Buy Hold Sell: 4 reader-favourite ASX income stocks - a mid-year verdict

Late last year, more than 2,700 Livewire readers nominated their favourite income stocks for the year ahead. We already ran the ruler over the first half of that list - you can find that episode here. Now we're back for the second half. A lot has changed in the past six months, so there's no better time to take stock, so to speak. Geopolitical tensions have rattled commodity prices, bond yields have pushed higher, and the question of what actually makes a reliable income stock has never felt more relevant. A high yield can be a gift, or it can be a trap.  In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Hugh Dive from Atlas Funds Management and Jason Teh from Vertium Asset Management are back to debate the remaining names on the reader-favourites list, separating the sustainable stories from those whose thesis haven't aged as well as investors might have hoped. They also share one income idea each to freshen up the list for the second half of the year.  This episode was filmed Wednesday 22nd July 2026.