The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable · chapter 8 · id the-black-swan-c8-03-talebs-own-investment-approach
“Taleb's own investment approach (the 'barbell strategy') -- putting 85-90% in extremely safe instruments and 10-15% in highly speculative bets on positive Black Swans -- is the rational response to the world described in the book.”
TRUE, BUTconfidence: high⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending
Receipts
Bloomberg: Universa Returned 3,612% in March 2020paywalled · manual check queued
Universa's tail-risk fund returned an estimated 3,612% on invested capital in March 2020 during the COVID-19 crash.
Institutional Investor: Nassim Taleb and Universa Versus the Worldsource alive
Universa's strategy requires constant small losses (premium bleeding) during calm markets. A 3.3% allocation to Universa with 96.7% in the S&P 500 returned 12.3% annually over 10 years through Feb 2018.
Empirica Capital performance historysource alive
Taleb's earlier fund Empirica Capital (1999-2005) closed after sustained losses: +56.86% in 2000, -8.39% in 2001, -13.81% in 2002, -3.92% in 2003. The strategy works in crashes but bleeds in calm markets.
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