FidelityConnects: Oil and opportunity: Canada’s resource story

[00:05:42] Pamela Ritchie: Hello, and welcome to Fidelity Connects. I'm Pamela Ritchie. The TSX was one of last year's quiet overperformers delivering steady gains and entering this year on pretty solid footing. Nearly 30% of the index's gains were driven by gold underscoring the depth of Canada's resource advantage. Now, that advantage is meeting a powerful new catalyst in AI. Joining us here today to break down how he is viewing Canada, the story of Canada for investors, where resources fit into the next phase of growth, and the opportunity set within is Global Natural Resources Fund portfolio manager, Joe Overdevest. Joe, perfect time to be speaking to you. Welcome. How are you? 

[00:06:25] Joe Overdevest: I'm excited to be here.

[00:06:26] Pamela Ritchie: Delighted to have you here. We'll invite everyone to send their questions in over the next half hour or so for Joe. I want to ask you to level set us on the discussion of natural resources broadly but really Canada's place, oil's place, Canada's oil discussion, within the global oil market right now. Tell us where we are. There's a lot of pieces coming together. Canada looking all right here?

[00:06:49] Joe Overdevest: Canada looks great. Canada has great resources, great potential. We'll get into some of the things that could further our development. When you look at the big commodities, of course, everyone's front page news, a little bit more is gold and then copper which makes sense. What's going on there is pretty powerful. I would say to this audience too, don't forget oil. Oil is still a very key commodity in geopolitics and, more importantly, how the world uses it in a significant fashion. Right now it's probably being held back by OPEC but at some point in time  when OPEC comes off in the supply they're putting on the market, the supply and demand of oil could tighten up and you have a catch-up story as well with oil. You're seeing that in the stocks, the stocks are discounting higher oil prices versus what you're seeing in the spot market. Canada has a great amount of potential and we can dig into it today.

[00:07:36] Pamela Ritchie: Let's dig into it a little bit. The idea is that if there's less flooding of the market, basically, from OPEC Canada steps up as the so-called reliable producer, which it's always been. We hope one day with better options to send that commodity around the world, tell us what is standing in the way of that sort of getting there.

[00:07:58] Joe Overdevest: The first one would be oil price. If the oil price is like high 60s you'll see a little bit more development across the world, not just Canada. Number two, I think what you're alluding to is policy. I think what happens right now is the Liberal government are deciding how do we move forward with this in terms of pipeline pathways, which is carbon sequestration, which, of course, hopefully leads to more development. I think when you look there just some clarity would be nice. There's a lot of talk, and I think that's really what we're waiting on right now because, again, a pipeline would get to new markets, would open up maybe a better oil price, less of a discount, versus predominantly selling it to one major customer right now being the US.

[00:08:41] Pamela Ritchie: Let's say that some of those things do get managed over the course of the next 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years. Again, where does Canada sit in terms of sort of the reliable player versus, I mean, OPEC, lots of people buy oil from OPEC, North America included, but there have been stories of it being unreliable in certain areas, being kind of a wonky alliance of producers. I don't know to what extent Canada sort of markets itself outside of that as the reliable producer. What's that worth, or is it worth something?

[00:09:13] Joe Overdevest: It is worth something because, again, especially even the last 12 months or even two years we're seeing how geopolitics are affecting many sectors. I think, at least right now, Canada actually stands very high in terms of people trust Canada not only for oil but other resources or other goods as well. That's great, and our standing relatively is actually probably going higher not lower. I think what happens as well is that when you look at Canada, we also have, obviously, a relationship with the US but also we have global market access. I think that's where we can develop. When you look at major, let's say oil supply, OPEC's number one. Other suppliers in the world actually are growing, are the US. That relationship maybe has been tarnished a little bit globally. On the margin your top two growth areas are already kind of looking like, well, maybe we should look to Canada. The other areas would be offshore, maybe Africa which, of course, comes with some risk as well. To your point of knocking off some names Canada stands out as something that would be opposite to some of these. Really, what we're looking for now is maybe in particular our governments as well to negotiate some of these things would be very beneficial for the country. The resource is there, the producers want to do it, we have the people to do it, it's really a matter of dotting the I's on some of these contracts.

[00:10:40] Pamela Ritchie: The power that's needed to power AI has been discussed a lot for green energy reasons to build up nuclear, to build up all kinds of other green energy, and that seems to be a go in a lot of ways because all kinds of energy are being thrown at it. What does it mean for oil though, as well? Is that the flame under the policy to say let's get ... is AI the reason that oil will be easier to market around the world?

[00:11:05] Joe Overdevest: I think AI will be more driven in the short term on natural gas and longer term nuclear. The reason why is more natural gas plants could come on at a quicker pace. I think nuclear is more because if AI plays out the way it is right now, it's a very dynamic situation, as you can imagine, but if the pace of what the hyperscalers are talking at you're probably going to need nuclear. The natural gas will be part of it but some of these facilities will be very, very big. What's going on right now, of course, in Canada, we could be part of that solution as well, actually, building out nuclear reactors not just in Canada but worldwide because we have some technology, one of them being, in particular, CANDU.

[00:11:45] Pamela Ritchie: And we've got some uranium.

[00:11:47] Joe Overdevest: Yes, we have a lot of uranium. We can definitely be a solution provider for that. Obviously, Cameco, one of our biggest companies here in the energy sector not only produces uranium but also can actually help build, with Westinghouse, the actual reactors.

[00:12:03] Pamela Ritchie: There's a big deal that the US government wants to do through Westinghouse and that is sort of already in the so-called pipeline. In terms of oil powering the world today, the future, the demand story for going further beyond just maybe we're a reliable player, speak to the demand ultimately of oil power in the world in years to come.

[00:12:23] Joe Overdevest: I think that's one of the stories too. You talk about different commodities and we always look at supply and demand. Maybe copper might be growing around 3%, accelerating potentially to 5% as we electrify the grid. We bring in more data centres. All this helps copper, even EVs. On the oil side story the growth is probably less. It's probably a little less than 1% but the oil markets are still seeing demand growth. I think that's a very key point. Some of that is emerging markets but also as the world GDP goes up oil generally goes up with it. You're just seeing anemic growth. Outside of the OPEC growth we're seeing right now of moving barrels on the market there's not a significant amount of growth. One of the other areas would be Canada and the US. When you look at Canada and the US really only the major players in terms of the large integrated names, the Exxons, the Imperial Oils, or even Suncors, are growing a few per cent per year. The other players are marginal at best. Even some of the biggest players like Diamondback Energy in the Permian, it's flattish. When you think back at other kind of commodity cycles the key players who are the higher growth companies are not flattish. They're growing at very high level. I think the larger companies, if they're the ones growing it makes sense because they're the last ones usually to cut. It's really a story in an oil market, demand continues to do well and, really, the supply is pretty anemic. Once this OPEC overhang goes away I think as Canadians, as investors in general, don't be too complacent on energy markets because energy, in particular, this past year the stocks actually did well because they're pricing in a higher oil price. They're pricing the...

[00:14:01] Pamela Ritchie: The demand of the future.

[00:14:02] Joe Overdevest: The equities are a discounting mechanism. They see that this OPEC overhang potentially is more of a shorter term thing, that oil prices could come back when this goes away.

[00:14:12] Pamela Ritchie: Did Venezuela, the event, we know what it is, did it scramble the short term story? Does it scramble the long term story for Canada, ultimately, and what it ships to the US?

[00:14:24] Joe Overdevest: Venezuela, the timing was interesting. I did 300 meetings last year with CEOs and CFOs.

[00:14:30] Pamela Ritchie: Wait, hang on, back up, 300 meetings?

[00:14:33] Joe Overdevest: Three hundred, yeah.

[00:14:33] Pamela Ritchie: Basically, one per day throughout the year if you average it out.

[00:14:38] Joe Overdevest: We're very fortunate to work at Fidelity, the resources and company access. This year-to-date was 70 meetings already. Actually, I was in the Global Energy Conference when the Venezuela news broke. Some government officials from the US spoke, we also had the majors, some of them producing in Venezuela as we speak. Venezuela, for the audience, obviously, yes, it's like just under a million barrels per day. In the peak it was around over three. The question for the audiences is, what does this mean in the short term? It probably means a few hundred thousand barrels per day potentially come on because you just had such a disarray of mismanagement for a long period of time. As Canadians we have to watch, some barrels could displace our barrels because we're sending them heavy oil, in particular, into Canada. Mexico and Venezuela used to produce as well heavy oil, their numbers have come off the last years. We have gained shares, Canadians. For the audience, all of a sudden we had to preface what this means. Doesn't mean they don't buy our oil but we have to maybe compete for market share. The price we get might be less than it was if Venezuela wasn't producing so much but we still get a decent price to oil markets.

[00:15:54] Again, back to your point, it's great if then we can have over time, and this is what the Liberal government's trying to figure out, how we can find other customers. No matter what your product is you want multiple customers to get the best price. I would say, in particular for Venezuela though, if you watch closely what the public comments are saying on these oil companies it's like, okay, it's safe on the ground, the resource is there, but the big third part is what are the economics of this. Am I doing a deal with the Venezuelan government or the US government? The US government can move and change in two, four years, what backings ... so they're waiting for someone to give clarity.

[00:16:33] Pamela Ritchie: So we both need policy clarity in Canada as well.

[00:16:34] Joe Overdevest: They need policy clarity.

[00:16:38] Pamela Ritchie: We've got it on autos, AI is coming, we think, we've got defence, we've got all kinds of things. What will their cumulative retooling of policy in a perfect world mean for resources in Canada? That's one of the questions because we're trying to, essentially, mine our own resources for our own ... to sell to other clients but to also to use towards our own economy. What does it mean, new policy being written?

[00:17:02] Joe Overdevest: You're already seeing it a little bit. I would say the Liberal government is probably right now been more open to development in copper and gold, for instance, those mining sectors.

[00:17:11] Pamela Ritchie: And you've definitely seen that, yeah.

[00:17:13] Joe Overdevest: I think just easing of restrictions and speeding things up is very helpful. I think what's interesting is that because it's a minority government the Liberals have to watch that like oil is more sensitive than copper is. It's just the way it is politically.

[00:17:27] Pamela Ritchie: So copper and things that help with that type of policy can be written faster.

[00:17:32] Joe Overdevest: It seemed to be written faster, for sure, the oil markets, when we talk about pathways or pipelines there's still a lot of talk. It is the essence of the government. When you have a minority government you need to get other people on side and oil is definitely a little more sensitive. What you're seeing in copper and gold, a lot more in terms of development and a lot quicker and a lot of more confidence. Even when you talk to CEOs, it's a drastic contrast the last 10 years versus today. I think that's what you hope for in oil, when they come to you and say, you know what, things are a lot easier to get done, we're very confident. Confidence is a big thing in the capital markets but also in capital allocation, and what the CEOs want to actually put in the ground, especially when you're talking billions of dollars, we're not really there yet on oil. We're definitely further along on copper, for sure.

[00:18:22] Pamela Ritchie: Do you want to bring in sort of the broader Canadian investment thesis, let's take a look at the financial sector, the banks themselves. They've sort of, in terms of talk, which you were saying, ready to be there to help provide whatever capital market support they can provide to parts of growth within the Canadian economy that has to do with natural resources. What do you think of the banking sector? I mean, it's been an amazing place for a lot of investors to be. What do we need to know about the future?

[00:18:49] Joe Overdevest: The Canadian banks right now are actually generally boring in a good way. There's nothing major controversial, their business models are great business models so very high ROE businesses, high dividend yields, and they're focused on dividends and buybacks. They're not really that focused on doing major acquisitions at this point in time in the US.

[00:19:05] Pamela Ritchie: I was going to ask you that. You hear a lot about consolidation of US banks, regional, smaller, there's always a question about that. Would Canada be the one that does some of the acquiring in that situation? I don't know.

[00:19:18] Joe Overdevest: It's a great question. The US banks have been a target for the Canadian banks for a period of time because we're very consolidated here in Canada so they look to the south. I would say that the feedback from investors is probably walk before you run. It would be preferred by investors probably a little more bite size and more in terms of dominate a region. That's the one thing when you go into another region in the US, in particular, there's all these other banks like JP Morgan who already number one share, Wells Fargo, so you're already coming in as a marginal player, but maybe if regionally you can dominate one area it's a little beneficial, or one segment. I think right now the banks actually all look very similar. They're all doing dividends and buybacks and they're focused on their cost efficiency. Again, almost like the Canadian stock market in general, quietly doing extremely well. What we're looking for there is potentially an acceleration of earnings growth. For banks, the earnings growth had been subdued for the last few years because they put a lot of credit on the books.

[00:20:21] Pamela Ritchie: They're worried about the mortgage, they're worried about all kinds of things happening.

[00:20:24] Joe Overdevest: They're worried about USMCA, they're worried about mortgages, so they pre-booked a lot of credit issues. Every day that goes by and there's not issues, potentially, you have credit releases. The USMCA negotiations will be a big thing about how much could actually be released but you're already starting to see the potential there. Earnings are subdued, you potentially have earnings acceleration when these kind of credit issue subside.

[00:20:49] Pamela Ritchie: Really, really interesting. Let's go into the more resources sector, other types of resources, what you see there for a right now discussion. Within your portfolios you're leaning towards which areas? Let's talk a little about allocation.

[00:21:06] Joe Overdevest: Darren and I who are in the global natural resources, and anyone else when we look at resources here on the team, supply and demand. The tightest supply and demand would be gold and copper. We'll get into gold because it's not really a supply demand but tightest commodities or attractiveness, gold, copper would be up there. Probably oil would be next and uranium, uranium probably a little higher than oil right now just because of short term demand for it.

[00:21:30] Pamela Ritchie: Do you think that will peter out a little bit? I mean, there's a question mark of whether some of the excitement about turning towards nuclear has already been priced in. What's your call there?

[00:21:40] Joe Overdevest: I think the demand for nuclear actually can continue to grow if AI grows. Right now these are some big numbers being put in place. Probably the bigger thing when you go further back, the AI technology is being adapted, what's actually being questioned in the marketplace right now is how do we fund this? To your point, the speed of it is ... because if you don't have the funding of it it may actually be a great technology, it may be used in a great fashion, but we actually have to spend a lot of capital to build these data centres. That might be the bottleneck right now.

[00:22:09] Pamela Ritchie: Is that why the US appears to have more data centres, and announcements about them specifically, than Canada? I mean, on a relative basis we're, obviously, a smaller country but...

[00:22:19] Joe Overdevest: The data centres, number one is actually size you're alluding to. When you talk about these things you're talking like gigawatts. What you generally want for the audience here is that you'll say, you know, is it part of the grid or behind the metre? Behind the metre is fine but you don't have the backup ability sometimes that you would on a grid. Whenever you're looking for power sources you like to be on the grid, the point is it's very reliable. You can imagine with data centre we don't want things going down for any period of time. When you look at the grid and you say, okay, I need a gigawatt here, well, really the US, first of all, is an area where you can potentially do that, whereas Canada, it's actually tough to do that because our grid is just smaller. We're a smaller country.

[00:23:03] Number two is probably policy, and this is the difference. The US administration, federally and, in particular, state-wide, would be like Virginia and Texas stick out. They've been very accommodating to data centres, almost welcoming them and encouraging investment and speeding up approvals and making sure the taxes are attractive. Whereas here in Canada I think it's still a debate. It's a debate at the federal level and at the provincial level. How welcoming do we want to be? You can imagine most of these people who are building it are Americans. Do we to give the hydro power here in Quebec to an American data centre? That could be a discussion that maybe didn't go over so well. I think you're still debating about how we do this to make sure we protect our resources and our energy. Again, we're very much blessed to have cheap energy here. Lastly, I think also just the politics of what's going on in the US and Canada.

[00:24:02] Pamela Ritchie: There's still a policy piece to what you're talking about right now as well.

[00:24:06] Joe Overdevest: I think there's a sensitivity. Even just a few months ago we still had a certain tax on a lot of the hyperscalers' revenue here which was something that we pulled back here in Canada but you can imagine even for a hyperscale it's like, okay, you had this special tax on me and I'm Meta, what other tax are you going to put on me if I also build an AI data centre? All those things need to be solved right now but you will see data centres was probably built. In particular Alberta is being talked about right now with some potential, not the same size of the US, but probably if AI continues almost all countries would in some fashion will have their own data centre. To your point, the last thing is sovereignty too, where the data comes from.

[00:24:52] Pamela Ritchie: And where it lives. We learned last week, we were speaking to the CEO of Coveo, where it's computed and then where it's backed up. It's one thing to actually do the computation but then if you send it somewhere else for the backup once a month, twice a month, twice a week, whatever, that also means it's not sovereign because it's been somewhere else. Really interesting discussions to have there. You've got a whole bunch of questions coming in. Can I put some of them to you?

[00:25:15] Joe Overdevest: Please.

[00:25:15] Pamela Ritchie: Back to OPEC, this is the discussion, does OPEC have a lot of spare capacity at this time? I mean, they kind of always do but tell us about that.

[00:25:22] Joe Overdevest: They have spare capacity enough to be meaningful I would say is the thing. They're pausing right now releasing barrels. It'll be really interesting too ... I'll be frank with the crowd here, the audience, OPEC's probably been more aggressive than they have been historically in terms of releasing barrels onto the market.

[00:25:38] Pamela Ritchie: There are lots of thoughts on why that is. We won't go there but they have been very aggressive about it.

[00:25:44] Joe Overdevest: It's almost like their actions are not normal. They're almost like they're trying to hold back the oil price and it could be for political reasons that they're...

[00:25:51] Pamela Ritchie: Maybe, that's the argument.

[00:25:52] Joe Overdevest: Exactly. When you look at OPEC, I will say too that there's always something, oh, they have a million or two million barrels per day, well, they're not audited, right? Our oil reserves are double-checked. There's always an impression you have to watch is that they want to give the world the view that they control the oil markets and they have a lot of capacity to go on or off. As always, you just have to understand where the data is coming from but they do have the ability, yes, to continue to put pressure on the markets, but they are pausing right now, yes.

[00:26:24] Pamela Ritchie: Okay, fantastic. Jason is sending us a question saying, lots of discussion about moving to nuclear, how long does it take to bring nuclear online?

[00:26:34] Joe Overdevest: It's a long time and it's a good question. You and I had this discussion just a minute ago.

[00:26:40] Pamela Ritchie: Like ten years.

[00:26:41] Joe Overdevest: Yes. The latest right now potentially is SMR. SMR is a small reactor, it's easier to even approve, it's easier to just ... the people are funding it to feel comfortable.

[00:26:52] Pamela Ritchie: You can put it on wheels and roll it around. It sounds so compact. It's not quite but smaller and easier to build.

[00:26:58] Joe Overdevest: Easier to build and I think that's more bite size. I think those are the ones you can knock off definitely some years. I think what's also interesting is that here in North America we're actually a little bit behind the rest of the world in developing nuclear reactors right now, which is funny in that normally North America leads it but I think we have such bad history, especially in the US, of building nuclear reactors, going over budget and too long that the US government is coming in with policy, and actually partner with Westinghouse here in the US and go, you know what, we're going to build, if not build, fund or support the first eight or ten reactors in the US. I think their hope is that everybody else is going to see in America the Americans build it themselves and go, you know what, the first few didn't go over budget massively or they're going okay, and then they're hoping other utility companies go, you know what, we'll go on the next two to three after that, two to four after that. I think that will help Canada as well because, of course, we'll supply the uranium but also we'll probably look towards that and go, should we have our own policy? If we don't at the very least seeing people build, and to your point, come on time, on budget, or at least close, would be a huge vote of confidence.

[00:28:07] Pamela Ritchie: Yeah, and create maybe the seeds for competition and getting it out there. Another question, how long does it take to build a data centre? I mean, I guess it depends on how big it is but, yeah, question coming in for you.

[00:28:17] Joe Overdevest: The actual data centre doesn't take long to build itself. It's more the powering of the data centre.

[00:28:21] Pamela Ritchie: It's pre-fab anyway.

[00:28:26] Joe Overdevest: That's the benefit of the Fidelity global research, you probably started hearing about it almost 12 months ago where probably the higher level people who are involved with data centres said, you know what, the bottleneck is power. It's not getting chips anymore, it's actually the power side. It's still the power side and I would say when you want to do these things you say, like I said, okay, I need a half a gigawatt, I need a gigawatt, it's who can actually withhold that on the grid. And then you're like, okay, well, I'll do it behind the metre all myself, well, the natural gas plant might take a few years.

[00:29:00] Pamela Ritchie: You don't have the provincial regulator watching to see how steady the supply is and to sort of be the backstop for that kind of oversight.

[00:29:08] Joe Overdevest: That's when you go back to your nuclear. I think shorter term natural gas will be your solution for, potentially, data centres and longer term it's nuclear. This is something that most people in the industry would say as well. I think one of the things right now at this moment is affordability. It's very sensible these data centres. We can talk all this about Excel models, and we've talked about this before, investing is not just the Excel model it's also just the human or an EQ side of the analysis, affordability is a big deal. Even if the data centre can come on in a short period of time if the local people are not comfortable that their utility bills won't go up, and I think that's the thing, you're gonna have to see the data centre companies guarantee in some way some deal that says I'm gonna pay more than everybody else and make everybody else whole. Otherwise it is almost politically suicide to do that.

[00:29:59] Pamela Ritchie: To raise people's energy bills. Arguably that's the smoothing effect of government money and then corporate money coming in to essentially make that happen.

[00:30:09] Joe Overdevest: Exactly. It kind of makes sense because utility bills are usually in many cases very much controlled. We have a regulator for utilities on purpose to make sure the average person doesn't get hurt. I think that's where some of the bottlenecks you're seeing right now as we speak is actually not the building of it, it's more like, okay, who's going to pay for this in terms of utility bills. They want to make sure that it's not the actual local mom and pop person who just owns a home.

[00:30:34] Pamela Ritchie: Again, that's a policy, it sort of kicks it back to policy being needed to be created for exactly at that. Take us a little bit to the gold story and the trade and the fundamentals. I feel like we should end out this way because it's what drove the TSX last year. Are the fundamentals the same after a pretty major hiccup a couple weeks ago in the gold price? Are the fundamental the same for gold going higher right now as they were most of last year, all of last year.

[00:30:58] Joe Overdevest: The reason why we got here is still here. The reason we got here, I've been doing this for a while, sometimes it's interest rates, sometimes US dollar, no it's central banks. After Ukraine's situation happened central banks said, you know what, maybe I shouldn't own so much US dollar Treasury and you're seeing a mix shift. Almost all the major central bankers on the margin are adding a little more gold and a little less US dollars just a little bit on the margins. That's a big buying power. We talk about ETS, trust me, central bankers will dwarf many other buyers in the market by a significant margin. That continues, the central banks continuing to buy gold. Now the kicker more recently is US dollar has been weak, been connected to interest rate cuts in the US, in particular by the Fed the last 12 months. What's going on in gold, there's lots of volatility. There'll be a Fed announcement, who's the new Fed leader...

[00:31:52] Pamela Ritchie: That seemed to crack open some real fears about gold being too high but that said, we've seen that come back.

[00:31:58] Joe Overdevest: I think that's more of a short term ... almost a reason to get a little more defensive. The actual fundamentals of why we got here has not changed. The kicker is people seeing deficits. No one really wants to cut spending on all these major countries. If deficits stay high at some point in time when you're thinking multiple steps in the chessboard you're like, gold might be sniffing out that these deficits are being solved, they're going to be solved by probably a weak dollar policy or by some extreme measures so hard assets of alternative currency become attractive.

[00:32:30] Pamela Ritchie: Are we at the beginning of a super cycle for commodities, broadly?

[00:32:34] Joe Overdevest: I think every cycle is a little different. The last one was driven by China. It was just so massive in terms of demand. I think this one's just a little difference, nuance. I know people like to say history rhymes but...

[00:32:44] Pamela Ritchie: But is it sort of a slower burn because that was a pretty straight up, wasn't it?

[00:32:49] Joe Overdevest: It's a slow burn.  That's what I'd like to tell the audience, right now this has been a slow burn. That's what's great about this market, it's page 20, commodities, Canada page 20. AI...

[00:32:58] Pamela Ritchie: Because you actually read newspapers like I do.

[00:33:05] Joe Overdevest: I actually have physical newspapers. Page one is the US market and we quietly have been outperforming the last five years in terms of the Canadian stock market and Canadian resources. That's actually a good thing because it's less of like, oh, everybody's talking about it. It's definitely not the hottest sector by any means.

[00:33:21] Pamela Ritchie: Isn't it nice to live in Canada and to invest in Canada. I think those are all really good stories. I often ask you what you're reading or podcast or whatever, anything to bring that we should all take home and read or...

[00:33:34] Joe Overdevest: I think for this audience, probably one of them is Chip Wars. If you want to talk about AI, it's a history of semiconductor chips. Suggested to me by, I believe it was Connor Gordon a year or two ago. It's a more new book and it's very much realizing why the US is in the lead right now for semiconductors. In some ways semiconductors and oil almost are acting like very big geopolitical chips, trading chips back and forth. Lastly, probably for this audience, it's not as much as one podcast or book but probably look at podcasts or even Twitter or X for just understanding what is going on with AI, in particular, Claude Code or OpenClaw, it's pretty profound what's going on.

[00:34:15] Pamela Ritchie: It might be the killer app, well, or it's being at least put in that realm.

[00:34:20] Joe Overdevest: For this audience, even if you don't even want to know about it for investing reasons it may help your own business or may help your own life personally, just knowing what these tools are because it's pretty profound what's going out there. Why I'm suggesting that is because you almost need the most recent iterations of that, it would be on X or maybe on a podcast. There you go.

[00:34:39] Pamela Ritchie: Fantastic. Joe Overdevest, we're delighted to have you join us. Thank you for taking us through incredible investment cases in all kinds of different industries across the country. All the best.

[00:34:46] Joe Overdevest: My pleasure.

[00:34:47] Pamela Ritchie: That's Joe Overdevest joining us here in studio today. Coming up on Fidelity Connects tomorrow, Fidelity Director of ETF and Alternative Strategy, Étienne Joncas-Bouchard. He joins us for his analysis of the current ETF landscape, the flow story for January, they've got those numbers, outrageous again. He'll tell us in more detail about that and an update on Fidelity's All-in-One ETFs as well. Étienne joins the show first in French, that's at 10:30 Eastern, and then at 11:30 in English, the regular time.

[00:35:17] On Thursday Fidelity Director of Quantitative Market Strategy, Denise Chisholm, she's back to discuss her latest sector thesis and the key signals advisors might want to be paying attention to more. We'll ask her about industrials, some of the things that go into the AI trade as well.

[00:35:32] On Friday equity research analyst, Andrew Hall. He takes a deep dive into the Canadian consumer as we move through earnings seasons. Andrew's going to unpack sort of the latest results, what they're revealing about Canadian consumer behaviour, performance of the consumer staples sector, ultimately, all of that folded in. Thanks for joining us here today. I'm Pamela Ritchie.