Mark Spitznagel

Mark Spitznagel worked as a floor trader at the Chicago Board of Trade before founding Universa Investments in 2007. Universa specializes in "black swan" protection strategies using deeply out-of-the-money options to provide convex payoffs during market crashes. During the COVID crash in March 2020, Universa reportedly returned over 4,000% as markets collapsed. Spitznagel is also the author of "The Dao of Capital" (2013), which applies Austrian economic theory to investing, arguing that indirect roundabout strategies provide superior long-term returns. His philosophical framework — drawing on Mises, Böhm-Bawerk, and Austrian capital theory — provides an unusually deep intellectual foundation for Universa's investment strategy, situating the practical business of tail risk hedging within a broader theory of how capital accumulation and time preferences shape long-run market dynamics.