Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (3:03)

Well, we're definitely in an era of regime change that we've touched on before. Pax Americana is breaking down. We don't have a benign hegemon that's either able or willing to keep order in the global system the same way. And Trump is an accelerant of this transition, but the root causes run much deeper and that means they will outlast him. The net result, I think, is going to be this much more volatile and inflation prone system. Shocks are going to be a feature, not a bug. So think about the return of big government, great power, competition, weaponized interdependence. Just think about China using its rare earths gun last year and it's exposing the fact, thinking about Iran, that the whole global system runs through about half a dozen critical choke points. And now you have cheap asymmetric warfare. Think about drones. It makes it very hard to secure those places. We saw it at the Houthis and the Red Sea and now we see it with Iran and Hormuz. So hard power matters again. So does physical control of resources, obviously, including energy. And rebuilding hard power and securing those resources are trends that are gonna dominate for many years to come.

Maren Somerset (4:15)

So basically everything is geography. Can we go back a little bit? And you said that Trump is an accelerant, but he's not part of the root cause. Can we just run briefly through the root causes here?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (4:27)

Well, there are lots of things going on. One of them is that at the end of the Cold War, America was left as a unipower, effectively over the global system. So they were able to exercise their power without any material threat. Now you have a kind of global leveling up, particularly the rise of China that changes that calculus. The return of the nuclear question, and also the fact that the economic settlement of the last 30 years is not working for large parts of the populations of major Western economies. So the kind of political economy dynamics have changed, the geopolitical landscape has changed very dramatically. And all of these things would have driven a pivot in the way America approaches the world anyway. Clearly we have particular Trumpian flavor of that at the moment. But there are big structural dynamics at play and they're going to play out over a long period of time.

Maren Somerset (5:18)

Let's stick with the Middle east briefly then. How do you think that's going to play out over the next couple of months?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (5:24)

Yes, if we get our crystal balls out, of course, the answer really is who knows? But the fact that we now have an American blockade of Hormuz and the Iranians have not immediately launched retaliatory drone attacks, I think is an important signal that both are acting rationally and there is presumably some kind of deal to be done. Now, who knows when this podcast is going out and what would have happened by the time it does. Best case immediately is they're going to extend the ceasefire, kick the can for a bit. But America's still moving kit into the region. We, we could very easily have another round of fireworks. And I think the key thing from our side is that we're positioning the portfolio to protect whatever happens. So if there's a big escalation and the energy market lurches again, we're in a good place. If the benign story continues to play out, we should be making money too.

Maren Somerset (6:17)

Yeah, but the key thing I suppose to say is that it doesn't really, whether there's a deal or not, and whatever that deal is, a lot of damage. And also change is baked into the system because already, even if there were a full truce and the Strait of Hummus was open tomorrow, a, we'd still have the damage that was already done, and B, we'd have the continued strategic thinking about how else people can supply themselves with energy. So those two changes still exist regardless of an immediate peace or not?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (6:47)

Yeah, they still exist. I mean, disruption has been rippling out from the Middle east at the speed of tankers, which is about 15 miles an hour, give or take. And I think that has masked, plus all the inventories that are being drawn down, the fact that we've had this enormous disruption. We've got more than 10 million barrels a day offline for over six weeks. So there's a pretty long fuse on the disruption that's already baked in. And it slightly brings to mind, you know, that old picture of the two dinosaurs talking to each other as the massive meteorite comes across the sky in the background. And one of them is looking pretty anxious and says, what do you think it means? The other one says, I don't worry, it's all in the price. Now, of course, the flip side is the global system has consistently proven itself in recent years more resilient to shocks than expected. It was during COVID it was during the trade war. But if you had told me two months ago that Hormuz would still be shut mid April and the S and P has just hit a fresh all time high, I Freely admit I would be very surprised, but this is a

Maren Somerset (7:49)

problem that you can't print money to make go away. Right. When we talk about previous problems and previous disruptions, financial crises, et cetera, for the last couple of decades we've been able to print pretty much everything away. But this is a genuine physical supply crunch that you can't sort out like that.

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (8:07)

Yeah, it's a supply problem, not a demand problem. And the Fed can't conjure copper mines or barrels of oil out of thin air.

Maren Somerset (8:14)

So why is the market so resilient in this circumstance? Is this just general idiocy from investors or is there something else going on?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (8:20)

But I think the market's been trained to fade geopolitical shocks for decades anyway. And in recent years you've had a supercharger on that, which is the infamous taco trade. And in addition, the Trump administration, which is pretty financially savvy if you think about Mr. Besson in the treasury, have been ruthlessly exploiting that. So they've been foaming the Runway with Hopium since the first week of the war to get machines to buy. Plus you had supportive tailwinds coming into the crisis. So think rate cutting cycle had been going on for some time. You had fiscal stimulus, the AI boom has continued. Now you've got very strong earnings growth coming through. But there are also a lot of important market structure dynamics that it's worth thinking about. In particular a lot of non fundamental investment flows, I. E. Machines or strategies buying and selling for reasons other than how many barrels of oil are making it out into the economy, for example. And so markets often change more about care more, excuse me, about rate of change rather than absolute levels. So when the oil stops going up and the news gets less bad, that's a positive impulse. The net result is that the market has banked a bullish outcome already. So clearly the symmetry of near term risk is that actually things do re escalate, there are further shocks or it just gets dragged out and the stoppage through almost continues. And look out below if that's the case.

Maren Somerset (9:44)

Okay, and how do we hedge against that? I mean, that's something we've talked about a lot on this part over the last couple of years. If you can't rely on bonds to hedge your equity position and you know, used to think, oh, never mind, I'll just have some gold. But now that appears to be financialized and shifts all over the place. What can you possibly do when you look at an environment like this, when I suspect what you're saying is that you're slightly bemused by the equity market being quite this resilient. New highs in the S and P seem completely nuts right now. And so there's a lot of risk baked into that. How on earth, as a retail investor and ordinary investor, do you mitigate that?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (10:19)

Well, as you say, the failure of conventional hedges and the fact that bonds, for example, are going to be a much less reliable friend in a balanced portfolio than they have been for a generation is a key feature. We think of this era of regime change. It's more shock prone, it's more inflation prone, and that scrambles those correlations. And again in the war, in the first few weeks really through March, bonds did not work. They sold off with equities. Gold didn't work, although of course it's had an extraordinarily strong run, partly because of geopolitical tailwinds. Yen didn't work because it's an energy shock. Energy did work. And I think it's a reminder that energy, in a world where all economic activity is energy transformed, energy is a useful hedge. We've been taking profits in our Brent crude, for example, that we held the dollar has been supportive, but certainly rallied modestly. And that's really because of the energy dynamic. America being a net energy exporter and volatility has been relatively contained so far. We would say if it gets worse from here, in particular, if you get a shock scenario where the market realizes that actually there is a heart attack coming down the pipe because the oil still stops, those tail hedges, the derivatives are going to be extremely powerful. We've got lots of them. That's why things get worse from here. We're confident the portfolio is well set.

Maren Somerset (11:42)

And what about gold from here, long term?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (11:45)

I think the tailwinds for gold are still intact. We're in a world where you've got fiat currency, compromise, inflation, instability, fiscal stress, geopolitical angst, all of these things and more are driving a desire for more neutral effects and reserve assets. But what you've seen recently is that after central bank buying really drove gold post Ukraine war initiation, lots of momentum players got into the price. And that's why you've had some pretty big corrections recently. So don't discount a lot more volatility. I think the structural tailwinds are very good. Final thought, A lot of people, if you think about currencies buying gold, they buy it because they want a rainy day potential. And Turkey, for example, has been liquidating a lot of gold recently to defend its currency against the energy shock. So you are going to see from time to time people cashing in their insurance policy. It doesn't mean that over the long run the tailwinds aren't still good as fiat currency goes down the U bend.

Maren Somerset (12:45)

Yeah. So would you expect other central banks to keep buying and they've been the backstop for a while now?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (12:51)

Yes, I expect that central bank buying will continue and in particular, it's hard to imagine the Chinese coming away from the current setup in the Middle east and concluding that they should have more dollars and less gold in the mix going forward.

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Maren Somerset (15:22)

Let's talk then about other Political shocks that we might see. And we're obviously in a very, very volatile environment. And so far we've just talked about what might or might not happen in the Middle East. But a lot of the guests that we've had on the podcast recently talk about the pattern that they see in Trump's behavior moving from Venezuela to Iran and how that impacts on the Chinese in particular. And then what might happen next? What do you think he'll be looking at next? And how does China fit into that?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (15:53)

Yeah. So on, what's Trump going to do next? More policy volatility, I think we can say that's pretty nailed on. His window of maximum latitude for policy flexibility is closing pretty quick as the midterms approach the end of this year. My guess is the narrative he wants is he dealt with quotes, dealt with Venezuela at the start of the year, then he'll be trying to move on from Iran, try being the operative word, potentially. And then Cuba, I think, is next. And I also think he'll go back to Greenland at some point. We've described the Trump dynamic ahead of the midterms as a sort of bread and circuses dynamic. So it's very difficult, given the cost of living is killing political prospects for incumbents right across the Western world. It's very difficult for him to do anything about that. And indeed, the war in Iran's made that worse because energy is feeding through into inflation that will crimp real wages. So you're going to see lots more distraction techniques, probably attempts to bribe the electorates, maybe even price controls, restart the Fed spat, all sorts of things. But policy volatility, I think, is the watchword, really.

Maren Somerset (17:05)

Okay. And internationally?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (17:08)

Well, America's been playing for detente with China since Mr. Xi fired the rare earth gun. You know, thinking again about those structural dynamics of the regime change era we're in, that weaponized interdependence gives opponents huge leverage over each other. And so that has driven this detente period in the trade war. We've now got the first Trump Xi meeting of the year pushed back to mid May. And Beijing must be delighted that Washington is busy alienating many of its traditional allies. You know, if you think about something like Taiwan, in some respects, this would be the perfect time, wouldn't it? You have Beijing, with its probably maximum supply chain leverage. It'll take years to wean the west off even some of their strategic dependence on China. The current White House is clearly very unlikely to choose to fight a major war with China over Ukraine. US Missile inventories have been reduced by both what's going on in Europe vis a vis Ukraine and also Taiwan. The alliance is afraid, as I mentioned. So were it not for the fact that the PLA leadership is in a kind of perma purge state, I'd be a bit more worried. But I think if you look at the kind of KMT chair visit to China just now, the fact that China clearly expects to be able to extract concessions from America in the discussions this year, I think they're going to just continue their pressure campaign for now. And of course tactically thinking about Iran, if China comes in over the top and puts more pressure on Iran to do a deal, that's one way the off ramp gets sealed.

Maren Somerset (18:42)

That seems quite a likely one, doesn't it?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (18:46)

Yeah, potentially. I mean Beijing I think is feeling like it's in quite a good position coming out of this. And I think that's possibly an interesting angle for the equity market because when people start thinking about who are the winners and losers coming out of this, China might be a winner.

Maren Somerset (19:02)

Okay, so let's look then at the markets that it might be worth looking to invest in. You sound concerned about the US market. Where do we feel positive? Some are coming into the market now thinking, well, I've been a bit nervous what with everything that's going on. I've got quite a lot of cash. What should I be doing?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (19:22)

Well, I can give you a flavor of what we've been doing during the recent volatility I mentioned. We've been taking some profits in oil. We have actually been buying some bonds in different flavors. We think in this era where the stock bond correlation is much more unstable, you're going to have to be a lot more active. But we did get some pretty big dislocations in front end rates for example. Suddenly the market flipped from implying rate cuts in places like the UK this year to lots of rate hikes. We thought that was pretty unlikely. So we bought a load of short dated UK bonds on the sell off. We bought some 10 year US tips. So those are inflation protected bonds in America offering a pretty decent real yield. We've been nibbling at very long dated Japanese bonds that are attractive on a global basis. Been buying some beaten up software names. There's going to be a lot of damage in some of the more exposed areas, but lots of babies have been thrown out of the bathwater. We've been buying some China tech, which I mentioned a moment ago might be an interesting winner, particularly if the market pivots back to thinking about that tech stack and obviously we've been trading our derivatives a bit in terms of the stuff that we don't own but are interested in. We could talk about a few of those ideas as well, if you're interested.

Maren Somerset (20:31)

Definitely.

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (20:33)

I think if you think about the way the global system is unfolding, American focus on the Western hemisphere was a big part of all their literature in the national security complex over the last 12 months. Latam has loads of natural resources, including energy, metals and soft commodities. It's got more favorable demography. It's geopolitically relatively insulated, apart from, of course, from the predations of America. So that's an interesting area we're thinking more about. We don't have exposure at the moment, but it is of interest. Commodities in general are going to be more interesting in a world where nominal GDP is much more rich. Remember that our core view really is there's so much debt in the world that the authorities are going to run the system hot wherever possible to inflate nominal GDP and burn off the real value of debt. We've been nibbling a little bit at some of the left behind mag 7. Everyone's super gloomy on compute and AI and it may well be right that we're in a massive overbuild, but they could also be surprised about better than expected revenues from what is now quite scarce compute. We're interested in automation and robotics in particular. And I think one really interesting emergent theme is the repurposing of legacy industrial capacity for new growth industries. And so what I mean specifically is stuff like carmakers pivoting into defense and robotics areas. And that could be a way that you see a very old legacy industry take on a much more interesting growth tenor. So loads of interesting opportunities out there and lots of things we're thinking about.

Maren Somerset (22:09)

Yeah, that last theme, the repurposing of manufacturing, that sounds like more of an American theme than a European theme.

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (22:15)

Well, you've seen in Germany a deal between one of the big legacy OEMs and an Israeli defense manufacturer to save a couple of thousand jobs. So I think it's something you'll see more broadly. In South Korea, you saw Hyundai with its Boston Dynamics robotics subdivision. They're doing something similar. So I think it's probably a broader story. But going back to the kind of core structural theme, we're in a world where stuff matters. Again, matter matters. Industrial capacity really matters. So heavy businesses that can actually build stuff and can eke out more earnings in a world of more nominal gdp, we think are interesting.

Maren Somerset (22:56)

Yeah, let's look at the UK briefly. You mentioned earlier when we were talking about the big changes, you were saying one of the things we have to get used to is big government, the return of big government. And it's hard to look at a country like the uk, and indeed any country in Europe, and say that the there's going to be a return of big government, because government has never been this big.

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (23:15)

Yeah. In terms of spend, that's absolutely true. The trouble is, the government's big in all the wrong places. And in this country's case, you know, the defence investment plan, infamously delayed from last year is still nowhere to be seen. And that's basically because the political economy of the current government means that cutting welfare or net zero in exchange for more defense investment is extremely difficult. So I expect them to continue kicking the can. But really what we're talking about is much more activist states. So industrial policy, state capitalism, buying stakes in critical resources, businesses. You've seen America doing that already in the rare earth space and other critical minerals to boot. So more activist leviathans are here to stay. At some point, there will have to be a trade off between welfare and security in different countries. We're at different stages in that journey and unfortunately, in the uk, I think we're somewhere off the necessary decisions being made.

Maren Somerset (24:22)

It's interesting, isn't it, because with everything that's going on geopolitically, you would have thought that the penny would be beginning to drop, that without adequate defence, welfare

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (24:30)

is meaningless, the first business of any government is national security and everything else is secondary. But as you say, the memo has not yet reached the necessary part of Whitehall

Maren Somerset (24:42)

price controls. You mentioned a possible Trump policy in the us and one of the things that we find in the UK is that in many ways there are price controls embedded into our system across the board. And interestingly, one of the things that the S and P have just put in their latest manifesto for the upcoming Scottish elections is actual price controls on essential foods. So that's rather what we mean by the extension of government isn't not just activism into into manufacturing areas and critical industries, but also this combination of financial repression that is attempting to inflate the debt away, but also trying to compensate for financial repression by putting price controls on all sorts of things. It's a mess. It's a mess.

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (25:27)

It's a terrible mess. Look, what we're really talking about here is again, the electoral kryptonite for politicians is inflation. Trump now owns the price level shock in America and politicians everywhere are marching to its tune with massive subsidies, socialized risk basically for energy shocks left, right and center. And of course the measures that are often popular to address them, politically speaking, tend to make the problems worse. And price controls are a classic example of it. Think about rent controls, food price controls you just mentioned, same for fuel prices. And I think that if you look at what's happening in America now with the recent election in New York, people are going to vote in politicians promising more handouts. That's the ratchet we're in to address these cost of living issues and they're likely unfortunately to make them worse. I think that's a really important long term threat to the market is the changing political economy. That could ultimately mean higher corporate tax rates. We've already talked about much more intrusive government, but it all revolves around the same thing, affordability, inflation, political economy changes against this backdrop of a more shock prone system that demands, electorally speaking, socialization of risk.

Maren Somerset (26:42)

Under those circumstances, how does the UK market look to you? We have all the risks that we've just discussed embedded here. We have a government that look, looks like it's going to be increasingly left leaning and of course we have some of the most expensive, actually the most expensive electricity in the developed world. When you look at all those factors and then you look at the UK market which has been having a little bit of a resurgence. Any interest in it?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (27:04)

Lots of interest in dear old Blighty. On a fundamentals basis, there's a pretty good story to tell about the uk. If the government was prepared to get out of the way, which at the moment it should be said, it doesn't appear to be willing to. And the story is pretty simple. Households have de geared, excuse me, paid off debt over a long period of time since the great financial crisis. Rates were being cut from levels not seen for more than 15 years and that tends to encourage more borrowing and that could get a private sector credit cycle going. And if that happened it would be magic for a lot of the UK assets. That's one of the things we've been taking out exposure to in the portfolio in UK equities, a big part of our, of our equity book. Of course there's a big question mark there about political stability. We've got the local elections coming up, we've got left with drift in government policy. So those are all known knowns, but that's the reason you get good value in the UK versus other places.

Maren Somerset (28:01)

Yeah, hopefully good value. Those things go horribly wrong and then it doesn't look like value at all anymore. There are risks that we haven't talked about embedded in markets, aren't there? I mean, private credit, for example, and the private equity connection to private credit and the AI connection to private equ equity via private credit, et cetera. That whole list of risks is something to worry about or not.

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (28:22)

You know, there are always things to be worried about in the market and there are always things to be optimistic about. The way we build portfolios means that we tend to survey the market for what we think the biggest risks are. We build the protections in advance and then we put a load of growth assets around that to try and ensure that we can make money in any market environment. And the big things that we're thinking about at the moment. Other, of course, and underappreciated tail risks from the war which remained considerable, that could kick off another wave of inflation. Think about the template from the 40s and 50s or the 70s. You've still got glowing embers of inflation from the COVID era experience and the system is now much better at passing on price rises quickly. Of course, there are all sorts of tail risks from AI as well as the oldest productivity bull case on the upside. What am I thinking of? You probably saw the headlines recently about the new Mythos engine, which had found all sorts of unpatched vulnerabilities in lots of most popular operating systems. I would guess one of the most underappreciated risks out there is something to do with AI and cyber security. So of course that's something to be prepared for.

Maren Somerset (29:32)

Although we're never really sure. We talk about this quite a lot. We're never sure whether when these big AI stories come out, whether they're just propaganda. Look what AI can do. It's so amazing. Give us more money or how real it really is.

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (29:45)

Yeah, there's definitely some propaganda, isn't there? Because of course we've got some massive IPOs coming up this year and so it's in everyone's interest involved in that ecosystem to pump the story as much as possible to justify the valuation and get maximum market cap out of it. But it doesn't mean there isn't also something important there in terms of tails. We all know about what's going in private markets, lots of other Geopol stuff, and we've just spoken about the risk of more left leaning governments, in fact, big government in general. But I think the thing from our point of view is we're never trying to pick a particular risk, we're never trying to nail the timing of Anything, Quite the opposite. We're trying to make sure the portfolio's got protections so that whichever of that smorgasbord or indeed anything else crops up and upsets the market, the portfolio will be fine.

Maren Somerset (30:31)

Alex, one thing we haven't talked about is the dollar. Where do you stand there?

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (30:35)

Well, I think the short term lift has been delivered by the positive terms of trade shock as a result of the energy surge. All other major economies other than America are net energy importers. America of course is an energy exporter as we mentioned earlier. But the base case for medium term from our side is that the dollar will go down. And that's really simply because the traditional providers of savings to the global economy, so things like East Asia, Germany, the Gulf, of course they're going to have to keep more of their savings at home to pay for things that we mentioned at the top, like greater resilience, more infrastructure rebuilding. In the case of the Gulf rearmament, you name it, it's there. And if you run massive twin deficits as America does as trade deficit and there's a government spending deficit, you need to sell a lot of financial assets to plug the difference. And if there's less fresh new money coming in from those traditional providers of savings to the system who would basically buy US assets and run overweights in America, that should bring down the value of the dollar. You don't actually need to believe that a single dollar of value in America at the moment will be taken out. It's just less fresh net new money going in would take it down. Now that's a medium term view. Tactically, I'd watch three things. Number one is rate differentials. Obviously that's pretty important. Number two, if the energy shock continues and remember the fat tails from here on what happens in Iran, that's relatively Good news for U.S. terms of trade and that could support it. And the third one is US equity performance relative to the rest of the world. So if US stocks start outperforming again, that is helpful for the dollar. So medium term we think it'll go down, but in general fiat currency is unlikely to be a great place to be. This is a world for real assets and lots of those new growth opportunities I mentioned earlier.

Maren Somerset (32:28)

Brilliant. Alex, thank you so much for joining us today. Hugely appreciate it.

Alexander Chartered, Fund Manager at Ruffa Investment Company (32:31)

Great pleasure. Thank you so much. Marin,

Maren Somerset (32:36)

thanks for listening to this week's Marion Talks Money. If you like our show, Rate review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and keep sending questions or comments to merriamoneyloomburg.net you can also follow me and John on Twitter or x. I'm Ariannasw and John is jonstapek. This episode was hosted by me, Marin Sumzet Web it was produced by Sama Saadi and Moses Andam Sound designed by Blake Maples and special thanks of course to Alex.

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