Let me ask this - do we know what % Universa was up in 2008?
They claimed 100%.
Let me ask this - do we know what % Universa was up in 2008?
Well now I really am confused. I re-watched the original Mark Spitznagel video. Universa. Looking at just that, seems at least that fund DOES include the long component and the tail-hedge component. I'll just have to study the numbers.
Ah, I see Maverick. That makes sense. Thanks. Someone mentioned I think I publicly traded tail risk fund or ETF or ETN, not sure if it was on this thread or another, need to find that one and look at the returns on big down periods to see how much protection they seem to give per $ invested. Thanks!
That is not correct. They do not provide the long component. They don't care what you do with your assets. You are paying them to insure x% of your portfolio. You could be long bitcoin for all they care.
I think Universa lies about their returns and deliberately obfuscates their performance.
There’s an NYT article that insinuated that they also run long portfolios with tail protection. They were claiming returns that were in line with long SPX - a few percentage points.
https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/bear-going-vs-the-bulls-still-profits/
It doesn’t make sense that any long vol fund would earn spx returns from 2009 onward without being long the market.
That brings up the next issue...your tail risk fund, vehicle, whatever, has to "perform as advertised" when the time comes. Many did/do not.That was me. The ticker is TAIL. It has only be around for about 10 months.
Thanks Maverick! So, let's just look at some quick numbers. These are all just off the small yahoo finance charts, so they may be off a bit, but hopefully not too far off.
SPY:
1/26/18 - 286.58
2/8/18 - 257.63
10.10% drop
TAIL:
1/26/18 - 21.78
2/8/18 - 23.19
6.47% gain
SPY:
3/9/18 - 278.87
3/23/18 - 258.05
7.47% drop
Tail:
3/9/18 - 21.52
3/23/18 - 22.72
5.57% gain
Those were some high and low points on the SPY just looking at the charts.
TAIL opened it looks like on April 6, 2017 at 25.00, closed Friday at 22.36, for a decline over its life of 10.56%. During that same time, SPY went from 231.03 to 263.43, for a gain of 14.02%.
So, TAIL seems a generally poor hedge against market drops - it didn't rise as much as SPY dove. And it loses money at a pretty quick rate to boot. Although, maybe the idea is that TAIL won't really take off until there is a much bigger drop in the market - 30% to 60%. Thoughts?
Thanks!
I think Universa lies about their returns and deliberately obfuscates their performance.
There’s an NYT article that insinuated that they also run long portfolios with tail protection. They were claiming returns that were in line with long SPX - a few percentage points.
https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/bear-going-vs-the-bulls-still-profits/
It doesn’t make sense that any long vol fund would earn spx returns from 2009 onward without being long the market.