Buy Hold Sell, by Livewire Markets

Even when households tighten their belts, the groceries still need buying, the phone bill needs paying and hospitals need to keep running. It’s easy to see why investors turn to essential goods and services when the outlook gets tougher.

But how much protection does reliable demand actually offer shareholders? And can the price you pay undermine the defensive qualities you’re buying?

With the Spring Racing Carnival upon us, this episode of Buy Hold Sell looks at businesses that might be suited to tougher conditions. We’re considering what happens when spending slows, confidence weaken...

A few good years can make a business look like a long-term winner. But what gives it the staying power to keep delivering over the next five or 10?

It’s an appealing prospect for investors: find a handful of businesses that can keep growing their earnings, hold on, and give compounding time to work. The challenge is recognising which companies have that endurance – and how much you should pay to own them.

With the Spring Racing Carnival upon us, we’re turning our attention to the ASX’s ‘stayers’ - businesses that can keep delivering for sharehol...

A recent survey of 1,400 Livewire readers revealed that 57% plan to increase their exposure to high-dividend stocks this year. Yet Australian income investors face a persistent concentration trap: just seven stocks across two industries generate half of the entire ASX 200 dividend pool. Shifting focus from last week's consistent dividend growers, we look at companies offering yields above the broader market benchmark. In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Dr Peter Gardner from Plato Investment Management and Dr Michael O'Neill from IML preview the upcoming bank reporting season and deliver their verdicts on a cross section of stocks where the dividends...

Dividend Aristocrats are US stocks that have increased their dividend for 25 consecutive years. The ASX has just one: Soul Patts, on a 28-year streak. 

But Australia’s dividend royalty might need to make room in the court as a cluster of aspiring Aristocrats deliver metronomic-like distributions to their investors.​

But Australia’s dividend royalty may soon need to make room. Take AUB Group, which has delivered 20 consecutive years of dividend growth at over +10% annually.

While the starting yield on some of the companies discussed below might not blow your hair back, consistent earnings growth...

I’ve always been fond of the phrase "wide economic moats." Beyond the jargon, it calls to mind heroic battles, impenetrable fortresses, and all manner of defence tactics and strategies.

While modern companies may not be dodging a rain of arrows or pouring hot oil from the parapets, they are defending their turf against an onslaught of AI disruption, geopolitical shockwaves, sticky inflation and market volatility.

To survive in today's market, a moat is made from three core pillars. Consistent High Return on Invested Capital (ROIC), strong pricing power, and a rock solid balance sheet. 

Quantitative data vs. qualitative insights — why not both? In this episode, we cut through the market noise using Market Index’s new stock screening tool, Stock Scores, to uncover top ASX stocks scoring highest across Quality and Growth metrics. Rudi Filapek-Vandyck (FNArena) and Henry Jennings (Marcus Today) join us to break down these high-scoring stocks and share whether they’re a buy, hold or sell.

More about Stock Scores here!:

https://www.marketindex.com.au/stock-scores

Please note this episode was filmed Wednesday 7th October, 2026.

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 th...

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. 

So, let's put the macro anxiety aside for a moment, take a collective breath and focus on what's working. In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Matthew Nicholas of 1851 Capital and Nick Sladen of LSN C...

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.<...

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...

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 sma...

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 Magell...

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 th...

A Livewire reader recently reached out to us to suggest now is the time for investors to be looking for those durable businesses that could offer some resistance to things like AI, rate hikes and oil prices.

The ASX industrials sector seems an obvious place to look, given it's full of stable companies that have endured through the years. But many industrials stocks are also directly exposed to those same macro factors that have help make equities markets a bit of a minefield. 

So how do you find the stocks that can deliver resilience? 

The Telstra outage of a few weeks ago was a fitting bookend to FY26 the ASX communications sector. It may have fared better than tech and healthcare, but the sector ended the financial year down 12.5% as macro, structural and cyclical threats took their toll. 

So what does the next year offer? 

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Livewire's Tom Stelzer is joined by IML's Daniel Moore and Wilson Asset Management's Hailey Kim to dissect three communication names and decide if they're worth picking up or letting go through to voicemail. 

They also each bri...

Late last year, more than 2,700 Livewire readers nominated their favourite income stocks for the year ahead. We already ran the ruler over the first half of that list - you can find that episode here. Now we're back for the second half.

A lot has changed in the past six months, so there's no better time to take stock, so to speak. Geopolitical tensions have rattled commodity prices, bond yields have pushed higher, and the question of what actually makes a reliable income stock has never felt more relevant. A high yield can be a gift, or i...

Every relationship has its ups and downs. 

And every year, misunderstandings, broken promises and poor behaviour create a special list that no company wants to end up on - the Dogs of the ASX. 

These are the stocks that have been punished by the market and banished to the proverbial doghouse.

This list is based on the "Dogs of the Dow" strategy, popularised by Michael O'Higgins in the early 90s - a systematic bet on mean reversion. Buy the worst performers from a large-cap index and wait for them to come back. The tr...

As anyone paying even cursory attention to markets would know, the ASX tech sector has had a rough trot over the past year, down 37% as AI upheaval and rising rates took their toll.

But not every stock in the sector has been dragged down with it, and the upcoming August reporting season is shaping up as a key test of who's actually benefiting from AI versus who's being eaten by it.

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Elise McKay of Pendal and Shaun Weick of Wilson Asset Management join Livewire's Tom Stelzer to analyse...

It's a tough time for many consumers as the forces of rising rates, stubborn inflation and other macro complications have seen Australia's cost-of-living crisis rumble on.

It's a good thing then that there's still plenty of consumer discretionary stocks showing strength, even if the outlook for the sector remains more uncertain.

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Livewire's Tom Stelzer is joined by Elise McKay from Pendal and Shaun Weick from Wilson Asset Management to make the call on three ASX consumer stocks that could still be potential buys despite the challenges.  

They've a...

There's no two ways about it. If you weren't holding materials stocks over the past 12 months, you missed a trick.

The sector surged more than 45%, blitzing its nearest competitor (consumer staples up ~11%) and outperforming every other positive sector... combined.

The sector was powered by insatiable demand for commodities from the AI infrastructure build-out.

Gold, silver, copper, platinum and palladium all enjoyed significant price increases, whilst iron ore - still the backbone of the Australian mining sector - didn't suffer the price falls many were expecting. But the stellar performance begs the natural question...

The energy sector has been front and centre for much of the last 12 months, as AI demand and the war in Iran have seen demand surge and prices jump around. 

That's been good news for many of local names, with the ASX Energy sector up 11% this year, but is there any charge left in the battery?

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Livewire's Tom Stelzer is joined by Dougal Maple-Brown from Maple-Brown Abbott and Stephane Andre from Alphinity Investment Management to see if they're positive or negative on some interesting ASX energy names. 

In a...

Just weeks ago, markets were pricing in the risk of a prolonged conflict in the Middle East, with oil surging as investors feared disruptions to global supply. Today, much of that geopolitical risk premium has unwound. Brent crude has retreated to around its pre-war levels following a US-Iran peace agreement, even as fresh flare-ups serve as a reminder that the situation remains far from settled.

Whether the recent pullback in oil proves temporary or not, investors are already asking the next question: who stands to benefit? The obvious winners are businesses with large fuel bills. But lower...

Short sellers are often described as the smartest money in the room. They borrow shares, sell them on market, and actively bet that the price will fall. 

Get it right and the returns can be substantial. Get it wrong and the losses are theoretically unlimited. Just ask the person on Reddit who shorted Korean fried chicken companies then lost it all when pictures of Jensen Huang eating fried chicken in Seoul went viral. I think about them often. Mostly I think - what were they thinking.

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, we are j...

As equity investors, we're always aiming for better-than-average - otherwise we'd just buy a low-cost index ETF and be rid of the vagaries of individual stocks (but what fun would that be?!?!)

No, playing the game of the market, we want - even need - stocks in our portfolio that deliver above-average performance, if for no other reason than to cover the laggards.

With the new financial year about to roll over, it’s time to cast our eyes ahead and think about companies that can deliver for us in the coming 12 months.

In...

There are a few moments throughout the financial year that lend themselves to a portfolio review. 

While investors should always remain diligent, January 1 provides a fresh opportunity to cast a critical eye over one's holdings, while the February and August reporting seasons offer another chance to decide which companies continue to make the cut.

But perhaps EOFY trumps them all, particularly due to tax-loss selling, where investors realise capital losses on underperforming investments to offset capital gains elsewhere in their portfolios and reduce their overall tax bill.

Most of the treatment above, however, f...

What are Australia's best income stocks?

To kick off Livewire's Income Series, we asked more than 2,700 investors to nominate their favourite income stocks and investments. The results included household names like BHP, Commonwealth Bank, Telstra and Washington H. Soul Pattinson, alongside a handful of small-but-mighty dividend payers that punched well above their weight.

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Matthew Kidman is joined by Jun Bei Liu from Ten Cap and James Gerrish from Market Matters to run the ruler over six reader-voted income favourites.

Timestamps:

The countdown is on to the FIFA World Cup and so what better way to join the party than by putting together our own best XI of ASX stocks. 

In this special edition of Buy Hold Sell, we've asked First Sentier Investors' Dushko Bajic to take on the role of manager and select a starting team of 11 ASX stocks he thinks can deliver on the pitch. 

It's a lineup that is looking to deliver everything you need to win - solid leadership, genuine experience, strong vision, versatility and a bit of X-factor. 

But which...

The great ASX tech unwind has been brutal.

After years of premium valuations, strong growth and near-bulletproof market faith, some of Australia’s best-known software and technology stocks have been dragged back to earth. The trigger? A mix of stretched multiples, slowing growth, investor fatigue and, increasingly, the disruptive threat of artificial intelligence.

The five names in this episode – Life360 (ASX: 360), Pro Medicus (ASX: PME ), Xero (ASX: XRO), TechnologyOne (ASX: TNE) and WiseTech Global (ASX: WTC) – fell an average of around 65% from their highs to their lows. More recently, however, they have recovered an average of around 3...

Are you finding equity income investing harder than it used to be? Well, you're not imagining it.

For years, income investors could build a portfolio of quality ASX dividend stocks and generate an attractive income stream without taking excessive risk. Today, that task has become far more challenging - but not impossible. 

The ASX's yield has fallen well below historical averages, bank share prices have rallied hard, and many of the market's traditional income favourites simply do not offer the yields they once did. At the same time, higher bond yields and attractive cash rates h...

At any given point in the market cycle, there are certain sectors and themes where investors go hunting for growth. Sometimes it’s driven by disruption. Sometimes it’s recovery. And sometimes it’s simply because the market has become too pessimistic about quality businesses with long runways ahead of them.

Right now, a few pockets of the ASX are attracting attention. Fintech and financial infrastructure businesses are trying to prove they can scale profitably. Software and SaaS names are attempting to emerge from one of the sharpest valuation resets in recent memory. And in healthcare and medtec...

In the wake of the budget and the proposed CGT changes, there has been plenty of spirited debate about the future of growth investing in our great country. And rightly so. 

But let's get real. Whatever we might think about the changes, Aussies will still create and invest in great growth businesses. It's in our blood. 

No tax change is going to completely crush home-grown innovation - the very innovation which brought us the Coolgardie cooler, the Hills Hoist, the Cochlear implant, and WiFi. Oh, and Tim Tams... mustn't forget the Tim Tams. 

Typ...

While much of the market has been nursing its wounds in 2026, the financial sector has been quietly holding up. But nothing stays comfortable forever. 

With a fresh rate hike hitting the market and bank valuations looking increasingly stretched, one of our guests this week puts it best - the banks are running on Wile E. Coyote physics. Off the cliff, still running - just haven't looked down yet.

So where does the smart money go from here? Because if the bank trade is getting crowded, the case for rotating into other parts of the sector, i...

Inflation, shifting rates, and volatile oil prices have served up a "vicious cocktail" for investors. While many of 2025’s high-flyers have come back to earth, the dynamic small and mid-cap market remains a breeding ground for opportunity.

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Chris Prunty (QVG Capital) and Chris Stott (1851 Capital) go head-to-head on five stocks from the growth engine of the ASX. 

They run the ruler over three "fallen angels" ripe for a rebound, two names testing 52-week highs, and reveal the "steady compounders" they’re backing for the year ahead.

Plus...

For years, the ASX healthcare sector was the picture of health itself - a compounding growth story that investors treated as a set-and-forget holding. Then came a brutal twelve months. The sector has shed nearly 40%, with former darlings and long-standing heavyweights hitting lows not seen in a decade. The causes aren't simple, and perhaps most disorienting is the ‘defensiveness’ that investors paid a premium for has simply stopped working. As one of our guests in this week's episode says, to quote The Castle - "The vibe is off." To work through the prognosis, Livewire's Anna Dadic is joined by Juli...

This episode was filmed Wednesday 22nd April, 2026.

Human nature pulls us toward the bargain, the beaten-up, the overlooked. Who doesn't love a sale? Buying a stock that's already doubled feels wrong. Dangerous, even. But some of the best money made has come from backing winners that just kept winning.

The first half of 2026 has been a wild ride. The broader market has been middling at best. But beneath the surface, a handful of small and mid-cap stocks have defied the macro gloom entirely - Codan and Cuscal are just two names that have more than...

When Archimedes had that famous bath and watched the water rise, he didn't just solve a problem - he had one of history's great moments of innovation. A completely new way of seeing something that had always been there.

Investors are on a similar hunt. Figuring out the pure gold in the market, the companies that are genuinely reimagining their industries, the true innovators that have the potential to become the market leaders of tomorrow.  The trouble is, telling real innovation from a good story is hard at the best of times. And right now, with small a...

In the first two episodes of this commodities-focused Buy Hold Sell series, we zeroed in on the obvious plays – gold, and oil and gas – the parts of the market dominating headlines and investor attention.

But as is often the case in commodities, the real opportunity set runs much deeper. Lithium has staged a sharp comeback, tin and manganese prices have surged over the past year, and key industrial metals like copper and even iron ore continue to trade at elevated levels.

So in this episode, we flipped the format. Rather than focus on a single comm...