The Meb Faber Show - Better Investing

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 the short-term nature of the earnings cycle.All this and more in episode 185, including Ben’s most memorable investment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 starting valuation of the markets, and the return on capital.As the conversation winds down, Ben and Meb discuss GMO’s benchmark free allocation strategy, and investing with the goal of making absolute money and worrying about absolute risk.All this and more in episode 183, including Ben’s thoughts on hedging currency risk and his most memorable investment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 episode 182, including concluding thoughts on challenges and resiliency, and Larry’s most memorable investment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 in episode 180. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Howard Marks, The Elements of Investing by Ellis and Malkiel, and more.Don’t miss episode 179. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 178 is a Meb Short. In this episode, you’ll hear Meb discuss the transactional nature of investing, finding an investment approach that works, and deploying an objective framework to govern removal investments and considering new ones.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices