Nassim Taleb-Advised Universa Tail Fund Returned 3,600% in March

A tail-risk hedge fund advised by Nassim Taleb, author of “The Black Swan,” returned 3,612% in March, paying off massively for clients who invested in it as protection against a plunge in stock prices.

The fund, managed by Universa Investments of Miami, had a year-to-date return of 4,144% through the end of last month, according to an investor letter from President and Chief Investment Officer Mark Spitznagel that was obtained by Bloomberg. He said Universa was able to cash in many of its positions, locking in the gains, while also keeping in place protection against more equity sell-offs, “one of the tricks of the trade.”

“Looking ahead, the world remains very much trapped in the mother of all global financial bubbles,” Spitznagel, 49, wrote. “It’s the systemic vulnerabilities created by this unprecedented central-bank-fueled bubble, and the crazy, naive risk-taking and leverage that accompanies it, that makes this pandemic so potentially destructive to the financial markets and the economy.”

Tail-risk hedging isn’t an investment strategy in itself. Instead, Universa tells clients to think of it as catastrophe insurance that allows them to pursue returns more aggressively, without the need for more traditional approaches to risk mitigation such as diversifying assets and holding Treasuries, gold or hedge funds.

Spitznagel included a chart in his letter showing that a portfolio invested 96.7% in the S&P 500 and 3.3% in Universa’s fund would have been unscathed in March, a month in which the U.S. equity benchmark fell 12.4%. The same portfolio would have produced a compounded return of 11.5% a year since March of 2008 versus 7.9% for the index. “Anyone can make money in a crash; it’s what they do the rest of the time that matters” Spitznagel wrote. “The totality of the payoff is what creates the portfolio effect.”

Nassim Taleb-Advised Universa Tail Fund Returned 3,600% in March, Bloomberg, Apr 9