Mark Spitznagel
Encyclopedia
Mark Spitznagel is an American
hedge fund
manager, derivatives
trader
, and value investor.
Spitznagel is known for a hugely profitable billion dollar derivatives bet on the stock market crash of 2008, for allegedly crashing the market again in May 2010, as well as for his highly unconventional investment style which targets infrequent enormous profits and frequent small losses.
Spitznagel is the owner, founder, and Chief Investment Officer of the Santa Monica, California
-based hedge fund
management company Universa Investments, L.P., which he founded in 2007. Universa specializes in hedging
tail
risks
and has approximately $6 billion under management. In 2009, Spitznagel closed his funds to new investors. Universa reportedly has large Chinese and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds among its investors.
Spitznagel has been an independent pit-trader
at the Chicago Board of Trade
, the head of equity options
in a secretive proprietary trading
group at Morgan Stanley
in New York
(until they requested that he sign a stringent “noncompete” agreement), and a partner at hedge fund Empirica Capital in Greenwich
and New York. Spitznagel has an M.S.
in Mathematics
from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
at New York University
and a B.A.
from Kalamazoo College
in Michigan
.
lost over a third of its value during the global financial meltdown, making him “a fortune” according to The Wall Street Journal
. Universa lost back about 4% in 2009 and 2010 when the S&P 500 recovered by over 40%. Despite this superior aggregate performance, Spitznagel comments that it was “done in a very lumpy way, for the most part, it's not very compelling.”
The Wall Street Journal alleged that a large purchase of put options by Universa in the minutes leading up to the May 6, 2010 “flash crash”
(when the Dow
lost over 9% of its value during the day) was among its primary triggers (and for which Spitznagel was subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission). Spitznagel responded that “Universa alone couldn't have caused the meltdown. We had reached a critical point
in the market, and it was poised to collapse. Universa is not in the business of causing crashes but is rather in the business of protecting its clients from them.”
In defense of his actions (or, as some have suggested, in deflecting attention from them), Spitznagel wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing the current Federal Reserve expansionary monetary policy
as the ultimate cause of the stock market swoon, comparing the aligned risky positions of traders induced by low interest rates to a fragile network of earthquake
faults that rupture together.
or Laozi
), though he is clearly an adherent of the value investing
philosophy. Spitznagel hailed Benjamin Graham
and the “margin of safety” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, and has even likened the esoteric derivatives trading that he does in his hedge funds to value investing due to his emphasis on long-term expected intrinsic value
over short-term market swings. (In the same op-ed, Spitznagel cautioned that the US stock market was as overvalued “relative to net asset replacement cost”—the Q ratio
—as at any time since 1900 save the late 1990s, implying eventually “much lower stock market prices.”)
In June 2011, CNBC
reported on a research piece by Spitznagel (The Dao of Corporate Finance) which predicted a 40% correction in the S&P 500 stock index, based on “stock valuations, put in the context of 110 years of stock-market history.”
Spitznagel has become notorious for very concentrated bearish bets in his tail-hedging funds, through what he calls his “bizarre, positively-skewed
approach” to investing. This is presumed to mean long
convexity-type positions, as in out-of-the-money puts on overvalued equities (such as Lehman Brothers
, about which he has responded “It's a regrettable aspect of our trade that we tend to do very well on others' misfortune”).
This approach requires “focus and discipline in the face of lumpy returns,” he says, which “ultimately keeps away competitors—they always move to greener pastures.” In fact, according to Spitznagel, Wall Street
and hedge funds tend to do the opposite of him, “manufacturing returns that look steady, but in reality, all they are doing is creating a very negatively skewed distribution
. They make small amounts of money very often and sometimes lose a lot. It is just a big game.”
In regard to the patience and persistence required of his method, Spitznagel has said “It's like you're playing the piano for ten years and you still can't play chopsticks
, and the only thing you have to keep you going is the belief that one day you'll wake up and play like Rachmaninoff
.”
Forbes
has described Spitznagel's investment strategy as “bets on the fat tail
s…delivering a string of mediocre results interrupted occasionally by spectacular years.”
futures
pit at the Chicago Board of Trade. There, as the youngest trader in the bond pit, he was mentored by 50-year veteran corn
and soybean
trader Everett Klipp (a.k.a. the “Babe Ruth of the Chicago Board of Trade”). According to Spitznagel, Klipp “stood with me in the bond pit and told and showed me the importance of discipline in trading—the discipline to limit losses and control risks and not try to forecast the market. I was pretty much brainwashed by the age of 16 by this old grain trader who said that to be successful, you just had to know how to take a small loss as opposed to a big loss.”
and Problem of Induction
of David Hume
, Karl Popper
, et al., and highly popularized by author and financial mathematician
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (who is an advisor to Spitznagel’s Universa funds). Spitznagel and Taleb are long-time collaborators, going back to Spitznagel's graduate study at the New York University Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences where Taleb was a professor. While Spitznagel has tried to remain anonymous, Taleb, who is very vocal in the media, has become more the face of Universa (despite Taleb calling himself “in general a risk adviser to Universa, I don't know their positions, I'm not involved in trading.”).
and Keynesianism. In a series of Wall Street Journal op-eds, Spitznagel extolled the views of von Mises against government-induced inflationary credit expansion (“Government expansion of credit takes a system otherwise capable of adjustment and resilience and transforms it into…a brittle one.”) and criticized the interventionism
of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke
(“easily the most significant market manipulator in history”).
.
In a July 13, 2009 Financial Times
column, Spitznagel and Taleb warned against excessive leverage and debt and the risks of hyperinflation from Federal Reserve debt monetization
.
section of Los Angeles
(in an estate which he bought in 2009 from Jennifer Lopez
and Marc Anthony
) and in Northport Point, Michigan. He also owns a cherry and goat farm in Michigan.
According to Malcolm Gladwell
(in The New Yorker
and What the Dog Saw
), “Spitznagel is blond and from the Midwest and does yoga. He exudes a certain laconic levelheadedness,” and “wants to be like von Karajan
” (presumably because Spitznagel is an instrument-rated pilot
and skier).
Forbes described the “unruffled”, loafered Spitznagel as looking “better prepared for a yacht race than for doomsday.”
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
hedge fund
Hedge fund
A hedge fund is a private pool of capital actively managed by an investment adviser. Hedge funds are only open for investment to a limited number of accredited or qualified investors who meet criteria set by regulators. These investors can be institutions, such as pension funds, university...
manager, derivatives
Derivative (finance)
A derivative instrument is a contract between two parties that specifies conditions—in particular, dates and the resulting values of the underlying variables—under which payments, or payoffs, are to be made between the parties.Under U.S...
trader
Trader (finance)
A trader is someone in finance who buys and sells financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. A broker who simply fills buy or sell orders is not a trader, as they are merely executing instructions given to them. According to the Wall Street Journal in 2004, a managing...
, and value investor.
Spitznagel is known for a hugely profitable billion dollar derivatives bet on the stock market crash of 2008, for allegedly crashing the market again in May 2010, as well as for his highly unconventional investment style which targets infrequent enormous profits and frequent small losses.
Spitznagel is the owner, founder, and Chief Investment Officer of the Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
-based hedge fund
Hedge fund
A hedge fund is a private pool of capital actively managed by an investment adviser. Hedge funds are only open for investment to a limited number of accredited or qualified investors who meet criteria set by regulators. These investors can be institutions, such as pension funds, university...
management company Universa Investments, L.P., which he founded in 2007. Universa specializes in hedging
Hedge (finance)
A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses that may be incurred by a companion investment.A hedge can be constructed from many types of financial instruments, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, insurance, forward contracts, swaps, options, many types of...
tail
Fat tail
A fat-tailed distribution is a probability distribution that has the property, along with the heavy-tailed distributions, that they exhibit extremely large skewness or kurtosis. This comparison is often made relative to the ubiquitous normal distribution, which itself is an example of an...
risks
Financial risk
Financial risk an umbrella term for multiple types of risk associated with financing, including financial transactions that include company loans in risk of default. Risk is a term often used to imply downside risk, meaning the uncertainty of a return and the potential for financial loss...
and has approximately $6 billion under management. In 2009, Spitznagel closed his funds to new investors. Universa reportedly has large Chinese and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds among its investors.
Spitznagel has been an independent pit-trader
Floor trader
A floor trader is a member of a stock or commodities exchange who trades on the floor of that exchange for his or her own account. The floor trader must abide by trading rules similar to those of the exchange specialists who trade on behalf of others. The term should not be confused with floor broker...
at the Chicago Board of Trade
Chicago Board of Trade
The Chicago Board of Trade , established in 1848, is the world's oldest futures and options exchange. More than 50 different options and futures contracts are traded by over 3,600 CBOT members through open outcry and eTrading. Volumes at the exchange in 2003 were a record breaking 454 million...
, the head of equity options
Equity derivative
In finance, an equity derivative is a class of derivatives whose value is at least partly derived from one or more underlying equity securities. Options and futures are by far the most common equity derivatives, however there are many other types of equity derivatives that are actively...
in a secretive proprietary trading
Proprietary trading
Proprietary trading occurs when a firm trades stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, their derivatives, or other financial instruments, with the firm's own money as opposed to its customers' money, so as to make a profit for itself...
group at Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley is a global financial services firm headquartered in New York City serving a diversified group of corporations, governments, financial institutions, and individuals. Morgan Stanley also operates in 36 countries around the world, with over 600 offices and a workforce of over 60,000....
in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
(until they requested that he sign a stringent “noncompete” agreement), and a partner at hedge fund Empirica Capital in Greenwich
Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 61,171. It is home to many hedge funds and other financial service companies. Greenwich is the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut and is 38+ minutes ...
and New York. Spitznagel has an M.S.
Master of Science
A Master of Science is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in the sciences including the social sciences.-Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay:...
in Mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences is an independent division of New York University under the Faculty of Arts & Science that serves as a center for research and advanced training in computer science and mathematics...
at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
and a B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
from Kalamazoo College
Kalamazoo College
Kalamazoo College, also known as K College or simply K, is a private liberal arts college in Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1833, the college is among the 100 oldest in the country. Today, it produces more Peace Corps volunteers per capita than any other U.S...
in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
.
Financial crisis, 2008–2010
In 2008, Spitznagel's Universa funds scored returns of over 100% as the Standard & Poor's 500-stock indexS&P 500
The S&P 500 is a free-float capitalization-weighted index published since 1957 of the prices of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States. The stocks included in the S&P 500 are those of large publicly held companies that trade on either of the two largest American stock...
lost over a third of its value during the global financial meltdown, making him “a fortune” according to The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
. Universa lost back about 4% in 2009 and 2010 when the S&P 500 recovered by over 40%. Despite this superior aggregate performance, Spitznagel comments that it was “done in a very lumpy way, for the most part, it's not very compelling.”
The Wall Street Journal alleged that a large purchase of put options by Universa in the minutes leading up to the May 6, 2010 “flash crash”
May 6, 2010 flash crash
The May 6, 2010 Flash Crash also known as The Crash of 2:45, the 2010 Flash Crash or just simply, the Flash Crash, was a United States stock market crash on May 6, 2010 in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged about 1000 points—or about nine percent—only to recover those losses within...
(when the Dow
Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow Jones Industrial Average , also called the Industrial Average, the Dow Jones, the Dow 30, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index, and one of several indices created by Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company co-founder Charles Dow...
lost over 9% of its value during the day) was among its primary triggers (and for which Spitznagel was subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission). Spitznagel responded that “Universa alone couldn't have caused the meltdown. We had reached a critical point
Critical phenomena
In physics, critical phenomena is the collective name associated with thephysics of critical points. Most of them stem from the divergence of thecorrelation length, but also the dynamics slows down...
in the market, and it was poised to collapse. Universa is not in the business of causing crashes but is rather in the business of protecting its clients from them.”
In defense of his actions (or, as some have suggested, in deflecting attention from them), Spitznagel wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing the current Federal Reserve expansionary monetary policy
Expansionary monetary policy
In economics, expansionary policies are fiscal policies, like higher spending and tax cuts, that encourage economic growth. In turn, an expansionary monetary policy is monetary policy that seeks to increase the size of the money supply...
as the ultimate cause of the stock market swoon, comparing the aligned risky positions of traders induced by low interest rates to a fragile network of earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
faults that rupture together.
Investor
Spitznagel has been vague when discussing his investing (preferring instead to discuss the writings of Ludwig von MisesLudwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal who had a significant influence on the modern Libertarian movement and the "Austrian School" of economic thought.-Biography:-Early life:...
or Laozi
Laozi
Laozi was a mystic philosopher of ancient China, best known as the author of the Tao Te Ching . His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Taoism...
), though he is clearly an adherent of the value investing
Value investing
Value investing is an investment paradigm that derives from the ideas on investment and speculation that Ben Graham and David Dodd began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis...
philosophy. Spitznagel hailed Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham was an American economist and professional investor. Graham is considered the first proponent of value investing, an investment approach he began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently refined with David Dodd through various editions of their famous book...
and the “margin of safety” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, and has even likened the esoteric derivatives trading that he does in his hedge funds to value investing due to his emphasis on long-term expected intrinsic value
Intrinsic value (finance)
In finance, intrinsic value refers to the value of a security which is intrinsic to or contained in the security itself. It is also frequently called fundamental value. It is ordinarily calculated by summing the future income generated by the asset, and discounting it to the present value...
over short-term market swings. (In the same op-ed, Spitznagel cautioned that the US stock market was as overvalued “relative to net asset replacement cost”—the Q ratio
Tobin's q
Tobin's q was developed by James Tobin as the ratio between the market value and replacement value of the same physical asset:One, the numerator, is the market valuation: the going price in the market for exchanging existing assets. The other, the denominator, is the replacement or reproduction...
—as at any time since 1900 save the late 1990s, implying eventually “much lower stock market prices.”)
In June 2011, CNBC
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...
reported on a research piece by Spitznagel (The Dao of Corporate Finance) which predicted a 40% correction in the S&P 500 stock index, based on “stock valuations, put in the context of 110 years of stock-market history.”
Spitznagel has become notorious for very concentrated bearish bets in his tail-hedging funds, through what he calls his “bizarre, positively-skewed
Skewness
In probability theory and statistics, skewness is a measure of the asymmetry of the probability distribution of a real-valued random variable. The skewness value can be positive or negative, or even undefined...
approach” to investing. This is presumed to mean long
Long (finance)
In finance, a long position in a security, such as a stock or a bond, or equivalently to be long in a security, means the holder of the position owns the security and will profit if the price of the security goes up. Going long is the more conventional practice of investing and is contrasted with...
convexity-type positions, as in out-of-the-money puts on overvalued equities (such as Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial services firm. Before declaring bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth largest investment bank in the USA , doing business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales and trading Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (former NYSE ticker...
, about which he has responded “It's a regrettable aspect of our trade that we tend to do very well on others' misfortune”).
This approach requires “focus and discipline in the face of lumpy returns,” he says, which “ultimately keeps away competitors—they always move to greener pastures.” In fact, according to Spitznagel, Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
and hedge funds tend to do the opposite of him, “manufacturing returns that look steady, but in reality, all they are doing is creating a very negatively skewed distribution
Probability distribution
In probability theory, a probability mass, probability density, or probability distribution is a function that describes the probability of a random variable taking certain values....
. They make small amounts of money very often and sometimes lose a lot. It is just a big game.”
In regard to the patience and persistence required of his method, Spitznagel has said “It's like you're playing the piano for ten years and you still can't play chopsticks
Chopsticks (music)
"Chopsticks" is a simple, extremely well known waltz for the piano. It was written in 1877 by the British composer Euphemia Allen under the pseudonym Arthur de Lulli...
, and the only thing you have to keep you going is the belief that one day you'll wake up and play like Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
.”
Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
has described Spitznagel's investment strategy as “bets on the fat tail
Fat tail
A fat-tailed distribution is a probability distribution that has the property, along with the heavy-tailed distributions, that they exhibit extremely large skewness or kurtosis. This comparison is often made relative to the ubiquitous normal distribution, which itself is an example of an...
s…delivering a string of mediocre results interrupted occasionally by spectacular years.”
Chicago pit trader
Spitznagel's approach to investing dates to his time as a fledgling pit trader in the early 1990s in the bondBond (finance)
In finance, a bond is a debt security, in which the authorized issuer owes the holders a debt and, depending on the terms of the bond, is obliged to pay interest to use and/or to repay the principal at a later date, termed maturity...
futures
Futures contract
In finance, a futures contract is a standardized contract between two parties to exchange a specified asset of standardized quantity and quality for a price agreed today with delivery occurring at a specified future date, the delivery date. The contracts are traded on a futures exchange...
pit at the Chicago Board of Trade. There, as the youngest trader in the bond pit, he was mentored by 50-year veteran corn
Corn
Corn is the name used in the United States, Canada, and Australia for the grain maize.In much of the English-speaking world, the term "corn" is a generic term for cereal crops, such as* Barley* Oats* Wheat* Rye- Places :...
and soybean
Soybean
The soybean or soya bean is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean which has numerous uses...
trader Everett Klipp (a.k.a. the “Babe Ruth of the Chicago Board of Trade”). According to Spitznagel, Klipp “stood with me in the bond pit and told and showed me the importance of discipline in trading—the discipline to limit losses and control risks and not try to forecast the market. I was pretty much brainwashed by the age of 16 by this old grain trader who said that to be successful, you just had to know how to take a small loss as opposed to a big loss.”
Black Swan Theory
Universa's tail-hedging strategy (named the “Black Swan Protection Protocol”) is related to the Black Swan TheoryBlack swan theory
The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept that The event is a surprise and has a major impact...
and Problem of Induction
Problem of induction
The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge. That is, what is the justification for either:...
of David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
, Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
, et al., and highly popularized by author and financial mathematician
Mathematical finance
Mathematical finance is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with financial markets. The subject has a close relationship with the discipline of financial economics, which is concerned with much of the underlying theory. Generally, mathematical finance will derive and extend the mathematical...
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (who is an advisor to Spitznagel’s Universa funds). Spitznagel and Taleb are long-time collaborators, going back to Spitznagel's graduate study at the New York University Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences where Taleb was a professor. While Spitznagel has tried to remain anonymous, Taleb, who is very vocal in the media, has become more the face of Universa (despite Taleb calling himself “in general a risk adviser to Universa, I don't know their positions, I'm not involved in trading.”).
Austrian School
Spitznagel has been an ardent proponent of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises and critic of Federal Reserve monetary policyMonetary policy
Monetary policy is the process by which the monetary authority of a country controls the supply of money, often targeting a rate of interest for the purpose of promoting economic growth and stability. The official goals usually include relatively stable prices and low unemployment...
and Keynesianism. In a series of Wall Street Journal op-eds, Spitznagel extolled the views of von Mises against government-induced inflationary credit expansion (“Government expansion of credit takes a system otherwise capable of adjustment and resilience and transforms it into…a brittle one.”) and criticized the interventionism
Economic interventionism
Economic interventionism is an action taken by a government in a market economy or market-oriented mixed economy, beyond the basic regulation of fraud and enforcement of contracts, in an effort to affect its own economy...
of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke
Ben Bernanke
Ben Shalom Bernanke is an American economist, and the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States. During his tenure as Chairman, Bernanke has overseen the response of the Federal Reserve to late-2000s financial crisis....
(“easily the most significant market manipulator in history”).
Inflation bet
In July 2009, Spitznagel opened a fund betting on hyperinflationHyperinflation
In economics, hyperinflation is inflation that is very high or out of control. While the real values of the specific economic items generally stay the same in terms of relatively stable foreign currencies, in hyperinflationary conditions the general price level within a specific economy increases...
.
In a July 13, 2009 Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
column, Spitznagel and Taleb warned against excessive leverage and debt and the risks of hyperinflation from Federal Reserve debt monetization
Monetization
Monetization is the process of converting or establishing something into legal tender. It usually refers to the coining of currency or the printing of banknotes by central banks...
.
Personal
Spitznagel keeps homes in the East Gate Bel AirEast Gate Bel Air, Los Angeles
East Gate Bel Air is a very small and very wealthy area within the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, California...
section of Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
(in an estate which he bought in 2009 from Jennifer Lopez
Jennifer Lopez
Jennifer Lynn Lopez is an American actress, singer, record producer, dancer, television personality, and fashion designer. Lopez began her career as a dancer on the television comedy program In Living Color. Subsequently venturing into acting, she gained recognition in the 1995 action-thriller...
and Marc Anthony
Marc Anthony
Marc Anthony is an American singer-songwriter, actor and producer. Anthony is the top selling tropical salsa artist of all time. The two-time Grammy and three-time Latin Grammy–winner has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide. He is best known for his Latin salsa numbers and ballads...
) and in Northport Point, Michigan. He also owns a cherry and goat farm in Michigan.
According to Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell, CM is a Canadian journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. He is currently based in New York City and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996...
(in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
and What the Dog Saw
What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures
What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures is the fourth book released by author Malcolm Gladwell, on October 20, 2009. The book is a compilation of the journalist's articles published in The New Yorker.-Background:...
), “Spitznagel is blond and from the Midwest and does yoga. He exudes a certain laconic levelheadedness,” and “wants to be like von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...
” (presumably because Spitznagel is an instrument-rated pilot
Instrument rating
Instrument rating refers to the qualifications that a pilot must have in order to fly under IFR . It requires additional training and instruction beyond what is required for a Private Pilot certificate or Commercial Pilot certificate, including rules and procedures specific to instrument flying,...
and skier).
Forbes described the “unruffled”, loafered Spitznagel as looking “better prepared for a yacht race than for doomsday.”
Publications
- Spitznagel, M. (2011) All About the Benjamins, The Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2011
- Spitznagel, M. (2010) The Fed and the May 6 'Flash Crash', The Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2010
- Spitznagel, M. (2009) The Man Who Predicted the Depression, The Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2009
- Taleb, N.N., Golstein, D.G., and Spitznagel, M. (2009) The Six Mistakes Executives Make in Risk Management, Harvard Business ReviewHarvard Business ReviewHarvard Business Review is a general management magazine published since 1922 by Harvard Business School Publishing, owned by the Harvard Business School. A monthly research-based magazine written for business practitioners, it claims a high ranking business readership among academics, executives,...
, October, 2009 - Taleb, N.N., Spitznagel, M. (2009) Time to tackle the real evil: too much debt, Financial Times, July 13, 2009