The surge in U.S. Government yields and correction in tech techs has not deterred investors from taking risks in the equity and debt market, according to Spitznagel, who manages the best-known funds that protect against black swan events.
Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Miami-based Universe Investments, Spitnagel, said in an interview to Bloomberg Television that there is a lack of understanding of how dangerous the market is and how the liquidity is embedded in the financial system.
Like Jeremy Grantham of GMO, Spitznagel says that assets are grossly overpriced and inflated due to highly low-interest rates and quantitative easing. Spitznagel differs on the approach of Jeremy on the impending crash.
Spitznagel does not believe in timing the stock market. His firm Universa advises its clients to think of Hedge funds kind of insurance protection against catastrophe and not consider them a source of profit. When investors know that they have insurance protection against any meltdown, they can take risks without the need for diversification in traditional assets like gold, treasuries, or hedge funds.
Jeremy Grantham feels the market is a superbubble, and a collapse has been building up since November. He advises investors to exit from the U.S. stocks, own gold and commodities, and hold some cash.
The tremors in the stocks early this year could not trigger sharply the hedges that had earlier brought a windfall for Universa Clients at the beginning of the pandemic. According to Spitznagel, the market moved quite in the last month, and those movements have not been essential or consequential.
In March 2020, stocks had collapsed, and volatility was high. Universal reaped enormous profit on its options trades. It gave its clients 3612 % returns in March 2020 and 4141% in April 2020.
One of the clients of Universa has been the California Public Employees Retirement System which scrapped one of the hedges deals and missed out on a $1 billion payout. Around that time, Universa was managing $6 billion assets in the client portfolio, which has now grown to $15 billion.
