Mark Spitznagel

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Mark Spitznagel
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Spitznagel at Bloomberg Tower in New York City, 2016
Born Mark William Spitz-Nagel[1]
(1971-03-05) March 5, 1971 (age 53)
Ann Arbor, Michigan[2]
Residence Michigan, Florida (Miami)
Nationality American
Occupation Hedge Fund Manager
(Founder & Chief Investment Officer, Universa Investments L.P.)
Known for Derivatives trading, tail-hedging
Political party Libertarian Republican
Spouse(s) Amy Spitznagel
Academic career
School or tradition
 Austrian School of Economics
Alma mater New York University,[2] Georgetown University,[3] Kalamazoo College[4]
Influences Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Mahatma Gandhi
Contributions “Roundabout investing”, The Dao of Capital (Wiley 2013)

Mark Spitznagel (born March 5, 1971) is an American hedge fund manager, derivatives and commodities trader, author, and sustainable farmer. Spitznagel is known for his pioneering “tail-hedging” and frequently bearish “Austrian”-based stock and commodities trading, his hugely profitable billion dollar derivatives bet on the stock market crash of 2008,[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] and for having allegedly caused the stock market crash of 2010.[13]

Spitznagel “gained credibility in the investment world by predicting two market routs in the past decade, first in 2000 and then in 2008,”[14] as well as predicting the “2000s commodities boom.”[5] He is considered “one of Wall Street’s most bearish”[15] as well as “biggest and boldest investors.”[16]

Spitznagel is the founder, owner, and Chief Investment Officer of the multibillion-dollar hedge fund management company Universa Investments, L.P., based in Miami, Florida.[4][5][7][8][10][17][18][19][20][21] Spitznagel reportedly has large Chinese and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds among his investment partners,[22] and he has since closed his funds to new investors.[5] Prior to becoming a hedge fund manager, Spitznagel had been an independent pit-trader at the Chicago Board of Trade[4][5][7][8][10][18] and the head of equity options in a secretive proprietary trading division (called the Process Driven Trading group) of Morgan Stanley in New York[4][8] (until they requested that he sign a stringent “noncompete” agreement[5]). Spitznagel has a graduate degree in Mathematics from New York University (Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences) and undergraduate from Kalamazoo College in Michigan.[2][4]

Spitznagel built a large farm in Michigan, Idyll Farms, that pastures dairy goats and produces award-winning artisanal chèvre. He is the author of the 2013 book The Dao of Capital, called by Forbes magazine “one of the most important books of the year, or any year for that matter.”[23]

Spitznagel has been a significant supporter of the Republican Presidential campaigns of U.S. Congressman Ron Paul and U.S. Senator Rand Paul—including as Senior Economic Advisor.[24][25]

Universa Investments

In 2007, Spitznagel founded the hedge fund Universa Investments, where he is the Chief Investment Officer. Universa “made one of the biggest profits on Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis” (according to CNBC),[26] scoring returns of over 100% as the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index lost over a third of its value,[5][7][8][10][19][20][27][28] and making Spitznagel “a fortune” according to The Wall Street Journal.[5]

Spitznagel has said that he specifically targets very “lumpy returns” in his trading (what Forbes has called “a string of mediocre results interrupted occasionally by spectacular years”[29]) which he says “ultimately keep away competitors.”[8] As Spitznagel describes the “asymmetric returns” of his approach:

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We tend to lose or draw—most of the time—these small battles or skirmishes. But, ultimately, we win the wars.[30]

Tail-hedging

Some have called Spitznagel’s so-called “tail-hedging” strategy “doomsday” investing,[31] for which, according to Forbes, he has many “copycat” followers.[32] Spitznagel is presumed to employ positions such as out-of-the-money puts on overvalued equities[5][7][9][10] (for example, Lehman Brothers,[33] about which he has responded “It’s a regrettable aspect of our trade that we tend to do very well on others’ misfortune”[34]), which he regards as primarily a value-driven bullish play on cheapened markets, providing dry powder specifically when asset prices are depressed[9] (making him “the inverse Warren Buffett”[35][36] and linking him to the value investing philosophy).

Spitznagel calls himself “a hedge fund manager that actually hedges for his clients. This is something of an old fashioned idea in this day of just gambling on the next Fed bailout.” The New York Times has described Universa investors’ ability to profit even in a bull market driven higher by central bank interventions, and how Spitznagel’s strategy allows his investors to hold long stock positions that they often otherwise wouldn’t.[15] He has said that his strategy specifically allows his investors to be “responsibly long” the stock market.[37] A 2015 video (“Spitznagel on the Paradox of Higher Returns with Lower Risk”) shows Spitznagel in front of a white board explaining his tail-hedge strategy in basic terms, specifically how the “asymmetry” of his payoff allows his investors do well “in both up and down markets.”

“Spitznagel’s strategy stems from his skepticism toward government efforts to revive the economy,” and as markets rise he is “content with descriptions that his fund had small losses each year as he wagered against the market.”[15]

For profiting off market crashes, “I’m always in this position where I look like the jerk,” Spitznagel has said. “The jerks should be Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan,” because of Federal Reserve actions that create asset bubbles, or for the ways in which the Fed intervenes to stave off the inevitable consequences of those bubbles.[1] (He has called central banks “the root of all evil in the market.”[38]) According to Spitznagel, he has basically been investing against the Federal Reserve and its monetary policies his entire career.[39]

In 1999, Spitznagel and author and financial mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb together created the first ever tail-hedging fund, Empirica Capital,[9][40][41][42] and “became close partners, Spitznagel the disciplined trader, Taleb the more abstract theorist.”[1] Taleb went on to popularize the “black swan” concept in his books, whereas Spitznagel went on to found Universa and thus modify and implement the strategy (which became a major hedge fund investment asset class[9][31]).

Taleb has said that he “advises Universa but does not have specific knowledge of the firm's strategy,”[43] contrary to occasional press crediting him with Universa’s investing.[44] Taleb has said “One thing Mark taught me was that when someone isn't afraid of losing small amounts, they’re almost invincible.”[5] “Mark’s portfolio is robust.”[9]

The Wall Street Journal alleged that a large purchase of put options by Spitznagel in the minutes leading up to the 2010 Flash Crash (when the Dow lost over 9% of its value during the day) was among its primary triggers[13][45] (and for which Spitznagel was subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission[8]). He wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in his defense.[46]

Spitznagel has publicly made several (“Cassandra-like”[38]) market calls. In June 2011, CNBC reported on a research piece by Spitznagel which predicted a 20% correction in the S&P 500 stock index.[47] The S&P 500 subsequently lost 20% within four months (as Spitznagel’s funds reaped from 20% to up to 10-fold gains[6][48]). In a May 2015 Bloomberg TV interview (“Meet the World’s Most Bearish Investment Manager”), timed almost to the day of the all-time high in the S&P 500 (as of March 2016) and three months before he made $1 billion (or 20%) in the August 2015 stock market decline,[49] Spitznagel called himself “the most bearish investment manager that you will find today. There may be someone hiding in their basement who’s more bearish.” (Bloomberg called him “the world’s most bearish investor”.) He also called the stock market the second greatest stock market bubble in the last one-hundred years.[37] The following September, he said “If August was scary to people, they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”[30] In a December 22, 2015 piece for Pensions & Investments magazine (“Revisiting the ticking time bomb”), Spitznagel wrote: “The crash should commence right about now.”[50] According to Absolute Return, this was “a rare instance of Spitznagel issuing a market timing call. That call has proven prophetic: the S&P 500 shed more than $1 trillion in market cap during the first week of 2016.”[51] (Regarding timing a crash, Spitznagel said in 2013, “I think it's probably naive to think we can pinpoint such a thing. If history is any guide, we should expect it sooner than later. But, history need not be a good guide because we're in this monetary experiment the likes of which we really haven't seen.”[26])

Ironically,[52] Spitznagel is largely indifferent to the concept of “black swan events” (a term popularized by Taleb). In a 2015 New York Times op-ed titled “The Myth of Black Swan Market Events”, he connected every similar high point in the Tobin's Q-ratio since 1900 (specifically in 1905, 1929, 1936, 1968, 2000, and 2007) with past monetary interventionism and subsequent stock market losses (of -19%, -85%, -36%, -29%, -44%, and -50%, respectively), which he called “perfectly predictable, by economic logic alone”—and thus implied that another crash is coming.[53] As Spitznagel wrote in The Dao of Capital:

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Truly, the real black swan problem of stock market busts is not about a remote event that is considered unforeseeable; rather it is about a foreseeable event that is considered remote. The vast majority of market participants fail to expect what should be, in reality, perfectly expected events.[3]:244

Commodities trading

In July 2009, Spitznagel launched a new strategy betting specifically on “a big leap in prices of commodities such as corn, crude oil,” and precious metals—a notably “huge wager,” according to The Wall Street Journal, where Spitznagel “bet his reputation.”[5] Over the next two years, the prices of corn, crude oil, gold, and silver gained approximately 100%, 50%, 100%, and 200%, respectively, in what has come to be known as the “2000s commodities boom.”

Spitznagel has strong Austrian views against fiat money, saying “As dollars are clearly a decaying asset, there’s sound economic logic behind gold’s long-term appreciation.” However, regarding the run up in gold prices and his gold trading, Spitznagel has said, “How many people acquire gold only after it goes up, and dump it when it doesn’t? I’d recommend the opposite strategy.”[54] By November 2013, he even called the market valuation of the cryptocurrency bitcoin “scary” and “dangerous”[55] (and bitcoin subsequently lost almost 80% of its value in just over a year).

Spitznagel began his trading career right after college as a fledgling pit trader in the commodity futures pits at the Chicago Board of Trade.[5][7] He described his time as a young trading clerk idolizing trader Lucian Thomas Baldwin, studying his “disciplined control in alternating between tremendous patience and overwhelming aggression.”[3]:16 As the youngest trader in the bond pit at twenty-two,[1] Spitznagel was mentored by 50-year veteran corn and soybean trader Everett Klipp (a.k.a. the “Babe Ruth of the Chicago Board of Trade”),[2][5][7][56][57] who had Spitznagel “pretty much brainwashed by the age of 16” to “limit losses by having him immediately exit trades as soon as they moved against him.” Klipp likened it to “quickly folding a hand” in poker,[5] and his mantra was “you’ve got to love to lose money, hate to make money.”[8]

As Spitznagel recalled the end of a trading day in the pit:

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Even if I’d lost money, I would be happy going home knowing that I’d traded the way I wanted to trade.[1]

Roundabout investing

In Spitznagel’s book The Dao of Capital he coins his investing approach as “roundabout investing” or “Umweg”, named after the Austrian School of economics concept of Produktionsumweg. (He also refers to it as “Austrian investing”, as the theories inform his notorious very concentrated bearish bets[58][59][60] in his so-called “tail-hedging” funds.[5][7][8][10][13][19][20][27][28]) Paul Tudor Jones has said of Spitznagel’s book that “Mark champions the roundabout,” and “shows how a seemingly difficult immediate loss becomes an advantageous intermediate step for greater future gain, and thus why we must become ‘patient now and strategically impatient later.’”[3] Spitznagel likens his process to “life’s roundabout road to success, as opposed to the direct. The direct way is easy but ultimately unrewarding. The roundabout, indirect way takes longer but leads to a better strategic advantage.”[61] Spitznagel’s roundabout is basically about delaying gratification and taking small setbacks now to gain enormous positional advantage later[62]—“the art of taking a circuitous path to an endpoint.”[14] His examples range from forest ecology, baseball, go and other games (the future equity bluff losses in poker “are a means to eventual big pots when the advantage is greatest”[3]:137) to the military strategies of Sunzi and Clausewitz.

Spitznagel describes the difficulty in being roundabout in the words of Frédéric Bastiat: “we pursue a small present good which will be followed by a great evil to come, rather than a great good to come at the risk of a small present evil.”[42] (We do what “feels the best in the short run. [quoting Dylan] ‘Let me forget about today until tomorrow,’ that kind of thing.”[63]) Spitznagel calls Henry Hazlitt’s book Economics in One Lesson (an expansion on Bastiat’s 1850 essay Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas) central to his development, and wrote “if I am able to get my children to read only one economics text in their lifetime, God forbid, it would be Hazlitt’s.”[3]:19 According to his research, the Cranbrook Kingswood school (where he sends his children[1]—and known as an “elite prep school”[64] with Mitt Romney among its notable alumni) is alone among “virtually all the top preparatory schools in the United States” in using Hazlitt’s or any other “Austrian-friendly text” in its curriculum.[3]:19

In his book, Spitznagel reveres Henry Ford, “the quintessential roundabout entrepreneur,” for his patience in reinvesting capital and his disdain for “shortsighted finance” and the “side show” of the stock market.

In his writings, Spitznagel has extolled the views of Ludwig von Mises, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, and Frédéric Bastiat,[65][66][67] and criticized the interventionism of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke[46][68] (calling him “easily the most significant market manipulator in history”[69]) and U.S. President Barack Obama.[67] Specifically, in his Wall Street Journal article “Christmas Trees and the Logic of Growth”, and subsequently in The Dao of Capital, Spitznagel made an analogy of the lessons learned from previous wildfire suppression policy in Yellowstone Park (what he calls the “Yellowstone Effect”) to the Fed’s bailout and crash-suppression policies (and resulting malinvestment).[68] In a conversation in National Review he said:

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A crash, or the liquidation of assets that have grown unimpeded by economic reality (as if there were more nutrients in the ecosystem than there actually are), looks to academics and bureaucrats—and just about everyone else as well—like the system breaking down. It is actually the system fixing itself. We live in an economic age where we’ve simply lost our ability to look at the world in this way, though I suspect we’ll be reminded of it again sooner rather than later.[42]

He has also blamed the Fed for increasing wealth disparity, drawing on the works of Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek,[70] and his Austrian positions have made him a target of notable Nobel and Keynesian economist Paul Krugman.[71]

Spitznagel calls the game of poker his “favorite investing metaphor.” He describes his investing as “getting the best of it,” whereby “the pot odds—the payoff, or the size of the pot relative to the price of calling—are very favorable compared to the hand odds—the likelihood of making the best hand.”[50] In a New York Times article “Bernanke Ups the Ante”, Spitznagel compared the tight and loose strategies in poker to value and momentum investing, respectively, and high ante poker games to investing during artificially low interest rate environments (where, in both cases, “a game of profound skill is distorted into a degenerate game of luck”).[72] In a Bloomberg TV interview (“Has the Market Crash Only Just Begun?”) where he discussed the “incredibly binary choices” investors had to make between “betting on Keynesianism” and “betting on price discovery,” Spitznagel said:

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It’s like in poker, when you know that you’ve either got the best hand or you’ve got the worst hand. This is an area where errors are made, and you want to avoid this area. But this is where we are as investors today, and it’s unavoidable.[63]

Personal

According to Malcolm Gladwell (in a New Yorker article and in his book What the Dog Saw), “Spitznagel is blond and from the Midwest and does yoga. He exudes a certain laconic levelheadedness.”[40][41] Nassim Taleb likened Spitznagel to Herbert von Karajan in sartorial appearance[40][41] (as well as in their penchant for planes, automobiles, and ashtanga yoga[38]) and said Spitznagel invests “like a German engineer, fearless and with an iron discipline.”[1] (Spitznagel’s paternal ancestry is Swiss,[73] and his surname means “sharp nail” in German.[74]) Forbes described the “unruffled,” loafered Spitznagel as looking “better prepared for a yacht race than for doomsday.”[75]

As Richard Bradley wrote (in Worth magazine): “You wouldn’t call Spitznagel warm and fuzzy; he’s not the kind of guy who’ll greet you with a bear hug and a slap on the back. But he’s funny in a dry, understated way, thoughtful and candid. Asked a question, he’s more interested in delivering a genuine answer than one intended to reflect well upon him.[1]

“Spitznagel is unusual not just because of how he invests, but how he lives—far from the typical hedge fund milieu of Wall Street and Greenwich.”[1] “Spitznagel splits his time between Miami, where his 20th-floor office overlooks the Atlantic, and Michigan, where his family lives and where he owns a farm”[38] (Idyll Farms) and century-old Lake Michigan summer compound in Northport[7][9][31][76] and a much-publicized estate[77][78][79] (called Woodland) in Bloomfield Hills. (In 2014, Spitznagel moved his hedge fund Universa from Los Angeles to Miami, citing Florida’s “more hospitable business and tax environment” than California’s.[21] He accordingly sold his notable Bel Air mansion that he acquired in 2009 from Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony.[80][81])

Bloomberg has said “Spitznagel does almost everything with zeal and intensity,” and described him honing his investing discipline by dodging oncoming taxicabs while skateboarding in New York City’s Central Park (once resulting in a separated shoulder), snowboarding and piloting engineless sailplanes over California’s Sierra Nevada.[7] (Spitznagel is also an instrument-rated pilot.[9]) It reported in 2011 that Spitznagel seeded his family office (Idyll Holdings) with $100 million.[7]

Spitznagel has said that over the years he has gained much investment insight from studying “the holy game of poker.”[72]

In Spitznagel’s youth, his father (Lynn Edward Spitz-Nagel, a UCC minister, “civil rights advocate and antiwar activist” who died in 1999) would stack books by Mahatma Gandhi outside his bedroom door, hoping the young Republican would read them.[1] (Gandhi later became Spitznagel’s declared “hero”.[82]) In 2014, Spitznagel’s older brother (Eric) wrote a humorous article in The New York Times Magazine (“The Moat, the Millions and the $50 Timex Watch”) about Mark and the death of their father.[83]

When once asked how to become a great investor, Spitznagel responded:

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The most valuable things you’ll need to learn to be good at investing are patience, resilience, and self-discipline. You aren’t just going to learn these in school. My best financial advice: practice yoga.[84]

Idyll Farms and sustainable farming

File:IdyllFarmsView.jpg
Idyll Farms complex in Northport, Michigan

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Main article: Idyll Farms

Spitznagel built, owns, and operates Idyll Farms, a pasture-based goat farm and creamery that produces award-winning artisanal farmstead chèvre. (The word Idyll is “a song describing pastoral life,” as well as a reference to Siegfried Idyll.[1]) Idyll Farms cheeses received three awards at the World Championship Cheese Contest (including Best of Class) in 2016, multiple and repeat awards—which included the broad all milk cheese category—at the American Cheese Society North American Competition in 2013 and 2014 (the farm's first two years of production),[85] as well as a “Best Artisanal Cheese” from Food & Wine magazine in 2016.[86]

In starting his farm in 2010, Spitznagel has said he wanted to “capture the terroir” of his native region,[87] as well as “feel engaged with something real, something tangible, and he wanted his kids to have that connection too.”[1] In discussing his life as both financier and farmer, Spitznagel has said “What’s going on in the financial world really shouldn’t matter that much. It’s the tail wagging the dog. What matters is making things, making real things, tangible things people can use.”[88]

Nassim Taleb has quipped that Spitznagel farms in order to satisfy his desire to be “a Victorian country gentleman”.[1]

Spitznagel imported French experts to help establish and refine his goat farming and cheese making operations.[88] (Spitznagel has been called “The Goat Whisperer” due to his habit of speaking to his goats in French.[1])

The 200-acre farm estate is located at the site of a 150-year-old dairy farm in his hometown of Northport—a town “perched on the edge of Lake Michigan, it has a peaceful beauty that hasn’t changed much in the decades since he lived there.” The farm is “a beautiful piece of land, with patches of forest, lots of open pasture and rolling hills from which you can see for miles.”[1] There, “in the bucolic hills of Michigan,” according to Der Spiegel, “he produces cheese according to environmentally sustainable methods, because he views modern agriculture, with its large-scale pesticide use and automated factory farms, as degenerate.”[89] He “wanted to show that you could reject the tenets of modern commercial farming and create a sustainable, profitable business without the help of government subsidies or growth hormones or artificial fertilizers.”[1] “Unlike conventionally managed dairy animals raised primarily on grain diets for the production of most commercially available cheeses, Idyll Farms’ goats are pasture-fed using rotational grazing practices which mimic and harness nature's complex, productive processes.”[85]

Factory farming, he says, is “an ideal metaphor” for what ails the economy.[89] To Spitznagel, government intervention in both economic (monetary manipulation) and agricultural systems (the subsidization of grain and GMO production, monoculture, and the excessive use of petrochemicals) distort and impede otherwise productive, healthy, and sustainable natural processes in exchange for short term benefits.[90] “Modern agriculture is about mining the soil for maximum, immediate productivity,”[91] he says, while at Idyll Farms, through sustainable pasture management rather than the use of factory-like monoculture feed,[84] “we’re thinking about how productive this land is going to be in a generation. This is antithetical to the world we live in.”[88]

In a conversation with Ron Paul, Spitznagel said “It’s crazy how much bureaucrats determine what we grow and what we eat. Sustainable farmers should all be libertarians.”[92]

Spitznagel has a strong anti-GMO opinion, described in his anti-GMO piece in The New York Times (co-authored with Taleb, and heavily criticized in conservative media[93]) where he wrote “The GMO experiment, carried out in real time and with our entire food and ecological system as its laboratory, is perhaps the greatest case of human hubris ever.”[94]

While Spitznagel has said that his motive in farming “is to change the way that we approach agriculture in this country, not just profit,” regarding his belief in farming as a good investment he has also said:

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I’m a firm believer that agriculture is going to be a great investment and entrepreneurial opportunity for the next generation. Farming is headed for a sea-change: farmers are getting old, we’re depleting the fertility of our topsoil, creating highly susceptible GMO monocultures, and we don’t fully appreciate the implications of water—just to name a few.[84]

When (the Swiss German magazine) BILANZ asked him what he would do if the Federal Reserve system finally collapsed and he no longer had any more stock market crashes from which to profit, Spitznagel quipped:

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Dann werde ich mich auf das Leben als Farmer und meine Ziegen konzentrieren. [I would focus on my life as a farmer and my goats.][73]

Idyll Farms Detroit

Spitznagel is an active supporter of the revitalization of Detroit, Michigan. He has said that he has “very high hopes for the city of Detroit,”[82] and The New York Times has claimed that “Spitznagel has a vested interest in seeing Detroit make a comeback” due to large personal commercial real estate holdings there.[95]

In 2013, Spitznagel penned a Project Syndicate article entitled “Austrian Detroit?”.[96] In 2015, he wrote an article for the Detroit Free Press in support of Rand Paul’s “Economic Freedom Zones” plan for Detroit.[97]

In particular, Spitznagel has been a leader in Detroit’s urban farming movement. The Sierra Club lauded Spitznagel’s vision of a “holistic system of urban agriculture” (where food production is moved closer to consumers in urban communities) and his belief that “Detroit is uniquely positioned to be the birthplace of an agricultural renaissance, because its abandoned lots endow it with plenty of cultivable land, and the city is teeming with people in need of work.”[91]

In 2013, Spitznagel established a farm called Idyll Farms Detroit for pasturing goats in Detroit’s heavily blighted Brightmoor neighborhood. The farm was a philanthropic effort to have the grazing goats safely and economically clean up overgrown foliage and to help the struggling community through agriculture, jobs, education, and self-sufficiency. Idyll Farms Detroit spent a year setting up infrastructure, hiring local farm laborers, and consulting with Brightmoor community leaders—who advised the farm “not to engage with city hall” because they thought “the city would not enforce the animal control ordinance” banning all livestock within the city.[98] In June, 2014, the farm moved a herd of wethers (castrated male goats) along with movable pens and electric fencing from Spitznagel’s Idyll Farms in Northport to Idyll Farms Detroit in Brightmoor. Despite heavy local support and national media attention for “Spitznagel’s caprine ‘guerrilla farming’ initiative”[99][100] (including from Ron Paul[101]), as well as the similar use of eco-friendly goats in other metropolitan areas,[91][102] Mayor Duggan immediately ordered the goats removed because of the ordinance.[95][103][104]

The New York Times commented that “If this all sounds a little unusual, Mr. Spitznagel has never been one to bend to convention.”[95]

Libertarianism

File:RPaulMSpitznagel.jpg
Ron Paul, Spitznagel, and P.J. O'Rourke in Las Vegas, 2015

Spitznagel is an avowed libertarian, and says that he has been one since high school. In fact, “his investing philosophy is really an extension of his deeply held libertarian beliefs about government intervention in the marketplace.”[1]

In a 2015 Fox Business interview, Spitznagel said:

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Great myths die hard. And I think what we’re witnessing today is the slow death of one of the great myths in human history: this idea that centrally planned command economies work, that they’re even feasible, and that they can be successful. It’s one of these enigmatic mythologies of the last hundred years in particular that we've been grappling with. Let’s remember that in the last hundred years a lot of blood has been shed over this mythology. And here we are today, how did we get here again?[30]

He has been an active libertarian Republican through his involvement in multiple U.S. presidential campaigns.

Spitznagel, along with entrepreneur Peter Thiel, has been the principal supporter of the Republican Party presidential primary campaign of (Texas Congressman) Ron Paul, a friend and fellow Austrian economics advocate who “shares his contempt for the Federal Reserve.”[36] In 2012, Spitznagel hosted multiple fundraisers for the congressman[11][12][35][36] (including a party at Spitznagel’s Bel Air home[105]). Spitznagel has been called “arguably Paul’s main economic theorist/popularizer outside an academic context”[35] who “could be Treasury Secretary to a future president Paul, Ron or Rand.”[36]

Spitznagel was Senior Economic Advisor to the 2016 Republican Presidential campaign of (Ron’s son) Rand Paul.[25] The New York Times said “the two share a similar outlook on the government’s role in the financial markets: that it should not have one.”[24] Paul has called Spitznagel “a very savvy investor who understands the nation’s finances as well as large, hedge fund-type finances. He also has a perspective on the Federal Reserve that helps cut through the mythology.”[106] Spitznagel and Paul have written together how Federal Reserve policies “disproportionately favor wealth,”[107] called the Fed “a political, oligarchic force, and a key part of what looks and functions like a banking cartel” (in Time magazine),[108] and declared “the Fed should set markets free” (in The Wall Street Journal).[109]

Publications

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 Richard Bradley, The Goat Whisperer, Worth, December, 2014
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 The Secret to Mark Spitznagel’s Success? Not Following the Crowd, CIMS Newsletter, Fall/Winter, 2009
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World. New York: John Wiley & Sons. September, 2013
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Universa Investments L.P., firm website
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 Spitznagel Bets Reputation on Inflation, The Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2009
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Hedging against disaster even as markets grow calm, Reuters, January 27, 2012
  7. ↑ 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 When Black Swans Fly, Bloomberg Markets, November, 2011
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 Profiting from Disaster, Risk magazine, January, 2011
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 Spreading his wings, Absolute Return + Alpha, November, 2011
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Ron Paul Sets Los Angeles Fundraiser, The Wrap, March 4, 2012
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Ron Paul sets Los Angeles fund-raiser, Reuters, March 4, 2012
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Did a Big Bet Help Trigger 'Black Swan' Stock Swoon?, The Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2010
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 A Hedge Fund Manager Who Doesn’t Mind a Losing Bet, The New York Times, June 29, 2011
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 A Bearish Hedge Fund Bets Against the Bulls and Still Profits, The New York Times, November 24, 2014
  16. ↑ 5 hedge-fund managers to watch in 2012: How to gain market insight from Wall Street’s biggest, boldest investors, MarketWatch Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2011
  17. ↑ Mr. Volatility and the Swan, The Wall Street Journal, July 13, 2007
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Flight of the Black Swan, Bloomberg Markets, May, 2008
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Taleb’s ‘Black Swan’ Investors Post Gains as Markets Take Dive, Bloomberg, October 14, 2008
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Preparing for the Next 'Black Swan', The Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2010
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Spitznagel’s Universa Moves To Miami, FINalternatives, Feb 19, 2014
  22. ↑ Taleb’s Pessimism Lures CIC, The Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2010
  23. ↑ Black Swans Are A Myth, Government Intervention Is The Only Black Swan, Forbes, August 21, 2013
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Rand Paul Names Hedge Fund Chief Mark Spitznagel as Economic Advisor, The New York Times, June 19, 2015
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Hedge fund giant joins Rand Paul campaign as economic adviser, Washington Examiner, June 19, 2015
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Scary! This bearish call points to 40% market drop, CNBC.com, October 23, 2013
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Black Swan Bets, Forbes, January 15, 2009
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 The Stars of The Recession, Newsweek, January 19, 2009
  29. ↑ The Oracle of Doom, Forbes, February 2, 2009
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 30.2 Will rising rates be bad for the markets?, Fox Business Network, September 17, 2015
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 31.2 New Investment Strategy: Preparing for End Times, The New York Times, June 29, 2011
  32. ↑ Wall Street’s Black Swan Copycats, Forbes, June 8, 2011
  33. ↑ DealBook, The New York Times, January 29, 2009
  34. ↑ Overheard, The Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2009
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 35.2 Meet Mark Spitznagel, Ron Paul’s L.A. hedge-fund guy, KPCC, Southern California Public Radio, March 5, 2012
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 36.2 36.3 Hedge-fund manager Mark Spitznagel to host Ron Paul fundraiser, Digital Journal, March 6, 2012
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 Meet the World’s Most Bearish Investment Manager, Bloomberg TV, May 13, 2015
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 38.2 38.3 Meet Mark Spitznagel, the Investor Behind Universa’s Big Gain, The Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2015
  39. ↑ Why Ron Paul and Mark Spitznagel will not go quietly into the Republican night, KPCC, Southern California Public Radio, July 25, 2012
  40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 40.2 Malcolm Gladwell, Blowing Up, The New Yorker, April 29, 2002
  41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 41.2 Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures. Little, Brown and Company. 2009
  42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 42.2 Taleb, Spitznagel, Inequality, Free Markets, and Crashes, National Review, May 31, 2014
  43. ↑ 'Black Swan' Author Denies Role in Market Meltdown, CNBC.com, May 12, 2010
  44. ↑ Nassim Taleb Accepts The Accolades Of An Adoring Public Only When He Deserves Them, Dealbreaker, September 1, 2015
  45. ↑ Chicago fires back over stocks sell-off blame, Reuters, May 11, 2010
  46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 Spitznagel, The Fed and the May 6 'Flash Crash', The Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2010
  47. ↑ Black Swan: A 40 Percent Correction?, CNBC.com, June 16, 2011
  48. ↑ Universa, Pimco Posted Gains on Black-Swan Funds as Market Fell, Bloomberg, August 10, 2011
  49. ↑ A ‘Black Swan’ Fund Made $1 Billion This Week, The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2015
  50. ↑ 50.0 50.1 Revisiting the ticking time bomb, Pensions & Investments, December 22, 2015
  51. ↑ Spitznagel predicted the January stock market selloff in a research piece last month, Absolute Return, January 28, 2016
  52. ↑ Is Spitznagel an Apostate?, Falkenblog, June 17, 2012
  53. ↑ Spitznagel, The Myth of Black Swan Market Events, The New York Times, February 13, 2015
  54. ↑ This Hedge Fund Manager Hates the Fed but Doesn’t Love Gold, The Motley Fool, November 10, 2013
  55. ↑ This Fund Manager Thinks Bitcoin’s Value Is Limited, The Motley Fool, November 25, 2013
  56. ↑ Everett Klipp: 'Babe Ruth of the CBOT', Futures Magazine, May 1, 1999
  57. ↑ Veteran Trader of the Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Tribune, January 31, 2011
  58. ↑ Spitznagel, The Austrians and the Swan: Birds of a Different Feather. Universa website. May, 2012
  59. ↑ Mark Spitznagel: The Austrians And The Swan - Birds Of A Different Feather, Zero Hedge, May 21, 2012
  60. ↑ Fed’s monetary credit expansion doomed to fail and lead to stock market crash, says Spitznagel, Hedge Funds Review, June 6, 2012
  61. ↑ Waiting for the next stock market crash, Fortune Magazine, September 25, 2013
  62. ↑ The roundabout path to profits: Mark Spitznagel on the Dao of Capital, Futures Magazine, April 1, 2014
  63. ↑ 63.0 63.1 Has the Market Crash Only Just Begun?, Bloomberg TV, February 17, 2016
  64. ↑ Inside Romney’s Elite Prep School, abc News, May 10, 2012
  65. ↑ Spitznagel, The Man Who Predicted the Depression, The Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2009
  66. ↑ Spitznagel, The Role of Capital Has Politicians Confused, Forbes, January 31, 2013
  67. ↑ 67.0 67.1 Spitznagel, Our Malinvestment In President Obama Will Bring Painful Consequences, Forbes, November 15, 2012
  68. ↑ 68.0 68.1 Spitznagel, Christmas Trees and the Logic of Growth, The Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2011
  69. ↑ Spitznagel, All About the Benjamins, The Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2011
  70. ↑ Spitznagel, How the Fed Favors The 1%, The Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2012
  71. ↑ Krugman, Plutocrats and Printing Presses, The New York Times, April 20, 2012
  72. ↑ 72.0 72.1 Spitznagel, Bernanke Ups the Ante, The New York Times, October 4, 2011
  73. ↑ 73.0 73.1 Eine riesige Falle, BILANZ, September 18, 2015
  74. ↑ German-American Names. Genealogical Pub Co. February, 1990
  75. ↑ Protect Your Tail, Forbes, June 27, 2011
  76. ↑ Northport’s Got Your Goats, Leelanau Enterprise, September 20, 2012
  77. ↑ Passion Makes Perfect: The Voluptuous World of Linda and Robert Taubman, Vogue, November, 1986
  78. ↑ Luxury Private Gardens. teNeues. 2008
  79. ↑ AD100 Hall of Famer’s great white ways, Architectural Digest, October, 2013
  80. ↑ J-Lo and Marc Anthony Sell In Los Angeles to Financier, The Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2010
  81. ↑ Mark Spitznagel sells former J.Lo estate in Bel-Air, Los Angeles Times, November 26, 2013
  82. ↑ 82.0 82.1 Universa CIO Spitznagel Says Markets Underestimating Impact of Fed Tightening, Bloomberg Brief, June 2, 2015
  83. ↑ Spitznagel (Eric), The Moat, the Millions and the $50 Timex Watch, The New York Times Magazine, May 30, 2014
  84. ↑ 84.0 84.1 84.2 Fi$cally Fit Man: How to Make a Fortune (or Go Broke), Men’s Health, January 2, 2015
  85. ↑ 85.0 85.1 Idyll Farms Takes Home Three Awards at 2016 World Championship Cheese Contest, PR Newswire, March 17, 2016
  86. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  87. ↑ Idyll Farms Crafts Old World, Blue Ribbon Goat Cheeses, Traverse, Northern Michigan’s Magazine, April 29, 2014
  88. ↑ 88.0 88.1 88.2 Mark Spitznagel on the world of farming, finance, Traverse City Record-Eagle, July 27, 2014
  89. ↑ 89.0 89.1 Feeding the Bubble: Is the Next Crash Brewing?, Der Spiegel, December 3, 2013
  90. ↑ Sustainable Agriculture Advocate, Fund Manager Predicts Market Crash, Agriculture Downfall, The Motley Fool, November 8, 2013
  91. ↑ 91.0 91.1 91.2 Goats: Coming Soon to a City Near You, Sierra Club, July/August, 2014
  92. ↑ Paul, Spitznagel, Americans Must Choose Non-Intervention for Peace, Prosperity, Voices of Liberty, August 26, 2014
  93. ↑ The New York Times Gets It Wrong about Genetic Engineering, National Review, July 21, 2015
  94. ↑ Spitznagel, Taleb, Another ‘Too Big to Fail’ System in G.M.O.s, The New York Times, July 13, 2015
  95. ↑ 95.0 95.1 95.2 Fund Manager Sets Goats Grazing in Blighted Detroit, The New York Times, June 5, 2014
  96. ↑ Austrian Detroit?,Project Syndicate, August 6, 2013
  97. ↑ Loosen restrictions to boost Detroit’s revival, Detroit Free Press, August 13, 2015
  98. ↑ No goats allowed! Detroit shuts down a farm’s efforts to rid Brightmoor of blight, NPR, June 10, 2014
  99. ↑ Overgrown lot-munching goats given the boot in Detroit, Mother Nature Network, June 13, 2014
  100. ↑ The Goats of Detroit, Modern Farmer, June 18, 2014
  101. ↑ Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan Halts Urban Farming Project in Struggling Neighborhood, Ron Paul Channel, June 9, 2014
  102. ↑ America's best cities for goat-owning hedge fund managers, Fortune Magazine, June 12, 2014
  103. ↑ A Deadline for Goats to Get Out of Detroit, The New York Times, June 6, 2014
  104. ↑ City of Detroit butting heads with blight-eating Brightmoor goats, Detroit Free Press, June 6, 2014
  105. ↑ Look Which Hedge Funder Has His Arms Around Ron Paul, Business Insider, April 22, 2012
  106. ↑ Power 100 Q&A: Rand Paul, Worth, October, 2015
  107. ↑ Paul, Spitznagel, The Federal Reserve is Not Your Friend, Reason.com, August 20, 2015
  108. ↑ Paul, Spitznagel, [ http://time.com/4170969/sen-rand-paul-audit-the-fed/ The Fed Is Crippling America], Time, January 10, 2016
  109. ↑ If Only the Fed Would Get Out of the Way, The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2015

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