Buy Hold Sell, by Livewire Markets

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, insurance in particular, is building fast. Higher rates, a more benign catastrophe environment, and valuations that haven't re-rated yet. It's a combination that's hard to ignore.

To work through it all, I'm joined by Julia Weng from Paradice Investment Management and Hamish FitzSimons from AllianceBernstein. Between them, they'll be analysing five stocks in the sector and sharing one high conviction pick each for where they see the real value.

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, we break down the must-know takeaways from the Macquarie Conference.

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 Julia Weng of Paradice Investment Management and Hamish FitzSimons of AllianceBernstein. In this episode, five sector stocks are put under the microscope. Our guests unpack the sell-off, make the case for where the stock-picking opportunities lie, and as always, share a high-conviction pick of their own. This episode was filmed Wednesday 6th May 2026.

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 doubled in the past year, leaving investors on the sidelines wondering whether they've missed the boat altogether. 

So have they? Or is the rally just beginning?

To help make sense of the top performers of the year so far, Anna Dadic is joined by two fund managers who know this space better than most. Lucas Goode from IML and Ben Rundle from Hayborough Investment Partners. Between them, they run the ruler over five of the ASX's biggest high flyers of the year so far and we ask the question every investor is thinking: is there still fuel in the tank to keep flying?

Let's find out!

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 and mid-caps taking a beating since the onset of the war in Iran, the market is anything but straightforward.

Do you chase macro tailwinds? Hunt for quality growth names that have been unfairly sold off? Or play it safe and wait for the dust to settle?

To help work through those questions and to find where the genuine "eureka!" moments might be, Anna Dadic is joined by Lucas Goode from IML and Ben Rundle from Hayborough Investment Partners to run the ruler over some stocks and share one high conviction pick for the year ahead.

Let's go find some gold! 

This episode was filmed Wednesday 22nd April, 2026.