The Rules of Investing
The Rules of Investing is one of Australia’s longest-running business podcasts, providing investors with unparalleled access to the ideas and insights of Australia’s leading fund managers, economists and industry experts. Learn how the industry’s best invest, with the help of Livewire’s James Marlay and Chris Conway. Whether you’re new to investing or a seasoned professional, this podcast is for you. New episodes are released every second Friday, available on Livewire Markets, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
The Rules of Investing is one of Australia’s longest-running business podcasts, providing investors with unparalleled access to the ideas and insights of Australia’s leading fund managers, economists and industry experts. Learn how the industry’s best invest, with the help of Livewire’s James Marlay and Chris Conway. Whether you’re new to investing or a seasoned professional, this podcast is for you. New episodes are released every second Friday, available on Livewire Markets, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
Episodes

Thursday Oct 10, 2024
Thursday Oct 10, 2024
Today, we’ll be bringing all the insights from Livewire Live together with the help of one of Australia's leading financial advisers and one of the country's top wealth managers.
Livewire’s James Marlay sat down with Alexandre Ventelon of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management and Charlie Viola of Pitcher Partners to answer our audience’s questions about asset allocation and give investors some tangible ideas on how to apply the lessons and insights from a full day of sessions covering multiple asset classes, themes and ideas.
This episode is part of our special mini-series of The Rules of Investing, giving you a front-row seat to discussions from Livewire Live 2024, our flagship investor event.
Whether you’re after big-picture market insights or actionable investment strategies, this series offers exclusive insights to help shape your investment decisions.
We hope you enjoy this special 7-part series. We’ll return to our regular programming with the next episode of The Rules of Investing.
________________
This series is proudly sponsored by Bell Direct Advantage.
Bell Direct Advantage is a premium trading platform designed for active and sophisticated investors. Offering access to Bell Potter research, exclusive IPOs, and advanced trading tools, it’s built to give you a competitive edge. Whether you’re a frequent trader or a high-net-worth individual trading shares, options, or warrants, Bell Direct Advantage delivers tailored solutions and superior service to sharpen your investing edge. [Find out more here]

Wednesday Oct 09, 2024
The good, the bad, and the ugly - Livewire Live Mini-Series
Wednesday Oct 09, 2024
Wednesday Oct 09, 2024
Today, you’ll be learning about the good, the bad and the ugly of equities markets - with the help of:
Dr David Allen, Head of Long/Short Strategies, Plato Investment Management
Ben Griffiths, Executive Chairman, Eley Griffiths Group
James Hawkins, Partner & Head of the Catalyst Fund, L1 Capital
Dushko Bajic, Head of Australian Equities Growth, First Sentier Investors
This panel is hosted by Centennial Asset Management’s Matthew Kidman.
They explore the stocks they are bullish on today, the themes they believe are likely to suffer, and the stocks they recommend investors avoid (or short, if they can) over the months ahead.
This episode is part of our special mini-series of The Rules of Investing, giving you a front-row seat to discussions from Livewire Live 2024, our flagship investor event.
Whether you’re after big-picture market insights or actionable investment strategies, this series offers exclusive insights to help shape your investment decisions.
We hope you enjoy this special 7-part series. We’ll return to our regular programming with the next episode of The Rules of Investing.
________________
This series is proudly sponsored by Bell Direct Advantage.
Bell Direct Advantage is a premium trading platform designed for active and sophisticated investors. Offering access to Bell Potter research, exclusive IPOs, and advanced trading tools, it’s built to give you a competitive edge. Whether you’re a frequent trader or a high-net-worth individual trading shares, options, or warrants, Bell Direct Advantage delivers tailored solutions and superior service to sharpen your investing edge. [Find out more here]

Tuesday Oct 08, 2024
5 Shocking Predictions for 2025 - Livewire Live Mini-Series
Tuesday Oct 08, 2024
Tuesday Oct 08, 2024
Many of the best investing opportunities emerge when you think differently from the herd. This session will feature five high energy predictions that will challenge consensus thinking as investors look towards 2025 and beyond.
You’ll be hearing from five of Australia’s leading investment minds, including:
Kellie Wood, Head of Fixed Income at Schroders
Vihari Ross, Portfolio Manager at Antipodes,
Bob Desmond, Co-Portfolio Manager and Head of Claremont Global
Josh Clark, Lead Portfolio Manager at QVG Capital
Matthew Kidman, Chief Investment Officer at Centennial Asset Management.
This episode is part of our special mini-series of The Rules of Investing, giving you a front-row seat to discussions from Livewire Live 2024, our flagship investor event.
Whether you’re after big-picture market insights or actionable investment strategies, this series offers exclusive insights to help shape your investment decisions.
We hope you enjoy this special 7-part series. We’ll return to our regular programming with the next episode of The Rules of Investing.
________________
This series is proudly sponsored by Bell Direct Advantage.
Bell Direct Advantage is a premium trading platform designed for active and sophisticated investors. Offering access to Bell Potter research, exclusive IPOs, and advanced trading tools, it’s built to give you a competitive edge. Whether you’re a frequent trader or a high-net-worth individual trading shares, options, or warrants, Bell Direct Advantage delivers tailored solutions and superior service to sharpen your investing edge. [Find out more here]

Monday Oct 07, 2024
Monday Oct 07, 2024
In this session you’ll be hearing a fireside chat with Todd Barlow the CEO of Soul Patts, Australia’s oldest listed company.
Soul Patts is a diversified investment house often described as Australia’s answer to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. The company has established an incredible record of dividend payments to shareholders and today you’ll be getting an asset allocation masterclass from Todd and hearing about the opportunities he sees in the market today.
This session was moderated by James Unger, Head of Corporate Finance and Bell Potter Securities.
This episode is part of our special mini-series of The Rules of Investing, giving you a front-row seat to discussions from Livewire Live 2024, our flagship investor event.
Whether you’re after big-picture market insights or actionable investment strategies, this series offers exclusive insights to help shape your investment decisions.
We hope you enjoy this special 7-part series. We’ll return to our regular programming with the next episode of The Rules of Investing.
________________
This series is proudly sponsored by Bell Direct Advantage.
Bell Direct Advantage is a premium trading platform designed for active and sophisticated investors. Offering access to Bell Potter research, exclusive IPOs, and advanced trading tools, it’s built to give you a competitive edge. Whether you’re a frequent trader or a high-net-worth individual trading shares, options, or warrants, Bell Direct Advantage delivers tailored solutions and superior service to sharpen your investing edge. [Find out more here]

Sunday Oct 06, 2024
Sunday Oct 06, 2024
Artificial Intelligence is surely the hottest topic right now powering returns in stock markets and capturing our attention with its promise of productivity and innovation. But with such spectacular interest and returns I’m sure many investors are wondering if the opportunity has passed.
Our next panel will be picking the eyes out of the AI opportunity. How big is it and where are we in the cycle for this industry? Who will be the winners? And who will get crushed?
The panel features:
Nick Griffin, Founding Partner & Chief Investment Officer, Munro Partners
Jun Bei Liu, Lead Portfolio Manager, Tribeca Investment Partners
Jacob Mitchell, Chief Investment Officer & Lead Portfolio Manager, Antipodes
This session was moderated by Livewire’s Deputy Managing Editor Ally Selby.
This episode is part of our special mini-series of The Rules of Investing, giving you a front-row seat to discussions from Livewire Live 2024, our flagship investor event.
Whether you’re after big-picture market insights or actionable investment strategies, this series offers exclusive insights to help shape your investment decisions.
We hope you enjoy this special 7-part series. We’ll return to our regular programming with the next episode of The Rules of Investing.
________________
This series is proudly sponsored by Bell Direct Advantage.
Bell Direct Advantage is a premium trading platform designed for active and sophisticated investors. Offering access to Bell Potter research, exclusive IPOs, and advanced trading tools, it’s built to give you a competitive edge. Whether you’re a frequent trader or a high-net-worth individual trading shares, options, or warrants, Bell Direct Advantage delivers tailored solutions and superior service to sharpen your investing edge. [Find out more here]

Saturday Oct 05, 2024
Saturday Oct 05, 2024
In this episode, you’ll be hearing a panel exploring a number of big topics dominating conversations around markets right now.
From the changing macro backdrop and debate over the merits of public vs private markets to the implications of ageing populations, the energy transition and digital innovation these are Seismic Shifts and we’re going to hear about the opportunities they present for investors.
The speakers in this session are:
Matthew Haup, Lead Portfolio Manager at Wilson Asset Management
Srdjan Dangubic, Partner at Five V Capital
James Abela, Portfolio Manager at Fidelity
Andrew Lockhart, Managing Partner at Metrics Credit Partners
You moderator is Livewire’s managing editor Chris Conway
This episode is part of our special mini-series of The Rules of Investing, giving you a front-row seat to discussions from Livewire Live 2024, our flagship investor event.
Whether you’re after big-picture market insights or actionable investment strategies, this series offers exclusive insights to help shape your investment decisions.
We hope you enjoy this special 7-part series. We’ll return to our regular programming with the next episode of The Rules of Investing.
________________
This series is proudly sponsored by Bell Direct Advantage.
Bell Direct Advantage is a premium trading platform designed for active and sophisticated investors. Offering access to Bell Potter research, exclusive IPOs, and advanced trading tools, it’s built to give you a competitive edge. Whether you’re a frequent trader or a high-net-worth individual trading shares, options, or warrants, Bell Direct Advantage delivers tailored solutions and superior service to sharpen your investing edge. [Find out more here]

Friday Oct 04, 2024
Friday Oct 04, 2024
In this episode, you’ll hear from Scott Kleinman, the co-president of Apollo Global Management, as he sits down with Livewire’s James Marlay. Kleinman shares his views on why he believes markets are getting ahead of themselves with rate cut expectations, where he sees value across various sectors, and how Apollo is positioning to take advantage of mega trends such as digital transformation, the energy transition, and ageing populations.
This episode is part of our special mini-series of The Rules of Investing, giving you a front-row seat to discussions from Livewire Live 2024, our flagship investor event.
Whether you’re after big-picture market insights or actionable investment strategies, this series offers exclusive insights to help shape your investment decisions.
We hope you enjoy this special 7-part series. We’ll return to our regular programming with the next episode of The Rules of Investing.
________________
This series is proudly sponsored by Bell Direct Advantage.
Bell Direct Advantage is a premium trading platform designed for active and sophisticated investors. Offering access to Bell Potter research, exclusive IPOs, and advanced trading tools, it’s built to give you a competitive edge. Whether you’re a frequent trader or a high-net-worth individual trading shares, options, or warrants, Bell Direct Advantage delivers tailored solutions and superior service to sharpen your investing edge. [Find out more here]

Friday Sep 27, 2024
Inside Macquarie's unique approach to consistent alpha
Friday Sep 27, 2024
Friday Sep 27, 2024
Behavioural economics explains why we make such stupid decisions with our money. Unfortunately, the study has found that behavioural biases are very hard to control and, even if you are aware of them, no one is immune from poor decision-making when it comes to both life and our finances.
This is where quantitative or systematic investing comes in - a realm of investing typically reserved for institutional investors like super funds and the ultra-wealthy.
Quantitative investing removes emotion and behavioural biases from investing. Instead, it relies on some of the smartest people in the world to put together hundreds to thousands of signals and data points for a large language model to make decisions. Humans are involved but just for oversight, in case the model does not truly understand a situation. For example, it may not understand that airlines were not a fantastic short-term opportunity amid a significant sell-off during the COVID-19 crash.
This is a far cry from fundamental investing, which relies on a fund manager or investor analysing macroeconomic and stock-specific factors, meeting with management teams, trying out products and services and reviewing a business's balance sheet before making an investment decision of their own.
The gains from quantitative strategies are typically small, but they're consistent over time. You are not going to have years of 10-20% plus outperformance over an index, but equally, you shouldn't experience huge drawdowns either. And over the long term, this small amount of alpha adds up.
Interestingly, Macquarie Asset Management was one of the few firms that saw its funds achieve 100 batting averages - for both the large-cap and small-cap categories - over a 10-year period. This means that these funds, which are all quantitative strategies*, have outperformed the benchmark 100% of the time in every three-year rolling period over the past decade.
So, to learn more about quantitative investing, quantitative ETFs and the major trends shaping ETF markets, Livewire's Ally Selby was joined by Blair Hannon, ETF Strategist at Macquarie Asset Management.
We discuss some common misconceptions surrounding quantitative investing, the signals that have worked over the last few years, and the magic of compounding over the long term.
Plus, Hannon also shares why he strongly believes that passive investing is not creating a bubble in markets - despite what some of the world's most famous investors (like The Big Short's Michael Burry) would have you think.
Note: This interview was recorded on Tuesday 24 September 2024.
Timecodes
0:00 - Intro
1:54 - Difference between fundamental and quantitative investing
5:28 - Removing the emotion from investing
6:55 - Signals that are used to avoid behavioural biases
8:56 - Do we need human touch on quant funds
10:31 - Common misconceptions of quant investing
14:44 - The signal that has been working over the last year
18:20 - Turnover of stocks in the portfolio
20:10 - The signal that has worked over the long term
21:32 - Why 1% alpha is attractive over the long term
24:38 - Macquarie's batting average scores over 10 and 5 years
27:37 - Why ETF popularity will continue to soar
29:57 - Why active fund managers need to innovate on ETFs
32:50 - Innovation in the US - and what we can expect in Australia
35:08 - Why ETFs aren't the death of managed funds
37:10 - Why passive investment isn't creating a bubble in markets
39:07 - Something that worries Blair about the direction of ETF markets
41:21 - One ETF to hold for the next 5 years if markets were to close
Disclaimer:
Product Disclosure Statements and Target Market Determinations for Macquarie ETFs can be found at etf.macquarie.com and should be read before making a decision to invest.
*The Macquarie Australian Shares Fund, Macquarie Australian Equities Fund and the Macquarie Australian Small Companies Fund’s investment strategies changed effective 18 December 2017. Until 17 December 2017, the strategies were managed with a fundamental approach. From 18 December 2017, the strategies were restructured such that they are managed with a quantitative, systematic investment approach.



