What is a safe haven?

What role should they play in an investment portfolio? Do we use them only to seek shelter until the passing of financial storms? Or are they something more? Contrary to everything we know from modern financial theory, can higher returns actually come as a result of lowering risk? In Safe Haven, hedge fund manager Mark Spitznagel—one of the top practitioners of safe haven investing and portfolio risk mitigation in the world—answers these questions and more. Investors who heed the message in this book will never look at risk mitigation the same way again.

MARK SPITZNAGEL is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of the hedge fund Universa Investments and the author of the book The Dao of Capital.

Foreword by Nassim Nicholas Taleb ix

PART ONE: WHAT COMES FIRST 1

Chapter One: AT WAR WITH LUCK 3

Chapter Two: NATURE'S ADMONITION 29

Chapter Three: THE ETERNAL RETURN 57

PART TWO: WHAT COMES AFTER 97

Chapter Four: A TAXONOMY 99

Chapter Five: HOLISM 123

Chapter Six: BOLD CONJECTURES 163

AFTERWORD: AMOR FATI 195

Acknowledgments 211

Index 213