WELCOME TO RUFFER

All-weather investing

Seeking consistent positive returns.

Come rain or shine.

Ruffer provides investment management services for institutions, pension funds, charities, financial planners and individual investors.
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London
Ruffer LLP
80 Victoria Street
London SW1E 5JL
Paris
Ruffer S.A.
103 boulevard Haussmann
75008 Paris, France
New York
Ruffer LLC
300 Park Avenue
New York NY 10022
Edinburgh
Ruffer LLP
31 Charlotte Square
Edinburgh EH2 4ET

Market views

DC pension schemes
Conventional strategies have served defined contribution (DC) pension scheme investors well for the past half century. But this year – as inflation has taken hold and policymakers scramble to contain it – the vulnerability of bonds and equities has been laid bare.
The illusion of diversification
In the April edition of his Citywire column, Duncan MacInnes addresses common diversification mistakes investors make and outlines the Ruffer approach in increasingly complex markets.
Turbulence warning
The return of inflation has jolted markets. But investing for higher inflation is not the same as investing for inflation volatility – this presents and unique and complex problem for investors.
Demise of the deflation machine
The global economy has been inherently disinflationary since at least the early 1990s. The result: a generation of investors who have never had to take inflation risk seriously.
Equities: a false sense of security
For the current generation of investors, equity markets have been remarkably happy hunting grounds. There have been crashes, bangs and wallops in recent years but, so far, central banks have ensured any pain was short-lived. As interest rates have fallen, investors have chased stocks up the page and global equity markets are now more highly valued than ever.
Many options, little choice
Investors have been wrestling with how best to defend their portfolios against financial repression (higher levels of inflation relative to lower interest rates) ever since the Financial Crisis in 2008. And now with inflation numbers hitting multi-decade highs, this search has become increasingly urgent. Here, we assess the options available to investors and look at what we’ve chosen in our inflation protection toolkit.
Worried about inflation?
The return of inflation poses a critical threat to balanced portfolios – severing the relationship between bonds and equites which has held steady for nearly half a century. And yet investors, so far, have stuck to what they know – trusting a portfolio built for the world which we are leaving.
The 60/40 portfolio
This has been the allocation of choice for traditional balanced portfolios and has served investors well for the past 50 years. Is this all about to change and should investors be looking for something different?
Would a stock, by any other name, rise just as high?
Traditional finance theory tells us that markets are rational. Investors incorporate all public and private information when making their investment decisions. This school of thought is grappling with the field of behavioural finance, which asserts that human psychology and biases also act in an irrational way to influence these same investment decisions.
The good, the bad and the German pension liability
The dangers of low discount rates and large pension liabilities is not unique to the UK.
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