As you report, investors’ interest in fat tails and black swans, events that fall outside ordinary distributions of outcomes, is growing (“Fat-Tail Attraction,” March 26, 2011). For instance, Universa Investment, a tail fund advised by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan (2007), has grown from three-hundred million dollars in 2007 to about six-billion today. As he advises in his book, between eighty-five and ninety percent should go into extremely safe investments, and the remainder of ten to fifteen percent should be put into extremely speculative ones, given that the focus should be on consequences rather than probabilities. The probabilities are beyond us, anyhow. This is like insurance, as you argue. Investors pay premiums every year to avoid financial catastrophe later. It is thus interesting to read in your article that Mark Spitznagel, the boss of Universa, complains about “complacency” among investors. Demand is very uneven, he claims. It rises when markets are volatile and declines during bull markets. To wit, investors cannot stomach fat tails and black swans except when little else is on offer. Surprise, surprise. Just like investments, only a few investors fall outside ordinary distributions of performance, as well.