Buy Hold Sell, by Livewire Markets

Strong dividends have always been one of the ASX's big calling cards, so it might surprise you to learn that Australian dividends actually shrank 6.7% to $63.5 billion in 2025, according to the Capital Group Global Equity Study. Now reporting season has thrown up some solid dividend results from Telstra, Woolworths, BHP and Evolution Mining to name a few, and our biggest income stocks - namely the...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That might be the best way to sum up the February reporting season at the headline level. Of course, there is more nuance to it than that.  The top end of town - the banks and miners in particular - enjoyed solid results and, often, spectacular share price moves; Woolworths up 14%, anyone? Throw into the mix a record high for BHP and a resurgent...

As part of our 2026 Outlook Series, we asked you for your picks of the top ETFs for the year ahead, and in a  recent episode of Buy Hold Sell , we ran the ruler over five of the most-picked ETFs. But we like to keep our guests on their toes, which is why we're back with a bonus round of Buy Hold Sell to run through nine more of the ETFs that made the list.  Back in the BHS hot seats are Daniel Kel...

AI. It's all anyone is talking about, and whether you love it or loathe it, you're probably going to have to hear about it for a while yet (i.e. forever). But whether you choose to invest in it? That's another story.  Let's be real. Investors of all stripes - from retail punters to institutional shops with trillion-dollar balance sheets - have lost their minds over AI. Yes, there will be winners....

With so much choice on the ASX for building an ETF portfolio, the challenge is in construction. How do you combine ETFs in a way that makes sense for where you are in your investing journey? And how should that mix evolve as your knowledge, confidence and capital grows? In this episode, Tom Stelzer is joined by Daniel Kelly of Viola Private Wealth and Adam Dawes of Shaw and Partners to build three...

ETFs have become the building blocks of modern portfolios, offering instant diversification, liquidity and low-cost access to everything from global blue chips to niche thematics. But with a veritable supermarket of options now available on the ASX, choosing the right ETF is no easy task. In this episode, Livewire’s Tom Stelzer is joined by Daniel Kelly of Viola Private Wealth and Adam Dawes of Sh...

If you’ve ever watched a race, there’s usually someone trailing well behind the pack. The limelight belongs to the winners, of course, but there’s always a mix of second-hand embarrassment and sympathy for the poor sod trying and failing to catch up. Growth investing can feel much the same. Miss the starting gun, and you may have already missed the early and most powerful part of the rally.  In th...

To paraphrase Gordon Gecko, growth is good. But not all growth opportunities are created equal (just ask ASX tech investors right now), and after a year in which some growth stocks soared while others stalled, what's the outlook for growth this year, and how do you take advantage? To answer those questions and more, we welcomed Anna Milne from Wilson Asset Management and Blake Henricks of Firetrai...

Welcome back to a new year of Buy Hold Sell. At the end of last year, we asked you, our Livewire readers, to tell us what your most-tipped growth stock will be for 2026. It was our 10th year running the survey, with nearly 5,000 responses, and we crunched the numbers to see which names emerged as clear favourites. So for our first episode of the year, we asked our guests,  Anna Milne  from Wilson...

Despite the noise, 2025 has quietly thrown up plenty of opportunities for investors. Anyone switched on enough to play the Resources rebound, the generational gold trade, the small cap surge or even the CBA rally (before things cooled off) has probably done pretty well for themselves this year.  While many investors sat on their hands over AI and bubble fears, or licked their wounds following the...

Markets love a good story. And for most of 2025, it’s been the same story everywhere. A handful of mega-cap stocks have driven the majority of equity market returns in the US, and a similar pattern has been evident here in Australia, where blue-chip heavyweights have dominated the spotlight.   In both jurisdictions, hundreds of profitable companies have been ignored, and that’s how overlooked stoc...

Every year, markets have a habit of humbling consensus. Industries written off as “uninvestable” can quickly turn into the best-performing trades on the board, while last year’s darlings quietly fall out of favour. And 2025 was a textbook example. Few investors began the year expecting gold, defence, critical minerals or uranium to deliver such standout returns – yet all surged as shifting geopoli...

For most investors, the biggest determinant of long-term outcomes isn’t finding the next multi-bagger – it’s avoiding the handful of stocks that permanently destroy capital.  The data is unambiguous. In his landmark study  Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills? , Professor Hendrik Bessembinder found that just 4% of listed US stocks accounted for all net wealth creation above Treasury bills since 192...

In a year as frantic and fluid as 2025, it can be hard to know what is a valuable learning experience and what is just noise. But it goes without saying that eventful times in markets will always throw up the opportunity for some new lessons and some old lessons best relearned.  As part of our 2026 Outlook Series, we asked 10 leading fund managers to share the key lesson they learnt in 2025 and ho...

Jensen Huang founded Nvidia in 1993. For much of its life, it was a good company, not a great one. A specialist chipmaker, a few near-death moments, and long stretches where the stock went nowhere. Over the past decade, however, Nvidia has become the poster child for modern growth investing. What looks like an overnight success was, in reality, a 20-year build, powered by reinvestment, innovation,...

Buy Hold Sell has wrapped up for 2025 and will be back in 2025. Keep your eyes out for some bonus episodes dropping in early January. Thanks for listening!

If 2025 showed investors anything, it’s that the best money wasn’t made by sitting still; it was made by catching the right waves. While broader markets delivered solid returns, the lion's share of profits went to investors willing to back the big themes: uranium, defence stocks, gold miners, Bitcoin, the Nasdaq, and Australian small caps. Get the wave right, and returns arrive fast. But as any su...

Looking back at 2023, 2024 and 2025, it’s hard not to think: wasn’t it easy to make money? As the table below shows, almost everything went up. With around 95% of asset classes delivering positive returns, avoiding losses wasn’t the challenge - owning enough of the winners was. But periods of easy money don’t last forever. Eventually, the macro backdrop shifts, leadership changes, and returns begi...

As 2025 winds to a close, it’s only fitting that we take stock of the names that dazzled investors this year, as well as those that landed squarely on the naughty list. Markets delivered no shortage of surprises, with some companies shooting the lights out while others tested even the most patient shareholders. On the “nice” list sit Regis Resources (RRL), Codan (CDA), and Charter Hall (CHC) - thr...

“Crazy.” That’s how Jun Bei Liu of TenCap summed up 2025, a year where big themes surged in waves, sector leadership flipped at lightning speed, and investors had to stay sharp through fresh bursts of volatility. Alongside Atlas’s Hugh Dive, we’re looking back at the year that was: Which stocks delivered, which ones fell short, and which great ideas slipped away before investors could act? And the...

Well, here we are again, staring down the barrel of the year-end. It’s a time for some fun and frivolity, but amongst the cheer, it’s also the perfect time to cast a discerning eye over our portfolios and make some hard decisions about which companies get a guernsey into 2026. Shedding the duds also means hunting for new opportunities and while piling into the top 10 best performers from this year...

Investing globally can feel overwhelming, but it also opens the door to powerful structural themes that Australian equities often miss. In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Nick Markiewicz from Ellerston Capital and Michael Poulsen from Canopy Investors reveal six global small and mid cap stocks positioned in the slipstream of major shifts including AI driven power demand, digital content monetisatio...

US earnings season might be over, but the aftershocks are still rippling through markets. Headline numbers looked strong – S&P 500 EPS growth hit 15%, margins touched 15-year highs – yet beneath that glossy surface lies one of the most divided landscapes in years. In 2025, the market is being pulled in two directions. On one side sits the AI complex, powered by hyperscaler capex that continues...

Whilst Aussie small caps have been on fire and are outperforming their large-cap peers year to date, it’s not the same story everywhere. In the US, for example, small and mid-caps (SMIDs) are still lagging – such is the dominance of the Magnificent 7. But when everything else is rallying, it can pay to fish where others aren’t. And here’s the kicker: unlike Australia, where there’s a tiny pool of...

Small caps have long been the hunting ground for investors seeking outsized growth, but they also demand a sharper eye and stronger conviction. Whilst smalls have woken from a long slumber in 2025, beneath the headline names a new generation of companies is quietly building momentum - firms with unique market positions, improving fundamentals, or catalysts that could soon propel them into the spot...