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The Meb Faber Show

Ready to grow your wealth through smarter investing decisions? With The Meb Faber Show, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and investment fund manager, Meb Faber, brings you insights on today’s markets and the art of investing. Featuring some of the top investment professionals in the world as his guests, Meb will help you interpret global equity, bond, and commodity markets just like the pros. Whether it’s smart beta, trend following, value investing, or any other timely market topic, each week you’ll hear real market wisdom from the smartest minds in investing today. Better investing starts here. For more information on Meb, please visit MebFaber.com. For more on Cambria Investment Management, visit CambriaInvestments.com.
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All Episodes
Archives
Now displaying: February, 2019
Feb 27, 2019

In Episode 144 we welcome Marty Bergin. Marty begins by going through his background, the history of Dunn Capital and the relationship he had with Bill Dunn, the founder of Dunn Capital. That relationship opened the door for Marty to ultimately work or Bill, and to later become the owner of the firm as part of a transition plan.

Next, Meb asks Marty to describe trend following as it relates to Dunn. Marty describes that trend following is pretty basic, but there’s magic in how you develop a portfolio with the strategy. At Dunn, Marty and his team rely on an adaptive trend-following system. From a portfolio management perspective, they look for markets with enough volume to trade in 55 markets across commodities, currencies, interest rates, bonds, equities, and volatility with an equal allocation of risk buckets for each market they trade.

Meb follows that with a question about how it all fits together on a high level. Marty explains the program is not restricted in any way, and multiple methods are used for determining noise. He adds that when looking at possibilities, they are looking at a few days all the way out to a couple of years, and update weekly, yet he doesn’t believe there would be a major drift in performance if it were updated on a 12 or 18 month basis. The program gets into positions slowly, and is designed to get out quickly to protect downside.

The conversation then transitions into how the system has evolved over time. Marty walks through the core tweaks Dunn has undergone to adapt and improve the trading system, from looking at trading from a market-by-market basis, to applying the same techniques to every market, to taking a fresh approach to risk.  

Meb then asks about what Dunn’s strategy looks like during various environments. Marty goes on to talk about how a trend follower is looking for directional volatility that is consistently applied, and the difficulty of environments like 2018 when trend followers can become overweight and get caught in corrections that can lead to aggressive reversals.

He follows that with some insight into thinking about the current environment through the lens of Dunn Capital, and talks about risk metrics setting up to look conducive for trend following.

Meb and Marty wind down with a chat about how Dunn is very focused on education. They also touch on Dunn’s unique fee structure, and the place for a strategy like Dunn’s in investment portfolios.

All this and more in episode 144.

Feb 20, 2019

In episode 143 we welcome Dr. David Eifrig. David begins by going through his background and pathway to finance. He first discovered his interest in investing through the occasional Barron’s issue, and understood he didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps in medicine, moving on to Kellogg for business school before moving on to Wall Street. He describes that while working in finance, he decided to pursue science and medical school and ultimately helped build a business that was sold to Roche. While in residency, he began writing and that launched him into newsletter writing.

Meb then asks David to describe his publications, Retirement Millionaire, Retirement Trader, Income Intelligence, and the newly launched Advanced Options.

Meb asks David about how he thinks about value and price declines. David responds with some background on how he prefers to teach investing, and provides a simple framework for thinking about price and value.

After a quick discussion of the closed-end fund space, the conversation shifts to what looks interesting right now. David discusses Altria, and their exposure to the vaping market and the marijuana industry as well as preferred shares. The pair then expands with a discussion about the current interest rate and inflationary environment after an interesting example from David. David also gets into the use of stop losses, having a plan, and the mindset of having an idea of when to sell. He mentions that he thinks about structuring portfolio positions such that losses on one single position won’t significantly impact the overall portfolio.

The conversation then shifts gears into some lifestyle suggestions, David’s experience as a winemaker, and David’s best and worst trades.

All this and more in episode 143.

Feb 13, 2019

In episode 142 we welcome Ryan Ansin. Ryan begins by discussing how his introduction into the cannabis industry started with thoughtful conversations at home, focused on the social justice perspective. He started investing in the industry over 4 years ago, then had an opportunity to purchase a factory in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. What started off as a passive real estate investment he thought would be a fit for vertical farming, and a suggestion from vertical farming experts to consider cultivating cannabis, led him to start his operation, Revolutionary.

Meb asks Ryan to speak in more depth about the business and the cannabis ecosystem. Ryan discusses the laws that shaped the cannabis industry in Massachusetts that caused a lot of fallout until recently. His operation is vertically integrated, and they go after products they can excel in, while licensing and distributing other products they don’t feel they can execute as well. Next, he discusses his vision for the company, and his goal to expand within Massachusetts, do it responsibly and sustainably, before growing elsewhere.

Ryan then gets into investing in cannabis companies, and although he receives hundreds of decks per month, he focuses on areas that fit well and within his areas of competence. The basis for his thinking behind the investments he makes is how it initially can help Revolutionary. He brings up the important point that we have not seen a full venture cycle in cannabis yet, what the exits will be, how, and when, so it is important to think about investments that can optimize operations.

Meb shifts into valuations in the space. Ryan mentions that he feels that valuations are high, and that valuation is a huge consideration for him. He notes that while many companies appear to be valued under assumptions of being able to sell what they’re funded to produce, and expand internationally in some cases, he believes competition may create unforeseen barriers in certain markets that may not be accounted for in valuations.

The conversation then transitions into the huge institutional interest that Ryan sees in the industry, as he has seen family offices gradually shift in their comfort level with the space.

As the pair wind down, Meb asks Ryan to discuss his involvement in the Family Office Association. Ryan provides useful insight about best practices in managing multigenerational wealth.

All this and more, in episode 142.

Feb 6, 2019

Episode 141 has a radio show format. We cover tweets of the month from Meb as well as listener Q&A.

For Tweets of the Month, a few topics we cover include:

  • A tweet from Charlie Bilello covering the range of equity returns over the past 11 years, from the U.S. +135% to Russia -48%.
  • Norbert Kiemling’s tweet about his team’s updated data that shows 34 of 40 countries with negative 52 week momentum.
  • Jason Zweig’s article on tax bills for mutual fund investors.

We then get into listener Q&A, a few questions we touch on include:

  • How can I find a good mentor in this field?
  • How can I build a network without Ivy League or Silicon Valley connections?
  • What knowledge, skills, degrees, certifications are most important and how do you recommend I obtain those skills?

 There’s this and plenty more in episode 141.

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