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The Hedge Fund Betting on the Next Great Crash

Mark Spitznagel, chief investment officer of Universa Investments, explains how their investors saw massive returns during the market crashes in 2008 and when the pandemic hit in March 2020.

Stocks falling sharply at the NYSE and Trump discussing the corona virus on the news displayed on a television
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
August 25, 2021

Mark Spitznagel, the founder and chief investment officer of the enormously successful hedge fund Universa Investments, is in an odd position at the moment. He’s very worried about the financial markets— “I’m as bearish as I could possibly be,” he told me the other day, when I called him at his home in Michigan, where his goat farm produces some of the country’s finest artisanal chèvre. But he’s also comfortable knowing that it doesn’t really matter what he thinks about the direction of the markets.