To most of the world, the solution to debt-ridden Detroit is money. But for one hedge fund manager, it’s goats.
Mark Spitznagel, the founder of the $6 billion hedge fund Universa Investments, on Thursday brought 20 goats to graze among abandoned homes and general detritus in Brightmoor, one of Detroit’s most blighted neighborhoods.
Not to be outdone by JPMorgan Chase, the country’s biggest bank, which recently pledged to invest $100 million to help Detroit over the next five years, Mr. Spitznagel says he is contributing directly to the community.
“It’s an urban farming experiment,” he said of his plan to leave his goats to roam and munch on overgrown grass. “Goats are an effective way to do landscaping,” he added.
The goats, which will number as many as 60 this summer, have come from Mr. Spitznagel’s farmstead, Idyll Farms, in Northport, Mich. When Mr. Spitznagel is not busy managing investments for his 15 or so clients, which include institutions and sovereign wealth funds, he tends to a business rearing goats and making cheese.
Mr. Spitznagel will enlist the help of the community — paying previously unemployed adults and enlisting the help of local youths to herd the baby goats — and he plans to build portable housing for the goats in addition to pens and electric fencing. At the end of the summer, Mr. Spitznagel said, he will sell the goats to Detroit butchers and give the proceeds back to the community.
If the goats are allowed to stay, that is.
“I have never heard of such a thing,” Linda Vinyard, a spokeswoman for Mayor Mike Duggan, said on Thursday afternoon, adding that Mr. Duggan’s office was unaware of the goats grazing.
Mr. Spitznagel “will have to deal with the authorities,” she said. “There are ordinances in our charter that prohibit grazing by goats on public property.”
If this all sounds a little unusual, Mr. Spitznagel has never been one to bend to convention. He began his career in a trading pit at the Chicago Board of Trade, where he first toyed with the idea of learning to “invest in loss.” Ever the fearmonger, Mr. Spitznagel says the stock market is in for a great shock that will set off devastating across-the-board losses. Until then, he is paying for the option to short the market, losing money each time he does so. The last boon he received was during the financial crisis: In 2008 his fund returned 115 percent amid wide market carnage.
But his goat experiment — called the Idyll Farms Detroit project — also appears to have a bigger objective. Mr. Spitznagel has a vested interest in seeing Detroit make a comeback. He has personally invested millions of dollars in commercial real estate, something he says has no bearing on the Brightmoor project.
Residents of the neighborhood may hope that Mr. Spitznagel’s mantra to “invest in loss” will pan out better for Detroit than it has for his hedge fund recently. Mr. Spitznagel is still waiting for the next financial disaster to cash in; so far this year his firm has lost 1 percent.
An article on Friday about the hedge fund manager Mark Spitznagel’s contribution of 20 goats to graze overgrown grass in a blighted Detroit neighborhood described the animals incorrectly. They are wethers, or castrated male goats, not billy goats, which have not been castrated and tend to be obstreperous, malodorous and not well suited to what Mr. Spitznagel called an “urban farming experiment.”