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. 

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 Perpetual Investments as an equities dealer. That was followed by 17 years at Perpetual, working alongside heavy hitters including Anton Tagliaferro, Peter Morgan, and John Sevior. There he held the role of head of equities from 2011 to 2015. He joined Airlie in 2016, with a remit that includes Australian share strategies for institutional clients and the Airlie Australian Share Fund for retail clients.

This year, Matt was recognised as one of the best in the business and inducted into the Hall of Fame, joining a small and distinguished list of Australia’s best fundies (including the three Perpetual alumni mentioned above).   

In tomorrow's episode of The Rules of Investing, I sit down with Hall of Famer Matt Williams - a portfolio manager at Airlie Funds Management. Matt runs Airlie's Aussie share fund. We cover a lot of ground, including the way he views today's market, where Airlie's deploying capital, and the one company born to be in Warren Buffett's portfolio. 

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, Livewire's David Thornton sits down with Sam Ruiz, a Portfolio Specialist in the Equity Division at T. Rowe Price. Sam hasn't lost any enthusiasm for growth investing. Instead, he acknowledges that the rulebook that worked so well through the 2010s should be put back on the shelf.

Among many other key insights, Sam believes that the choice between growth and value is not the binary choice many make it out to be. The growth stocks that will excel in this market, and there are many, will share many many attributes with their value-focused cousins.  

Topics discussed include the muscle memory plaguing markets, the changing face of growth, and the importance of capital. He also goes deep on a widely dismissed traditional sector that he believed could grow 2x in the coming years!

Note: this episode was recorded on Monday November 28, 2022. 

1:30 - Will the multiple mindset continue?

4:30 - Dark days for speculative growth

5:55 - Prices follow returns and narratives follow price

8:20 - Pitfalls of total addressable market

10:10 - Growth companies fed off multiples

16:30 - Dispersions = opportunities

18:40 - Don't count out cyclicals

21:20 - False dichotomy of growth vs value 

22:15 - Importance of cash balances

28:00 - Hunting for idiosyncratic companies

29:00 - Opportunities in emerging markets

23:40 - A contrarian view on a dismissed sector

32:00 - Fight for money has changed the game

33:40 - A Big Tech stock worth its weight

36:30 - A Brazilian bank for the bottom drawer

How the mighty have fallen. Large cap growth is on the nose. The NASDAQ composite is down roughly 30% this year, and it may have some way to go yet. But growth investing as a style isn’t going anywhere. Rather, it will need to adapt to the times.  

In the upcoming episode of The Rules of Investing, we’re joined Sam Ruiz, a portfolio specialist at T. Rowe Price. Sam is on the team running the global equity fund. While they still maintain some exposure in the kinds of big growth stocks the market has sold off, their views of the growth market, and the way they pick their winners, is tailored for today’s new market paradigm.    

Here’s a preview of what you can expect.

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 today's episode of The Rules of Investing, Livewire's David Thornton is joined by Luke Smith from Ausbil Investment Management. Luke runs Ausbil’s Global Resources Fund. The fund invests in natural resources companies using a top down and bottom up approach. It also goes short to help manage risk.  

Luke explains why he's so bullish on battery metals, how the decarbonisation supercycle will pull commodities along for the ride, the mismatch between the nearish micro narrative surrounding China and what he's seeing at the micro level, and how he finds companies with relative value. 

Note: this episode was recorded on Thursday November 11, 2022. 

1:20 - Ausbil Global Resources Fund

4:10 - High demand, low supply in battery metals

9:30 - Falling demand in the West, accelerating demand in the East

10:15 - Macro fears distracting from micro strength

11:50 - Positioning through the commodities bull market

12:40 - Lacking investment in new supply

13:30 - Lithium spodumene price goes 25x

16:00 - Lithium, Cobalt and Copper are key for electrification

18:30 - Energy was on a tear before Russia-Ukraine

19:00 - Don't write off fossil fuels

20:50 - Separating signals from noise

24:00 - Don't be negative in a negative market

30:00 - Don't equate Aussie EV penetration with demand for electrification

32:00 - As relative value shifts, so should your exposures

37:00 - Commodities fundamentals are stronger than the macro narrative

41:08 - Betting against the market in 2020

43:10 - A Decarb stock for the bottom drawer

It’s been a crazy year for virtually every asset class. Commodities have been particularly interesting, though, because earlier this year, when just about everything was selling off, commodities went on a bull run. It’s a highly volatile sector, exposed to just about every macroeconomic variable, so investing in it takes a unique skill set.      

In tomorrow's episode of the Rules of Investing, I sit down with Luke Smith from Ausbil Investment Management. Luke runs Ausbil’s global resources fund. We cover:

- how he's investing in the energy transition;

- the long-term macro anchors he employs to deal with short-term volatility;

- and he also takes us through a sector set for 10x growth over the next ten years. 

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 "finding value everywhere."  

Claremont Global run a high conviction global fund of just 10-15 stocks. Being that concentrated would send shivers down the spine of many investors at a time like this. But while it's true that diversification is the only free lunch in finance, it's also no coincidence that the vast majority of the world's top investors pass on the free lunch and choose to be concentrated.

Bob takes comfort in knowing a few companies well. You could say that the quality growth companies Bob invests in are made for the moment. That is to say - indispensable large cap companies with lots of cash and big moats.  

In today's episode we cover the kind of big tech stocks Bob likes, the stock he's just bought after waiting years for the right price, how he manages investor expectations during a bear market, and much more!

Note: this episode was recorded on Monday October 10, 2022. 

Last week, London-based economist and founder of Longview Economics Chris Watling walked into a pub and ordered three pints of beer. The barman poured the pints and promptly asked Watling for £30. There was a pause, as the two made eye contact before eventually acknowledging the extreme prices for beer. 

But it's not just beer and bars that are going through a rough time. The other B - the Bank of England - is in a policy tussle with the new UK government, and that's led traders to question the economic credibility of the country.

In this special edition of The Rules of Investing, Watling sits down with Livewire's Hans Lee for a discussion on the state of the UK, his current global market strategy, and what he feels are the next big risks on the horizon. We also dig deep into the changes he's made to Longview's model portfolios - and there are many to get through.

The old adage that "past performance is not an indicator of future returns" is possibly more relevant in today's market than it's ever been. 

When the market is driven by momentum, as it has been through the past decade, piling onto winners has paid off. And why wouldn't it? Earnings have been easy to fuel when debt costs next to nothing, in a market where the shareholders reward the pursuit of market share - no matter how it's achieved.

In today’s episode of The Rules of Investing, David Thornton sits down with Mark Landau – Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer at L1 Capital. 

Mark started L1 in 2007, alongside Raphael Lamm. Their flagship long-short strategy has returned a whopping 18.7% per annum since inception, and was ranked in an HSBC survey as the ‘Best Performing Hedge Fund Globally’ in 2015 and ‘Top 20 Hedge Fund Globally’ in 2016, 2017 and 2021. 

The episode covers an enormous amount of ground. We discuss everything from the uniqueness of today's market, where L1 is deploying capital, what makes earnings sustainable, the importance of balance sheets. Mark also tells us why the investing playbook of the last decade should be put back on the shelf. 

• 1:15 - Origins of L1 Capital