What is Your Take on Black Swan Funds Offered Through Universa?

What's your take on the Black Swan Fund(s) offered by Universa? Are there similar funds / ETF's offered through the plain-vanilla wire houses (Vanguard,Fidelity, Schwab)?

PS ~ BlackSwan's minimum investment of $25MM is a little steep for me -- which is why I asked about the availability of similar funds and ETFs at retail wirehouses. Vanguard doesnt have any such funds that I could find on their site or their phone rep could direct me to.

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I think the funds and Taleb's ideas are super interesting. As the article indicates, the existing funds obviously performed incredibly well last year--what took place is precisely what they are intended to capitalize on. That said, I'm not sure how well the funds performed over a longer-term as the cash flow requirements to maintain the option strategy over many years are not trivial.

Also, as you indicate, not exactly a retail option in a retail price range.

Inflation is obviously a concern but not a certainty. Commodities are interesting in light of inflation and otherwise. Shorting treasuries and the dollar would seem to be the most obvious of any of these.

I am not aware of any ETFs or retail funds that are designed to replicate all of the above in one package.

However, long or short positions can be established in any of the following through ETFs or other: inflation, dollar, treasuries, commodities.

Let me know if you need direction on those ETFs.

Tom ~

Will take you up on the ETF recommendation. Would greatly appreciate any direction you can provide on ETFs that bet against the $ and Obamanomics.

Thx again

Sure, here are some ETFs that might be of interest:

1) TBT - ultrashort (1.5 leverage) 20 year Treasury

2) GLD - long gold

3) GSG - long commodity

4) IXC - long energy sector

5) VIPSX - Vanguard long TIPS

6) UDN - Proshares short dollar

7) PCRDX - Pimco long commodity and TIPS