Empirica Capital LLC was a hedge fund founded in 1999 by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in partnership with Mark Spitznagel, that used Taleb's black swan strategy. The firm closed in 2005.: 157
The investment strategy of the fund has been explained in a New Yorker article. One of Empirica's funds, Empirica Kurtosis LLC, was reported to have made a 60% return in 2000 followed by losses in 2001, 2002, and single digit gains in 2003 and 2004.
Taleb has stated that he shut down Empirica LLC, in 2005 to become a "writer and a scholar". At the time he also "feared he might have a recurrence of throat cancer."
In 2007 Spitznagel founded the firm Universa Investments L.P. with Taleb as an adviser using black swan portfolio hedging strategies similar to Empirica's.
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