FOCUS 2026: Q4 asset allocation playbook – David Wolf, David Tulk, Ilan Kolet
David Wolf, David Tulk and Ilan Kolet outline the key themes shaping markets and offer asset allocation insights for the quarter ahead.
Transcript
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Subtitles are AI Generated
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Wow.
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Fantastic. Fantastic to see everyone here.
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A lot of familiar faces in the crowd.
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Thank you all for joining.
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It's going to be a wonderful couple of days.
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A lot of stuff to get to and the clock's already ticking
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so let's dive right into it.
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DW, which is David Wolf, by the way.
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Yields have pushed a lot higher.
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Why has that happened and why should we care?
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Let me first welcome everybody as well
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and also mention we are
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happy to take audience questions.
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I think there's an app that you can put in your questions.
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We really need this because if we run out of questions
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at the end Ilan has threatened to show off
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the line-dancing moves that he learned last night.
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Trust me, nobody needs to see that--
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Nobody wants to see it.
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--so we're happy to to take any of your questions.
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We're gonna start with bonds, which is not
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usually the place that we start.
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It tends to be the less interesting part
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of asset allocation part of our portfolios but that's where
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the action has been in recent weeks.
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I'm going to unpack that, I'll take a few minutes to do
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that. First of all, we have been concerned
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for some time, I think, as a lot of folks in the audience
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know, about risk to the bond market and in
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particular in the US.
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We eliminated all of our
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direct holdings of US Treasuries towards the end
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of last year and we've been through this year selling down
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more broadly our US fixed income holdings.
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That's helped cushion us to some degree in what's been a
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pretty savage bond sell-off.
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As you know rates were really, really low for a really long
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time. We had them normalized to 10-year
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yield of about 4% in 2022 and they kind
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of there more or less for some time.
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They've ripped up to about
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5 1/4% over the past several months, half of that
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just in the last few weeks.
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There's been a lot of kind of gnashing of teeth about
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this so let me break down exactly what
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we think is happening and what the consequences
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are.
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If you think about a bond yield there's sort of three
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pieces to it underneath.
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There's a fundamental real interest rate piece which
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reflects what's happening in the economy.
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There's the inflation and inflation expectations piece
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which is kind of self-explanatory.
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Then there's a risk premium or term premium piece
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which is basically a catch-all for things that you
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worry about up to and including whether you're gonna
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be paid back.
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The first insight I'd like to give is, in our judgement,
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it's been entirely the first piece of that that's
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been driving the increase in bond yields.
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It's because the economy is strong and investment is
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strong. If you think about where an interest rate comes
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from, it's the balance between people who have
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money, the savers putting it aside, and the people who
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need the financing, those who are going in and building
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for the future.
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For most of the 2010s we had a lot of savings, Bernanke
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talked about the global savings glut, and we had
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not a lot of investment opportunities.
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Larry Summers I remember talking about secular stagnation.
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A lot of supply of funds, not a lot of demand for
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funds, price of funds goes down which is the interest rate.
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Now we have entirely the reverse.
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We have probably the largest investment boom that
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any of us have ever seen in our lifetimes with the
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trillions going into the AI buildout.
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Savings really haven't moved very much so you have this
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big increase in demand for funds, price of
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funds should go up which is the interest rates.
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That is, shall I say, a less worrisome
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source of the increase than others
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would be, at least for equities.
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For bonds it's bad, right?
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If you buy a long bond at 4%, it goes up
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to 5%, you've lost 20% of your money.
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That's just bond math, that's bad.
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But it's not necessarily a negative or bad signal.
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Well, I mean, if you're
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a bond holder it's a negative and bad signal.
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If you are an equity holder it is not as
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bad because it's coming from ultimately
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a reflection of strength in the economy, which is to say
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that if you think about stock prices
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it's... and I see Jurrien over there who I'm sure will talk
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about the dividend discount model and such later
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on in the session, but it's basically a stream of earnings
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and a discount rate. How much money
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a company is gonna make and then how much you discount it
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in the future. Bond yields go up, discount rate goes up.
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That's just math, right, that's not good.
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But the same thing that's driving the discount rate up is
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also driving the earnings up.
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It's ultimately the strength in the economy.
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So numerator up, denominator up, not clear what
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happens to price.
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That doesn't mean that rising bond yields is great for
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equities, it's not, but it's as bad, I
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think, as a lot of people fear and it's one of the reasons
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why the market has been holding in as well as it has.
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I think that it's helpful for you to have unpacked
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that because I think a lot of people do view it as a purely
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scary signal which it may not necessarily be for
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us as multi-asset class investors.
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DT, how should we be
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thinking about this in the context of the Fed?
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Next weekend I'm in Cleveland, not to brag, and
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I'm moderating a panel with three
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former regional Fed presidents.
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How should we be thinking about this?
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What are some of the questions I can ask them?
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And yes, you're admittedly doing my homework for me.
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That was the second prize in that particular agenda?
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I think it's interesting with the Fed in particular because
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you normally think of ...
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when you talk about the bond market your first thought
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tends to go to what central banks are doing because they
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tend to be a big player.
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But as DW outlined, it's more than
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that that I think is really driving the bond markets.
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It's only natural to think of the Fed and the recent
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tightening, and maybe some perspective future tightening,
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as contributing to the uncertainty we feel
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about the bond market. I guess trying to
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unpack the drivers of what the Fed is doing, I think a lot
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of the reason why the Fed's is hiking is in
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direct response to what's happening in the economy.
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That's really what should be happening for a central
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bank. When you think about the degree of
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building in AI and the amount of
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economic growth that that is contributing to
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that, I think, is something that the Fed sees the need to
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try to tighten policy.
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The next question, especially when you think about it in
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the context of our overall positioning and how much risk
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you want to take within your wider portfolio,
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the question is is this likely to be a repeat
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of 2022 when the Fed doesn't just hike
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a little bit it hikes a lot.
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That's in response to inflation that's
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quite elevated or that is starting to impact
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expectations of future inflation.
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Today I think we don't have that
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same expectation which is comforting, at least
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to us, because we know that business cycles,
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they don't die of old age There's usually somebody
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out there that causes them to
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end. It can be a
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central bank and the Federal Reserve in this instance.
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The fact that the tightening that we expect I think is
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fairly incremental from here does give us a fair bit
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of confidence that the wider backdrop, I
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think, is still constructive.
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Not without risk but it doesn't look like
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that classic tightening cycle.
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The last point I'll make is that starting points matter.
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If you think about the analogy of 2022, you were at
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exceedingly low interest rates and you were normalizing
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them. Now you're more in a calibration
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phase of monetary policy as opposed to having to
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really take a lot of stimulus out that had been left in,
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arguably, too long.
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Interesting.
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I want to get to sort of our overall discussion around
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equities and regional discussion but just staying on the
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Fed for a second, DW, you were in the room for those
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interest rate deliberations.
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Are we still concerned about political interference with
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the Federal Reserve?
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Where are your thoughts in terms of
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very concerned versus not concerned at all and how
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are you thinking about that?
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It's a question that I get a lot from clients coast to
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coast.
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When I was at the Bank of Canada we had zero political
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interference, which is the way that we want it.
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This was 15 years ago on
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the US side.
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All of us central bankers would know each other and talk a
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lot, partly because we weren't allowed to talk to anyone
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else. It was helpful to
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have somebody to talk to.
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Central banking is an interesting world, maybe we can talk
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about that a little bit later.
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The Fed folks also were very,
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no, they leave us alone to do what we do.
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I don't think we can be 100% confident that
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that's still the case. That's one of the reasons why there
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is a risk that it's not just the
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fundamentals, the strength of the economy that lifts
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interest rates but that it could be some concerns
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about inflation.
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I saw the President was talking about, well, we could get
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rid of the debt by just inflating it away, which if
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you're a bond holder is really scary.
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I think a lot of you folks have heard my rant several
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months ago about worrying about how
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the United States may treat its creditors.
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All of these are reasons why we've
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avoided the US Treasury market and helped out.
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The broader Fed concern, so maybe I'll distill down
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some of DT's comments a little bit, if the Fed is
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just following the natural increase in rates coming from
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a strong economy, which is what's what happening now,
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that's okay.
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If they decide they need to slam on the brakes because
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inflation is getting out of hand, that is not
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okay.
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It's the first that's happening.
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We worry about the second.
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But that's a very hard thing to call and becomes a
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harder thing to call, to your point, when you have
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political interference, potential political
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interference, we don't know, which is one
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of the reasons why in our asset allocation over
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the last couple of years we've been
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sort of playing down the kind of top-down
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signals that we often use and spending more
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time focused on the bottom-up signals.
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This is all of the information and research we're getting
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from our underlying analysts in equity and
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fixed income, our portfolio managers, many of
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whom we'll see over the next couple of days,
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to really say, okay, if the top-down is imponderable,
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whether it's Fed or AI bubble, not bubble, or what have
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you, let's just focus on what earnings
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are doing because the market is gonna go where earnings go.
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Those analysts have kept telling us for the last couple
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of years that the market is underestimating
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how much these companies are gonna earn.
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With that we have retained an
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overweight position in equities because again,
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our experts are saying put aside rates, put
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aside Iran or what have you, the market's
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underestimating earnings.
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That's really helped us stay overweight equities
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through the bouts of volatility and uncertainty that we've
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seen. More recently that has frayed a little
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bit in the sense that our analysts are still quite
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bullish on earnings across the market but it
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seems that the market has caught up to us.
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With that, and I think we have a slide showing our
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positioning, we have taken down our equity posture
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a little.
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Interesting.
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That bottom-up pillar is absolutely critical.
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I always say, and we're all trained economists,
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what a company is saying and doing today sort of shows up
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in the economic data six or eight weeks later.
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If we could bring up that positioning slide that'd be
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great. DT, let's click in
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and let's talk about regionally ...
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well, first of all, what are we looking at, and then
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regionally how should we be thinking about what
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DW talked about in terms of actual
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positioning in our largest fund?
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How has that evolved from 12 months ago?
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Sorry, that's seven questions and you have three minutes.
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Okay, go.
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All right. Well, let's just jump into it.
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This is the chart that haunts our collective dreams
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because we look at it, we talk about it quite extensively.
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I think most people in the audience are probably familiar
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with it as well. It is the active positioning we have in
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the Global Balanced managed portfolio.
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This is representative of a lot of the positioning we have
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across many of our funds so you'll
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see these themes rhyme elsewhere as well.
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What it shows are the overweights and underweights we have
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to various asset classes.
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We've added a little bit more detail to get at
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DW's point about US Treasuries, which you see on the
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bond side of the portfolio.
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Sticking to the questions you asked I'll focus just on the
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left-hand side which gives you our equity positioning.
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I think a lot of the equity positioning that we have
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on a regional basis comes down to
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the theme of AI.
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I think this is a trade or a theme that unites
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a lot of different asset markets together.
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The one that we think about in the context of the equity
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market just reflects the imponderable nature
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that DW described when we think AI.
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Again, this is a really transformational
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technology. We think it does have significant impacts
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on the global economy but trying to get the exact magnitude
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and the exact timing right is virtually impossible.
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We try to draw as much as we can from all of our underlying
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analysts. I think we'll hear from Evan later on in
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the conference who can give us perspective there.
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That's just the nature of this game.
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When you think about what we do as asset allocators,
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when we face something that's imponderable we wanna really
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emphasize diversification.
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We wanna try to think about the equity at market as
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giving us a chance to expose the fund
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to AI, which we think again can be a durable theme, but
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we also want to have some ballast against that view where
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we want to an allocation to markets that are
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less correlated to AI.
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I'll start with the first group when we think about the
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sort of more correlated markets.
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You can think of where action is happening is
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primarily in the United States and in
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emerging markets.
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Emerging markets have certainly evolved in recent years to
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look a lot like an AI play and it's concentrated in
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a number of small ...
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a small number of companies but it has really
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an outsized impact on the broader index.
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When we think about the US and emerging markets
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that's where we want that pro-AI correlation
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but we can choose within that.
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There, again, if you're looking at the positioning we can
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see we're cautious on the US.
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This is not to say not every US company is challenged but
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we think that there's more value on the
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emerging market side.
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It's just beyond AI as well within the US.
15:25.190 --> 15:27.559
We talked a bit about some of the institutional challenges,
15:27.559 --> 15:29.561
some of the issues we see with the currency and everything
15:29.561 --> 15:33.032
else so that is part of that narrative.
15:33.032 --> 15:36.268
That gives us a nice chance to have some choice within the
15:36.268 --> 15:39.305
pro-cyclically exposed parts of the market to
15:39.305 --> 15:40.339
AI.
15:40.339 --> 15:43.242
When we go to the ballast side of the equation where we
15:43.242 --> 15:45.844
want to have a little bit more defensiveness, or at least
15:45.844 --> 15:48.914
something that's less correlated to AI, this is where we
15:48.914 --> 15:51.717
have Canada and the international bucket.
15:51.717 --> 15:54.887
You can see that we've chosen pretty
15:54.887 --> 15:58.190
decisively to be overweight Canada.
15:58.190 --> 16:00.926
I think Canada, for a number of different reasons, has a
16:00.926 --> 16:04.196
really nice property in terms of not being correlated,
16:04.196 --> 16:07.766
or at least being a very small correlation, to
16:07.766 --> 16:09.501
the AI theme.
16:09.501 --> 16:12.171
There's a lot of Canada that we'll want to unpack on top of
16:12.171 --> 16:14.773
that but at least as we look at that broad equity
16:14.773 --> 16:17.843
allocation around the world having that exposure into the
16:17.843 --> 16:21.680
Canadian market relative to international
16:21.680 --> 16:24.550
gives us that chance to choose within markets that are less
16:24.550 --> 16:26.819
correlated to AI. That's an important part of the
16:26.819 --> 16:29.388
diversification we want to bring to these funds.
16:29.388 --> 16:31.957
That's an interesting discussion. Again, just to be super
16:31.957 --> 16:35.094
clear for everyone in the room, when DT talks
16:35.094 --> 16:38.230
about being underweight the US it does not mean we've
16:38.230 --> 16:41.200
sold all of our US equities, 25% of this fund
16:41.200 --> 16:44.403
is US equities and that's being trimmed by about 2%,
16:44.403 --> 16:46.405
just to understand exactly what we're looking at.
16:46.405 --> 16:48.507
It's an interesting discussion on AI.
16:48.507 --> 16:50.042
I'm just gonna hang out on AI for a second.
16:50.042 --> 16:52.611
The first rule of AI is always talk about AI.
16:52.611 --> 16:55.748
It's amazing
16:55.748 --> 16:58.584
we made it 10 minutes in, waiting so long to talk about AI.
16:58.584 --> 17:01.887
Before we jump to Canada, DW,
17:01.887 --> 17:04.390
can you just kind of give us your thoughts on AI?
17:04.390 --> 17:07.359
How do you think about it in the short term horizon
17:07.359 --> 17:10.229
and then what are some longer term secular impacts?
17:10.229 --> 17:13.132
Of course, I know we wrote a paper on that but a lot of
17:13.132 --> 17:16.402
people do ask me on the road about long term implications
17:16.402 --> 17:18.937
of AI. Is it so positive that it's negative?
17:18.937 --> 17:22.041
How are you thinking about this and then we'll
17:22.041 --> 17:23.042
jump into Canada.
17:24.843 --> 17:27.846
I think the honest answer is for me and for anyone
17:27.846 --> 17:29.848
in the world we just don't know.
17:30.883 --> 17:32.151
A lot of people are afraid to say that.
17:33.485 --> 17:36.455
You can lay out an enormous
17:36.455 --> 17:39.425
spectrum of different outcomes, everything from AI
17:39.425 --> 17:42.394
is going to usher in this wonderful new
17:42.394 --> 17:45.831
world of higher efficiency and higher productivity, it's
17:45.831 --> 17:48.567
going to do all kinds of stuff for us, you're going to have
17:48.567 --> 17:51.870
a new phase of economic growth, people
17:51.870 --> 17:54.506
won't have to work as much because the AI will do it, or
17:54.506 --> 17:57.543
robots, or whatever it is, and that's
17:57.543 --> 18:00.779
great. The other side of it, and we've seen a lot of
18:00.779 --> 18:03.749
commentary on this, is AI takes over
18:03.749 --> 18:06.819
everything, everyone loses their job, and we all end
18:06.819 --> 18:10.022
up in camps on universal basic
18:10.022 --> 18:13.892
income and there is no economy to grow.
18:13.892 --> 18:15.194
Don't sugarcoat it.
18:15.194 --> 18:18.230
No, I mean, you can paint both pictures.
18:18.230 --> 18:21.266
I don't think anyone can know, we've never seen
18:21.266 --> 18:24.236
this before. I gets back to, as DT
18:24.236 --> 18:27.206
said, we don't want to make a call on that because we
18:27.206 --> 18:30.242
don't think it's responsible for anyone to make a
18:30.242 --> 18:33.479
call on it. So we have exposure to if
18:33.479 --> 18:36.448
AI works then we have things that are going
18:36.448 --> 18:39.585
to work. If AI doesn't work we have things
18:39.585 --> 18:42.654
that are gonna be okay and protect us from that.
18:43.722 --> 18:46.892
Again, be led by our experts in terms
18:46.892 --> 18:50.062
of the bottom-up signals rather than trying to make a hero
18:50.062 --> 18:51.964
call on what kind of world we're going to get.
18:51.964 --> 18:54.867
Yeah, that's an important element of diversification that's
18:54.867 --> 18:57.603
embedded in these funds for our investors.
18:58.904 --> 19:01.540
Okay, we're gonna now spend a bit of time on Canada.
19:01.540 --> 19:04.643
I will say I spend a lot of my time on
19:04.643 --> 19:08.313
the road meeting with many folks in this room.
19:08.313 --> 19:10.883
I've spoken in every dimly lit steakhouse in Canada, and
19:12.985 --> 19:13.986
there's many of them.
19:15.387 --> 19:18.423
This is the part of the thesis where I would say there
19:18.423 --> 19:21.059
is a very healthy dose of skepticism.
19:21.059 --> 19:24.763
It is the cautious optimism that we have around Canada.
19:24.763 --> 19:27.833
I mean, we were underweight Canadian equities, essentially,
19:27.833 --> 19:29.101
when you joined Fidelity.
19:30.402 --> 19:32.804
That changed pretty meaningfully last year and through the
19:32.804 --> 19:34.439
course of last year.
19:34.439 --> 19:35.574
So let's talk about Canada.
19:36.608 --> 19:37.843
This is on a lot of peoples' minds.
19:39.778 --> 19:42.915
Why are we cautiously optimistic on Canada?
19:43.982 --> 19:47.085
DW, I'll start with you and then DT
19:47.085 --> 19:48.287
I'll turn to you for some thoughts as well.
19:49.421 --> 19:52.891
Maybe I'll make a couple of broader comments
19:52.891 --> 19:54.660
and DT can dig down.
19:55.727 --> 19:58.764
As you mentioned, we were underweight Canada
19:58.764 --> 20:02.000
for many, many years. I joined Fidelity in 2013
20:03.635 --> 20:06.705
and up until about last year we were underweight.
20:06.705 --> 20:10.008
Now, why were we underweight, and that's underweight
20:10.008 --> 20:13.545
Canadian equities, Canadian bonds, Canadian dollar.
20:13.545 --> 20:16.949
It was because, as we talked about it, a number of these
20:16.949 --> 20:20.052
types of events, as we wrote about, in our view
20:20.052 --> 20:23.222
the Canadian economy was kind of on a road to nowhere,
20:23.222 --> 20:26.658
which is all of the growth that we were seeing was
20:26.658 --> 20:29.628
basically consumer spending which was
20:29.628 --> 20:32.831
fueled by immigration and was fueled even more
20:32.831 --> 20:35.901
importantly by sort of selling houses to one
20:35.901 --> 20:38.971
another and then borrowing off of the equity
20:38.971 --> 20:40.973
increases.
20:40.973 --> 20:44.042
That does nothing for longer term
20:44.042 --> 20:46.979
growth. That's kind of eating your own economy.
20:46.979 --> 20:50.215
We've seen a huge shift and it's been a couple of
20:50.215 --> 20:53.085
things. Obviously, a different federal government, even
20:53.085 --> 20:55.721
it's the same party it's obviously a very different
20:55.721 --> 20:59.124
character and a very difference Prime Minister, but also
20:59.124 --> 21:01.893
just the pressure that's coming from the United States than
21:01.893 --> 21:04.329
the need to diversify ourselves.
21:04.329 --> 21:07.399
We've completely reoriented towards
21:07.399 --> 21:09.034
a capital investment agenda.
21:09.034 --> 21:12.638
We'll see over time
21:12.638 --> 21:15.941
to what extent that bears fruit
21:15.941 --> 21:19.044
but there clearly is a path to better in Canada
21:19.044 --> 21:22.080
economically that hasn't been there for quite some
21:22.080 --> 21:25.384
time. One of the things that we know is if we
21:25.384 --> 21:28.654
wait for all of that to manifest itself with
21:28.654 --> 21:31.623
higher growth and higher productivity, et cetera,
21:31.623 --> 21:35.027
we've waited too long. When everything
21:35.027 --> 21:37.362
is great everybody knows it's great and the market move has
21:37.362 --> 21:40.499
already happened. As our friend Mark Schmehl likes to
21:40.499 --> 21:43.769
say, some of the best trades are getting from bad
21:43.769 --> 21:46.838
to less bad and we think that we're going from
21:46.838 --> 21:49.007
bad to less bad in Canada.
21:50.342 --> 21:53.879
It's interesting because that move from
21:53.879 --> 21:57.015
sort of very bad to less bad can
21:57.015 --> 22:00.719
be a powerful dynamic. The statistic that I often
22:00.719 --> 22:03.722
use is, you know, I think
22:03.722 --> 22:07.459
about from 2014 to the end of 2023
22:07.459 --> 22:10.429
inflation-adjusted capital spending in oil and
22:10.429 --> 22:13.565
gas infrastructure, you know, however they
22:13.565 --> 22:15.801
take oil out of the ground, like the straws or I don't
22:15.801 --> 22:20.105
know, comes out of the pump for me, fell by 50%.
22:20.105 --> 22:23.075
It used to account for 1 in every $3 a Canadian
22:23.075 --> 22:26.178
company spent, by the end of '23 it was 1 in 10.
22:27.646 --> 22:30.515
When I tell people this statistic I say, look, that doesn't
22:30.515 --> 22:32.617
even have to go back to 2014 levels.
22:32.617 --> 22:35.687
If it just gets slightly better that's that move from
22:35.721 --> 22:37.189
very bad to less bad.
22:38.857 --> 22:41.526
DT, take us through how you're thinking about this and
22:42.761 --> 22:45.797
maybe as well some thoughts on
22:45.797 --> 22:48.133
the path for short term rates.
22:48.133 --> 22:50.369
We've got a question from the audience, short term rates
22:50.369 --> 22:52.671
from the Bank of Canada as well.
22:52.671 --> 22:55.974
I think a little bit about the meta comment in
22:55.974 --> 22:58.944
terms of the skepticism that you receive on
22:58.944 --> 23:02.247
the road with respect to Canada and I think that it makes
23:02.280 --> 23:04.950
a fair bit of sense because if you do look around the
23:04.950 --> 23:08.387
economy today, I mean, things don't feel great.
23:08.387 --> 23:11.356
On that road to better, as DW outlined, we're
23:11.356 --> 23:13.859
still very much in the first few steps.
23:13.859 --> 23:17.229
I think that reveals an important part of our
23:17.229 --> 23:20.532
investment process and it reflects another trait of
23:20.532 --> 23:23.735
one of our building block portfolio managers, Dan Dupont,
23:23.735 --> 23:26.872
is that we can be very patient long term
23:26.872 --> 23:28.140
investors.
23:28.140 --> 23:31.376
When you think about the road to better for Canada
23:31.376 --> 23:35.113
it's inherently going to take a lot of time.
23:35.113 --> 23:38.517
As DW mentioned, the market will move well ahead of
23:38.517 --> 23:42.020
the wider economy. When we think a bit about the nature
23:42.020 --> 23:43.422
of the improvement on Canada
23:45.157 --> 23:48.059
it involves investing in our infrastructure. We know that
23:48.059 --> 23:51.263
the regulatory environment is a lot more favourable.
23:51.263 --> 23:54.199
We have that signal confirmed by our bottom
23:54.199 --> 23:56.735
up analysts who spend a lot of time talking to Canadian
23:56.735 --> 23:59.704
companies and that optimism that we see, at least
23:59.704 --> 24:02.707
from a top down perspective, is matched by the
24:02.707 --> 24:05.610
bottom- up. Inherently, if you're building infrastructure
24:05.610 --> 24:07.145
it does take a long time.
24:07.145 --> 24:08.980
It is moving in that direction.
24:08.980 --> 24:11.983
We think a little bit about diversifying trade.
24:11.983 --> 24:14.052
Yes, we're still in the teeth of a trade war with the
24:14.052 --> 24:17.622
United States but there is a steady drum beat
24:17.622 --> 24:20.792
of trade agreements and diversification in
24:20.792 --> 24:22.527
trade away from the US.
24:22.527 --> 24:25.530
Now, we won't obviously be able to entirely replace the
24:25.530 --> 24:28.967
US. Geographic and economic proximity makes that a very
24:28.967 --> 24:32.404
challenging ask. If growth does happen on the margin
24:32.404 --> 24:34.005
that's where it's happening.
24:34.005 --> 24:37.409
That is where we, again, can see a positive impulse on
24:37.409 --> 24:38.944
the trade side of the economy.
24:38.944 --> 24:41.413
Even when we think a bit about housing, and we're still
24:41.413 --> 24:44.850
working our way through a pretty significant leverage cycle
24:44.850 --> 24:46.384
among Canadian borrowers, but
24:47.953 --> 24:51.056
as we look at the steady drum beat of mortgages that
24:51.056 --> 24:54.125
are resetting at slightly less ridiculous interest
24:54.125 --> 24:57.095
rates that, again, just allows that
24:57.095 --> 25:00.198
supply of homes to be absorbed, households to
25:00.198 --> 25:02.634
get a little bit more of a tailwind in terms of
25:02.634 --> 25:05.770
discretionary spending. That does, again, bring us to
25:05.770 --> 25:07.339
a better economic environment.
25:07.339 --> 25:09.608
I think that's the path.
25:09.608 --> 25:12.143
Just comment quickly on the outlook for the Bank of Canada,
25:12.143 --> 25:15.113
the Bank of Cananda sees in the same way
25:15.113 --> 25:19.017
as the Fed this prospect of future growth.
25:19.017 --> 25:22.153
The move higher in rates has also happened in Canada when
25:22.153 --> 25:24.089
you look further out the curve.
25:24.089 --> 25:27.192
As Canada, and as the Bank of Canada specifically, sees
25:27.192 --> 25:30.128
notably a positive terms of trade shock
25:30.128 --> 25:33.131
coming from commodity prices which, again,
25:33.131 --> 25:35.767
reflects some of the changes we've seen in the global order
25:35.800 --> 25:38.770
where there is this rush to secure
25:38.770 --> 25:41.339
strategic resources that Canada has.
25:41.339 --> 25:44.643
Canada, again, as a nation of laws
25:44.643 --> 25:47.612
and a nation of good governance is a really strong
25:47.612 --> 25:50.148
candidate for this type of investment.
25:50.148 --> 25:52.884
The Bank of Canada sees that as a positive tailwind into
25:52.884 --> 25:55.487
investment, into capital inflows into the country.
25:55.487 --> 25:58.623
Their reaction function is to take
25:58.623 --> 26:01.626
interest rates higher, not jam them higher, not ruin the
26:01.626 --> 26:04.195
economy but at the same time just try to get the better
26:04.195 --> 26:07.265
balance between the risks around inflation that reflects, I
26:07.265 --> 26:10.936
think, a road to a much more promising economy.
26:10.936 --> 26:14.239
Yeah, it's interesting. I think there still are
26:14.239 --> 26:17.242
a lot of sort of dark clouds, grey clouds hanging
26:17.242 --> 26:21.112
over Canada in terms of the trade war and
26:21.112 --> 26:23.315
a disorderly resolution of that.
26:23.315 --> 26:24.916
Can I just add a quick point?
26:25.917 --> 26:29.054
That's also what we really like as investors because if
26:29.054 --> 26:31.656
sentiment is really negative and if the skepticism that
26:31.656 --> 26:34.292
some people in the room or online share, or that we see
26:34.292 --> 26:36.861
priced into the currency market or other parts of the
26:36.861 --> 26:38.597
investment community, we love that.
26:38.597 --> 26:41.399
We like being contrarian with respect to that.
26:41.399 --> 26:44.469
If Canada's out of favour that's an entry point for
26:44.469 --> 26:47.806
us. Again, we start to see this also with some of our
26:47.806 --> 26:50.775
colleagues in Boston who are managing funds
26:50.775 --> 26:53.912
for large pools of US money
26:53.912 --> 26:56.715
and Canada for them is a little bit of an out of benchmark
26:56.715 --> 26:58.016
or a very small part of their index.
26:58.016 --> 27:01.119
What we've seen in our conversation as we've been
27:01.119 --> 27:03.722
spreading this message about Canada, they're starting to
27:03.722 --> 27:05.924
come to the Canadian market as well.
27:05.924 --> 27:08.526
You can imagine that other large pools of investors might
27:08.526 --> 27:09.794
start seeing Canada more favourably.
27:09.794 --> 27:13.031
When you contrast that wall of potential
27:13.031 --> 27:16.067
money with a fairly small market that alone can be
27:16.101 --> 27:19.404
a nice tailwind that I think you would expect to see in
27:19.404 --> 27:20.538
the road ahead.
27:20.538 --> 27:22.440
Yeah, that's significant. I mean that is significant,
27:22.440 --> 27:24.643
right? I often say, I mean, GAA is
27:25.744 --> 27:28.747
$1 1/2 trillion. If you add on
27:28.747 --> 27:31.816
top of that the pool of assets that we
27:31.816 --> 27:34.819
meet with regularly on a weekly basis you're well into
27:34.819 --> 27:36.521
the trillions.
27:36.521 --> 27:38.690
Okay, I'm gonna ask a challenge... yeah, go for it.
27:38.690 --> 27:40.458
Before you ask the challenging question, maybe you'll think
of an easier one. Maybe
27:46.131 --> 27:48.299
we can bring a couple of these threads together with the
27:48.299 --> 27:51.136
middle section of the slides, the green, which is our
27:51.136 --> 27:52.470
positioning in fixed income.
27:53.571 --> 27:57.242
That big green down bar that you see there is
27:57.242 --> 27:58.243
our positioning in US fixed income.
27:59.044 --> 28:02.113
As I said, we got rid of our Treasuries, we sold that down.
28:02.113 --> 28:05.050
Our position 12 months ago which is the little, is that
28:05.050 --> 28:06.051
an orange diamond, was
28:08.019 --> 28:11.056
flat, now it's significantly underweight almost no
28:11.056 --> 28:12.057
holdings.
28:12.590 --> 28:15.226
That's because of the concerns that we've talked about.
28:15.226 --> 28:18.530
It's the fiscal, it's inflation,
28:18.530 --> 28:21.332
it's the move in interest rates, it's concern that way.
28:21.332 --> 28:24.769
There's also a big down bar
28:24.769 --> 28:27.739
there, that's developed investment grade.
28:27.739 --> 28:29.307
That's Europe and Japan primarily.
28:29.307 --> 28:32.444
I think a lot of you folks have heard about concerns
28:32.444 --> 28:35.547
about the ECB needing to raise rates and concern,
28:35.547 --> 28:38.650
in particular, about French debt because France is actually
28:38.650 --> 28:41.653
facing a lot of the debt size and
28:41.653 --> 28:44.189
trajectory issues that the United States is.
28:44.189 --> 28:47.592
People have been shying away from there and, again,
28:47.592 --> 28:48.827
we're underweight that.
28:48.827 --> 28:51.129
We've moved a lot that money, you can see implicitly there,
28:51.129 --> 28:52.630
to Canadian bonds.
28:52.630 --> 28:55.200
We talk a lot about Canadian equity, we should talk about
28:55.200 --> 28:58.303
the Canadian dollar. The Canadian bond market, the
28:58.303 --> 29:00.939
Bank of Canada may raise rates but they don't, in our
29:00.939 --> 29:04.709
judgement, have a reason to jack them up significantly.
29:04.709 --> 29:08.847
Our fiscal situation is much better
29:08.847 --> 29:11.883
than the United States, France, a lot of other
29:11.883 --> 29:13.084
countries around the world.
29:13.084 --> 29:14.219
That's not well known.
29:14.219 --> 29:16.788
No, it's not well known but it's gradually being
29:16.788 --> 29:19.524
acknowledged. We talked about our colleagues down in Boston
29:19.524 --> 29:22.861
who run a trillion and a half.
29:22.861 --> 29:25.964
If you look at the broader data, StatsCan is very good on
29:25.964 --> 29:29.167
this data, foreign investors
29:29.167 --> 29:32.737
buying Canadian bonds, that's been a record
29:32.737 --> 29:35.774
level, and that doesn't even include us because we are
29:35.774 --> 29:37.075
Canadians.
29:37.075 --> 29:39.911
Other big pools of capital are recognizing the better
29:39.911 --> 29:43.114
stability of Canadian debt even as US Treasury
29:43.114 --> 29:46.117
inflows into that market have
29:46.117 --> 29:48.720
basically gone to zero from foreigners.
29:48.720 --> 29:52.056
There's this big shift going on from investment
29:52.056 --> 29:53.992
in the US to elsewhere.
29:53.992 --> 29:57.395
Now, in the short term that's being swamped by all these
29:57.395 --> 30:00.532
capital inflows to the US related to
30:00.532 --> 30:03.601
AI. That's one of the reasons why the US dollar has
30:03.601 --> 30:06.371
been strong and that the Canadian dollar, like everything
30:06.371 --> 30:09.207
else, has been going down a little bit against it.
30:09.207 --> 30:12.177
The future look is that we're not the
30:12.210 --> 30:15.180
only ones who want to diversify and that will manifest
30:15.180 --> 30:17.182
itself in market pricing.
30:17.182 --> 30:20.485
That's very significant. These are not sentences
30:20.485 --> 30:23.254
we could have said for the last 13 or 14 years.
30:24.823 --> 30:27.425
I think it speaks to this sort of shift in regime that
30:27.425 --> 30:30.428
we've looked at. Something that DW mentioned I think
30:30.428 --> 30:32.197
is really important to emphasize is the role
30:34.232 --> 30:37.302
of the US dollar in all of this, especially if
30:37.302 --> 30:40.405
the US dollar is being elevated by a lot of
30:40.405 --> 30:42.907
the AI related flows.
30:42.907 --> 30:46.044
If there is a stumble in AI it's reasonable to expect
30:46.044 --> 30:48.646
that maybe some of that capital is repatriated.
30:48.646 --> 30:51.683
What you end up now seeing is that the US dollar,
30:51.683 --> 30:54.118
which you might have historically thought of it as a safe
30:54.118 --> 30:57.422
haven currency, ends up being positively correlated with
30:57.422 --> 31:00.425
AI. If that AI spending retreats for
31:00.425 --> 31:02.660
whatever reason then the US dollar does exactly the
31:02.660 --> 31:04.863
opposite of what you would hope in that type of scenario.
31:04.863 --> 31:07.899
That's again a reason why we want to be
31:07.899 --> 31:10.468
very cautious in terms of our allocation into the US
31:10.468 --> 31:13.071
dollar. I think a lot of other investors around the world
31:13.071 --> 31:15.940
are trying to find ways to diversify away from that US
31:15.940 --> 31:16.941
dollar risk as well.
31:17.775 --> 31:19.777
We do have a few minutes left. I see the question on
31:19.777 --> 31:22.046
inflation which I'll get to in just a second but I've got
31:22.046 --> 31:23.915
to ask this challenging question because this is the
31:23.915 --> 31:26.951
question that also comes up on the road
31:26.951 --> 31:30.021
very frequently, especially at a dinner where
31:30.021 --> 31:31.022
there's been a lot of wine.
31:33.558 --> 31:36.327
Why hasn't the Canadian dollar appreciated?
31:36.327 --> 31:39.330
There's a pretty significant overweight there which implies
31:39.330 --> 31:41.599
a view ...
31:41.599 --> 31:44.035
DW, take us through your thinking on the Canadian dollar
31:44.035 --> 31:47.272
and why hasn't it really been sort of
31:47.272 --> 31:48.273
rangebound.
31:49.173 --> 31:52.210
As I just mentioned, this is more of a US dollar
31:52.210 --> 31:55.613
phenomenon which has been going up against everything.
31:57.015 --> 32:00.151
That, in turn, is partly the capital being
32:00.151 --> 32:02.553
sucked in on AI, it's partly the interest rates themselves
32:02.553 --> 32:05.056
that have gone up in the United States.
32:05.056 --> 32:08.092
It's been frustrating us to see this sort
32:08.092 --> 32:12.063
of brighter horizon for Canada
32:12.063 --> 32:15.166
which we think will manifest itself in a stronger currency
32:15.166 --> 32:16.467
over time and that hasn't happened yet.
32:18.636 --> 32:22.040
One of the ways that I would think about it is we're
32:22.040 --> 32:25.443
not really interested in the next cent or two,
32:25.443 --> 32:27.345
we're interested in the next 10 cents.
32:28.680 --> 32:31.749
We're right now around 70 cents US in the
32:31.749 --> 32:34.786
Canadian dollar, which all of us down here in Nashville
32:34.786 --> 32:36.087
feel that.
32:36.087 --> 32:38.656
You look at prices, they look like Canadian dollar prices
32:38.656 --> 32:41.726
but it's 40% more expensive. That is
32:41.726 --> 32:42.727
meaningful.
32:43.428 --> 32:46.898
If you think about the upside downside on that 10 cents,
32:46.898 --> 32:49.567
down 10 cents from here would be 60 cents.
32:49.567 --> 32:51.302
Canadian dollar has never been there.
32:51.302 --> 32:54.205
The low in 2002 was 62 cents.
32:54.205 --> 32:57.508
Is it plausible that you would get that weak a currency
32:57.508 --> 33:00.511
in an environment where oil prices are going up
33:00.511 --> 33:03.414
and people are trying to diversify away from the US?
33:03.414 --> 33:06.184
That seems very hard to imagine for me.
33:06.184 --> 33:08.119
Could it go up to 80 cents?
33:08.119 --> 33:10.755
Well, that's kind of purchasing power parity.
33:10.755 --> 33:12.924
It's where it was for a long time. It's kind of historical
33:12.924 --> 33:16.160
average. That makes a lot more sense.
33:16.160 --> 33:18.629
Could the Canadian dollar keep weakening a little bit if
33:18.629 --> 33:20.398
the US dollar keeps going?
33:20.398 --> 33:23.701
Sure. But we're not interested in tomorrow
33:23.701 --> 33:25.069
or next month.
33:25.069 --> 33:28.373
We want to get the broader contours
33:28.373 --> 33:31.242
of market movements right which is why we stayed
33:31.242 --> 33:34.412
underweight the Canadian dollar all the way from parity to
33:34.412 --> 33:36.214
70 cents.
33:36.214 --> 33:38.649
We think that there's going to be a fair bit of runway for
33:38.649 --> 33:39.884
that trade on the way back up.
33:40.985 --> 33:42.353
It's a very important driver of return.
33:42.353 --> 33:45.723
We have the equity growth, we have the fixed income income,
33:45.723 --> 33:48.793
you have to get the currency piece right or you can flush a
33:48.793 --> 33:49.794
lot of the first two.
33:51.863 --> 33:55.099
We've talked about our view around bonds and how we're
33:55.099 --> 33:58.302
not huge fans, less of an equity overweight than
33:58.302 --> 34:01.372
where we were, call it, 12 months ago, how should we be
34:01.372 --> 34:04.375
thinking about other diversifiers. How are
34:04.375 --> 34:07.145
we thinking about broader diversification in terms of some
34:07.145 --> 34:10.248
of the other asset classes? DT, take us through
34:10.248 --> 34:11.449
how we're building that in.
34:12.850 --> 34:14.585
This will surprise exactly no one but you should always be
34:14.585 --> 34:17.789
thinking about diversification, especially
34:17.789 --> 34:18.956
as asset allocators.
34:20.291 --> 34:24.162
I've said the ABCs of investing are always be diversified.
34:24.162 --> 34:25.163
You need to go back to school.
34:27.532 --> 34:31.269
I'd say that when we're looking at diversifying equity risk
34:31.269 --> 34:33.771
that's really what I think bonds traditionally would have
34:33.771 --> 34:35.039
done for you.
34:35.039 --> 34:37.809
The US dollar traditionally could have done that for you as
34:37.809 --> 34:40.278
well. But for all the reasons we've outlined on stage thus
34:40.278 --> 34:43.314
far both of those as
34:43.314 --> 34:46.417
sources of hedge to equity risk just
34:46.417 --> 34:48.686
really aren't as reliable as they once were.
34:48.686 --> 34:51.722
So we've got to become more creative.
34:51.722 --> 34:55.460
You can see that in a couple of ways across the portfolio.
34:55.460 --> 34:58.129
First, you can see within the credit and spread sector
34:58.129 --> 34:59.697
we're beyond investment grade.
34:59.697 --> 35:02.767
We have a number of asset classes in that
35:02.767 --> 35:06.604
part of the market that I think does diversify equity risk.
35:06.604 --> 35:09.474
One that I would pull out specifically is emerging market
35:09.474 --> 35:11.576
debt but in local currency.
35:11.576 --> 35:14.745
We get a nice yield pickup and a currency basket that
35:14.745 --> 35:17.849
is fairly well correlated with Canadian dollars, which is
35:17.849 --> 35:19.684
a property we really want.
35:19.684 --> 35:22.787
We continue to hold protection against inflation.
35:23.988 --> 35:26.991
Specifically there it can be gold, it can be commodities
35:26.991 --> 35:30.094
more generally. I think we've talked a bit about the
35:30.094 --> 35:33.030
risks around the US dollar and some of the regime shift
35:33.030 --> 35:36.234
that we're going through where it's a unipolar
35:36.234 --> 35:39.237
world, traditionally led by the US dollar, is now more of a
35:39.237 --> 35:42.573
multipolar world. Some investors will look at commodities
35:42.573 --> 35:45.710
and gold and even Canadian dollars as a nice way to
35:45.710 --> 35:48.713
try to manage that multipolar backdrop.
35:48.713 --> 35:51.849
We want to have still that allocation there
35:51.849 --> 35:52.850
as well.
35:52.950 --> 35:55.486
We also have a collection of liquid alternatives.
35:55.486 --> 35:58.623
You'll hear from Dave Way, I think, right after
35:58.623 --> 36:02.193
us as well. That as an uncorrelated
36:02.193 --> 36:05.429
source of return for us, which really does emphasize,
36:05.429 --> 36:08.666
again, asset classes that we think can contribute
36:08.666 --> 36:11.169
to the return of the fund which is sort of why we're all
36:11.169 --> 36:14.772
here, but also really provide that sense of diversification
36:14.772 --> 36:17.808
so that when equities go through more a challenging
36:17.808 --> 36:20.645
period we have something that can really keep us in the
36:20.645 --> 36:22.480
game and contribute to relative performance.
36:23.781 --> 36:26.117
We're thinking about things in risk-adjusted returns.
36:26.117 --> 36:29.220
It's streams of basis points
36:29.220 --> 36:32.190
from various parts of the funds that
36:32.190 --> 36:34.192
you see up here. We only have a couple minutes left.
36:34.192 --> 36:35.593
There was a quick question on inflation.
36:35.593 --> 36:38.062
I'm going to quickly answer that and then I'll kick it to
36:38.062 --> 36:39.797
DW to close us out.
36:39.797 --> 36:42.900
The question around inflation was how should we
36:42.900 --> 36:45.603
be thinking about inflation in the context of elevated oil
36:45.603 --> 36:49.106
prices? I love talking about inflation so we
36:49.106 --> 36:50.875
could be here for another hour.
36:50.875 --> 36:54.078
Inflation will pull up and push up total inflation
36:54.078 --> 36:57.114
but the way central banks generally think of it
36:57.114 --> 36:59.584
is they remove food and energy, because, of course, none of
36:59.584 --> 37:02.753
us consume food or energy, and they look at
37:02.753 --> 37:04.589
underlying core inflation.
37:04.589 --> 37:06.591
We could go on at length about this, we've written on it.
37:06.591 --> 37:09.627
For the person that asked me that question,
37:09.660 --> 37:12.597
just find me later tonight and we can nerd out for a couple
37:12.597 --> 37:12.897
hours.
37:12.897 --> 37:16.000
I'm sure that's exactly what people
37:16.000 --> 37:17.268
want to do on the Broadway Bar is to talk about core
37:17.268 --> 37:17.301
inflation.
37:17.301 --> 37:20.338
There's not enough bourbon in this city to make
37:20.338 --> 37:22.073
that conversation tolerable.
37:24.408 --> 37:26.711
Well, there is probably less now after the weekend that
37:26.711 --> 37:27.712
some of you have had. DW, why
37:30.448 --> 37:32.116
don't you close us out with a couple of closing thoughts.
37:32.116 --> 37:35.453
I just want to thank everyone in the room, especially the
37:35.453 --> 37:37.955
entire sales team at Fidelity who does a spectacular job.
37:39.490 --> 37:42.460
Maybe the right place to end our session
37:42.460 --> 37:45.496
is on acknowledging that we've talked about
37:45.496 --> 37:48.699
a lot of things to worry about, and others on stage
37:48.699 --> 37:51.669
will as well. Whether that's rising bond yields
37:51.669 --> 37:54.639
is kind of the newest thing but there's, you know, is
37:54.639 --> 37:55.640
AI a bubble? The Iran war, what's
37:57.842 --> 37:59.143
gonna happen with that?
37:59.143 --> 38:01.012
All of these trade tensions,
38:02.280 --> 38:04.982
rising debt levels everywhere in the world, notably in the
38:04.982 --> 38:07.118
United States. People are
38:08.886 --> 38:09.887
scared of these things.
38:10.921 --> 38:14.325
In a sense, that's actually not a terrible sign
38:14.325 --> 38:17.361
because when you want to worry is when everyone is
38:17.361 --> 38:19.864
just euphoric about markets.
38:19.864 --> 38:21.332
There's always a wall of worry.
38:21.332 --> 38:25.036
There's always something to be concerned about.
38:25.036 --> 38:28.105
Not that you should downplay those concerns but you
38:28.105 --> 38:29.674
want to look at it as
38:31.375 --> 38:34.445
potentially an opportunity to say if things are
38:34.445 --> 38:37.415
getting better and there's fear there maybe we
38:37.415 --> 38:38.416
want to be invested.
38:39.550 --> 38:42.386
We've talked about a huge range of topics today.
38:42.386 --> 38:45.389
Our Q4 thought leadership paper will be out by the
38:45.389 --> 38:48.526
end of this week so please have a look at that.
38:48.526 --> 38:50.061
Again, thank you all for the support.
38:50.061 --> 38:52.363
I look forward to catching up with many of you over the
38:52.363 --> 38:53.364
next couple of days.
38:55.232 --> 38:59.537
Thanks for watching or listening
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38:59.537 --> 39:02.973
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39:32.203 --> 39:35.973
The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the participants
39:35.973 --> 39:41.078
and do not necessarily reflect those of Fidelity Investments Canada ULC or its affiliates.
39:41.078 --> 39:43.347
This podcast is for informational purposes only
39:43.347 --> 39:46.917
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39:46.917 --> 39:50.688
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39:50.688 --> 39:54.158
or sponsorship of any entity
or securities cited.
39:54.158 --> 39:57.962
Read a funds prospectus before investing,
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Their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated.
40:01.699 --> 40:05.736
Fees, expenses, and commissions are all associated with fund investments.
40:05.736 --> 40:08.239
Thanks again. We'll see you next time.

