Buy Hold Sell: 5 mega-caps on a tear (plus 2 fundie favourites)

This episode was filmed Wednesday 11th March, 2026.

The Magnificent 7 are starting to look a bit like a boy band past its peak. (Think the Beatles, NSYNC, BTS...pick your era.) At their height, the hype is intoxicating. The name up in lights, the style, the choreography of the market moving to their beat. For a while, everyone agrees -  they’re untouchable.

But nothing stays loved in the limelight forever, and sentiment can turn quickly.

Doubts around AI leadership and an overcrowded trade have made investors pause on tech, while sectors like energy, materials and industrials have started outperforming. And when the gloss fades, as we saw in the pullback earlier this year, the next question that naturally gets asked is - what else is out there?

Well friends, here at Livewire, we’re here to tell you - quite a lot!

In this episode, we’re casting our eyes past the Magnificent 7 and instead focusing on the global megacaps that have been stuck in the Mag 7's shadow. 

And we’ve brought in two of the best in global equities - Vihari Ross of Antipodes, and Casey McLean of Magellan - to talk through the other members of the trillion-dollar club (and the ones knocking on the door.) 

Let's dive in!

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Edited transcript

Tom Stelzer: Hello and welcome to Livewire Buy Hold Sell. I'm Tom Stelzer. When you think about the world's biggest stocks, it's hard to look past the all-conquering Mag Seven, but what about the other companies in the trillion dollar club or knocking on its door?

Joining me today, Vihari Ross for Antipodes and Casey McLean from Magellan to offer their take on the world's other biggest companies and share a global large cap pick of their own. Guys, thanks for joining us.

TSMC (TPE:2330)

Tom Stelzer: We're going to start with one of the world's hottest companies right now, TSMC, the Taiwanese chipmaker. Vihari, I'll come to you first. Is that a buy, hold, or sell?

Vihari Ross: (BUY) This is a buy, Tom. I think this is a stock that, historically speaking, it was very high quality, but was cyclical. And with the advent of AI and clearly the leading edge technology that TSMC has, has transitioned to a more structural grower.

This is a stock trading at less than 20 times multiple, growing its AI revenues at 60%. The overall business is growing at 25% per annum, very compellingly valued. And as they become more advanced, they're able to shed some of their lower quality chips to other companies that are happy to take that revenue off their hands, and they're getting a mix and pricing benefit that's very material and significant as well. Very much a buy.

Tom Stelzer: I think it's up about 94% over the last year, almost 20% this year alone. Casey, what about you? Is it a buy, hold, or sell?

Casey McLean: (BUY) I think TSMC is a buy. I think it's probably one of, or maybe the most, important company in the world. And it's really because of that near-monopoly position they have in leading edge chips, which means they're the facilitator of the AI revolution, but really all tech innovation as well.

And what we like about them is really they're not dependent on one customer, one product, or even one theme. They're everybody's foundry and growing really fast. In fact, they just recently raised their medium-term revenue growth to about 25%. And we think that's comfortable when you think about their expanding customer base. It's not just Nvidia that's doing GPUs. It's other fabless companies like AMD. It's the hyperscalers like Google that are doing their own chips. And then the AI chips are expanding into new product areas like autonomous vehicles as well.

And so yeah, like Vihari said, if you're growing at 25%, only trading around 20 times, that looks pretty attractive. In fact, they're very similar numbers with what you get with Nvidia, except with Nvidia, you have to accept that market share risk that these new customers are coming in to try and take their near-monopoly position, which could also lead to some pricing pressure for their products.       

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B) 

Tom Stelzer: Next up is Berkshire Hathaway. Casey, I'll stay with you. We're in the post-Warren Buffett era, but is it a buy, hold, or sell?

Casey McLean: (BUY) I think Berkshire is a buy, and you're right. It's just gone through the biggest change in their history with Warren stepping down after 60 years. But we think with Greg Abel, we're in a pretty safe pair of hands. He's been there for decades. He's been groomed for this position for a long time, and we're not looking for any sort of drastic change in the company's strategy.

It's really going to be about that decentralised model where the 51 non-insurance companies that they have will continue to act with autonomy. And whilst they maintain their four core holdings of Apple, Coke, Moody's, and American Express, and they're just sitting on this massive pile of dry powder, $373 billion in cash, which they're going to deploy whenever there's a market panic or one of these famous fat pitches come along, which makes it pretty defensive.

And we've seen that because Abel has immediately turned back on the buyback. So we think it's pretty unique company with their low cost of funds, and valuation is reasonable, especially if we do see the insurance cycle turn.

Tom Stelzer: Vihari, what about you? Buy, hold, or sell on Berkshire?

Vihari Ross: (SELL) This is a sell for me. I have a different opinion here. I think you're paying 1.4 times book for this business. 40% of the valuation is in cash. I think you only own this stock if you're a massive bear on markets. So you're sitting there. Not only is there 40% in cash, another third of the value's in these equity investments.

Buffett himself has said how difficult it has been for him to redeploy that money. And essentially, on the insurance business, they only intend to make money from the float. So this one, certainly if you want to buy an insurance business, there's cheaper insurance businesses to buy. And a number of the stocks in their stable are frankly overvalued.

Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) 

Tom Stelzer: Fair enough. Vihari, I'll stay with you. We're going to look at the world's largest pharma company, Eli Lilly. Is that a buy, hold, or sell?

Vihari Ross: (SELL) This is a sell. This is a pharma company that has been valued very exuberantly off of a vision of singular success in GLP-1s. More than 90% of its valuation is coming from a vertical where there is competition, where there is this weird asymmetry that if you have high pricing, then not as many people can access the product. If you have lower pricing, more people can access it, but then you don't reach your TAM.

And one of the unfortunate realities in this firstly is access, not only in terms of getting rebated access to the drugs, but also the fact that 70% of obese people in the US are unfortunately poor. And so it creates this dynamic where you've got exuberant success priced in, but also risk to what you can actually achieve in the business.

Tom Stelzer: Vihari touched on it there. It's one of the big players in the weight loss drug space at the moment, but Casey, what about you? Buy, hold, or sell?

Casey McLean: (HOLD) I think we're a hold on Eli Lilly because I think they've really executed incredibly well, and they're the clear market leader in GLP-1s. Their injectable Zepbound is gaining a lot of market share over Novo, which looks to extend given Novo's latest next-generation drug, CagriSema, failed to show superiority.

And then we're moving into the era of oral drugs, oral GLP-1s, and Eli Lilly is going down the avenue of a small molecule compared to the peptides that Novo's doing, which is going to be far cheaper, which is going to be important because there's probably going to be maintenance-type drugs.

But I do think there's a lot of success that is built in, and there still is risk, particularly around their next-generation injectable retatrutide, which is a new type of injectable, which does have risks that it can be even more efficacious, but still have good tolerability and quality. So yeah, I think the risks are reasonably balanced there, even though they are the market leader.

Walmart (NASDAQ: WMT) 

Tom Stelzer: Next up is American retail giant Walmart. I think it became a member of the trillion dollar club earlier this year. Casey, I'll stay with you. Buy, hold, or sell?

Casey McLean: (SELL) We think Walmart's a sell. It's incredibly high-quality company. Their customer value proposition is unrivalled, and they still have opportunities for share gain as well. And they're implementing AI to enhance the growth in their e-commerce segment and also in advertising and the membership rates as well.

And so it's become a bit of a market darling, that it's a defensive haven but also an AI winner. And as a result, it's trading on 42 times earnings. It's 15 turns higher than its long-term average. So valuation, risk-reward just doesn't really stack up for us at this valuation.

Tom Stelzer: Fair enough. I think it's up over 42% over the last year or so. Vihari, what about you? Buy, hold, or sell?

Vihari Ross: (SELL) Yeah, Walmart is a sell for me as well. This is, again, trading on a really high multiple. And it's funny, there's all this capital expenditure that's been spent to platform themselves into an e-commerce-esque giant, and really all of that money was spent simply to stand still.

They still grow their revenues at 5% per annum, just like they always did. And if they didn't spend all that money, they wouldn't even be growing that fast. So I think this is a classic example of overvalued quality in our market. And just because everyone tells you that quality underperformed in 2025, it's going to bounce back, the reality is this is extremely overvalued still, and quality as a factor is extremely overvalued still. Very much a sell in case of warm-up. 

Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM)  

Tom Stelzer: Next up, we have ExxonMobil. Oil, probably the biggest story in markets over the last week or two. Vihari, I'll stay with you. Is that a buy, hold, or sell?

Vihari Ross: (HOLD) Exxon is more of a hold. We prefer TotalEnergies, which is a French oil major, because Exxon trades at double the multiple of Total. But again, they've had a really good hit rate in terms of their execution on projects. They've been good capital allocators. They have a decent dividend yield, and they have pivoted more towards renewables and the like.

There is a capex cycle that's playing out, as we've discussed, in real assets in oil investment, and Exxon is probably the best management play on that dynamic. But we do prefer Total, that invest more heavily in the gas-hybrid-carbon side of it. They've got double the free-cash-flow yield thanks to that French multiple advantage.

So that one on balance, but oil in general, it's a cornerstone of some of those defensive, low-volatility investments in our portfolio.

Tom Stelzer: I think it's up over 20% already this year, but Casey, what about you? Are you buy, hold, or sell on Exxon?

Casey McLean: (SELL) We're a sell on Exxon because, yeah, at Magellan we only invest in the highest-quality companies, because they're the ones that have shown to compound earnings over the long term. And it's pretty rare that a commodity company does meet our quality criteria. And if you look at Exxon, they may be one of the better in that space, but over the last 10 years they've delivered a return on equity of about 11%.

And that's at a time when you've had the massive spike in oil prices during the Ukraine invasion, but also a time when oil prices went negative in COVID as well. And they are advantaged in some of their assets. The Permian, Guyana, they look pretty good, pretty low cost, but eventually they're going to deplete.

And then if you think about it cyclically right now, I think it's a pretty bad time to be investing in oil. Oil spiked through the Iranian invasion, and long term it is oversupplied quite significantly. There's a lot of spare capacity. Demand is still growing, but that pace of that growth is slowing as electrification comes through as well.

Guest picks

Tom Stelzer: We've also asked our guests to bring a large cap pick of their own. Casey, I'll come back to you. What's your pick and why?

VISA (NYSE: V) 

Casey McLean: Our pick is Visa. It's not quite in that trillion-dollar club, it's around about $600 billion market cap, but we think you can get to that $1 trillion in the next few years through a combination of both earnings growth with some multiple rerating, mainly around the earnings growth.

And what is really driving their growth is this transition to digital payments, cashless society. And you may think that's pretty much run its course if you live in Australia where penetration is about 87%, but it's far lower in a lot of developed countries like Germany or Japan where it's still only 40 to 50%. And then in emerging markets, it's a fraction of that. In big countries like India and Mexico, it's only 20 to 30%.

So this is still a really long tailwind for growth in the transactions part of the business. But then you also have their VAS business, the value-added services, which is a newer, much faster-growing segment. And that's where they deliver services to merchants and issuers, things like fraud, protection, marketing and card issuance and tokenisation as well. And that's only about 20% of their business now, but it's growing at about 28%, has a really long runway.

So I think that'll fuel their earnings growth, and overall it can compound in its mid-teens-type growth levels. And the stock has been hit from a valuation point of view because there has been some negative sentiment around the stock in terms of stablecoins. There's regulation in the US. We think that's going to be an opportunity for them. They're already building out the digital infrastructure for cryptocurrencies.

And then the other one was potential for caps on interest rates in credit cards, which we just don't think will come to pass. And even if it does, it's going to be a token card here or there. So with the stock trading near its trough levels, there's potential for rerating as well as that sentiment starts to improve.

Walt Disney Co (NYSE: DIS)

Tom Stelzer: Vihari, what have you got for us?

Vihari Ross: For me, I'm going to do one that everyone's going to know the name of, but might not have thought of as an investment, and that is Disney. Disney is very much priced like a legacy, old-world media company with a declining linear cable platform. The reality of the business is very different. They're getting almost 60% of their earnings from experiences, this is the theme parks, the cruises, the resorts, and that's the cash cow that sits within the business.

In addition, the decline in linear is being replaced rapidly with growth in direct-to-consumer. And that's through ESPN, it's through HBO Max, it's through Disney+. And as that bundling dynamic starts to play out in DTC, you're getting a much better lock of customers, you're getting pricing power, and you've got a real profitability inflexion that's playing out.

So you're essentially paying 14, 15 times, a discount to the history when the company was at its prime, for a business that's going to have an earnings inflexion and grow it at 15% per annum. So I like that one. 

Tom Stelzer: There you have it. Seven large caps that aren't the Mag Seven. Thanks to Casey and Vihari, and thanks for watching. Make sure to check out our YouTube channel for more Buy Hold Sell.