In 1990, then-Treasurer Paul Keating famously said that the country's economic downturn was the “recession that Australia had to have.” Although Keating was responding to a poor GDP print and doing his best to control the narrative, at the start of the rate hiking cycle in mid-2022 most in the market spoke of an impending recession with almost as much certainty. As it stands today, said recession is yet to materialise. So, what happened? And perhaps more importantly, what does it mean for invest...
Aug 30, 2024•37 min•Ep. 214
In this episode of The Rules of Investing, Livewire's Ally Selby learns about some of the companies that meet these criteria, why Rizzo believes AI will be far more transformative than investors currently think, as well as why he believes that investors are likely to do more harm waiting for a correction in some of these tech winners than a correction itself. Plus, he shares what he is seeing on the ground in the US right now in terms of economic weakness, the stocks he believes are worth paying...
Aug 16, 2024•42 min•Ep. 213
Much has been made of the “Great Rotation” of late and the move away from highly concentrated large caps into small-cap equities, particularly in the US. Greg Dean, founder of Langdon Equity Partners, is having none of it. When quizzed about whether the rotation was impacting how Dean and his team invest, the short answer was ‘no’. Late last year, amid widespread commentary about 2024 being the ‘year for small caps’, Langdon wrote about the time and energy people spend talking about timing in sm...
Aug 08, 2024•42 min•Ep. 212
In tennis, just as in investing, it's the points that you win that matter. After all, Roger Federer played 1,526 singles matches throughout his career, and while he only won 54% of the individual points within those matches, he walked away with the win 80% of the time. Ausbil Investment Management's fresh-faced co-head of emerging companies, and portfolio manager for its small and micro-cap strategies, Arden Jennings, is focusing on just that. "Stocks are just points. But it's the points that ma...
Aug 02, 2024•20 min•Ep. 211
There's no supply in residential housing nor the majority of segments of the commercial real estate market. Sky-high construction costs are now too prohibitive. Bandaid solutions, like rent control, only backfire. And inconsistent state, federal and local policies are not helping either. That's according to this week's guest on The Rules of Investing, Andrew Parsons, a founder and the chief investment officer of global listed real estate manager Resolution Capital. While these factors continue t...
Jul 19, 2024•40 min•Ep. 210
Investors are too focused on interest rates and are subsequently underweight risk assets. That’s the, albeit US-centric, view from Global X ETFs’ Head of Investment Strategy, Scott Helfstein. He elaborates by saying that the US economy is looking a lot more like mid-cycle expansion than late cycle and that “you don’t want to be sitting on the sidelines”. A fan of thematic investing, Helfstein goes on to highlight three big investment themes that he likes right now, including one offering the opp...
Jul 05, 2024•44 min•Ep. 209
Fully franked dividends are a prized asset of the Australian market. While the lack of growth is often lamented, plenty of self-funded retirees are content to dine on the distributions of Australia's big miners and banks. And who can blame them - high commodity prices, particularly in iron ore and lithium, resulted in record dividends from the top end of town. However, after peaking in 2021 and 2022, dividends from mining companies are steadily declining. Research from Commsec published late in ...
Jun 28, 2024•39 min•Ep. 208
This time last year, PIMCO Portfolio Manager Adam Bowe told Livewire that there was a 50/50 chance that Australia would slip into recession. March GDP figures show that the economy grew at just 0.1 per cent, the slowest rate since December 2020. Today, Bowe says interest rates are sufficiently restrictive, and the chance of recession remains a ‘line ball’. In this episode of The Rules of Investing, Bowe explains why interest rates in Australia don't need to go higher, why house prices have been ...
Jun 14, 2024•28 min•Ep. 207
While "survival of the fittest" certainly applies to the Earth's abundance of flora and fauna, it may be time for investors to take a page out of Darwin's book. That's according to FNArena's Rudi Filapek-Vandyck, who believes the market has irreversibly changed since 2014 - as has the way investors should value stocks. In this episode, Rudi outlines why he believes technological innovation will transform the market as we know it. He also discusses some of his favourite ASX-listed stocks to play ...
May 31, 2024•53 min•Ep. 206
There seems to be no stopping Australia's ultra-wealthy, with the number of billionaires down under growing by 14.4% over the past 12 months, to a record 159 people. For some context, in 2020, this number was 117, according to The Australian. While it's wonderful to daydream about what you would buy or do with a few billion dollars, the true secret success of the ultra-wealthy is their ability to stay that way. After all, how many stories have you read of lottery winners squandering their newfou...
May 23, 2024•25 min•Ep. 204
In investing, just as in love, trust is everything - and without it, you really don't have anything at all. It's for this reason that the Wilson Asset Management global equities team meets with more than 700 management teams across the world each year - including in the US, Japan, and Europe. In addition, they also meet with competitors and suppliers, as well as talk to current and past employees and industry experts. According to WAM Global ( ASX: WGB ) lead portfolio manager Catriona Burns , t...
May 17, 2024•33 min•Ep. 203
Time flies when you’re having fun! While the last five years have had plenty of ups and downs, they haven’t dented the enthusiasm and passion of small-cap fund manager Chris Stott from 1851 Capital. Stott launched 1851 Capital in 2020, just before COVID-19 hit, wreaking havoc on the market and his portfolio. Since then, Stott has comfortably beaten his small-cap benchmark, growing the fund’s initial capital of $80 million to almost $500 million through a combination of inflows and capital growth...
May 10, 2024•47 min•Ep. 201
The past six months have been golden for investors, with everything from equities to gold and even Bitcoin enjoying stellar runs. And if risk assets are not your bag, then there have been juicy yields on offer across a range of cash and fixed-income asset classes. Animal spirits woke from their slumber in late October 2023 when the Fed effectively claimed victory in the fight against inflation. Markets have been led to believe that rate cuts are a forgone conclusion in the year ahead, and partic...
Apr 12, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 200
Quality growth stocks, those with fortress balance sheets, impressive moats, structural tailwinds and top-notch management teams, have had a stellar run recently. Take Goodman Group ( ASX: GMG ) for example, which has risen 66% over the past year. Or Megaport ( ASX: MP1 ), up over 252% in 12 months alone. If you're like this anonymous writer, you've probably started to ponder whether it's time to trim some of your winning positions and take some profits. And according to TMS Capital's Ben Clark ...
Apr 11, 2024•47 min•Ep. 199
If there is any one investment product that has experienced a true boom over the last 10 years, it is exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and exchange-traded products (ETPs) more broadly. The number of listed products has increased by 17.5 times in Australia during the last decade alone. More than 300 products are now listed across the ASX and CBOE exchanges and two million Australians have at least one ETF in their portfolio. And, as if you need more proof of the growth of ETPs, 2024 marked the first ...
Mar 22, 2024•29 min•Ep. 197
Warryn Robertson, portfolio manager and analyst at Lazard Asset management, understands the nuances of infrastructure assets like few others in the market. His approach is to find monopoly assets with inflation protected revenues, high margins and reasonable leverage then buy them at attractive prices. Of the 400 listed infrastructure stocks globally only 160 have passed the four filters and typically Lazard’s Global Listed Infrastructure Fund will own just 25 to 30 of those companies. Given the...
Mar 14, 2024•39 min•Ep. 196
"Living Legend", "One of a kind", and "Diamond in the Rough are not terms usually bandied about when describing economists! But these are just a few of the hundreds of messages of support and appreciation that flooded a recent social media post recognising the 40-year tenure Dr Shane Oliver to AMP. Shane has dedicated his years to educating Australians on all matters of the economy. His style tends to be glass half full, and you'll rarely hear him pushing doomsday forecasts. He also possesses an...
Mar 01, 2024•46 min•Ep. 195
If you’re looking for the future blue chips of the ASX then Washington H Soul Pattinson might be worth a closer look. The company has been around for more than a century, has never missed a dividend payment but, for the most part, has flown under investor radars. That is starting to change following the tie up with Milton Corporation in 2021, which has helped to propel Soul Patts’s market cap over $12 bn and into the S&P/ASX 50 . Soul Patts now sits alongside popular names including Mineral ...
Feb 16, 2024•42 min•Ep. 194
The structural forces that saw growth investing rise to the top after the GFC remain. Covid created a blip, but the world is returning to slow growth, low inflation and lower interest rates. That's the perspective of Jason Orthman, the Deputy Chief Investment Officer of Brisbane-based Hyperion Asset Management. Orthman says that neither you, me, nor our grandchildren are likely to experience an environment like 2022, where rapid interest rate hikes rocked long-duration assets such as government ...
Feb 02, 2024•46 min•Ep. 193
Each year, Barron's releases a list of Australia's Top 100 Financial Advisers. Pitcher Partners' Charlie Viola and Lipman and Burgon Partners' Paul Burgon have featured high on this list over the years, and both ranked in the top 10 in 2023. As part of Livewire's Outlook Series for 2024, Livewire's James Marlay hosted an in-depth panel discussion exploring how these two investing gurus are allocating capital on behalf of their clients in 2024. Whilst there is no 'one size fits all' when it comes...
Jan 08, 2024•30 min•Ep. 192
Two years ago, on a trip to Perth, Yarra Capita’s Dion Hershan was pitched the case for lithium stocks by his Uber driver. Hershan says it was a cliche moment and a classic example of a ‘ringing the bell’ sign. On the flip side, there are moments when deciding to invest causes your stomach to churn and your hands to quiver. “Some of the best ideas I’ve had in my career were when my stomach churned and my hands trembled when I put the trade on. That’s often a good lead indicator.” Recent investme...
Dec 20, 2023•42 min•Ep. 191
The penny has dropped and thanks to a three-letter word from the Federal Reserve's recent interest rate decision ("any"), small caps both in the US and in Australia have started to rocket out of a long slumber. For most of the last 18 months, small cap performance at an index level has been smashed thanks to the soaring cost of capital. But now that markets have called central banks' bluff, we're entering what Ben Griffiths of Eley Griffiths Group calls a "pause rally" - the kind of rally that h...
Dec 14, 2023•44 min•Ep. 190
Culture is not something that immediately springs to mind when assessing a company and its prospects for the future. More often than not, we investors are scouring profit and loss statements, comparing financial ratios and (if we have the time and skill) constructing valuation models. However, good culture is critical in a business; it takes a long time to build and is hard to maintain. And yet, it can take as little as one rogue employee to upset the delicate balance and ruin it completely. Thi...
Nov 17, 2023•37 min•Ep. 189
From geopolitics to fiscal policy, commodities to equities, this week's featured guest on The Rules of Investing has some high-conviction views on a whole range of subjects. For more than 40 years, Donald Amstad traded his way through the highs and lows of financial markets. After completing his undergraduate studies at Oxford University, Amstad began his career at Japanese trading house Nomura. He went on to hold roles at JPMorgan, JPMorgan Asset Management, and the Bank of America before spend...
Nov 10, 2023•31 min•Ep. 187
Despite all of his success, Morry Waked has remained relatively under the radar. He’s not one to boast of his achievements, and he’s very rarely fronted the media. At Livewire, we dedicate ourselves to finding the best fund managers in Australia - and in a testament to how underground Morry is, he hadn’t even popped up on our radar. Last week, however, Morry found himself thrust into the spotlight and was inducted into the Australian Fund Manager Hall of Fame - joining a now 22-name strong list ...
Oct 27, 2023•29 min•Ep. 185
The times when a company is dominating headlines (for all the wrong reasons) are the best time to buy. Take Medibank Private ( ASX: MPL ), for example, which you may remember, was embroiled in a data breach in October 2022. On the news, the stock's share price plummeted more than 20%. And while it still hasn't retraced its steps to its prior glory, astute investors who picked up the private health insurance provider on the cheap would have since enjoyed a return of around 22%. Today, there are t...
Oct 06, 2023•48 min•Ep. 184
Matthew Kidman is a well-known entity to readers of Livewire, as host of Success and More Interesting Stuff, Buy Hold Sell, and most recently, Livewire Live. Finally, we got him in the hot seat to run us through his own journey into funds management, his approach to investing, and the way he’s thinking about markets today. From hard truths on a squash court to starting his own shop, Centennial Asset Management, Matt’s story is one of happenstance. It’s also a story about the importance of mentor...
Oct 05, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 183
Short sellers have had a tough time of it over the past decade. The era of free money lifted all boats, including companies that would perhaps otherwise be candidates for short selling. Today's market is radically different. Central banks have lifted rates in a desperate attempt to control inflation. Global equity markets have performed well, but much of that performance can be attributed to the tech titans of the Nasdaq. Consumers have less money to spend, while costs are up and top line revenu...
Sep 22, 2023•46 min•Ep. 182
We're constantly told that diversification is the only free lunch in finance. Yet most of the world's top investors choose not to eat it. Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, John Maynard Keynes, Lou Simpson, George Soros. All run concentrated portfolios. Today's guest on the Rules of Investing is similarly esteemed, with a similarly concentrated portfolio. Claremont's Bob Desmond runs a portfolio of just 10-15 "quality growth" stocks. And many of the stocks he owned during the 'free money' period of...
Sep 15, 2023•45 min•Ep. 180
Ten years ago, investing was an easy game. Thanks to rates near zero and reckless fiscal spending, markets were drunk on liquidity. There was multiple expansion across the board, and winning was relatively easy. Pick an index, sit back and let multiple expansion take care of the rest. Today’s reality is far different. Volatility is high, correlations are weak, and the once reliable 60/40 portfolio is, well, not so reliable. In today’s episode of The Rules of Investing, I sit down with Frances Li...
Aug 25, 2023•39 min•Ep. 177
