Nassim Taleb's Black Swans Earned Their Keep This Week
If you like numbers in the range of one billion.
The recent market rout caught some star Wall Street traders by surprise. But not a hedge fund affiliated with “The Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb that seeks to profit from extreme events in the financial markets. Universa Investments LP gained roughly 20% on Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter, a day when the market collapsed more than 1,000 points in its largest ever intraday point decline. Universa’s profits—some realized and some on paper—amounted to more than $1 billion in the past week, largely on Monday, as its returns for the year climbed to roughly 20% through earlier this week. [WSJ]
