Ruffer Radio

Fund Manager Alexander Chartres sits down with Investment Specialist Gemma Cairns-Smith to discuss the challenges facing investors in a more fractured global landscape. They cover the journey to this more multipolar and harder‑edged world order, its new power dynamics, and the renewed importance of real assets. They also discuss the skills investors need to survive in this hard new world. READ THE...

What really drives the economic cycle? It’s not the total amount of debt – it’s the rate of change of new borrowing. Investment Specialist Gemma Cairns-Smith sits down with Ruffer’s Head of Macro Strategy Michael Biggs  to explore his research into the credit impulse — the change in new borrowing that drives economic activity. Mike explains why this signal is wid...

In this thought‑provoking conversation, Ruffer Chief Executive Chris Bacon discusses the idea of Risk backwards : that comfort, conformity and ‘blanding’ can create the illusion of safety while increasing vulnerability. Chris shares lessons drawn from different decades of life, explaining why disruption can be an advantage, how to cultivate independent thinking, and how Ruffer’s...

It was a forward-looking review, which is unsurprising, given that Ruffer at the time had no history – we were a business trundling slowly down the runway in a light plane on a long journey. As I approach retirement, this will be my last formal review – the pen may be silent, but the thought processes will continue. I shall continue to meet with my former colleagues, and will thereby f...

When I was a student, I gave my worldly wealth of £200 or so to an ignoramus stockbroker in the City who specialised in hot stocks. He didn’t do well, but he didn’t do that badly either. I undertook some basic analysis as to what was going on (perhaps I would have been better-advised to have done that before engaging him); what I discovered is that he was so slow on the uptake th...

This review explores what we can (and can’t) infer from today’s facts about tomorrow’s markets. Our aim is to get a bit further than Pierpont Morgan: when asked to predict where the markets were heading, he replied, “They will fluctuate.” At Ruffer, we claim to be all-weather investors. In recent years, we let the side down by being overconfident of an approaching han...

He climbs onto a water barrel to elevate his harangue. In mid-peroration, the wooden struts at the top of the barrel give way, and he ends up head and shoulders sticking out of the water. Everybody laughs and jeers. Then a shot is fired off screen, and he slumps lifeless in the barrel. It is a great scene, illustrating, theatrically, a time when everything changes – in that moment, there&rsq...

Fund Manager, Steve Russell discusses the investment risks we see in 2025 – overvalued US markets, Trumps return to office, rising bond yields.   DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT ]]>

If I put myself in the other person’s shoes – the client’s – what would I be thinking? And that, of course, should be a routine transposition. What the servant thinks is neither here nor there – what matters is to see it through the master’s eyes. If, then, I were the client, I would want to make a judgement on the following three things. First, are the people a...

It’s an important question, and I address it because not only do I have an answer, but I believe it, too; it’s why I set the business up 30 years ago. We opened for business on 8 December 1994, and this Investment Review sets out, again, what we are trying to achieve. It’s fair to say that we are more concerned with preservation of money, so the market indices are not the primary...

As the US presidential race enters its final straight, Dr Tim Smith and Alexander Chartres join Rory McIvor to discuss how investors are weighing up the prospects of a new administration.   DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT ]]>

Investors are herding into a narrow market and propelling stocks to new highs. Fund Manager Jasmine Yeo joins Rory McIvor to explain why this is a market well worth insuring against.   DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT ]]>

But the sentries at the investment gate are not best occupied in taking opportunities to be photographed – eternal vigilance is the uncomfortable adjunct to those responsible for other people’s money. As I write this, I am aware that we have fallen well short of our investment objectives over the last eighteen months. The days of delivering on our investment aims – and some &ndas...

Duncan MacInnes joins Rory McIvor to reflect on Q1 performance and discuss some of the portfolio’s key positions including gold and silver, derivative protections and the yen.   DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT ]]>

We can now see that, when we began, markets had enjoyed the first decade of an unprecedented 40 year bull market, during which there were, for sure, opportunities to lose money, but nothing which can be described as a conventional bear market. Although it did not feel like it (for it suffered crevasse-like setbacks), it was a perpetually rising market – an equatorial climate of everlasting s...

Can the economy and markets survive interest rates at 5%? Not for long, suggests fund manager Matt Smith – either interest rates must come down or asset prices do. In this quarter’s episode, we reflect on portfolio performance in 2023 and discuss what’s changed in outlook, and investor sentiment, compared to this time last year.   DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT ]]>

The unfortunate villagers who lived on top of it had been evacuated; but what was expected to erupt within hours was then demoted to ‘within weeks’. I remember a vulcanologist telling me that a call within 80 years of the actual event was regarded in that milieu as being ‘right’. I therefore look on them with respect, but also a certain envy, since we investment gurus are g...

In this quarter’s episode of Ruffer Radio, Chairman Jonathan Ruffer shares his perspectives on the evolution of Ruffer’s all-weather investment approach since founding the firm in 1994. Jonathan reflects on the genesis of the firm, making mistakes, the character traits that shape his investment style, and the challenges and opportunities facing investors today. And crucially, how these...

He asked, “What’s your attitude to the poor performance we’re putting in during 2023?” A good question deserves a good answer, and it got one. Its substance was – when things are tough, two questions need to be satisfactorily answered. The first is: why did it happen? The second is: why are you confident that the portfolio is rightly positioned for effective performan...

Investment Director Steve Russell reviews the downtrend in performance this year in the context of a global equity market rally. Steve explains why we retain high conviction in a strongly defensive position in portfolios despite investor sentiment having turned more positive. He also discusses the assets we expect to generate returns in worsening financial conditions. DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT...

There are two reasons for this. First, that we have experienced similar results in the past; in each case they have heralded a major correction in the market. Second, the macroeconomic outlook points firmly to specific troubles ahead – troubles against which we have particularly guarded. Being right about the markets necessarily means being different from the markets. Our settled aspiration...

After a strong start to the year, markets were destabilised by a shift in liquidity dynamics in March. Central banks now face a reckoning. Their choice is simple – inflation stability or financial stability – but it isn’t easy. Investment Director Jos North joins Rory McIvor to discuss how recent developments fit into Ruffer’s investment thinking and what is needed to prote...

There has been a savage sirocco wind blowing into the banking industry, an industry which has become much safer since its near-death experience in 2008. Banks have been regulated to within an inch of their corporate lives, and a battery of consumer protections ensure that cash deposits are not lost. Credit Suisse – an archduke among them, dating from 1856 – imploded last month, having...

When the country went decimal in February 1971, a letter from a girl named Ambrosiana was published in The Times. It read: “I am seven. When I am old, will the money still be called new pence?”. Shortly afterwards, another letter appeared. “I am seventy-seven. When Ambrosiana is my age, it will be called nuppence”. In my own life, the value of money, measured in sterling, h...

Of the many storylines to unfold in 2022, only one really mattered to investors – rising interest rates and falling asset prices. The chief protagonist in this tale – the Federal Reserve - conducted one of the fastest and steepest rate hiking cycles in financial history. But how much further do they need to go? Fiona Ker discusses the unenviable choices facing central bankers and expla...