Brexiteer hedge fund tycoon Crispin Odey has made £115million from this month’s stock market crash – and now he’s betting on a recovery.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Mr Odey revealed his bets on plunging share prices had netted him a fortune over the past three weeks.

The investor – who is a friend of Boris Johnson and donated to the campaign to leave the European Union – said his flagship hedge fund was 12 per cent down for the year at the end of February.

Optimist: Crispin Odey says markets will rebound. In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, he revealed his bets on plunging share prices had netted him a fortune over the past three weeks

But huge falls in share prices since then have left him 20 per cent up for 2020, adding an extra £115million to the funds he manages.

Mr Odey now thinks share prices are bottoming out and could rise soon.

‘The stock market has to rally because a recession has now been priced in,’ he said. ‘I’m buying some shares now. It’s a good time to be stock-picking.’

Mr Odey – thought to be worth about £775 million – hit the headlines in 2012 after spending £150,000 on a Palladianstyle coop for his chickens at his mansion in Gloucestershire.

Traders, some in medical masks, work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on March 20. Trading on the floor will temporarily become fully electronic starting Monday (file photo)

He has been predicting a market downturn since 2015 and suffered several years of poor returns as shares soared.

But coronavirus has caused stock markets to slump, boosting socalled short-sellers such as Mr Odey, who profit from falling share prices. He made his fortune in the financial crisis a decade ago, betting against the shares of failing banks.

Mr Odey, who has recently benefited from falls in firms such as Fevertree and Metro Bank, said: ‘The big difference between now and 2008 is the machines (used by traders to sell automatically when the market dips).

'The machines just never stop selling when the market falls. That’s why you are seeing such big moves down.’

See Financial Mail, Page 103, for the full Crispin Odey interview