Terry Smith is not giving in to panic. As investment managers are convulsed by the coronavirus market sell-off, Britain’s most popular stockpicker is remarkably sanguine — and even bullish.
The veteran investor, known for his love of boxing and combative style, professes to be “not worried one iota” about a sustained recession caused by the pandemic lockdown.
“It takes a lot to impress me,” says Mr Smith, who manages the UK’s largest investment fund from his bolt-hole in Mauritius. The former stockbroker, who worked in the City of London for four decades before relocating to the Indian Ocean idyll, says that precipitous drops in markets needed to be viewed relative to previous crises, such as Black Monday, the 1990 oil shock, the dotcom crash and the 2008 credit crisis.