The speculative fund “Black Swan” Universa Investments is, as its name suggests, specialized in the improbable shocks of the black swan type, these inexplicable events which come to severely disrupt the foreseeable trends of a stock exchange like the crisis of 1929, that of 1987 or even that, more recent, of subprimes.
The investment strategy of this fund is simple: assure its clients that their losses will be minimal in times of economic prosperity, but that if a sudden shock occurs in the markets, the gains can reach astronomical sums. The fund posted a return of 4,144% in the last quarter thanks to the coronavirus.
Founded by Mark Spitznagel, a graduate in mathematics from New York University. and advised by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, professor of risk engineering at New York University and author of the bestseller “Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable”, published in 2007, the Universa fund totals $ 5 billion under management.
During the financial crisis of 2007 – 2008, the fund achieved returns above 100%. In August 2015, Universa Investments made over $ 1 billion in profits in one week, which represents a 20% return since the start of the year. Universa achieved an average annual return of 105% between 2008 and 2019.
A Black Swan fund is an investment fund based on the black swan theory that seeks to take advantage of steep market declines. These new structures of the financial market acquired their letters of nobility during the subprime crisis, in 2007 and 2008.
