Buy Hold Sell, by Livewire Markets

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 small caps, and in light of the doom and gloom, we asked our guests to bring a positive insight they took from the season. For Ben Richards of Seneca, it was the breadth of the market, with the Small Ordinaries rising 6% while the ASX 200 remained broadly flat. For Steve Johnson from Forager Funds, it was the return to form for software companies - reliable revenue, improving margins, and the SaaS apocalypse narrative finally creating some discipline in the space.

We unpack six small-cap stocks in this episode, the ones who were solid from the ones who were sold off, and sort out the winners form the losers (plus a few bonus picks).

Keep an eye out for our next episode with Tom Stelzer covering the large caps.

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 Magellan Investment Partners and Joseph Ziller from Ziller Funds Management to give their calls on three distinctive founder-led businesses, and share a founder-led stock pick of their own.

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 thematic ETFs in technology, semiconductors, healthcare, cryptocurrency and property. 

This episode was filmed Friday 14th August, 2026.

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? 

In this episode of Livewire's Buy Hold Sell, Hailey Kim from Wilson Asset Management and Daniel Moore from IML join Livewire's Tom Stelzer to dive into three heavyweight industrial stocks that could offer that durability right now, as well as a pick each of their own.