Buy Hold Sell: Ride or rotate? The themes shaping portfolios in 2026

If 2025 showed investors anything, it’s that the best money wasn’t made by sitting still; it was made by catching the right waves.

While broader markets delivered solid returns, the lion's share of profits went to investors willing to back the big themes: uranium, defence stocks, gold miners, Bitcoin, the Nasdaq, and Australian small caps. Get the wave right, and returns arrive fast.

But as any surfer knows, timing matters. Not every wave kept rolling, and some themes lost momentum just as quickly as they emerged.

So as we head into the New Year, the key question is which of these themes still have legs - and where is the next swell forming?

To find out, we sat down with Michael Wayne from Medallion Financial Group and Adam Dawes from Shaw and Partners to unpack which 2025 themes can continue, and nominate their one hotspot for 2026 and how to play it.

Note: This episode was recorded on Wednesday, 17 December 2025.