Sam Volkering

Sam built a career advising private clients and businesses on how to manage their money and build their wealth. With a decade of financial advice under his belt he decided that it was time to change the game and combine his great passions in life (technology, writing and helping people to make money).

He joined our Australian affiliate Port Phillip Publishing in 2013 and has since become one of Australia’s most recognised financial editors.

As a child he revelled in the wonders of the Apple 2e and Macintosh. A life-changing trip to Japan’s ‘Electric Town’, Akihabara set him on a discovery of technology that will never end. Starting a small tech business in his 20’s, registering a patent in Australia and running several websites are just some examples of how he immerses himself in the world of technology.

But his real talents lie in uncovering, researching and investigating the world’s most revolutionary technology companies and trends before they hit the big time. He predicted the rise of 3D printing, the arrival of augmented reality and most notably the incredible shift to self-driving cars and artificial intelligence.

He first bought bitcoin in 2011, and ever since he has followed the cryptocurrencies 'wild west', becoming an authority in this new field of digital assets. Southbank Investment Research published his book Crypto Revolution: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies and The Future of Money.

He travels the world meeting and engaging with inventors, founders, innovators and the most influential people in tech. His unique combination of financial acumen with an unwavering devotion to the most cutting edge technology makes Sam one of the most prodigious talents in our stable of editors.

James Allen

James Allen has over a decade’s experience as an expert energy analyst.

He reported on the main trends affecting global wholesale energy markets as head of Montel’s real-time newswire bureau in Manhattan for five years, covering areas such as LNG, pipelines, coal, carbon, power, oil, generation spreads, utility hedging and regulation.

Prior to joining Montel, he was Team Leader of the power markets desk at Platts, a huge energy price reporting agency.

He brings a wealth of expertise and a rolodex of key contacts, including energy insiders, CEOs, analysts and experts to his role as editor of Strategic Energy Alert and Southbank Growth Advantage here at Southbank Investment Research.

John Butler

John Butler is a seasoned, international financial professional with a wide variety of industry experience. Working as an investment strategist and portfolio structurer for 25 years, John has advised many of the world's largest institutional investors and central banks. He has served as a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers and Dresdner Bank, in charge of global teams responsible for macro and commodity strategy and has been ranked #1 for interest rate strategy by Institutional Investor Magazine.

He has also worked in FinTech, most recently as the Head of Treasury for FinTech startup TallyMoney. Prior he served as Director and CEO of the Lend and Borrow Trust Company, the world’s only regulated peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform on which all loans are collateralised by physically-allocated precious metals. He also served as Vice President and Head of Wealth Services for Goldmoney, the world's leading gold-backed financial services firm.

John is on the record having predicted some of the most important global financial events during his career, including a secular bull market in gold and a US-centric housing and credit bubble that would eventually burst. In 2016, he predicted that a series of balance of payments crises would ripple through emerging markets. In 2019, he predicted that inflation would begin to surge and 'stagflation' would set in thereafter.

John's publications include The Golden Revolution (John Wiley and Sons, 2012), and The Golden Revolution, Revisited (2017), books explaining the causes and consequences of the 2008 global financial crisis and exploring the financial market implications of global monetary regime change.

Nickolai Hubble

Nickolai Hubble is chief strategist of The Fleet Street Letter and Fortune & Freedom, which are published by Southbank Investment Research. He’s also the editor of Jim Rickards Strategic Investment in Australia and a contributing editor of The Daily Reckoning Australia.

After finishing his degrees in finance and law at Bond University in Australia in 2009, working for an investment bank didn’t seem so enticing any more. An internship with his scholarship provider Goldman Sachs during the height of the financial crisis was quite enough of that.

Instead, Nickolai went to work for independent publishers that allow their analysts to predict the financial crises that investment bankers cause.

In 2012 Nickolai exposed the sub-prime practices of Australian banks to his readers at The Money for Life Letter. His accusations that bankers and mortgage brokers routinely manipulate their customers’ loan applications were vindicated by a Royal Commission in 2018.

In 2018 Nickolai predicted Italy’s budget battles would lead to “Bloody October” and successfully warned his subscribers about the worst period in financial markets since 2008. In August he compiled his predictions into a book called How the Euro Dies.

Nickolai doesn’t just investigate financial markets and predict crises and opportunities. He’s also a flying trapeze, juggling and chin balancing performer and instructor. He’s lived in England, Ireland, Scotland, Austria, Germany, Australia, Thailand and Japan, stubbornly refusing to identify with any nationality.

Nickolai is the only person to have spun a plate on a stick while playing the bagpipes while swinging on a flying trapeze bar eight metres up in the air.