justinmares

This is just not true - corn/soy/wheat are the most sprayed crops in agriculture.

Exactly

This is almost exactly correct. Though what's crazy is they charge fees on the notional - aka the amount they're "insuring".

So if you have a 4b portfolio, they're charging fees on the 4b.

The 3600% return in March is sort of misleading.

The returns are on the premium paid for options (or margin), not the notional (which is where fees are paid). That $4bn fund is counting its performance on only $40 million of invested capital (of the $4bn). So they are up 3600% on $40 million.

Universa’s model is they take 3.5% of a portfolio value per year and use it to buy puts over the course of a year. So at any time, maybe they have 30-60 basis points of the portfolio in puts. So they are up 3600% on 30 basis points or like 12%.

"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%."

"The same portfolio would have produced a compounded return of 11.5% a year since March of 2008 versus 7.9% for the index."

2.6% per annum is a lot of outperformance, albeit not quite as eye popping as 3600%.

That's on the roadmap! Starting with restaurants as that's the world I know best right now