks to inflation, rates and slowing output. If 2022 has taught us anything, it's that a regime change in markets has arrived with a bang. In the latest episode of The Rules of Investing, Livewir...
Dec 01, 2022•38 min•Ep. 130
It’s been a crazy year for virtually every asset class. Commodities have been particularly interesting, though, because earlier this year, when most everything was selling off, commodities went on a bull run! It’s a highly volatile sector, exposed to just about every macroeconomic variable there is, so investing in it takes a unique skill set. But as you'll learn, it's a first-order beneficiary of the big trends that will define markets over the coming decades. And that means massive returns. In...
Nov 11, 2022•45 min•Ep. 128
When I ask most fund managers about today's operating environment, they almost invariably respond with words like 'difficult', 'complex', or 'bearish'. And you can't blame them. The age of cheap money and growth at any cost is over. They're not defeatist, by any means, but it's safe to say they've had easier days at the office. So it was a breath of fresh air to sit down with Bob Desmond from Claremont Global to record this latest episode of The Rules of Investing. Bob's optimistic, and he's "fi...
Oct 21, 2022•39 min•Ep. 126
