Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve might be in the process of driving the stock market over a cliff by tightening into a recession.
That is one potential scenario envisioned by fund manager Mark Spitznagel, who actually thinks the Fed will blink soon on rate increases. He isn’t explicitly betting on either outcome, but would likely find himself in the headlines again if the more dire one comes true: The last time there was a contraction in the U.S. economy his firm, Universa Investments, earned an astounding 4,000% return in a matter of weeks. The time before that, during the financial crisis, he more than doubled clients’ money even as the value of stocks was cut in half. In between those two downturns, Universa made $1 billion in a single day during the “flash crash.”
