Safe Haven (investing For Financial Storms)

What is a safe haven?

What role should they play in an investment portfolio? Do we use them only to seek shelter until the passing of financial storms? Or are they something more? Contrary to everything we know from modern financial theory, can higher returns actually come as a result of lowering risk? In Safe Haven, hedge fund manager Mark Spitznagel—one of the top practitioners of safe haven investing and portfolio risk mitigation in the world—answers these questions and more. Investors who heed the message in this book will never look at risk mitigation the same way again.

Foreword by Nassim Nicholas Taleb ix

PART ONE: WHAT COMES FIRST 1

Chapter One: AT WAR WITH LUCK 3

Chapter Two: NATURE''S ADMONITION 29

Chapter Three: THE ETERNAL RETURN 57

PART TWO: WHAT COMES AFTER 97

Chapter Four: A TAXONOMY 99

Chapter Five: HOLISM 123

Chapter Six: BOLD CONJECTURES 163

AFTERWORD: AMOR FATI 195

Acknowledgments 211

Index 213

MARK SPITZNAGEL is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of the hedge fund Universa Investments and the author of the book The Dao of Capital.

Praise for SAFE HAVEN

“Thoroughly Excellent” — FORBES

“As introduced (and formulated) in Safe Haven, risk mitigation needs to be ‘cost-effective’ (i.e., it should raise your wealth), and to do that it needs to mitigate the risks that matter, not the risks that don’t.”
—From the Foreword by NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB

“Clear, logical and persuasive, Safe Haven is highly recommended for all students of the markets—novice and professional. Spitznagel masterfully builds from first principles, establishing the role risk mitigation ought to play in investment portfolios and provides a simple yet practical framework to identify and analyze said Safe Havens.”
— HARSHAL CHAUDHARI, Chief Investment Officer, General Electric Pensions

“Properly priced insurance against big investment losses can increase the expected compound growth rate of both insurer and insuree. It is a widely overlooked free lunch. Mark Spitznagel, a leading long-term practitioner, shares his insights from analyzing this extremely counterintuitive idea.”
— EDWARD O. THORP, Author of Beat the Dealer and A Man for All Markets

"As introduced (and formulated) in Safe Haven, risk mitigation needs to be ''cost-effective'' (i.e., it should raise your wealth), and to do that it needs to mitigate the risks that matter, not the risks that don''t."
—From the foreword by NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB

"Clear, logical and persuasive, Safe Haven is highly recommended for all students of the markets—novice and professional. Spitznagel masterfully builds from first principles, establishing the role risk mitigation ought to play in investment portfolios and provides a simple yet practical framework to identify and analyze said Safe Havens."
—HARSHAL CHAUDHARI, Chief Investment Officer - General Electric Pensions

"Properly priced insurance against big investment losses can increase the expected compound growth rate of both insurer and insuree. It is a widely overlooked free lunch. Mark Spitznagel, a leading long-term practitioner, shares his insights from analyzing this extremely counterintuitive idea."
—EDWARD O. THORP, Author of Beat the Dealer and A Man for All Markets

"Safe Haven confronts the central challenge for an investor constructing a portfolio for the long term: how to mitigate systemic risk while enhancing the compound growth of the entire portfolio.