Unhedged Podcast – "Stock Picking Champs 2025"

Date: January 15, 2026
Hosts: Katie Martin, Rob Armstrong
Guest: Alan Livesey

Episode Overview

In this episode of Unhedged, Katie Martin, Rob Armstrong, and Alan Livesey gather to dissect the Financial Times’ annual stock-picking competition—an FT newsroom tradition where participants pick five stocks to rise or fall over the coming year. The trio compare winning and losing bets, analyze themes and strategies that worked (or didn’t), and poke fun at their own performance in the game. The mood is equal parts competitive, self-deprecating, and insightful as they unpack what 2025’s surprising market moves reveal about luck, risk, and the limitations of human (and journalist) stock-picking.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

The FT Stock Picking Competition: Rules and Purpose

• "The best way to invest in stocks honestly is to buy a big index with a cheap tracker thing and forget all about it for as long as possible. But just for fun, every year the FT runs a stock picking competition."
  —Katie Martin (00:10)
• The rules: pick five stocks to go long or short and let them run for a year.
• The competition is explicitly not investment advice—just a lighthearted annual challenge.

The Big Winners: Precious Metals and Silver

• 2025’s standout performer: a contestant who concentrated on five precious metals miners, especially silver, returned over 200%.
  • "If you were just purely long silver at the beginning of 2025, you killed it."
    —Katie Martin (02:25)
  • Fresnillo (FTSE 100; gold/silver miner) returned 379%, nearly a five-bagger (03:01).
  • Silver benefitted from both fundamental strength and a late-year short squeeze; Alan notes, “there was a number of sort of last quarter melt up” (03:57).
• Rob Armstrong offers a general market principle: "If thing X has a great year, thing Y, which is a lot like X but is slightly crappier, will have an even better year." (03:20)

AI and Quantum Computing: Mixed Success

• Some participants went in on the AI/quantum computing theme—picking names like D-Wave Quantum. While not as spectacular as silver miners, some did well.
• Those who shorted Nvidia or Alphabet/Google fared poorly; "betting against Nvidia... didn't work out" (05:13).

Failed Shorts and Surprise Successes

• Shorting large, trending names often backfired, though shorting MicroStrategy (now called Strategy—essentially a Bitcoin proxy) finally paid off with a 50% drop (05:21).
  • Katie recounts a prior faceplant: "while I was short this company ... the stock went up something like 400%. It became macro strategy and I got absolutely annihilated." (05:47)

Strong Sector Trends

• Memory chipmakers had a banner year—Micron, Seagate, Western Digital—due to structural shortages and AI ("all were up like 200%," Rob notes at 06:32). Memory/semiconductors were popular picks.
• European defense stocks performed strongly, a trend echoed across professional investor sentiment for 2026.
• European banks and green energy were mentioned as notable outperformers not necessarily captured in the contest.

FT Journalists: Performance and Self-Reflection

Alan Livesey: This Year’s Champ

• “Gotta hand it to you, man, you absolutely killed it in 2025. Average returns of, get this listeners, 91%.”
  —Katie Martin (07:41)
• Alan’s winning recipe: leverage to gold via profitable, not tiny, junior miners (Oceana Gold, DPM Metals), two shorts (Kering and GAM), and a speculative pick (Rocket Lab).
  • On his shorts: Kering (luxury’s China drag and management missteps) and GAM (legacy of scandal and structural decline) (09:39).
  • Admits luck played a role and credits the power of a concentrated but not reckless strategy.

Katie Martin: From Duncedom to Top-10% Victory

• Rebounded to the top decile: “I have restored my dignity, ladies and gentlemen. I was fourth within the FT and I came like 82nd out of a thousand and something people.” (11:01)
• Her theme: European defense companies—all long, capitalizing on sector momentum despite initial worries about being late to the party.
  • “I did get on a trade that already had momentum... But no, they had a lot of gas left in the tank.” (12:08)
  • On strategy: "Let your winners run."

Rob Armstrong: Respectable, Methodical Approach

• 23rd within the FT, 23% returns, outperformed the index (13:46).
• Restricts his picks to S&P 500 stocks to reflect his own beat.
• Two standouts:
  • Alphabet/Google: “The biggest winner was Google. I went long Google for a couple of reasons... The stock had the cheapest valuation of the Magnificent Seven...”
    • Noted shift in perception from AI laggard to AI leader drove the stock (15:02).
  • McKesson: An archetypal ‘boring stock’ that did well because “most of healthcare was under political pressure ... so people who wanted a boring healthcare stock had very few options. McKesson was one and the stock did well.” (16:27)
• His 2025 theme: “Boring wins.” Picks included Waste Management, Vulcan Materials, JP Morgan—“pretty low risk portfolio that did pretty well.” (18:01)

Notable Bombs and Quirks

• Nick Magaw picked companies that phonetically resembled his name; predictably, it didn’t pay off (18:08).
• Kadim Shubha, last year’s winner (all-in crypto), crashed and burned this time.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "There is always a lot of luck [in these competitions]." —Alan Livesey (04:09)
• "I'm just a man who plays bad cards brilliantly. But in the case of everyone else, luck plays a huge role." —Rob Armstrong (04:17)
• “If, however, you bet on something falling and it goes up, your downside is ... unlimited and extremely painful.” —Katie Martin, on the risks of short selling (08:02)
• “Let your winners run ... just because something's doing well doesn't mean it's going to stop doing well.” —Rob Armstrong (12:57)
• “Rocket Lab, a SpaceX wannabe. It worked, right? Totally worked. I got my reasons totally wrong, but it worked.” —Alan Livesey (09:19)

Timestamps of Key Segments

• 01:00–02:00 — Competition rules and caveats; fun, not real investing
• 02:07–03:40 — Precious metals and the "silver trade" dominates; Fresnillo's stunning performance
• 03:55–04:13 — The role of luck (The "L word")
• 05:06–05:47 — AI/Quantum bets, Nvidia/Alphabet shorts go badly
• 06:29–07:16 — Micron, memory chipmakers, and the S&P 500’s top performers
• 07:16–09:36 — FT journalists’ results: Alan’s portfolio breakdown and rationale
• 11:01–12:57 — Katie’s defense trade and reflections on momentum
• 13:46–18:01 — Rob’s S&P 500 “boring” picks portfolio explanation
• 18:08–18:53 — Humorous recaps: Nick Magaw and Kadim Shubha

Long/Short Segment (19:29–20:27)

Each host picks something to be metaphorically 'long' or 'short' on for 2026:

• Alan: Short the USD (the dollar): “I think the dollar will keep going down. ... Mr. Trump ... has now raised the size of those rocks to boulders and he's rolling them down the hill at the Fed.” (19:29)
• Rob: Long the people of Iran: “Great civilization ... suffered under a terrible regime for a long time. ... Godspeed to you Iranians.” (19:55)
• Katie: Short prediction markets: “They are not real markets ... none of this is going to end well. ... Lose your money betting on stocks instead.” (20:27)

Takeaways

• Diversity in picks pays but can’t out-muscle strong, concentrated thematic bets like silver or semiconductor memory in banner years.
• Shorting is hard—downside risk is infinite, and markets trend upward.
• Let winners run—momentum often matters more than being "early."
• Luck is inescapable in short-term contests, even for finance pros.
• Don’t take it too seriously. As Katie says, “all you have to win or lose is your dignity” (00:46).

For aspiring stock pickers and FT podcast fans alike, this episode is an exuberant, honest, and slightly humbling review of what actually works—and what unpredictably doesn’t—in real-world speculative investing.