Mark Spitznagel at the 2022 Prime Quadrant Conference

Mark Spitznagel, Founder & Chief Investment Officer of Universa Investments, at the 2022 Prime Quadrant conference. pqconference.com
The Prime Quadrant conference is an annual event, bringing together over 400 investors in support of pediatric care and mental health.
The conference is for family offices and ultra-high net worth investors who can benefit from interacting with the brightest minds in the investment world, featuring some of the most successful investment managers, best-selling authors, and thought leaders, as they share their best insights and ideas.

[@George-jm4rn]

Perhaps the best interview of Mark Spitznagel I've seen. Highly recommended.

[@canxida]

Thank you for uploading this.

[@thesoftwareinvestor]

One of the best interview from Mark. I hope the puts option premium will keep staying low for the next 100 years as most people don't really understand this tail hedging strategy..

[@yington]

I’m sure they do understand it. It’s just that psychologically it’s a very hard strategy to endure real implementation of.

[@-www.chapters.video-]

00:00 Introduction and early trading experiences 01:28 Influence of Everett Klipp and Warren Buffett 03:00 The purpose of the book and its focus on risk mitigation 04:35 The concept of roundabout production and its impact on investing 10:04 Different strategies for risk mitigation and their cost effectiveness 11:00 Contrasting strategic and tactical risk mitigation 13:18 The importance of compounding and the math of risk mitigation 19:59 Understanding risk as errors of commission and omission. 21:56 Differentiating between strategic and tactical risk mitigation. 24:00 Evolution of perception towards tail risk hedging strategy. 26:00 Critique of AQR's research on tail risk hedging strategy. 30:38 The possibility of the Fed's dovish actions not stopping the market and the potential for a traditional asset bubble pop.

[@SF-fb6lv]

He says "any risk mitigation strategy that requires a forecast is just simply doing it wrong". This is very similar to my statement that "any manufacturing process that requires skill is the wrong approach to manufacturing". Universa is like LTCM's counterparty.

[@manson1900]

Mark is true pro

[@popperianmind6615]

The dude is no joke

[@thequantartist]

Started reading the Dao of Capital by Mark Spitznagel. Thinking about making a book summary on it!

[@artofexistance]

Want to collab on review . I’ve been reading as well. Helps to digest ideas to co readers .

[@thequantartist]

@@artofexistance Nice, interested to collab. I've been reading Economics in One Lesson by Hazlitt and now Human Action by Mises to understand better the thought-process of Spitznagel. Send me an email, it's in my about page.

[@user-zt4zr7eg6z]

I love your intellect Mark. How to connect?

[@scottphillips8117]

Dude is pretty evasive about his actual strategy and whether or not it improves geometric returns from reducing drawdowns or whether or not the positive skew of buying puts is profitable on a standalone basis

[@tuckerbugeater]

why would he give you the secret sauce

[@DefundTheFringes]

Can you rephrase that word-salad sentence for laymen?

[@lesleyjohnson8488]

Barbell strategy

[@dhirajmeenavilli5508]

That "yea" at 4:12 sounds like the dude just didn't care I don't know why

[@MrYesman83]

He’s great. Nothing actionable for the average investor though. Who doesn’t want to be long puts without it being a drain to your portfolio. So, he accomplishes this by having alpha in his option picks. I wonder what his 2022 return was, anyone has insight to this? My best guess would be he cleans up in a 20% overnight crash but the same 20% down over a year might not offset much off your SP500 losses at all.

[@qazxswpat]

That's correct. Look up put ratio back spreads

[@lesleyjohnson8488]

That is so true. It’s sad that the average investor cannot take advantage of this strategy until their portfolio has grown either through luck or alpha. Buying puts is an incredible drain when you have very little money to begin with …

[@lesleyjohnson8488]

Honestly, guys, I really think the only thing you need to do to understand tail hedge investing is to play the game Othello with another smart person sometime. Play it over and over and you will eventually understand this strategy. Learn how to play a loooooong game …

[@kylebetsmlb]

12:12 LOL "10 bagger"

[@1965simonfellows]

.. coin toss isnt even. See Persi Diaconis.

[@KISSMIBUT27]

He talks in circles without any solutions. They ask about his strategy and he goes off on a tangent.

[@AseemKumar9]

why should he give away his strategy ?

[@dennykeaton9701]

I used to think that too. First I had to study options and trade them ❤️ for several years before I could understand what he was talking about.

[@torosytoros]

Why would he give his secrets away?

[@dennykeaton9701]

@@torosytoros Fair point. If he gave away his methods of finding cheap insurance everyone would buy it and it wouldn't be cheap anymore. It took me years to find that cheap insurance, and I'm definitely not going to tell anyone outside of close family members.

[@torosytoros]

@@dennykeaton9701 Exactly. As a quant finance student myself, I haven't found it yet, but I have some sort of idea regarding that. Once you understand the greeks, you understand how it is possible, at least on paper, to have those explosive returns. He probably acts as a kind of market maker and profits on the change in price of the option, not on the payoff of the option itself.

[@johncharles3907]

He is so annoying, just tell us wtf the strategy is? So buying puts and leveraging the whole portfolio??