Revealed: 5 ASX Shares Scott Phillips Owns With His Own Money

Most experts tell you what to buy. The Motley Fool Australia's Chief Investment Officer is showing you what he's bought, why he still holds every one of them, and exactly what would make him sell.

Ask a room full of investors what they'd most like to see, and a surprising number will give you the same answer.

Not another list of "stocks to watch". Not a forecast. A look inside someone else's portfolio. The shares a professional has bought with his own money and still owns today.

It's not hard to see why. Opinions are cheap. Anyone can go on television and name a share they like. What a professional investor actually owns tells you a great deal more about what he believes, because he's the one who loses if he's wrong.

The man who's opening his portfolio

Scott Phillips is the Chief Investment Officer at The Motley Fool Australia. You may have seen him on Channel 9's late news, or heard him on 2GB, 3AW, 4BC or Triple M. He's also the lead advisor on Motley Fool Share Advisor, which has been recommending ASX and US shares to Australian investors since 2011.

Scott is a long-term investor. He puts money to work regularly, whenever capital becomes available, rather than waiting for a perfect moment that never arrives. And in a new report, he's done something most market commentators won't. He's named five ASX companies he personally owns, and explained why each one earns its place in his portfolio.

Five companies, one portfolio

The five don't fit one neat label. They span retail, health insurance, wine and investing. Some lean towards quality, some towards value, and some towards the slow, quiet work of compounding over many years.

Among them:

• A household-name retailer most Australians have shopped at, which also sits on a property portfolio worth billions and pays a rising, fully franked dividend
• An online retailer started in a garage, which passed $1 billion in sales for the first time this year, carries no external debt, and still has its founder at the helm
• A health insurer that has quietly built a second engine of profit outside its tightly regulated home market, and almost doubled those earnings in a single year
• The company behind perhaps the most famous name in Australian wine, a brand that kept around 40 cents of every sales dollar as profit even in a bruising year
• Australia's second-oldest listed company, which has just lifted its dividend for the 28th year in a row, straight through the GFC and the pandemic

Not just why he'd buy. Why he'd sell.

For each company, Scott covers three things: what the business actually does, what there is to like about it over the long term, and what could make him sell.

That last part is rare. It's easy to find someone who'll tell you why a share is wonderful. It's much harder to find someone who'll tell you, up front, exactly what would change his mind. Scott does it for all five, from the slow shift to online shopping, to the heavy hand of Canberra, to a $3.8 billion pile of cash that's only as good as the decisions made with it.

The detail that makes this different

Here's what separates this report from the usual list of tips. Every one of the five companies is also a current, official Buy recommendation on Scott's Motley Fool Share Advisor service.

In other words, he isn't just telling members to buy them. He's bought them himself.

Scott is the first to say that his owning a share doesn't automatically make it right for you. His goals, timeframe and circumstances are his own, and yours will differ. Treat the five as ideas to research, not instructions to follow. But as a starting point for your own digging, it's hard to think of a better one than a professional investor's own portfolio.

How to get the report

Scott has made this brand new report available to all members of Motley Fool Share Advisor, with immediate access the moment you join.

To find out how to get your copy, enter your email address below.