Meet the managers behind Fidelity Global Opportunities Long/Short Fund

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I discovered investing in high school.

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I bought my first stock when I was 14, and it quickly got taken out for a 20%

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premium. I thought I cracked the code of investing, but the market had a

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lesson for me. In 2008, my portfolio went down, and I realised I

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needed to learn more. So I went to McGill in finance and investments,

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and that's where I met Max.

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Together, we co-managed a student investment fund, and we spent the last

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13 years as analysts picking stocks.

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Finding winners and losers and building a solid track record that earned

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us the opportunity to manage this new fund.

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And we now work with our analysts globally to find their best ideas.

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And I get to do this with someone I've trusted and known for 15 years.

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Well, compared to Nic, I was a little bit more of a late bloomer when it came

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to stocks and investing. I started my academic career to be a meteorologist.

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And shortly after I started that, I met several people who had a great

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influence on me who said that there are a lot of similarities between investing

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and the weather. They're very complicated systems where you need to bring a lot

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variables together to create a forecast.

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Shortly after that, i transferred into the finance stream.

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I met Nic Bellemare here.

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Who happened to be an inspiration for me in my investing journey.

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He already had a blog talking about his investments.

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I took a lot of ideas out of that blog and said, hey,

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why don't I do some of the things that you're doing?

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We joined the student-run investment programme together.

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We co-managed a fund at that time.

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Nic did the internship at Fidelity.

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He had some amazing things to say.

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And I said to myself, I want to be a part of that as well.

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I became an analyst at Fidelity, had the opportunity to cover various different

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sectors, co-manage the Fidelity Disciplined Equity Fund, all the

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while sitting next to Nic for 10 years as an analyst.

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Three years ago, we had the opportunity to start a pilot fund,

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running global strategy, looking at the world in different ways.

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As Nic mentioned, long and short, finding the best opportunities and

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most importantly, working as a team.

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Not just with us, but with our entire analyst group around the world.

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Co-managing the fund with Nic means that we work as a team to service

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the very best ideas from Fidelity around the world.

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We work with our global analyst team to vet one idea versus another.

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And because we do investments both long and short, we find Fidelity's

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very best and also its worst ideas.

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There's not a single idea that makes it into the portfolio without one of us

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being able to convince the other that it's a good idea, and there's not any

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investment that stays there without one us convincing the other that

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it remains a good ideas, which creates a high level of accountability.

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Nic sits next to me every day, which means there is nowhere to hide.

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Nic and I are trying to find areas of the market where consensus

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has a view that we think will be wrong.

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We are trying find the element of surprise.

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We do this both on the long side and the short side.

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There are thousands of stocks listed globally and there are thousands of stocks

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under coverage at Fidelity, but there are only a few where we can develop

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a high conviction consensus view.

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We don't have to bet on absolutely everything.

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We do not have to allocate capital absolutely everywhere.

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We are looking for the best ideas where we find that we are different.

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For me, it's working with Max.

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We co-managed a fund at McGill 15 years ago.

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I would have never imagined that we would have the opportunity to manage a

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fund together at Fidelity.

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This time, we do it with a world-class research engine behind us.

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The timing of this is incredible.

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The world faces an unprecedented set of events.

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We have trade tensions, we have different geopolitical changes,

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we have a change in the interest rate regime, we have

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advances in technology like we've never seen before.

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The necessity for investors to think internationally, think beyond

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typical boundaries, has never been more urgent than it has

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today.