Love/hate relationship with risk brings smooth returns

Jonathan Ruffer is chief executive of Ruffer LLP and something of a maverick in the world of fund management. His listed fund (Ruffer Investment Company) has been an enormous success over the last few years, as has his Ucits III fund co-managed with Steve Russell.

His style is a fairly unique mix of focused stockpicking and top-down thinking about key macro trends and his passion for history translates through into a number of important asset allocation calls in his fund. No friend of the cult of equity and an inflation bear by temperament, Ruffer is about as far as you can get from the manufactured, marketing-led absolute returns manager – he would much rather be talking about gold or the 1936 stock market setback You run a very successful multi-asset-listed fund that some people would suggest has an absolute returns mandate. What exactly is your...