FidelityConnects · Sep 29, 2026 · 28m · 17m saved
With Dan Dupont, portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments Canada
Dan Dupont says the bottom half of Americans own just 1% of the country's stocks and mutual funds.
Recorded September 10, before three more weeks of rising rates played out, the Fidelity portfolio manager described starting 2026 more defensively positioned than at any point in his 25-year career, then buying the software stocks everyone else was dumping.
"So, we haven't really seen any credit cycle since '08 because we're trying to patch everything."
Dupont has managed Fidelity Canadian Large Cap Fund through the entire 2008 financial crisis, marked 25 years at Fidelity Investments Canada this July, and has personally worked more than 500 merger-arbitrage deals.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 28 minutes of audio, 11 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
America's bottom 50% own just 1% of the country's stocks and mutual funds
The top 1% own half
He started 2026 more defensively positioned than at any point in 25 years, then bought the software selloff
Says a 30% market drop is not out of the question if rates keep climbing
Constellation Software became one of his largest new positions, bought at a very attractive price
The market rarely punishes broken promises for long
Tesla's stock hasn't suffered despite Elon Musk promising full self-driving since 2018
A "death care" company quietly moved its contracts onto insurers owned by private equity
He compares the structure to how AIG hid mortgage risk before 2008
Three firms handle 95% of equity trading and none are market makers, a risk Goldman Sachs's CEO flagged to him
Merger arbitrage on Laurentian Bank's take-private still pays about 5-6% annualized, better than a T-bill
He's shorted 3D printing, marijuana and eVTOL stocks before, and now finds value in cheap health care names like Zoetis, Pfizer and Boston Scientific
1. No Real Cycle Since 2008
Dupont marked 25 years at Fidelity this past July by walking through what he's learned since covering banks through the 2008 financial crisis and gold through the last bull market.
Policymakers have patched every credit cycle since 2008 rather than let one run its course
"So, we haven't really seen any credit cycle since '08 because we're trying to patch everything." — Dan Dupont
He drew a specific lesson from 2007: Canada's commercial paper market seized up that August, months before the stock market even peaked, in October, and didn't fully break until 2008 — evidence, he said, that credit stress and equity prices can move on different clocks. He sees a mild version of the same lag today: government bond yields climbing and squeezing credit markets at the edges, without yet reaching stocks.
