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Nassim Taleb's Black Swans Earned Their Keep This Week

If you like numbers in the range of one billion.
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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]

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