The Meb Faber Show

Last year when we published The Best Investment Writing Volume 2, we offered authors the opportunity to record an audio version of their chapter to be released as a segment of the podcast, and listeners loved it. This year, we’re bringing you the entire volume of The Best Investment Writing Volume 3 in podcast format. You’ll hear from some of the most respected money managers and investment researchers all over the world. Enough from me, let’s let Todd take over this special episode.

In episode 191, we welcome our guest, Simon Hallett. Simon and Meb start off the conversation with a run-down of Simon’s firm, Harding Loevner, cover its quality growth investment approach as well as its long-term focus. Simon gives some insights into “short-termism” and what it takes and the incentives in place to keep everyone at Harding Loevner focused on long-term investing. Simon walks through the investment framework at Harding Loevner in detail. From a high level, they care about growth, quality, and price and beyond that, Simon walks through the details and what it looks like as ideas work their way through the process. Next, Simon and Meb get into skill vs. luck. Simon emphasizes the role process plays in skill vs. luck, and the post-investment review he and his team go through to analyze the role skill vs. luck played in the outcome of a position. As the conversation winds down, Simon and Meb touch on behavioral finance, and Simon discusses introducing behavioral aspects to the investment process wh

Episode 190 has a radio show format. We cover a variety of topics, including: Buying stocks at all-time highs 2010 Fund Manager of the Decade Jim Simons Year-end questions for advisors and brokers There’s this and plenty more in episode 190. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 189 we welcome our guest, John Parise. John and Meb kick off the conversation with the idea of the family CFO and wealth planning. As John gained experience in financial planning, he investigated the family office model, and he consistently saw a lack of planning. That eventually led him to the foundations that helped him eventually form his firm, Copper Beech. Meb and John then cover to the process of what planning looks like at Copper Beech. John describes the interview, discovery process, and the types of conversations the firm has with families. They then get into some examples of the mechanics of what the planning process really looks like, and some methods to pay zero estate tax. The pair then shift to talking about teaching young generations to handle wealth. As the conversation winds down, John covers some of the major items people can consider to improve their planning outcomes. All this and more, in episode 189 including John’s most memorable investment. Learn more about your ad choices.

Last year when we published The Best Investment Writing Volume 2, we offered authors the opportunity to record an audio version of their chapter to be released as a segment of the podcast, and listeners loved it. This year, we’re bringing you the entire volume of The Best Investment Writing Volume 3 in podcast format. You’ll hear from some of the most respected money managers and investment researchers all over the world. Enough from me, let’s let Ray take over this special episode.

In episode 188 we welcome our guest, Andreas Clenow. Meb and Andreas start the conversation with a hat on what hooked Andreas on trend following, and his book, Following the Trend. Andreas discusses running trend following as a portfolio strategy, not something that is optimal to run on a single market. He talks about some basic fundamentals of trend following, including the premise that it’s about taking a lot of bets on a large number of markets independently. Meb then asks Andreas to get into some detail about risk management and position sizing. Andreas defines the way he thinks about risk, and goes back and forth with Meb about the reality of return expectations and compounding. Meb follows by asking what has changed with his approach over the years. Andreas responds with the idea of realizing it’s about strategy and business, and the business has changed a lot. The conversation transitions into how trend following can fit into an investment portfolio. Andreas offers that the strategy can serve as a core

Last year when we published The Best Investment Writing Volume 2, we offered authors the opportunity to record an audio version of their chapter to be released as a segment of the podcast, and listeners loved it. This year, we’re bringing you the entire volume of The Best Investment Writing Volume 3 in podcast format. You’ll hear from some of the most respected money managers and investment researchers all over the world. Enough from me, let’s let Jack take over this special episode.

In episode 187 we welcome our guest, Kevin Carter. Meb and Kevin start the conversation with some background on Kevin’s career, getting to know Burton Malkiel, and launching EMQQ.  Kevin offers some of his thoughts on investing in China, including his initial thoughts about the prominence of state owned enterprises. Kevin mentions that a key component to investing in emerging markets is that it’s about the consumer. He notes that emerging and frontier markets are 85% of the world’s people and almost 90% of the people under the age of 30, the GDP of those people are still growing twice as fast as the rest of the world, and their incomes are growing.  Kevin discusses that once he figured out that the indexes that were available to invest in these markets were allocated relatively heavily to the legacy, inefficient, state owned enterprise portion of economies, he got to work on building indexes that were more targeted to capture emerging market growth.  Meb and Kevin then discuss the reality of emerging market a

Last year when we published The Best Investment Writing Volume 2, we offered authors the opportunity to record an audio version of their chapter to be released as a segment of the podcast, and listeners loved it. This year, we’re bringing you the entire volume of The Best Investment Writing Volume 3 in podcast format. You’ll hear from some of the most respected money managers and investment researchers all over the world. Enough from me, let’s let Scott take over this special episode.

In episode 186 we welcome our guest, Carter Malloy. Meb kicks off the conversation with Carter’s background in finance and growing up in a farming family. When conducting research on the asset class. He saw attractive returns historically, but there wasn’t a great way for most people to invest in it. That insight spurred the idea for AcreTrader. As Meb and Carter dig a little deeper into farmland, they discuss the return drivers, yield and asset appreciation, and the imbalance of demand vs. supply as a driver of returns. Meb then asks Carter to get into the cycles of farmland investing. Carter covers leverage and cycles. The pair explore the Macro themes that have been in play over the last few years. Carter comments that it has been tough for farmers, and commodity prices have been low. He clarifies that if you separate the farmer from the land owner, the land owner has continued to do great. The pair then get into the ideas behind Carter’s firm, AcreTrader. Carter walks through the inefficient nature of far

Last year when we published The Best Investment Writing Volume 2, we offered authors the opportunity to record an audio version of their chapter to be released as a segment of the podcast, and listeners loved it. This year, we’re bringing you the entire volume of The Best Investment Writing Volume 3 in podcast format. You’ll hear from some of the most respected money managers and investment researchers all over the world. Enough from me, let’s let Larry take over this special episode.

In episode 185 we welcome our guest, Ben Claremon. Ben and Meb start the conversation with some background on the blog Ben started in school, The Inoculated Investor. From there, the pair move on to discuss Cove Street and the investment process. Ben gets into investing, and what value investing means to Cove Street Capital, bifurcated between Warren Buffett style investing and Benjamin Graham style investing. Next, Ben discusses the investment and portfolio construction process he and the team undergo at Cove Street, including sell discipline applied to fund positions. Ben and Meb get into the outlook for the investment landscape, covering Value investing to opportunities in China, as well as the auto industry. He also discusses some things to avoid. Ben then gets into the importance of proxy statements, and the role corporate governance plays in the investment process. As the conversation winds down, Meb and Ben get into the bogeyman of buybacks and talk about the idea that the focus should instead be on th

Episode 184 is a Meb Short. In this episode, you’ll hear Meb discuss the CAPE ratio, flawed logic behind the conclusion that “CAPE doesn’t work,” probabilistic investing, and a global perspective on CAPE. All this and more in episode 184. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In episode 183 we welcome our guest, Ben Inker. Ben and Meb start the conversation with a chat about Ben’s thoughts on markets which include the overriding theme that non-us markets are currently presenting opportunity for investors. Next, Meb asks Ben to get into his thoughts on current valuations and Ben walks through some ideas on high valuations for US stocks and reduced forward looking returns. On the subject of valuations, the pair then discusses interest rates and monetary policy. Ben follows that with an interesting paper he wrote that explored how high profitability has skewed toward large capitalization companies. Ben expands on his thinking about valuations and markets outside the US, the past decade being the worst for value stocks, and being excited about opportunities like emerging market value stocks. He goes further in his discussion by getting into a concept he credits Robert Shiller with, clairvoyant fair value of a stock market, and shares that two pieces of information are critical, the st

Last year when we published The Best Investment Writing Volume 2, we offered authors the opportunity to record an audio version of their chapter to be released as a segment of the podcast, and listeners loved it. This year, we’re bringing you the entire volume of The Best Investment Writing Volume 3 in podcast format. You’ll hear from some of the most respected money managers and investment researchers all over the world. Enough from me, let’s let Gary take over this special episode.

In episode 182 we welcome our guest, Larry Hite. Larry and Meb start off the conversation with Larry’s origin as a trend follower, and the parallels to trend following and life. Larry follows with personal challenges he overcame in life, and how he found a path to success through a life lesson, weeding out what he couldn’t do, and include the things that gave him a lot of enjoyment and potentially a lot of money (or both). Next, Larry gets into his start in investing, combing through hundreds of years of data and finding that cutting losses and letting winners run really works. He then transitions into some underlying foundations about how he thinks about trading, including, putting the odds in your favor by creating asymmetrical bets. Meb then talks with Larry about founding Mint, one of the earliest systematic CTAs, and was the first hedge fund to raise over $1 billion. As the conversation winds down, Larry talks about systematic rules, trend following, and making an array of bets. All this and more in epis

Episode 181 has a radio show format. We cover a variety of topics, including the new ETF rule: Major brokerage firms dropping ETF trading commissions to $0 New ETF rule Market valuation Trend following Investment Process There’s this and plenty more in episode 181. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In episode 180 we welcome back our guest, Rodrigo Gordillo. Meb and Rodrigo start the conversation with a walk through Rodrigo’s background and his experience growing up in Peru. Rodrigo then gets into his framework for thinking about investing and how that evolved into what he and his team is doing at ReSolve. Rodrigo then spends some time on the knowledge gained by studying and backtesting investment strategies. He stresses the use of “ensembles” rather than isolating single parameters for more robust investment processes. Meb shifts the conversation and asks Rodrigo to talk about ReSolve’s machine learning project. Rodrigo discusses applying machine learning to finance, and how it is a tool, and another element of the ReSolve team’s process. Meb and Rodrigo chat about risk parity, and some of the common misunderstandings that exist, as well as the basic functions of how the strategy works. As the conversation winds down, Rodrigo gets into some research projects on the horizon for ReSolve. All this and more

Last year when we published The Best Investment Writing Volume 2, we offered authors the opportunity to record an audio version of their chapter to be released as a segment of the podcast, and listeners loved it. This year, we’re bringing you the entire volume of The Best Investment Writing Volume 3 in podcast format. You’ll hear from some of the most respected money managers and investment researchers all over the world. Enough from me, let’s let Justin take over this special episode.

In episode 179 we welcome our guest, Dan Ferris. Meb begins with a discussion of Dan’s background as a guitarist, and his path into finance. Dan then provides a high level view of his framework for how he thinks about investing. He discusses bottom-up value investing, and developing a powerful respect for the effect of cycles. When it came to evaluating companies, he took issue with traditional DCF analysis, and focused more on using DCF as a tool to provide guide posts to probabilities of various outcomes. Next, Meb asks Dan to walk through the Extreme Value portfolio. Dan discusses there are 17 names with average days held of 1100, reflecting his thinking about equity as “permanent capital.” He covers names like Altius Minerals, Starbucks, and Dollar General. Dan also touches on his thinking behind the sell decision. As the conversation winds down, Dan discusses some of the most influential books and passages he has read on investing: Chapter 20 of the Intelligent Investor, The Most Important Thing by Howar