Every trading day, investors around the world make a little easy money by selling Spitznagel options. Until one day, maybe only every five or ten years, a black swan appears, terrorists ram jets into skyscrapers or a global pandemic freezes the global economy. Then the tables turn hard and Spitznagel makes an enormous amount of money, more than enough to make up for all those many days of small losses.  Universa’s flagship “Black Swan Protection Protocol” fund earned its near two dozen institutional investors a staggering 3,612% in March, putting its 2020 gains at 4,144%.

12 years is a long wait but 4000% returns is still very strong annualised returns!

“At the pivotal moment of crisis, [Spitznagel’s] trades, which cost almost nothing to put on during good times, can be sold at almost infinite prices. ‘Liquidity is really about the price for immediacy and we are capturing that on both sides of our trade...’”