Scott Phillips

Scott Phillips joined Montgomery Investment Management in 2013.
Scott joined the firm from BlackRock Investment Management, where he was Managing Director, Head of Retail Australia for 12 years.
It’s been a while since I last did a profile piece on a member of the Montgomery team and in that time, we had two skilled investment professionals join. I lift the lid and see what makes the people behind the process, the blog posts and the numbers tick. I catch up with one of our newest Portfolio Managers on our Australian Small Companies team – Gary Rollo. Continue…
The success of the Australian superannuation system, envied by most governments around the world has now grown to encompass close on $3 trillion of assets. This is broadly split between three different types of fund – Public Sector/Industry/ Corporates, Retail and Self Managed Super Funds (SMSF). The proponents of each type often battle it out in the court of public debate as to the merits of each type and one of the fronts of attack is often on the topic of cost! Continue…
A lot will be written about events in calendar year 2020 and the impact COVID-19 had on many facets of our lives, not to mention the huge volatility in financial markets. Interestingly, when we look in isolation at the calendar year returns of the S&P/ASX 300 Accumulation Index (which includes the returns from dividends), the market was up a tiny 1.4 per cent. Continue…
The typical balanced portfolio being a 60/40 mix of growth assets to defensive (bonds) has been a mainstay of investors for many decades. But with 10-year Australian government bond yields at just 0.84 per cent and inflation running somewhere around 1.8 per cent (as seen in Figure 1), the return you get on the yield from your risk free Australian 10 year treasury bond is trailing inflation by around 1 per cent per annum. Continue…
Living in a world with COVID-19 certainly has changed the habits of many of us, particularly when it comes to our consumer behaviour. We have seen business models and sectors bought to their knees (Virgin, Flight Centre, Myer, Unibail Rodamco Westfield) while others have found themselves suddenly with an online business in hot demand (Kogan, Adairs, Marley Spoon, Temple and Webster). So, will consumers continue to support their new online practices and which areas have been the real beneficiaries. Continue…
There is a popular aphorism in investing circles that originally came from Winston Churchill; “never let a good crisis go to waste.” While the human and economic costs of the COVID-19 crisis remain current, Gary Rollo and Dominic Rose, the team behind the Montgomery Smaller Companies Fund have quietly taken advantage of the dislocation to establish the ground work for what might become an enviable track record. Continue…
A lot has been written about the COVID-19 crisis and undoubtedly it will go down in history as a monumental market crash, and so far it has been one of the quickest technical “bear” markets on record, with the S&P 500 hitting its high on 19 February 2020 and into a bear market just 16 days later. Continue…
Yesterday saw the ASX 200 Index sell off a whopping 7.3 per cent in what was the most brutal fall in our Australian equity market since 10 October, 2008, which was in the height of the GFC. Continue…
Investors in Australia and around the world are understandably worried about the onset of a new disease (Wuhan Coronavirus – known as nCoV) and the implications for their investments, particularly as the medical profession develops their understanding of the disease. While the number of confirmed cases has increased from 282 to 4,474 in the past 7 days it is a moving tally. Continue…
As an investment manager our number one goal is to compound the wealth of our investors in a prudent manner while trying to protect against the permanent loss of capital. If we can achieve this then we as investors alongside our clients will be not only successful but should also be happy. Continue…