economics

Cash is trash. Cash is a melting ice cube. Going to cash is giving up.

Ruffer currently has the highest weighting to cash or cash-like assets in our history. We are concerned that liquidity is the new leverage and that a degradation of liquidity conditions poses an imminent danger to investor portfolios. 

So why, unlike other investment managers, are we comfortable owning cash today?

Who’d be a central banker today? Once, they were the masters of the universe, bravely slaying the dragon of inflation and slashing interest rates to save the economy in times of peril.

Today, they seem powerless to control inflation. Fearful of raising interest rates too far, they issue hollow calls for wage restraint. No wonder Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, admitted to MPs recently that “It’s a very, very difficult place for us to be in.”

In the late 1970s, the world was on the cusp of radical change. The ‘Deflation Machine’ was being born. Deng Xiaoping, having outmanoeuvred Mao Zedong’s preferred successor, began the process of reforming China’s moribund economy. In the West, liberal, free-market ideals were gaining traction, ideals that underpinned the subsequent regime of rapid, disinflationary global growth.

Increasing inflation volatility represents the greatest challenge to investors for a generation. A new regime and the collapse of the financial market status quo requires us to reimagine portfolios. No longer can we rely on yesterday’s logic.

“Inflation is the endgame. Just brace for inflation volatility first.”

This was the punchline of my 2021 Ruffer Review article.