Michael McCarthy, Chief Market Strategist

Michael McCarthy is Chief Market Strategist for CMC Markets Asia Pacific, where he is responsible for global and local market analysis, formulating trading strategies and playing a key role in education of clients.

Mr McCarthy is a trader first and foremost. Working with prominent global investment banks and brokers as a proprietary trader, he has managed money market books, conducted foreign exchange arbitrage, stood as a market maker in exchange traded options over shares on the ASX trading floor, managed hybrid and convertible note portfolios, and traded a global share index swap book. As a director of trading he oversaw all equity derivative risk, acting as a wholesaler of market risk management to the global operations of the bank.

Michael has over 35 years of experience in financial markets. He holds a Masters in Applied Finance from Macquarie University, and has held licenses and accreditation from regulatory authorities and exchanges from around the world, including ASIC, the SFE, the ASX and ASXD, and the SEC in New York. He now lectures to applied finance students at Macquarie University.

His focus is CMC and its clients, but his ability to identify and simplify key market considerations means persistent media requests, both in Australia and internationally. He is a regular on Australia’s national broadcaster the ABC, BBC World, Bloomberg, SKY, and SBS News.

Gemma Dale, Director, SMSF and Investor Behaviour

Gemma Dale is a Director, SMSF and Investor Behaviour at nabtrade. She is a recognised expert in SMSF and superannuation topics, and regularly discusses investment trends and investor behaviour in the media, including Sky Business, the Australian Financial Review and The Australian.

Tim Samway, Managing Director, Hyperion

Tim has been a leader in financial markets for the last 35years and with Hyperion for the last 20 years. During the period he led Hyperion as Managing Director, Hyperion won two coveted overall Fund Manager of the Year awards and numerous small cap and large cap equity awards.

Tim is regularly called upon to provide insights on long term investing in quality businesses both here in Australia and as well as in international markets.

Dermot Woods, Executive Director, Westoz Funds Management

As Executive Director, Dermot is responsible for sourcing, analysing and implementing investment ideas. He is a member of the Manager's Investment Committee. Mr Woods has over twenty years of investment experience in international equity markets as an equity analyst and a portfolio manager.

Eu-Jene Teng, Business Development Manager, Martin Currie - a Legg Mason affiliate

Eu-Jene joined Martin Currie in 2019 as a Business Development Manager to provide sales and client service activity across Pan-Asia. Prior to this, Eu-Jene was an Associate Director of Institutional Sales at Pinnacle Investment Management with Pan-Asian responsibility. He has also held business development roles at Macquarie Investment Management, Vanguard, Orchard Funds and Macquarie Professional Series. Eu-Jene has a Master of Business Administration from Melbourne Business School and a Commerce degree from Murdoch University.

Robin Bowerman, Head of Corporate Affairs, Vanguard

Robin Bowerman is Head of Corporate Affairs at Vanguard and a member of Vanguard Australia’s Executive team.

In his current role, Robin leads the corporate communications and government relations functions of the business and plays a key role in Vanguard’s long-term strategy development.

Robin joined Vanguard in 2003 as Head of Retail and played a pivotal role in the growth of Vanguard’s retail business and the products and services offered to financial advisers and retail investors, as well as overseeing retail sales and marketing.

Robin is a key spokesperson and experienced presenter for Vanguard, with expertise in investor education, funds management, self-managed super funds, product development, industry and regulatory affairs related topics. Prior to joining Vanguard, Robin had a distinguished career in the media and was a leading financial services writer, commentator and editor for over 15 years.

He continues to be editor of Vanguard’s core client publications including writing a weekly column with more than 50,000 readers.

In 2002, Robin co-authored the book Wealth of Experience, with Jeremy Duffield, Vanguard Australia’s ex-Chairman and founder. Robin also serves as Vice Chairman of the SMSF Association.

Balaji Gopal, Head of Product Strategy, Vanguard

Balaji Gopal is Head of Product Strategy for Vanguard in Australia.

In this role, he leads the team responsible for long- term product planning, research, development and implementation. Balaji works closely with Vanguard’s global teams in the design and launch of new products, as well as implementing changes across Vanguard’s suite of investment products.

Prior to joining Vanguard in April 2017, Balaji gained over 15 years’ experience working across government, financial services, investment and management consulting sectors.

Violeta Todorova, Senior Technical Analyst, Morgans

Violeta, Senior Technical Analyst, brings a wealth of experience to Morgans & uses price charts to identify stock trends early & accurately. She combines advanced technical analysis techniques with the basic trend analysis, chart patterns & indicator tools into a powerful stock market timing system.

Jessica Amir, Market Analyst and Media Presenter, Bell Direct

Jessica is a Market Analyst and Media Presenter at Bell Direct. She is passionate about making the finance and investment world easier to understand and more accessible to everyday Australians. She has worked in both equities and broadcast television, analysing markets, while also interviewing politicians, Prime Ministers, Treasurers, CEOs and fund managers; asking them the questions investors need to know. You may have also seen or heard Jessica on ABC News, Sky News Business, or the regional arms of Channel 7 and 9.

Andrew Lockart, Metrics Credit Partners

Andrew has over 30 years’ experience in funds management, banking and finance. His areas of expertise include corporate debt origination, portfolio and risk management and corporate restructuring. Andrew previously specialised in leverage and acquisition finance as well as corporate and institutional lending.

Ying-Peng Bell, Director, Corporate Strategy, Qualitas

Yin-Peng Bell has over 13 years' experience in real estate financing, specialising in structured loans for private corporate and institutional borrowers, and across all property asset classes. Yin-Peng played a lead role in the establishment of the ASX-listed Qualitas Real Estate Income Fund, and now plays a key role in managing the fund as well as overseeing the banking and treasury function of the Qualitas Funds platform.

David Bassanese, Chief Economist, BetaShares

David Bassanese is Chief Economist at BetaShares. Prior to BetaShares, David was a senior financial commentator with The AFR. He has worked at Macquarie Bank, the Federal Treasury and the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He is author of Australia’s definitive book on ETFs, The Australian ETF Guide.

Brendan O'Connor, Regal Funds Management

Brendan O'Connor commenced with Regal Funds Management as Chief Executive Officer in December 2016 and is a member of the Regal Investment Fund (RF1) investment committee. Brendan has over 20 years of financial services experience with organisations including KPMG, Westpac and Challenger Limited. Immediately prior to joining Regal Brendan spent over 10 years at Challenger, including eight years as the CFO of Challenger's Funds Management business. Brendan holds a Bachelor of Business, majoring in accounting and finance from the University of Technology, Sydney, is a chartered accountant and a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Mark Hoven, CEO Wealth, Adviser Ratings

Mark joined the Adviser Rating team in November 2017 as CEO Wealth. Mark has worked in the Wealth industry for the last 20 years in investment research, ratings and data-analytic businesses following an earlier career as a petroleum engineer at Exxon. He spent 10 years with Standard & Poor's, establishing and growing a start-up fund research business to top 2 in Australia before running the global business based in London.

Pat Garrett, Co-CEO, SixPark

Pat Garrett is the co-CEO of Six Park, one of Australia’s leading providers of online investment management. He co-founded Six Park in 2014 after a 25-year career in the financial services industry. From 1990 to 2005, Pat worked at JP Morgan in New York, San Francisco, and Melbourne (Australia). Since 2005, Pat has worked at Georgica Associates, a private investment management firm based in Melbourne. At both JP Morgan and Georgica Associates, Pat was involved with managing the global private equity investment portfolio and had specific responsibilities for investment strategy and portfolio management and reporting.

Ted Richards, Director of Business Development, SixPark

Six Park's Director of Business Development, Ted is a former AFL premiership player with the Sydney Swans, where he earned accolades not only for his football skill but his leadership, toughness and sportsmanship. Ted has a Bachelor of Commerce and a Masters of Applied Finance, and has studied behavioural economics at Harvard.

Nathan Ide, Managing Director, Private Capital Management

Nathan has over 13 years financial markets experience within Investment Banking, Investment Management and Wealth Management and has worked within some of the worlds largest banks. Nathan has presented a TED talk in Boston on Australia’s superannuation industry and has been a frequent presenter at industry events.

Doug Morris, CEO, Sharesight

Doug is the CEO of Sharesight. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. Prior to Sharesight, Doug worked at Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ: MORN), where he held various positions including Product Manager for Morningstar Adviser Research Center (a platform serving financial advisers), and Global Product & Marketing Manager, Equity & Credit Research, overseeing international research distribution.

Gemma Dale, Director, SMSF and Investor Behaviour

Gemma Dale is a Director, SMSF and Investor Behaviour at nabtrade. She is a recognised expert in SMSF and superannuation topics, and regularly discusses investment trends and investor behaviour in the media, including Sky Business, the Australian Financial Review and The Australian.

Graham O'Brien, Senior Manager, ASX

Graham has over 22 years’ experience in the equity and derivatives industry as a broker and educator. He started on the options trading floor as a board broker in 1995, then worked on both institutional and retail desks until 2001. One of Graham’s key responsibilities today is educating investors and advisers on a range of ASX products including options.

Campbell Stevens, Business Development Associate, VanEck

Cambell is a business development associate at VanEck joining in 2017 from JBWere where he worked as a financial intermediary’s analyst. He graduated with a Bachelor of Business, Major in Marketing from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Damon Gosen, Vice President, Business Development, VanEck

Damon is responsible for business development across the broker and financial planning channels in Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia. With more than 15 years’ experience in financial services, Damon has worked as a Strategy Manager, Direct Investments for AMP Capital and held investment roles with AXA and Genesys. Damon has a MBA from Deakin University and a Bachelor of Business and Bachelor of Economics from The University of Queensland.

Julian Moore, Vice President, Business Development Associate, VanEck

Julian is a business development associate at VanEck, joining VanEck in 2017 from Bell Potter Securities, where he worked as a Dealer’s Assistant. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Sydney and is completing a Master of Applied Finance from Macquarie University.

Liz Tian, Director, Equity Derivatives, Citi

Liz has been specializing in equity products and investor derivative structures over different asset classes such as shares, international shares, commodities and currencies. Citi has over 95% market share in the retail market in this space. Liz has worked on the Citi Equity Products business for over 5 years. Prior to Citi she worked at RBS/ ABN Amro, Colonial Geared Investments and Macquarie Private Wealth. Liz is also a regular speaker for the Kaplan CPD Education Program, Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), Television Interviews to ABC Business, CNBC, SKY Business News, Nine, Ten, and Radio 2UE.

James Waterworth, Vice President, National iShares Specialist is based in Melbourne, Australia

Prior to re-joining BlackRock in September 2017, Mr. Waterworth worked for Societe Generale's Lyxor Asset Management as Director, UK & Ireland ETF sales based in London. Before this he worked for BlackRock in London as Vice President within EMEA corporate strategy and iShares UK & Ireland sales. Mr. Waterworth began his career in Sydney at UBS in equity derivatives sales. Mr. Waterworth holds a Master of Applied Finance from Macquarie University and a Bachelor of Commerce, with honours, from the University of Sydney.

Blair Hannon, Vice President, iShares ETF Specialist, BlackRock Australia

Blair is responsible for increasing ETF adoption and helping drive sales in coordination with the Australian iShares team. The focus is across retail and particularly the broker and private bank segment by providing market analysis linked to trade ideas, educational content and thought and sales leadership.
Blair joined BlackRock after spending 12 years at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia where he was a Senior Investment Adviser providing investment advice to high net wealth individuals across equities, derivatives and funds.
He has a Bachelor of Finance from Newcastle university and is currently undertaking an MBA at the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of New South Wales.

Adam Dawes, Senior Investment Adviser, Shaw and Partners

Adam Dawes is a Senior Investment Adviser and has worked at Shaw and Partners since 2003. In total, Adam has over 16 years of experience in wealth management, delivering investment advice on a wide range of areas, including equity trading, portfolio and risk management, bonds and superannuation. With a thorough understanding of financial markets and strategic long-term financial planning, Adam constructs and carefully manages the investment portfolios of a select group of private clients and sophisticated investors. Since 2015 Adam has been a regular contributor on equity markets with yourMONEY / Sky News Business and other business and finance TV shows like CNBC and ABC Business. Adam backs all his recommendations with a full account of risks and rewards and solidifies his partnership with clients through diligent ongoing support and advice.