Australian Investors Podcast

In this episode of the Australian Investors Podcast, Owen Rask sits down with Michael Bell, CIO at Solaris Investment Management, for a practical conversation about how professional investors think when they are putting real capital to work.

From the outside, fund management can sound like hot tips and big macro calls. Michael explains why the reality is usually much more disciplined: process, patience, risk management and the ability to stay focused on business quality when markets are noisy. The conversation unpacks what active investing is meant to achieve, how portfolio decisions are weighed, and why good investors...

In this episode of the Australian Investors Podcast, Owen Rask and Drew Meredith tackle one of the biggest questions in markets right now: if Micron and Sandisk are wobbling, has the AI trade gone too far, or is the market simply shifting where the real profits sit?

They break down the latest sell-off in AI hardware names, why memory chips and data-centre narratives can look unstoppable right up until margins crack, and why the software layer may still capture more long-term value than the hardware beneath it.

Closer to home, they unpack why the ASX...

In this episode of Australian Investors Podcast, Owen Rask sits down with Jaki Virtue, Chief Operating Officer of Washington H. Soul Pattinson, for a rare look inside one of Australia’s most closely watched investment companies. Jaki explains how a business with only about 55 staff can still oversee a large and growing portfolio, and why culture, systems and clarity matter just as much as capital allocation.

The conversation starts with Jaki’s backstory, from an adventurous family and an unconventional schooling experience through to investment banking, business management and eventually becoming the inaugural COO of an ASX 50 comp...

In this episode of the Australian Investors Podcast, Owen Rask is joined by Ben Richards and Luke Laretive from Seneca Financial Solutions for the final instalment of the Small Cap Playbook series.

Instead of another stock-pick list, the conversation turns to Ben’s development as an investor and the lessons he has learned working alongside Luke. They unpack eight ideas that matter in small-cap investing: offer value first, learn who to listen to, question the prevailing narrative, accept that you are wrong until the market proves you right, understand the plumbing of markets, focus on what matters, fi...

In this episode of the Australian Investors Podcast, Owen Rask and Drew Meredith test a deliberately provocative question: is the ASX now the worst developed share market in the world?

Starting with fresh global market performance data, they compare Australia with Japan, Europe and the United States, then unpack why weak local growth, a bank-heavy index and a lack of global technology winners can leave the ASX looking sluggish even when some local companies are still doing well.

From there, the conversation moves into the AI trade. Owen and Drew explore whether the market is...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, Owen Rask sits down with Alan Pullen from Magellan to unpack Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s investing legacy and why the business may still deserve a fresh look even as Buffett steps back from day-to-day leadership.

They trace Berkshire’s path from a struggling textile mill to one of the most remarkable capital allocation machines ever built. Alan explains how insurance float, patient cash management, disciplined capital allocation and a culture shaped by Buffett and Charlie Munger helped turn Berkshire into something far bigger than a stock portfolio or a simple hold...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, Owen Rask is joined by Ben Richards and Luke Laretive from Seneca Financial Solutions to break down what actually moves small-cap share prices and why being “cheap” is rarely enough on its own.

They explain why catalysts matter so much in small-cap investing, how management incentives shape outcomes, and why takeover potential can be one of the clearest ways for value to be realised. Using real ASX case studies, the conversation explores the clues Seneca looks for when assessing whether a company can rerate, attract a bid or simply stay stuck whil...

In this episode of the Australian Investors Podcast, Owen Rask and Drew Meredith move from the market headlines into the real forces shaping investor behaviour right now.

They start with Wesfarmers pushing higher, BHP printing fresh highs and Macquarie continuing to attract attention, then ask the question behind the moves: are these quality businesses still buys, or are investors paying up for comfort in an uncertain market? The discussion widens quickly into small-business CGT concessions, SpaceX euphoria, and the squeeze households are still feeling as wages struggle to keep pace with living costs.

Owen and...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, Owen Rask sits down with Justin Lin from Global X to unpack why commodities may be moving from ignored to essential again. Rather than treating gold, copper or lithium as short-term geopolitical trades, Justin explains why the bigger story is a mix of underinvestment, supply-chain fragility and a fresh wave of demand from AI, electrification and energy security.

They break down why investors have mostly ignored commodities for the past decade, what changed after years of weak demand and excess supply, and why today’s backdrop looks different. Owen and Justin al...

This episode was originally featured on The Australian Finance Podcast.

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, Owen Rask is joined by Navarre Trousselot, founder of Navexa, to unpack why the proposed 2026 Federal Budget tax changes could make ETF record-keeping and capital gains reporting much messier for everyday investors. Instead of glossing over the hard bits, they walk through how capital gains tax works in Australia, why parcel selection matters, and why ATO pre-fill can give ETF investors a false sense of security.

Navarre explains the trap most ETF investors miss: annual cost...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, Owen Rask and Drew Meredith are back for a super-sized "2 sense" segment, breaking down the biggest market news, key themes, and listener questions impacting Australian investors.

In this episode, we dive deep into:

- The AI Revolution: Despite mind-blowing growth (NVIDIA's profit up 285%), why did the tech giant "fail to impress," and what does the market concentration in a handful of names (NVDA, GOOGL, AMZN, META) mean for the S&P 500? We cover the trillions being poured into AI infrastructure and BlackRock's bullish strategic view on...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, Mitchell Sneddon sits down with veteran investor John Abernethy to unpack what market crashes really teach you when you have lived through several of them. Rather than chasing clever forecasts, John explains why liquidity, incentives and investor behaviour usually matter far more when markets get ugly.

John reflects on the 1987 crash, the dot-com unwind, the GFC and COVID, sharing how he thought about protecting capital, raising cash early when risks were building, and moving when panic created better prices in listed debt, hybrids and quality businesses. It is a grounded look...

In this second Small Cap Playbook episode on the Australian Investors Podcast, Owen Rask is joined by Luke Laretive and Ben Richards from Seneca Financial Solutions to unpack how professional small-cap investors actually generate ideas — and why selling discipline matters just as much as finding a winner.

The conversation starts with where Seneca’s best ideas come from: deep company coverage, long-held watchlists, industry networks and the ability to spot optionality when the market is giving away upside for free. From there, Luke and Ben explain why cheap stocks are not enough on their own. What matters is t...

We're revisiting one of our favourite conversations this week — with the Motley Fool's own David Gardner.

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, your host Owen Rask sits down with David Gardner (co-founder of The Motley Fool and author of Rule Breaker Investing) to discuss:

– Beating the market vs indexing

– The “lose to win” philosophy and position sizing

– The six traits of rule-breaker companies

– Conscious capitalism, purpose and culture

If you love learning about growth investing and finding outliers, subscribe to the Australian Inv...

Passive income sounds easy in theory: buy a few ETFs, collect the distributions, and let the portfolio do the heavy lifting. In practice, the details matter. In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, Owen Rask sits down with Global X's Marc Jocum to explain how ETF income is actually generated, what investors should look for, and where people can go wrong when they chase yield without understanding the trade-offs.

Marc walks through five ETFs worth researching for income-focused investors, including Australian dividend exposure, bank credit, covered calls, and US fixed income. Along the way, he explains why franking...

In this first Small Cap Playbook episode, Owen Rask sits down with Luke Laretive and Ben Richards from Seneca Financial Solutions to unpack how professional investors think about ASX small caps when the market is noisy, ETF flows dominate and AI tools promise easy answers. The pair argue that volatility is not the same as business risk, that so-called blue chips are not automatically safer, and that smaller companies can offer genuine opportunities when pricing is inefficient and research is thin.

The bigger lesson is process. Luke and Ben explain why there is no money in consensus...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, Owen Rask sits down with Senator Andrew Bragg for a wide-ranging conversation about the Federal Budget, housing supply, tax, productivity and why so many Australians feel the country has become harder to get ahead in. Rather than getting stuck in party talking points, they focus on the practical questions investors, business owners and workers are asking right now: what happens when policy makes it harder to build homes, why does productivity matter so much for living standards, and how do taxes, regulation and incentives shape whether Australia creates more wealth or simply fights...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, Mitchell Sneddon sits down with Mark Ambrose from Global Value Fund to unpack one of the more unusual deep value trades of the COVID era: buying into airplane leases when the aviation market looked uninvestable.

Mark explains why GVF was drawn to the setup. The fund was not trying to make a heroic prediction about airlines bouncing back overnight. Instead, the team focused on asymmetry, cash on the balance sheet, the behaviour of forced sellers and the gap between a panic price and a conservative base case. It is a practical...

In this week’s 2 Sense episode of the Australian Investors Podcast, Owen Rask and Drew Meredith unpack the messy collision of budget politics, company results and AI hype shaping markets right now. They look at the latest tax chatter, the debate over whether Australia is getting better at redistributing wealth than creating it, and why policy headlines can shift investor behaviour long before the real-world outcomes are clear.

They also run through a broad batch of company updates, including Temple & Webster, Brambles, Commonwealth Bank and BHP, asking what actually matters and what is just noise during another bu...

AI can now generate prototypes, content and product ideas at speed — but Figma’s Andrew Hogan says the real edge is still human judgment.

In this episode, Owen Rask chats with Andrew about what AI is changing inside teams, why design is becoming more valuable, and how leaders are using better tools to communicate ideas with more clarity. They explore why senior designers may be worth more than ever, how non-designers are increasingly doing design work, and why businesses are taking on bigger projects because AI expands what feels possible.

If you want to understand wher...

In this week’s 2 Sense, Owen and Drew tackle a bigger question than one stock or one budget line item: is Australia getting worse at creating wealth?

Rask Wealth Checker: https://rask.au/wealth-checker

That opens a sharp conversation about tax chatter, policy drift and why uncertainty can make it harder for founders, investors and workers to build long-term value. The episode also revisits CSL, touches on private credit noise, and asks what matters when headlines get louder than fundamentals.

It is a useful reminder that great businesses can still be overhyped, and th...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, Mitch sits down with Nick Sladen for a deep dive into Cogstate and why it may be one of the more compelling ASX healthcare names right now.

Alzheimer's and broader central nervous system diseases are becoming more important as populations age, and Nick explains why that matters for Cogstate. The company plays a small but critical role in clinical trials, helping large pharmaceutical groups run cognitive testing with higher accuracy, cleaner data and stronger regulatory confidence. With more than 20 years of accumulated testing data, Cogstate has built an edge that is...

In this episode of 2-Sense, Owen and Drew ask a big question: is Warren Buffett falling behind in 2026, or is Berkshire Hathaway just investing on a different timetable to everyone else? They unpack Buffett’s huge Apple exposure, Berkshire’s growing cash pile and the broader debate around whether AI is changing the investing playbook or simply changing what investors are paying attention to right now.

The conversation then swings back to Australia, with a close look at Magellan’s decision to outsource management of its global equities funds. Owen and Drew explore what the move says about...

Dimensional Fund Advisors has quietly built one of the most respected investment firms in the world on the back of Nobel Prize-winning academic research. In this episode, Mitchell Sneddon sits down with Bhanu Singh, Australian CEO of Dimensional Fund Advisors and head of the world's largest active ETF manager, to unpack the philosophy, factors and discipline behind the firm.

Bhanu walks through the legendary names on Dimensional's board and advisory panel — Eugene Fama, Kenneth French, Robert Merton, Myron Scholes and Merton Miller — and explains how their work on efficient markets, the Fama-French factor model, opti...

In this episode of the Australian Investors Podcast, Owen Rask and Drew Meredith tackle a question that would spook plenty of income investors: what should you do if your shares land on the most shorted list?

That opens a broader discussion about dividend traps, earnings risk and whether a big yield is actually a warning sign. The pair also dig into recent results from Tesla, Microsoft, American Express and Lululemon, and what those numbers may be saying about spending, margins, capital investment and market expectations.

Topics covered

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In May 2026, Jerome Powell's tenure as chair of the US Federal Reserve comes to an end. His replacement is Kevin Warsh — a former Fed governor and Donald Trump's hand-picked choice to lead the world's most powerful central bank. The appointment has been anything but quiet, arriving against a backdrop of sustained political pressure from the Trump administration, public attacks on Powell, and a criminal investigation into cost overruns at the Fed building.

But beyond the politics, what does the leadership change actually mean for US monetary policy, for inflation, and critically, for Australian investors an...

In this 2 Sense episode of the Australian Investors Podcast, Owen Rask and Drew Meredith move from practical investing questions to the bigger forces shaping portfolios right now. They settle the active ETF vs managed fund debate, run through the latest from Intel, Netflix and JP Morgan, pick the sectors they reckon will shine over the next decade — and ask the big one: could Warren Buffett have pulled it off if he'd grown up in Australia?

Topics covered

This episode was originally featured on The Australian Finance Podcast.

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, your host Owen Rask is joined by Brian Parker, Chief Economist of Australian Retirement Trust (ART), to discuss how ART thinks about runway, portfolio construction, private markets and when volatility becomes opportunity.

They cover:

- What a chief economist actually does and how ART turns research into portfolio action.

- How “super money” is different: time horizon, tax wrapper and the power of compounding.

- Geopolitics, inflation and...

In this episode of Australian Investors Podcast, Drew Meredith and Owen Raszkiewicz name four of the worst ASX 200 stocks from the past five years, Zip Co (ASX: ZIP), Nuix (ASX: NXL), Dubber (ASX: DUB) and EML Payments (ASX: EML), and explain the warning signs investors should have spotted earlier.

They also unpack the Nasdaq's 11-session winning streak, Betashares ATEC inflows, the Magellan and Barrenjoey merger, and listener questions on David Gardner, flop stocks and the long-term impact of Australia's ageing population on super.

2025 was a record-breaking year for Emerging Markets, seeing the largest capital inflows in over a decade. But is this a short-term flight from the US dollar, or the beginning of a structural "EM Supercycle"?

In this episode, we sit down with Malcolm Dorson (Senior PM & Head of EM Strategy) and Billy Leung (Equity Research Analyst) from Global X to dissect the two engines of global growth: India and China. We explore why the "uninvestable" tag is fading from China, how India is carving a unique path through its landmark 2026 Free Trade Agreement with Europe...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, your hosts Owen Raszkiewicz and Drew Meredith discuss why Owen's most overrated ASX share is CSL Limited (ASX: CSL) and reveal the names of the 1 stock they would own for 20 years.

- Owen's most overrated stock: why CSL no longer deserves a super rich valuation on the ASX.
-NextDC's $1b hybrid deal: The massive capital raise with Canada's La Caisse and what it means for the data centre giant (ASX: NXT).

- Guzman y Gomez (ASX: GYG) rockets: Breaking down the fast food chain's 18.6% surge...

How does a "boring" electrical engineering firm from Texas become one of the best-performing stocks on the NASDAQ? In this episode, we sit down with Tobias Bucks from Ausbil to dissect Powell Industries (NASDAQ: POWL). While the stock's recent vertical climb has caught the market's attention, the reality is that Powell is an overnight success story 79 years in the making.

Beyond the stock pitch, Tobias opens up his investment playbook, sharing how his background in anthropology shapes the way he asks questions, uncovers "unrecognised growth," and identifies workplace cultures that the market has failed...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, your hosts Owen Rask and Drew Meredith are back for 2 Sense. Invest with Owen: https://bit.ly/R-invest Rask financial planning: https://bit.ly/R-plan

TOPICS COVERED: – Buying falling stocks vs chasing winners – Designing the perfect ASX ETF – Xero’s AI deal with Anthropic and what it means – CSL, inflation risks, and market concentration concerns Listener Questions Answered 🧾 Investment bonds for kids (The Frugal Farmer) 🏠 SMSF + property advice (Deer in the Headlights) 💰 LICs vs ETFs (AFICionado) Resources for This Episode Learn more about portfolio strategy & investing: – https://www.rask.com.au/rask-invest – https...

Owen Rask and Billy Leung from Global X throw down the challenge to build two themed $100,000 ETF portfolios — one focused on AI infrastructure and the other on value investing — discussing long-term strategy, mistakes, lessons and the future of markets.

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, your hosts discuss:
– The one investment Billy held the longest (and what it taught him)
– The most expensive mistake we’ve made as investors
– Two $100,000 themed ETF portfolios with a 5-year total return goal
– AI infrastructure vs value investing — which wins?

If you love learning about E...

In this week’s 2 Sense episode, Owen and Mitchell lean into the chaos of the current market. From the geopolitical ripples of the Iran conflict to the surprisingly high cost of plastic piping, they trace the butterfly effect of oil through the ASX.

Plus, Owen returns from Vietnam with some eerie travel tales, and the team checks in on the ever-evolving saga of Richard White and WiseTech.

Topics covered

– The Global Oil Squeeze: With the war in Iran showing no signs of de-escalating, they unpack the unintended cons...

The market is obsessed with AI as the sole driver of energy demand, but the "Saaspocalypse" of February taught us that picking AI winners is a volatile game. In this episode, Mark Jones from Resolution Capital explains why the real opportunity lies in the "picks and shovels" that power the modern world: Electricity Utilities. We dive into why Resolution Capital has doubled down on utilities (60% of the portfolio), the reality of the US re-shoring trend, and why this is a multi-decade structural shift that remains underappreciated by the broader market. In this episode, we discuss: - Defining a great...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, with Owen on holiday in Vietnam, Mitchell Sneddon joins Drew Meredith to discuss:

– US–Iran conflict and what it means for oil prices, inflation and markets

– L1 Capital’s new gold listed investment company

– Hansen Corporation in the news and a look at the billing software providers prospects

– What has had a worse effect on markets to date, the Iran war or the SaaSpocalypse?

– How is Mitchell almost last in the Stock Genius game? Drew reviews his portfolio or AD8, TAH, EDV, DTEC...

Private credit is growing rapidly in Australia. Understanding how managers actually operate may matter more than the yield itself. In this episode of the Australian Investors Podcast, Mitchell sits down with Nicole Kidd, CEO of Corval Avenue, to unpack how investors should evaluate real estate private credit managers. As private credit continues to attract capital with double-digit yields, Nicole explains why the manager is effectively part of the asset — and how weak governance, conflicted incentives, or poor reporting can turn an attractive investment into a multi-year workout. The conversation provides a practical framework investors can use to separate disciplined cr...

In this Australian Investors Podcast episode, your hosts Owen Rask and Drew Meredith discuss:

– Why Drew invested in a Melbourne bar

– Rising distrust in superannuation

– Div 296 and SMSF strategy questions

– Retirement bucket strategies and FIRE investing

If you love learning about retirement planning and investing strategy, subscribe to the Australian Investors Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube!

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Why Drew invested in a bar - Beneath Driver Lane

In this Booking Holdings Ltd deep dive, we sit down with Alan Pullen from Magellan Investment Partners to analyse the evolution of a travel giant. From its origins as Priceline.com during the dot-com era to its transformative acquisition of Booking.com, we explore how the company’s shift from an agency model to a merchant model has reshaped its financial profile. We break down the "Connected Trip" strategy and examine how the integration of brands like Agoda and OpenTable creates a powerful network effect that continues to dominate the fragmented European and global hotel markets. As investors look fo...