Buy Hold Sell, by Livewire Markets

The key to any great institution is the management team behind the scenes. Take the example of Justin Holbrook, who has guided the Newcastle Knights from wooden spooners to NRL grand finalists in the space of a year.

And the ASX has long been home to stellar management teams who have turned their companies into global winners. 

In this episode of Livewire's Buy Hold Sell, I'm joined by Sean Roger from Perpetual Asset Management Australia and Joseph Koh from Blackwattle Investment Partners to deliver the calls on five ASX stocks with respected management teams, and share their pick for the ASX management team to beat.

Finding the right balance between attack and defence can be the difference between winning and losing. That will be the case when the Dockers meet the Lions at the MCG tomorrow, and it's also the case for ASX investors looking to build a winning portfolio. 

In this edition of Buy Hold Sell, I'm joined by Sean Roger from Perpetual Asset Management and Joseph Koh from Blackwattle Investment Partners. 

After weeks of news about volatile bond markets, stubborn inflation, interest rate hikes, falling house prices, and the AI regulatory divide, that heavy feeling of doom and gloom can be hard to shake. 

But amidst all of this the world keeps showing us that success stories are still everywhere. Great companies are still thriving and investing in quality companies still works. 

Right now, bond markets are front of mind for investors everywhere. Sticky inflation and ballooning budget deficits are pushing yields higher, and with the RBA looking likely to hike rates once again and the domestic economy under pressure, the question isn't just which stocks look cheap, it's which ones can actually hold up when the cost of capital keeps rising.

Small caps are particularly exposed in this environment and get hit harder when sentiment turns. But within this universe, there are always names with the earnings quality, balance sheet strength, or structural tailwinds to hold their ground.

To find which ones can weather the storm, Matthew Nicholas from 1851 Capital and Nick Sladen from LSN Capital Partners are running the ruler over four small caps, and sharing a high-conviction pick each of their own.

No, that's not a typo in the headline.

We're currently running our Commodities in Focus series, so this episode of Buy Hold Sell is a commodities takeover.

We're also departing slightly from our traditional format, with our guests pitching stocks that they like across five different commodities segments.

That's right, it's wall-to-wall buys for this episode - because who wants holds and sells when it comes to commodities stocks.

Sharing their best and brightest picks across the precious metal, bulk, base metal, battery/energy transition metal, and energy segments are Romano Sala Tenna from Katana Asset Management and Emanuel Datt from Datt Capital.

Please note, this episode was recorded Wednesday, 9 September 2026

Another reporting season is behind us and now all that's left to do is assess the fallout.

In this special reporting season edition of Buy Hold Sell, I'm joined by Joe Wright from Airlie Funds Management and Charles Story from WaveStone Capital to assess the large cap winners and losers from reporting season, and some other large cap picks that the market may have missed. 

Reporting season is done and dusted for another six months. And as my colleagues have pointed out in their respective wrap-ups, for all the angst heading in, Australian companies came out of it in better shape than many expected.

The backdrop, however, is a different story. Bond yields have pushed higher, the consumer is weakening, inflation remains sticky, and uncertainty is the only certainty on the horizon. If you had to sum it up in one line: it's tough out there.

We kick off this two-part reporting season wrap-up of Buy Hold Sell with the small caps, and in light of the doom and gloom, we asked our guests to bring a positive insight they took from the season. For Ben Richards of Seneca, it was the breadth of the market, with the Small Ordinaries rising 6% while the ASX 200 remained broadly flat. For Steve Johnson from Forager Funds, it was the return to form for software companies - reliable revenue, improving margins, and the SaaS apocalypse narrative finally creating some discipline in the space.

We unpack six small-cap stocks in this episode, the ones who were solid from the ones who were sold off, and sort out the winners form the losers (plus a few bonus picks).

Keep an eye out for our next episode with Tom Stelzer covering the large caps.

Since 1926, 17 of the top 20 US companies by annualised returns were founder-led at at least one point in their history, and many remain so today. 

Investors willing to back the right founders over time have been richly-rewarded, and a quick look at the list of the world's most valuable companies suggests that has never been more true than it is today. 

But what makes founder-led businesses so successful, and which founder-led or formerly-founder led companies are worth a look right now? 

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, I'm joined by Alan Pullen from Magellan Investment Partners and Joseph Ziller from Ziller Funds Management to give their calls on three distinctive founder-led businesses, and share a founder-led stock pick of their own. 

It's fair to say the world's biggest stocks are quietly putting the "magnificent" back in their Mag 7 moniker.

Against the backdrop of an ever-escalating AI arms race, the Mag 7 are posting record revenues and record capex, but which ones are well-placed for this brave new world, and which could fall behind?

In this bumper Mag 7 special of Buy Hold Sell, I'm joined by Alan Pullen from Magellan Investment Partners and Joseph Ziller from Ziller Funds Management to give big calls on the biggest companies in the world. 

Thematic ETFs offer something that broad index funds can't - a concentrated, conviction-driven vehicle built on the belief that a particular trend will define the future. Just look at the space tech ETFs that launched this year. But as we know, what's in favour today can be out of favour tomorrow. Markets follow narratives, and yesterday's hot thing can become next year's toxic ex. 

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Adam Dawes from Shaw and Partners and Andrew Wielandt from DP Wealth Advisory sort the hot from the not, the break-ups from the make-ups, across six thematic ETFs in technology, semiconductors, healthcare, cryptocurrency and property.