by Michael Johnston on May 31, 2012

Innovation in the ETF industry has become standard over the past several years, with countless first-to-market products opening up new asset classes and strategies. And it turns out that the U.S. isn’t the only place where product development is going full throttle; our neighbors to the north have recently rolled out some rather unique exchange-traded products.  Horizons, one of the largest Canadian issuers of ETFs, recently debuted a suite of Black Swan ETFs that are designed to protect investors against sudden plunges in equity markets.

The new ETFs, including the Horizons Universa Canadian Black Swan ETF (HUT) and Horizons Universa U.S. Black Swan ETF (HUS) will combine traditional exposure to stock indexes with an actively-managed options strategy. The goal of these products is to protect assets in the event of extreme downside events–such as a wave of sovereign debt defaults in Europe.

The new Black Swan ETFs essentially consist of two components: exposure to broad stock indexes such as the S&P 500 or S&P/TSX 60 and a pool of put and call options that utilizes the Black Swan Protection Protocol. The basket of options will be actively managed by Universa Investments, which was founded by Mark Spitznagel. Universa made a fortune by betting against stock markets in 2008; Spitznagel’s fund returned more than 100% in 2008 as global stock markets tumbled.

Nassim Taleb serves as a Distinguished Scientific Advisor for Universa.

The idea behind the options pool is to assemble protection in the event that stocks plunge, with the goal of offsetting the losses incurred by the traditional long only position. That can potentially be done by simply buying put options that will be valuable if stock markets decline, or selling call options that will expire worthless in the event of a sharp decline. The goal is to generate positive returns from the options pool when stocks decline, with gains invested into equity markets when they are cheap on a historical basis–consistent with a “buy low” strategy.

The strategy essentially is intended to dramatically reduce downside risk taken on by investors. In exchange, the Black Swan ETFs may give up some upside potential when stocks are rallying. For example, the premiums paid to buy put options on the S&P 500 could erode returns if they expire worthless. Continue reading →