I wonder how many people would drive sports cars if nobody watched them.

For the weak, envy (professional, financial, etc.) is the root cause of unhappiness. As it is impossible to transform it into indifference the only cure is to turn it into admiration.

In July Universa intends to tap the financial adviser market by offering its own black swan ETF. The fund will mimic some of the strategies employed by its institutional-only hedge fund and will have an expense ratio of 1.5%.

Will Universa be able to repeat its outsize returns in another crash? Clifford Davis, head of equity derivatives at BNP Paribas
(
BNPQY.PK –

news
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people
), is skeptical. “A true black swan event is by definition different from all previous crises, and markets don’t react in the same way.”

Spitznagel is unruffled as he sits in his office listening to classical music and losing money each day. He is ready and waiting for the next black swan to arrive.

On roughly 95 trades out of 100 they lose money… Spitznagel is unruffled as he sits in his office listening to classical music and losing money each day. He is ready and waiting for the next black swan to arrive. 

Spitznagel is pretty young to be so pessimistic; only about 40. So he might have gotten that way from Nassim Taleb, the author of “The Black Swan.” Spitznagel was Taleb’s right hand man at Empirica, another doom-scenario fund. Taleb is now principal and senior scientific adviser at Universa (he shut Empirica after getting seriously ill).