Desautels Global Expert Daniel Dupont uses patience to ride out market turbulence

When oil prices went negative in 2020, Daniel Dupont (BCom’01) bought in. “I didn’t need to be smart to know it would go back up,” says Dupont, Portfolio Manager at Fidelity Investments and a Desautels Global Expert. “My patient process tells me to wait for the market to come my way and deploy capital quickly.” Dupont manages a $7.3 billion large cap fund for Fidelity, and spoke with The Globe and Mail about picking stocks that perform well in turbulent times. Dupont notes that energy stocks are too cyclical for his taste, but constraints on supply enhance their value. “The situation is intriguing. Supply has been constrained partly by environmental and social governance (ESG) restrictions on lending to energy companies. It’s tight in North America while OPEC+ controls most of the rest of the production. I don’t know if oil will go up a lot, but supply is very attractive relative to history, so I am more bullish.”