The Curve

Hannah Hart started saving for a house at 10 and built her first property by 21. Buying the home she lives in now took four to five months, four auctions and a lot of tears. She joins Soph to talk through what really happens when you buy at auction: why one building report stopped her taking on $400,000 of work, what to do when someone else brings an auction forward, and the bidding move her husba...

Soph and Emma Louise-Boynton get into the ASOS hack, where hackers messaged customers directly through the app after the company wouldn’t pay up. We talk about how these digital ransoms work, why so many businesses quietly hand over the money, and the flaw hiding under 70% of the internet that nearly went very wrong. Plus, the cybersecurity stocks and insurers doing well out of it all. Then we tur...

It’s reporting season, when listed companies hand in their report cards and share prices swing on the results. This week Soph and Vic dig into two of them. Netflix grew its profit by around 43%, yet its shares fell, so what were investors actually reacting to, and why is YouTube now the rival to watch? Then there’s a company you’ve probably bought from without realising: EssilorLuxottica, owner of...

Part two of Meet the Founders. After Soph shared her money story, the requests for Vic's kept coming, so we sat her down for the full version. Vic takes us from selling her sister's clothes on Trade Me as a kid to choosing a South America trip over a job offer at Goldman Sachs, then starting out answering phones at Milford Asset Management. She shares the employee share offer she nearly turned dow...

Bumble was once worth US$14 billion. Now it’s being bought for US$1.3 billion and taken private, and the app built on women going first will be run by two men. Soph and Emma get into what went wrong, what happens to your shares when a company leaves the stock market, and why LVMH shares are down around 40% while Uniqlo keeps breaking records. Plus, is a Chanel bag ever really an investment? Thanks...

Vic is officially back in New Zealand with big news: The Curve Fund is now live on Sharesies. She explains why September is so often a rough month for markets, the best analogy you’ll hear all year for how AMD became a trillion-dollar company without making a single chip, and why the company everyone should be watching isn’t Nvidia. Plus, how Warner Bros.’ CEO walked away with US$606 million after...

Today we're talking lab grown versus natural diamonds, and by the end of it, neither of us landed exactly where we thought we would. Sophie sits down with Martha (@martha.stewish) to unpack where diamonds actually come from, why the cut matters more than the size, and how a 90-year-old marketing campaign convinced generations of women that a natural diamond equals real love. We get into resale val...

Emma Louise Boynton is back, filling in for Vic. Sydney Sweeney’s “just sports” ad caused a stir, but the bigger story is that she’s an investor in Novig, the prediction market now reportedly worth $2 billion. Soph breaks down how prediction markets work and whether they’re anything more than sports betting. Then Emma brings the story of Sarah Creal, the Victoria Beckham Beauty co-founder who’s ju...

UK mortgage rates have hit 6% for the first time since Liz Truss’s mini-budget, yet the Bank of England hasn’t raised rates. So who’s pushing them up, and why does it matter even if you don’t own a home? With Vic on her way home to New Zealand, our lead investor Nicole Bremner steps in alongside Soph to explain. Then, the race to turn weight-loss jabs like Ozempic into a pill. It could more than d...

It’s time to talk about "looksmaxxing," the internet's term for optimising everything about your appearance, and why so many of us are quietly pouring hundreds (or thousands) of dollars every month into it. Soph is joined by Hanna Horvath, author of the money and culture Substack ‘Your Brain on Money’. Together they dig into why Love Island contestants are the extreme end of a spectrum we're all o...

First up, Oura was about to go public. It was looking to raise $2.2 billion at a valuation of more than $15 billion, then pulled out at the last minute. We break down what an IPO actually is and why companies wait for a sunny market before they list. Plus, why Oura's subscription model could make it one to watch when it finally does go public. Then, Meta's new AI agent Muse can book, buy, and emai...

We're back from our break, and we're kicking things off with not one but two personal updates. Soph opens with some very happy news, and Vic's comes right at the very end, so make sure you stick around. Trigger warning: this episode discusses the Cornell University sexual assault case. We look at who holds the power and the purse strings at elite universities, why donors could be the key to real c...

What is a share price, how is it actually set, and what makes it move up or down. This episode breaks the stock market down to its most basic level, buyers and sellers in a marketplace, and explains why getting emotionally attached to a stock (much like a bad relationship) is one of the easiest ways to make a bad decision. A great primer before you buy your first share. Credits: Hosts: Sophie Hall...

Diversification is one of those words that sounds boring until it saves your portfolio. This episode breaks down what it actually means to spread your risk, why the stock market works like any other marketplace, and why falling in love with a single investment can be one of the most costly mistakes you make. Comes with a story about a company that no longer exists, and why that matters. Credits: H...

Risk is one of those words that sounds terrifying until you understand what it actually means. This episode walks through how to think about your own risk appetite, why investing and gambling are not the same thing, and why checking your investments constantly can do more harm than good. A solid one for anyone who feels anxious about the idea of investing before they've even started. Credits: Host...

There are four main asset classes: cash, bonds, property and stocks, and this episode ranks them from safest to riskiest and explains why. Property in particular gets a reality check here, since it's the asset most people assume is "safe" without really questioning why. A useful one for understanding where your money is sitting and what that actually means for your risk. Credits: Hosts: Sophie Hal...

Before anything else in investing makes sense, you need to understand return, volatility and why Einstein rated compound interest so highly. This episode breaks down what people actually mean when they talk about "the return" on an investment, and why different types of investments move up and down at different rates. If you've ever nodded along in a finance conversation without fully following, s...

The Curve is pausing new episodes for the next couple of weeks. Soph's away and Vic is in the middle of moving back to New Zealand to run the fund, so rather than rush new episodes out, the feed is taking a breather. In its place, five of the very first episodes ever recorded are being re-released, the ones that cover the absolute fundamentals of investing. If you're new here or you want a refresh...

Holly's back in the studio (this time in person) for another round of Curveballs, real listeners’ submitted property stories sent in after her last two episodes went viral. Soph & Holly unpack a family vacation home at the centre of five and a half years of conflict, a couple who split renovation labour and income unevenly with nothing in writing, and two very different relationships where one par...

Lululemon's founder is getting divorced after 20+ years of marriage, and there's no prenup on a fortune worth over $6 billion. We get into what that means for his wife (one of the company's first employees and founding designer), especially as Lululemon posts its second dire quarter in a row and its stock hits an eight-year low. Then, Kendall Jenner just bought a stake in TRIP, the British calming...

First up, government bond yields just hit levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis, and the headlines are in full panic mode. Vic breaks down what a bond yield actually is, why investors are suddenly worried that governments around the world have overextended themselves, and why a "boring" corner of finance is about to hit your mortgage, your taxes, and your savings account. Then, Shein wen...

Madi Stefanis started her business at 19 with one old film camera and a Facebook Marketplace listing. It sold for 5x the asking price, and that was the beginning of a side hustle that scaled to $70K a month from her bedroom floor, before turning into 35mm Co., a camera brand now sold in nearly every country in the world with over 100,000 units sold. This episode is a true side-hustle-to-global-bus...

She's got 33 million followers and one of the most photographed families on the planet. It still took Victoria Beckham 18 years to turn a profit, and £66m in debt to get there. We break down what that says about the difference between revenue and profit, and why runway matters more than either. Plus, tech multimillionaire Bryan Johnson's girlfriend Kate Tolo is running her own 100-day biohacking e...

This week, Soph and Vic share the Curve Fund's very first monthly update and break down the biggest movers, including Estée Lauder's and AMD. They also get into Apple's new CEO John Ternus, only the seventh in the company's 50 year history, and what his $60 million pay package (mostly in stock) says about how the company rewards long-term thinking. Plus, natural disasters cost the world $450 billi...

This week, Soph is joined by The Curve’s angel investor, Nicole Bremner. At its peak, Nicole’s portfolio included stakes in over 110 properties. In this episode, the pair get honest about what's shifted in the property market over the last 15 years, and why the old rules of buying property no longer apply. They unpack the diversification blind spot most homeowners don't realise they have, and why...