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UK multimillionaire Jonathan Ruffer admitted that his eponymous investment boutique “failed to meet its objectives” for customers for a second year in a row by delivering less than the return on cash.

Ruffer, who co-founded Ruffer Investment Management three decades ago, said in his annual review that the £20bn firm’s strategy lagged behind its cash benchmark in 2024 and 2023.

The philanthropist, who will also chair the company, said its investment strategy suffered from the belief that the US stock market would crash and that the Japanese yen would strengthen against the dollar, which Ruffer’s funds were wrong about.

The S&P 500 is up more than a fifth in 2024, while Ruffer’s flagship Total Return fund delivered 4.4 percent in the year to the end of September, compared with the UK bank rate of 5.25 percent, according to company.

“We are set up for a dislocation if the S&P is too low: that is wrong, but not the opposite – the nature of the bubble estimates is that they somehow offer subliminal validation of the trip to the moon,” said Ruffer in his annual update.

“The yen continued to decline and exporters increased. If we had put, say, 4 percent of the portfolio in these equity offsets, we could have consistently reaped strong gains. . . we didn’t do it. , because we are concerned about the risk of equities as an asset class.

“The loss of one error will not, on the one hand, save our performance in terms of cash-plus returns, but it will help a lot.”

His comments come after he received a share of the company’s £89.8 million payout for the year to the end of March 2024 – equivalent to around £2 million for each of its 44 partners – from £95 million last year. Operating profit fell 14 per cent on the year to £119mn.

Ruffer’s flagship Total Return fund aims to provide “consistently positive returns, regardless of what the financial markets are doing”. But the strategy returned a negative 3.8 percent in 2023.

The fund boutique has been bearish on equity markets, taking defensive positions in long-term, inflation linked bonds while betting against growth stocks through short positions.

But Ruffer said the company will stick to its investment stance. “We continue to fight the bull tack; Those properties we selected felt like they had good days accompanied by bad weeks.

“It is no accident that we have a portfolio that can take advantage of a systemic shock of a magnitude. Why can one say that, without arrogance? It is related to the three words of the price level in the main American equity market: the S&P at 6,000.

The investment firm last year cut about 20 pieces of paper from 330 strong headcount at the time, including private client positions and risk groups.