Ruffer investment trust faces a rough patch

Ruffer, the defensive investment trust, has an impressive overall record, but may struggle for now.

Jonathan Ruffer founded Ruffer, the wealth management company that bears his name, on the maxim that “investors like making money, but they hate losing money more”. In 2004, the firm launched the Ruffer Investment Company (RIC) to allow private investors who weren’t clients to climb on board.

The trust’s focus is on wealth preservation, which means sacrificing returns on the upside to limit “drawdowns” on the portfolio. A drawdown refers to the paper loss, from peak to low point, incurred by a portfolio when valuations go into decline.

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Max King
Investment Writer

Max has an Economics degree from the University of Cambridge and is a chartered accountant. He worked at Investec Asset Management for 12 years, managing multi-asset funds investing in internally and externally managed funds, including investment trusts. This included a fund of investment trusts which grew to £120m+. Max has managed ten investment trusts (winning many awards) and sat on the boards of three trusts – two directorships are still active.

After 39 years in financial services, including 30 as a professional fund manager, Max took semi-retirement in 2017. Max has been a MoneyWeek columnist since 2016 writing about investment funds and more generally on markets online, plus occasional opinion pieces. He also writes for the Investment Trust Handbook each year and has contributed to The Daily Telegraph and other publications. See here for details of current investments held by Max.