Never heard from this formula so had to google it. I came to that formula based on my own personal experience. So I reinvented somethingthat was already invented before? Most people have no clue what it is all about. That's why they cannot make big money, only small money.
Somebody once said to believe nada till you see the brokerage statement. anybody see the brokerage statement? lol or any kind of paper trail to rebuild the thought pattern and process of execution as the program unfolded. Bernie wants to second that, "who wouldn't like to see this operate on a trade by trade basis. now, that would be cool, no?" thanks bern, no not That one, that bernie gets money making like he's running for office and keeping the "campaign funds". Such a deal. visitors day.
Yes, I don't understand @Sekiyo's math. If you only risk 1% buying put, I don't see how you can get the 3,600% gain from the downturn. And if I just buy and hold SP500 starting 1-1-09, I get 12.73% CAGR as of today and don't have to work at all.
Note Taleb calls Corona a .... White Swan. Not a Black one. Meaning one is unexpected, the other isn't - only the timing. Viruses come and go all the time.
For people, like Bill Gates kept warning people on "super Flu" for almost 10 years it's sth that kind of certain to come
The math is of course, screwed up. Let's do a 5th grade calculation, shall we? Yeah, something is fishy with the math. Not to mention a hedge still requires incredibly good timing of catching the bottom and if they can't they can easily give back gazillion % of unrealized gains. But let's see what they said: "Spitznagel included a chart in his letter showing that a portfolio invested 96.7% in the S&P 500 and 3.3% in Universa’s fund would have been unscathed in March, a month in which the U.S. equity benchmark fell 12.4%." So a 1/29 hedge of the funds protected a 1/8th drop . That is only a 375% return on the hedge!!! So yes, the journalist (and everybody else in this thread) missed a decimal point, no biggie, a rounding error. Another thing to note is that the bottom was at mid-month, and we bounced like 18% from there (2200 to 2600). We don't know when exactly they cashed out (or locked in) the hedge, but if only at the end of the month, that is giving back some serious profits. And as a last point, this wasn't a huge, one day black swan event, but a rather orderly, although volatile sell off. We had 5% moves for 2 weeks before the first 10% daily drop came. A decent hedge could have been put on anytime between late February to early March. About the impossibility of predicting the top, somebody wrote this on February 13th:
Feb 12th a FTSE 6900 put was 15 to buy, it was about 2000 by March 20th -and I'm one of the idiots screeching about Covid! Of course I didn't buy any.