Joe Overdevest, Director of Research and Portfolio Manager, is joined by Brendan Cochrane, Equity Research Analyst, and Andrew Hall, Equity Research Associate, on today’s episode. The panel speaks with host Pamela Ritchie about supply chain issues, labour, consumer health, housing, ESG, bankruptcies, and the energy transition. Brendan believes that there are two factors in the past year that stand out when investors think of supply chain issues. The first being ocean shipping costs which have skyrocketed and the second is the chip shortage as there is an increased demand for work from home electronics. Andrew mentions that he is seeing wage increases that are higher than normal and increases for frontline jobs, also noting that companies are scrambling to hire back employees that were let go during the pandemic. Joe comments on housing, noting that we are spending more time in our homes, causing the focus of real estate to shift from office building to home building. He added that supply is still not keeping up with demand believing that we are not yet at the point where supply is outstripping demand.

Recorded on December 14, 2021.

Transcript (PDF): https://www.fidelity.ca/cs/Satellite/doc/transcript_podcast_fidelityconnects_overdevest_14dec.pdf