Safe Haven

At War with Luck

WRITTEN IN BLOOD

In the words of the nineteenth‐century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, thus spoken by his ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra, “Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood.”

If so, Nietzsche would have loved this book.

It was written with the blood of war against luck, fought over the last more than a quarter century in my life as a trader. It grew organically out of an investing and risk‐mitigation practice as a hedge fund manager and professional safe haven investor. The message of this book has been and will always be lived by me and my hedge fund firm, Universa Investments. (It is our manifesto.)

Talk is cheap. Ideas and commentary are just that. Significance only comes from the doing, from action within the arena. It is not my business, like Sherlock Holmes, “to know what other people do not know.” It is my business to do what other people do not and cannot do (as well as, just as importantly, to know what I do not know). Doing and demonstrating effective safe haven investing is far, far more important than arguing about what it should be. And even among most of those who claim to do it, they neglect those pithy words from Hemingway to “never confuse movement with action.”

This book tells of the foundation and methodology behind how, as of this writing, Universa risk‐mitigated portfolios have, over ...