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2025 was a strong year for small companies and for the Montgomery Small Companies Fund. In this detailed video, I’m joined by Gary Rollo, Co-Portfolio Manager of the Montgomery Small Companies Fund to review the Fund’s performance, key market drivers, and the outlook for small caps and growth companies heading into 2026. Continue…

by Scott Phillips Posted in Companies, Economics, Global markets, Investing Education, Market commentary, Market Valuation, Small Caps, Stocks We Like.

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Business is like a piano accordion. Sectors and individual companies expand and grow, then contract, necessarily becoming smaller than they once were. If you keep this metaphor in mind when investing, it can help you understand the business’s stage of life. 

There are exceptions, of course – those businesses that rise above the cycle of invention, adoption, scale, saturation, disruption and destruction, but they are few and far between. Most will eventually reach a natural limit to their size, and then they either sit there, churning customers for lower margins, or are disrupted, or their customers move on to the next trend. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary.

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Throughout history, there’s been a tidal quality to the flow of capital because there is a tidal quality to the human condition. Every new technology, after welding on its inventors, attracts its devotees who, believing – often correctly – the tech will change the world, become the pied pipers for many more investors. If they’re successful, they generate a groundswell of financial, government, and social support that converge to drive their vision and their wealth, often to heights that natural laws cannot support. 

That intersection of innovation and capital is a phenomenon that has long fascinated. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary.

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If you’ve been watching the news lately, you’ve seen the script: The Middle East is a tinderbox, the Strait of Hormuz is a “no-go” zone, and $120 oil is an inevitability according to JP Morgan.

But if you look at the facts and the data, the story falls apart.

Despite the headlines, oil is struggling to hold its gains. Why? Because the “New World Order” of energy isn’t being built in Tehran or Riyadh. It’s being built in North and South Americas and the “war” we’re watching looks more like a managed liquidation of the old guard than a global catastrophe. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Energy / Resources, Market commentary.

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On statewide drive with Jess Maguire, I explained that recent market volatility reflects investors reassessing some big assumptions, particularly after Donald Trump’s nomination of Kevin Walsh as the next U.S. Federal Reserve chair.

Many investors had been expecting lower U.S. interest rates, so the nomination caught markets off guard and forced a reversal of those bets. That led to sharp falls in gold and silver, higher bond yields, and weaker share prices. While precious metals may recover over time, I see the bigger influence on sharemarkets as the gradual unwinding of the artificial intelligence (AI) trade. For Australia, stronger U.S. growth can support some companies, but persistent inflation risks and policy uncertainty mean investors are becoming more cautious and re-evaluating risk.

Listen from 1:44:55 here: ABC Statewide Drive. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Economics, Global markets, Market commentary, Radio.

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What’s war good for? With apologies to Motown songwriters Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, absolutely nothing from humanity’s point of view. While the human cost of conflict – measured in lives lost, families displaced, and immense suffering – is profound and undeniable, the historical relationship between geopolitical chaos and long-term market valuations is remarkably detached, perhaps because markets grind on, focused on profits and with what appears to be indifference to the tragedies that dominate the headlines. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Global markets, Market commentary.

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I realise the war in the Middle East and fuel prices are dominating headlines and investors’ current concerns, however, there will come a time when markets and conversation will return to those topics that made headlines before Trump triggered the latest conflict in the Middle East. 

One of those topics is the disruption to employment expected to be wrought by Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially now that AI has itself moved from prompting Large Language Models (LLMs) to deploying Agentic AI. The question on my mind is whether, assuming a large shift in employment roles, that shift will be smooth or unstable. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary.

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Yesterday afternoon I joined Jess Maguire on ABC Statewide Drive to discuss how the conflict in the Middle East is affecting global markets. While headlines have focused on oil and petrol prices, we also discussed the potential impact on industries such as airlines, tourism and energy-intensive manufacturing. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Radio.

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This week on ABC Statewide Drive, I spoke about how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping sharemarkets, prompting investors to reassess which business models are likely to benefit and which may face disruption.

Major technological shifts tend to reshape markets in unpredictable ways. In times like these, broad diversification and exposure to strategies that are uncorrelated to markets may help build more resilient portfolios. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary, Radio.

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I joined ABC News to discuss the market reaction to the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Surging oil prices and concerns about supply disruptions have rattled global markets, prompting investors to reassess risks and reduce exposure to equities.

Watch here: ABC The Business. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Economics, Energy / Resources, Global markets, Manufacturing, Market commentary, TV Appearances.

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