Interview #110 : Xinyu Ru (Fawkes Capital Management)

Identifying durable trends that drive asset mispricing's

For this issue we have the pleasure of interviewing Xinyu Ru from Fawkes Capital Management.

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Hi Xinyu, thanks so much for taking the time out to do this interview.

Very happy to be here Jon, thanks.

Can you please tell readers about your background, and how you got involved in investing?

Absolutely. My interest in financial markets was sparked by reading newspapers and magazines during high school and deepened as I entered university.

Over time, this initial interest evolved into a genuine curiosity about how markets continuously adapt to global events, imperfect information, and persistent behavioral biases. I have been particularly intrigued by how these dynamics create unique opportunities to uncover hidden value and achieve exceptional investment outcomes.

Beyond financial markets, I have developed a strong interest in history, philosophy, and behavioral psychology – disciplines that I believe are often overlooked in investing but play a crucial role in shaping sound decision-making.

The lessons of the past offer invaluable insights, and some of the greatest investors in history serve as powerful sources of learning. Among them, George Soros, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Jim Rogers have had a profound influence on my own investment philosophy, shaping the way I analyze markets and approach opportunities over the years.

I studied Finance and Law at the Australian National University, and that foundation gave me a structured way to think about risk, capital allocation, and incentives. But it was my professional experience that I would say really shaped me as an investor.

I spent a decade in Westpac’s Chief Investment Office, working in both Sydney and London, where I was responsible for managing macroeconomic risks across foreign exchange, interest rates, and derivatives.

This experience afforded me the freedom and opportunity to work in a largely unconstrained environment, with exceptional individuals, where the sole objective was to prioritise capital preservation and profit maximisation. While a highly intense and stressful role, I very quickly fell in love with it.

Through this I was afforded the flexibility to develop my own personal investment philosophy, creating a process that I’ve been able to deploy consistently in identifying and capitalising on investment opportunities in global markets. It also fuelled my ambition to one day manage my own and my family's capital, leading to the creation of Fawkes Capital Management.

Why did you decide to launch Fawkes Capital Management? And what’s the strategy behind the fund?

Launching Fawkes Capital Management was the natural evolution of a long-held vision. From early in my career, I knew that one day I wanted to take full ownership of my investment decisions – to build something independent, unconstrained, and performance-driven, where success would be measured solely by the quality of our decisions and the returns we generate for investors.

Fawkes began as a private investment partnership between myself and two colleagues in 2021, originally designed as a vehicle for managing our own capital alongside that of close friends and family. We wanted to apply the same level of rigor and strategic thinking that I had developed over a decade managing macroeconomic risk at Westpac but in an environment where we had full control over our approach.

Over time, as our track record developed and interest grew, it became clear that what we were doing was unique, and we decided to open the fund to external investors.

We found that investors were attracted to the idea that we were doing something different and that by having a more unconstrained investment mandate, we were less correlated to any single asset class and had been able to demonstrate a track record of generating positive returns in market drawdowns. People were really drawn to this capital preservation element.