Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms by Mark Spitznagel

Part One 
What Comes First

At War with Luck
 WRITTEN IN BLOOD
 In the words of the nineteenth‐century German philosopher Friedrich
 Nietzsche, thus spoken by his ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra, “Of all
 that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood.”
 If so, Nietzsche would have loved this book.
 It was written with the blood of war against luck, fought over the last more
 than a quarter century in my life as a trader. It grew organically out of an
 investing and risk‐mitigation practice as a hedge fund manager and
 professional safe haven investor. The message of this book has been and
 will always be lived by me and my hedge fund firm, Universa Investments.
 (It is our manifesto.)
 Talk is cheap. Ideas and commentary are just that. Significance only comes
 from the doing, from action within the arena. It is not my business, like
 Sherlock Holmes, “to know what other people do not know.” It is my
 business to do what other people do not and cannot do (as well as, just as
 importantly, to know what I do not know). Doing and demonstrating
 effective safe haven investing is far, far more important than arguing about
 what it should be. And even among most of those who claim to do it, they
 neglect those pithy words from Hemingway to “never confuse movement
 with action.”
 This book tells of the foundation and methodology behind how, as of this
 writing, Universa risk‐mitigated portfolios have, over their decade‐plus life
 to date, outperformed the S&P 500 by over 3% on an annualized, net basis.

Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms by Mark Spitznagel