The Meb Faber Show - Better Investing

Episode 81 is a radio show format. Meb starts with a note of thanks to listeners. It involves a milestone Cambria just passed as a company. Next, Meb walks us through the common themes he’s hearing from his office hours. In short, all listeners are generally making the same investing mistakes (though everyone seems to believe his/her situation is unique). Meb tells us what everyone is doing. Then,...

In Episode 80, we welcome commodities and gold expert, Claude Erb. As usual, we start with Claude’s back-story, but it’s not long before the guys jump into investing, with Meb asking about Claude’s general framework and view of the markets. Claude tells us there are three concepts that guide his broad investing thinking: first, framing investment opportunities in terms of price/value relationships...

In Episode 79, we welcome Jason Goepfert, founder of SentimenTrader. Per usual, we start with Jason’s background. It involves listening to margin calls, when “real emotion” would come out. Jason tells us anger and panic were what you would hear, and that people are not necessarily rational. These experiences and others eventually led Jason to launch Sentimentrader which is, according to its websit...

In Episode 78, we welcome angel investor, Alex Rubalcava. As Meb and Alex are friends, we start with Meb recalling the first time he met Alex over some egg tacos. Alex goes on to give us more about his background, which took him from pension funds, to dot.coms to VC investing. Meb asks for more information on Alex’s group, Stage Venture Partners. Alex tells us that Stage is a classic seed venture...

In Episode 77, we welcome author and asset manager, Tobias “Toby” Carlisle. After discussing Toby’s background, including his time as an M&A lawyer and what drew him to investing, we jump into his latest book, The Acquirer’s Multiple. Toby tells us that the book describes a simple way to find undervalued companies. In essence, you’re trying to find a company trading below its intrinsic value. This...

In Episode 76, we welcome Phil DeMuth. We start with Phil’s background. It’s a fun recap, involving Phil’s clinical psychology roots, his move to LA to be a screenwriter, his experiences in the Dot Com boom with friend, Ben Stein, which led to the writing of his first investment book, which eventually resulted in his managing money. Meb dives into investing, asking for an overview of the framework...

In Episode 75, we welcome Mike McDaniel, CIO and co-founder of Riskalyze. It’s a special episode, being recorded at the Riskalyze Fearless Investment Summit in Lake Tahoe. Per usual, we start with Mike’s origin story, but it’s not long before the guys dive into investments. Meb asks about Mike’s investment framework – how does he think about the world as a practitioner. Mike tells us he tries to l...

In Episode 74, we welcome Jeffrey Sherman from DoubleLine. We start with Jeff’s background – it’s a fun recap, including stories of running the scoreboard for The Stockton Ports… being a bank teller… earning graduate degrees… there’s a brief aside into catastrophe bonds which is a good primer if you’re less familiar with them… then back into Jeff’s background with DoubleLine. This dovetails into M...

In Episode 73, we welcome Jeff Porter and Barbara Schelhorn from the financial planning group, Sullivan Bruyette Speros & Blayney. We start with Jeff’s background. He was a contemporary of Meb’s at the University of Virginia. The guys share a laugh recalling running out of class to check stock quotes back in the Dot Com boom. As the conversation turns to investing and financial planning, Meb asks...

Episode 72 is a radio show format before we start back with guests this fall. Some of the questions and topics you’ll hear: You've said that bonds can face significant drawdowns. But because of the way bonds work, is it the case that bond ETFs guarantee a positive return over time (assuming held to maturity and no default)?  I have heard that equal weight beats market cap because it sells the expe...

Episode 71 is a solo-Meb show in which he reads a white paper we’ll soon be publishing. The white paper might be a tad controversial as it calls into question an investing strategy that’s so beloved, it borders on sacrosanct. What’s the strategy? Since this is a shorter episode, we won’t reveal it here. Instead, here’s a bit from the paper’s introduction… “…Similarly, if you worship at the altar o...

Episode 70 is a radio show format. We start with a quick catch-up, discussing the recent eclipse and Meb’s upcoming travel, including Iceland, Reno, Orlando, Amsterdam, among others. Before jumping into listener questions, we get Meb’s thoughts on Episode 69, which featured Jason Calacanis (Meb dabbles with some angel investments himself). Meb tells us a bit more about his own angel experiences an...

In Episode 68, we welcome Meb’s friend and Newfound Research founder, Cory Hoffstein (or as Meb refers to him, a “fellow nerd”). Per usual, we start with Corey’s background, but then Meb jumps in by asking Corey to describe his general, 10K foot investing framework.  Corey tells us that a specific product and/or style doesn’t necessarily define him or Newfound. Rather, he believes in a consistent,...

In Episode 67, we welcome Simon Black, founder of the newsletter, Sovereign Man. We start with Simon’s military background, having been an intelligence officer. He spent lots of time overseas, yet became disillusioned after the promises of WMDs failed to prove accurate. From this, he began challenging the status quo. Underpinning everything was an ethos of personal freedom, which is at the core of...

Episode 66 is a radio show. We start with Meb referencing the just-published book, The Best Investment Writing, which he edited. It’s a great collection of essays from some of the smartest minds in investing. Check it out. Next, we jump into market commentary, using Meb’s recent “office hours” as our vehicle for discussion. What that means is Meb had some extra time over the last few weeks, so he...

In Episode 65, we welcome CTA and commodities expert, Emil van Essen. Meb starts with a fun bit of trivia – if you mesh his and Emil’s name, coming up with “Emil Faber,” can you guess in which movie that name appears? It turns out it’s from the classic comedy, Animal House. “Emil Faber” was the founder of the movie’s “Faber College” and under his statue was his quote, “Knowledge is good.” After Em...

In Episode 64, we welcome David Varadi from Blue Sky Asset Management. David tells us a bit about himself before he and Meb jump into investing. Meb starts by referencing a quote from Blue Sky’s website: “Unlike endowments, investors do not have an infinite time horizon. For this reason, we believe that a traditional strategic asset allocation approach based on modern portfolio theory is suboptima...

In Episode 63, we welcome Gary Beasley and Gregor Watson, co-founders of Roofstock. If you’re one of our listeners who has written in requesting an episode on rental real estate, be sure not to miss this one. We start with some quick background on the guys, how they came to found Roofstock, and the way in which their company is aiming to make rental real estate investing far easier. In essence, th...

In Episode 62, we welcome journalist and author, Ron Lieber. Meb begins by congratulating Ron, as it was Meb's pregnant wife who read Ron's book about how parents should discuss financial matters with their kids, and promptly told Meb he needed to read it and get Ron on the podcast. Turning attention to Ron's book, "The Opposite of Spoiled," Meb begins by asking about Ron's motivation for writing...

In Episode 61, we welcome Jack Vogel, CFO/CIO of Alpha Architect, and the partner of Wes Gray, who you may remember as one of our earliest Meb Faber Show guests. After Jack tells us a bit about his background and how he came to be at Alpha Architect, Meb jumps in, starting with "factors" - specifically, the value factor. Meb asks about Jack's value philosophy in general, and how he creates a value...

In Episode 60, we welcome the great William (Bill) Bernstein. Bill starts by giving us some background on how he evolved from medicine to finance. In short, faced with his own retirement, he knew he had to learn to invest. So he studied, which shaped own thoughts on the matter, which led to him writing investing books, which resulted in interest from the press and retail investors, which steered h...

Episode 59 is a radio show format. This week we're diving into some of the recent market stories which Meb has found most interesting. We also bring back some listener Q&A. We start with a Tweet from Cliff Asness, in which he rebuffs a Bloomberg article titled, "The Death of Value Investing." The article states that value isn't working. Sticking to that approach has resulted in a cumulative loss...

In Episode 58, we welcome Axel Merk from Merk Investments. After a bit on Axel's background, the guys jump in, discussing the Fed's decision to raise interest rates today (recorded on Wed 6/14/17). Axel discusses how the Fed has announced the normalization of its balance sheet and the pace at which it would like to do so - but they've left out lots of details. He likens it to driving into a tunnel...

Episode 57 is another "radio show" format, yet this one is different than our others. In this episode, Meb discusses his 17 different "million-dollar" fintech ideas. In essence, Meb has had various business ideas over the years which he's wanted to pursue, but hasn't had the time. Some he's tweeted about, some he's blogged about, others he's kept to himself. But in Episode 57, he'll run through...

In Episode 56, we welcome Meb's good friend, and CEO of ETF.com, Dave Nadig. Per usual, we start with some background information. Dave tells us about his early days in the investment industry, starting a consulting firm that was working on a then-new idea: fee-only financial advising. His first client was a little shop that went on to become none other than BlackRock. After some professional twis...