Buy Hold Sell: 5 high-scoring ASX stocks for quality and growth

"We are drowning in information yet starved for knowledge," said American futurist John Naisbitt in 1982 in his book Megatrends. That sentiment couldn't be truer today, as we are overloaded daily with data, news, numbers and facts.

I talk to a lot of people at Livewire. Does it make me better at stock picking myself? Alas friends, it does not. I still have to rely on the professionals to filter through the mountain of information out there. And yet, it still leads me to the same fork in the road of my train of thought - do I rely on quant numbers or qualitative factors? 

As the saying goes from Old El Paso, ¿por qué no los dos?

In this episode, we use Market Index's newly launched stock screener, Stock Scores, to filter through the ASX's top stocks scoring elite numbers across both Quality and Growth metrics, and then ask our guests for their take. 

I'm joined by FNArena's Rudi Filapek-Vandyck in his Buy Hold Sell debut, and regular favourite Henry Jennings of Marcus Today, for how they score the stocks that scored the highest. Let's jump in.

This episode was filmed Wednesday, 7th October 2026.

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Edited transcript

Anna Dadic: Hello and welcome to Livewire's Buy Hold Sell. My name is Anna Dadic. 

Today, we're putting computer logic to the ultimate human test using Market Index's brand new quant screener, Stock Scores. We filtered the ASX for stocks that scored elite numbers across both quality and growth. But a high algorithm score doesn't always guarantee a spot in an expert's portfolio. 

Joining us today to give their verdict are Rudi Filapek-Vandyck from FNArena and Henry Jennings from Marcus Today. 

Capricorn Metals (ASX: CMM)

Anna Dadic: All right, let's start with our first stock. It's Capricorn Metals, a low-cost Western Australia gold producer. I'll start with you, Rudi. CMM scored 99s across the board. Does this gold story make the cut for your portfolio, or is it a buy, hold, or sell?

Rudi Filapek-Vandyck (HOLD): It's not so much about the company itself, but I'm a little bit less enthused about the prospects for gold. So when you do commodities, in particular the smaller cap ones, it's nice to see that the share price is not at an all-time high, but equally, you obviously have to have a view on the product, on the gold building in this case. I'm a little bit undecided about gold. You never know what's going to happen with the elections, with the bond yields, et cetera.

And the difference between having exposure to gold and having exposure to gold miners is that you fall less when it's gold, and you fall more when it's the miners. But equally so, if you have a bigger bowl than I have, you get more upside on the miners than on the gold track. Now, I'm of the view that every portfolio should have exposure to gold, but typically I hold gold, not the gold miner.

It doesn't mean that you can't make money out of gold miners, but at the moment, I'm a little bit more undecided on the immediate outlook. So, I would say a hold.

Anna Dadic: A hold. Henry, are you backing the quant numbers here?

Henry Jennings (BUY): I guess it was interesting when we first looked at the results of the quant that so many were resource stocks and so many were gold stocks—which, I'm not sure what that's saying about the gold miners at the moment—but Rudi's absolutely right. You buy gold miners for leverage. Every investor, I think, should have some sort of hedge against the worst-case scenario. And in the past, gold has been part of that hedge. It hasn't really behaved as it should or as it used to in the past, but here we are at $4,160 or whatever it is in the gold price. It's still pretty elevated. Most gold miners are still salivating at those kinds of prices.

So Capricorn Metals itself is one of the better gold miners: low cost, good production guidance as well for that one. It has been doing pretty well, so that is a tick. And I am a fan of the gold sector, I have to say. I know that there are lots of arguments about bond yields and gold doesn't pay dividends, et cetera. But you look around the world, there is an awful lot of disruption happening to government fiscal positions—France, Spain, UK, US. And I think gold is still a great place to be for some part of your portfolio. And I think Capricorn Metals is one of the better gold producers. So for me, it is still a buy.

Northern Star Resources (ASX: NST) 

Anna Dadic: Moving on to our next stock, Northern Star Resources, another gold miner fresh off rejecting a massive $38.7 billion takeover bid. Henry, I'm going to stay with you. Is Northern Star a buy, hold, or sell?

Henry Jennings: (BUY) Northern Star, it is in play. Elliott activist fund managers have been sort of pushing for some sort of change. Gold Fields has come to the party with a shot across the bows, basically, and a lot of it is scrip and not much is cash. If it's going to get serious, it needs to pay more cash, but it may weasel, it may winkle out one other party perhaps to have a tilt at Northern Star.

So it is in play. I like gold. Northern Star, it's a wounded blue-chip gold miner and the vultures are starting to peck at the carcass, and you can see something is going to happen. So for me, Northern Star remains on the buy list.

Anna Dadic: Rudi, are you a buy, hold, or sell?

Rudi Filapek-Vandyck: (BUY) One thing we haven't mentioned about gold, and that is diesel. So diesel prices are very high. Mining companies, needless to say, are one of the highest users of diesel. In particular, it impacts gold. Why is that? Because gold miners are collecting nuggets instead of shipping tonnes. So with high diesel prices, there's a fair chance that we will see quite some disappointments coming out of the gold sector operationally. And again, for someone like me who owns gold and not the gold miners, that's a risk I don't have in my portfolio.

Having said so, Gold Fields clearly is very, very keen on getting this deal done. The other party doesn't want to dance. Now you see the share market is not pricing in any large rate of success here. So you can take the bet that ultimately both will find somewhere common ground high enough, or someone else comes to the fore.

For that reason, I would call it a speculative buy, because if somehow it doesn't come to a deal, the share price will probably go lower. The counterargument from Northern Star is they're approaching us basically at the low in our operational cycle. They're probably correct about this, but the share price will nevertheless respond to what's now going to happen with deal or no deal.

Cuscal (ASX: CCL)

Anna Dadic: Moving on to our third stock, it's Cuscal. It's a core payments infrastructure provider. Rudi, I'm going to stay with you. It provides critical plumbing for Australia's payment systems. Does the sticky revenue signal a buy for you?

Rudi Filapek-Vandyck: (BUY) If you're an investor like myself, we like to look out for companies that don't perform just on a six-month basis or a year basis, but hopefully they can repeat what, for example, CSL did between '92 and 2020, which basically means you turn $3,700 into a million dollars if you stay the course.

Now, for that type of company, they have to have something special, something more than Northern Star or the other gold producers, for example. I think that Cuscal could be one of those. It's early days. They're only, I think, somewhere between $1 and $2 billion in market cap. They haven't been listed for that long, but they have a lot of the characteristics that could potentially turn this into a long-term winner.

The problem is the market has now taken that view as well, so it's trading at quite a premium. Now, that's not necessarily a problem; premium companies can still perform, but at this point in time, I would call this a buy on weakness. You don't want to chase it. And of course, how much weakness do you need to see? Well, that's how long is a piece of string? But needless to say, you have to be confident here that the premium won't be eroded because management doesn't execute or something nefarious happens. That's always the risk. It's also a small cap, and small caps can be quite volatile. But I think at this point in time, from what I've seen and followed so far, I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt. So it's a buy on weakness.

Anna Dadic: Henry, what's your call?

Henry Jennings: (HOLD) I'm going to go a hold, which I guess is almost like a buy on weakness, to be honest. It's interesting. This has got a great code, isn't it? CCL, for those of us old enough to remember, that was Coca-Cola Amatil. So you look at it and you think, "Oh, they're back." These guys have taken on a number of acquisitions, Indue being the latest one, and that integration looks as if it's going well. Everything looks as if it's going well.

I guess, to some extent, the organic growth has slowed a little bit, hence the acquisitions, so there is a danger there. The last set of results—I mean, you look at them, what have we got? 49% statutory NPAT growth for FY26, and the outlook was pretty positive as well. So everything is pointing to good times ahead, but the market has priced that in, as Rudi has said.

So for me at the moment, at these kind of levels, I think the best I could come up with is a hold.

GQG Partners (ASX: GQG)  

Anna Dadic: Moving on to our next one, GQG Partners, a global funds manager known for massive net inflows and exceptional return on equity. Henry, I'm going to stay with you. GQG boasts a perfect 100 quality score. Where do you stand?

Henry Jennings: (SELL) I'm amazed that it has a perfect hundred, to be honest, because this has been suboptimal for investors. Money has been leaking out of GQG for some time, and they took a big, big bet in avoiding the AI technology space. We also saw them, I guess, get clobbered with the Adani issue some little while ago, and that started the rot.

And we've seen time after time, once a fund manager starts to—I wouldn't say struggle, but start to get their wiggly line of performance below the wiggly line of their benchmark, it gets harder for them, to the extent that GQG, as I say, has experienced outflows rather than inflows, which is never good. I think we're down to sort of $149 billion US under management, but their funds are underperforming, which is not good. And they have pivoted recently to more balanced portfolio exposure, especially towards AI, which is interesting. Having been loud and proud—"We're not getting sucked into the whole AI bubble"—they got sucked into the AI bubble. And not only did they get sucked in, but they got sucked in late. It's not a great combo. I would avoid this one.

The only thing going for it is the yield is exceptionally high. It's not franked. There are no guarantees. I think when you work it out, it's sort of 13%, which is about the only thing that's attractive in this one. And that's great, but it is a bit like a capital return: you get a 13% yield, but it comes off the share price. So it's not that brilliant at the end of the day.

Anna Dadic: Sure. Okay. Rudi, are you buying or backing out on this one?

Rudi Filapek-Vandyck: (SELL) If you see the dividend yield, you know that the market is very sceptical about what the future is. I'll take more of a broader view here. I think this market—and I've said this before—two-thirds, at least two-thirds, is not performing. One-third is performing. Most fund managers, whether they're active or otherwise, have difficulties with that setup. You will find that both in the US and here, the sector is struggling.

The other element to add is the share market itself is already volatile and difficult. Why would you then invest in a fund manager who is equally having the same problems as you have? So, sort of like doubling up the weakness there. The sector is without any doubt due for major upheaval, major change. I mean, there's this thing called agentic AI on the horizon, which they're using, but you see that that's not necessarily a good cocktail.

Pretty much, I'm going to go with a very broad broomstick here, but I'm just avoiding the whole sector, to be honest. I mean, for me, it's just not attractive. And if I were to think about it for longer than five seconds, I think I would find it very difficult to identify one company in the sector that's not having some kind of problems. If it's not on one end, private credit, then it's the share market itself, outflows, technology not in the portfolio—you name it. Margins. For me, it's nah.

Anna Dadic: It's a firm sell?

Rudi Filapek-Vandyck: Too hot to handle. Yeah.

Duratec (ASX: DUR) 

Anna Dadic: Our final stock for today is Duratec, a niche engineering and asset remediation contractor across defence and infrastructure. Rudi, worth locking in? Buy, hold, or sell?

Rudi Filapek-Vandyck: (BUY) I'm going to introduce a new synonym here. It's a double-B. And a double-B doesn't mean double buy. It means it's a "buy, but..."

In this case, I think we already published this story two years ago, I think. We predicted this sector of engineers, contractors, subcontractors—they would actually have a golden period ahead of them. There was defence, there were data centres, there's AI, there was infrastructure, water, energy, you name it. So that sector should be booming. Operationally, many are. Share price-wise, not so sure.

The problem I have with Duratec is... Well, let's start with the positives. It's in the right sector. The problem I have is it almost always disappoints in reporting season, and that is sometimes simply related to the fact that one of its customers just postpones their ordering by a few weeks, moves into the next financial year—disappointment, share price down. That obviously comes with size, because it's a relatively small size.

So I would say on valuation and on sector, it's a buy, but the asterisk comes along and says, for those who want to invest like a woman and trade like a man, you buy a little bit of the larger ones in the sector. So you go for, let's say, Ventia Services or Service Stream, maybe even a Downer EDI. The one to avoid would appear—and the market's telling me that—is Worley, somehow, with that whole Middle Eastern energy thing that's not working. So yes, it's a buy, but I think there are better alternatives out there in the sector.

Anna Dadic: Okay. Henry, does Duratec pass your stock test?

Henry Jennings: (HOLD) I'm still trying to get my head around the "invest like a woman and trade like a man." Sounded like a Country and Western song.

Anna Dadic: Rudi's written a song about it. He'll sing it for you later.

Henry Jennings: Yeah, I'm sure he will. Probably in Flemish as well.

So Duratec, I think for me, it's a bit of a hold. They do have lumpy contracts, which can affect timing, et cetera. They do also have a pretty good record of acquisitions, which is good in that—as Rudi says, they're in the right sector in terms of defence spending. We've got AUKUS. I noted that the US is increasing their sort of AUKUS investment as well, so that is good. But they're not the cheapest at the end of the day. And Rudi's right with Worley—it has been the dog of the sector. There are others that have performed very, very well. And those infrastructure stocks, especially with regards to data centres, have been absolutely flying and have been the place to be.

I think with Duratec, I'd probably be a little bit cautious and just have it on hold because of the lumpy contracts, because of the valuation, and the market expects—and they've run pretty hard as well. So for me, I think it's a hold.

Anna Dadic: That's all we have time for. If you're interested in checking out stock scores, head over to Market Index. Thanks to Rudi and Henry for joining us today, and thank you for watching Buy Hold Sell. See you next time.

Check out Stock Scores on Market Index here.