Info

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.
RSS Feed Subscribe in Apple Podcasts
The Meb Faber Show
2023
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2022
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2021
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2020
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2019
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2018
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2017
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2016
December
November
October
September
August
July
June


All Episodes
Archives
Now displaying: April, 2019
Apr 24, 2019

In episode 152 we welcome Kevin Smith and Tavi Costa of Crescat Capital. Kevin kicks off the conversation with an overview of Crescat’s approach, the long-only strategy, long/short equity hedge fund, and Global Macro Fund.

Tavi then gets into high equity market valuations, their macro model that has timed well in backtests with previous market peaks and troughs in the tech and housing bubbles, 15 countries with 30-year bond yields below the Fed Funds rate, and demand for U.S. Treasuries and the U.S. dollar.  Kevin follows up with some comments on implementation and expressing these views in their portfolio, and why they continue to trust their process and remain net-short equities.

Next, Tavi gets into Crescat’s thesis on China and the potential credit bubble, and the vulnerable Chinese currency as a result.

Meb then asks about Crescat’s bullish thesis on precious metals. Kevin discusses that trade’s role in the portfolio, and its place as a theme in the global macro fund, which includes, a short equity theme, long precious metals theme, and a short Chinese Yuan theme.

Meb asks the pair to get into some of their other themes that stand out as opportunities. Kevin links the Canadian housing bubble and Australian debt crisis themes to China and Chinese capital outflows. He also covers some longs as part of their cybersecurity theme such as Palo Alto Networks.

Meb shifts by asking about what investors should takeaway from Crescat’s thinking, Kevin adds that people should think about more tactical asset allocation, become increasingly defensive, and consider some alternatives. Tavi adds that investors may want to consider cash, precious metals, and perhaps some Treasuries.  

As the conversation winds down, Meb asks about anything else they consider that isn’t covered widely in the media or by investment managers. Kevin discusses consumer confidence, and Tavi adds twin deficits and an alternative view of beta.

All this and more in episode 152.  

Apr 17, 2019

In episode 151 we welcome Divya Narendra, CEO & Co-Founder of SumZero. Divya begins by talking about the beginnings of SumZero and finding its initial traction by Divya calling friends from other funds and politely asking them to submit research. From there, he asked those friends to provide any contacts they could, and the platform grew from there, including a cap-intro side of the business to expose analysts, PMs, and fund managers to potential investors.

Divya then discusses addressing the shortcomings of sell side research with SumZero, in particular, the lack of vested interest and high conviction from the sell-side, and lack of coverage in unknown securities. All contributors are vetted, and their ideas go through Divya.

Meb asks about how people use the site for generating ideas, which brings up some various processes like screens from people with a fundamental approach, to quants who are looking at items like who is getting the most views and best ratings. Divya even gets into some of the best ideas contests he has run, and even submitted a contest winner’s idea to Warren Buffett.

The conversation then shifts to what Divya sees in the future for SumZero, from scaling cap-intro efforts, to a data feed that can serve quantitatively driven analysts, but ultimately looks to expand the scope of the SumZero community.

Catch all this and more in episode 151, including Divya’s thoughts about the future of fundamental stock picking, robo advisors and the private wealth model, and more.

Apr 10, 2019

In episode 150 we welcome Bill Smead. Bill begins with how he came to be a value investor, describing himself as someone who came from a family of educated gamblers, and as a boy, going to greyhound races, learning to put probabilities in his favor, and even developing a criteria system for selecting greyhounds.

Next, Bill talks about his beginnings in the investment business, starting out in an era of high interest rates, and reading about Buffett, Lynch, and some of investing’s great minds. He describes his 8 criteria for selecting investments: 1) Does it meet an economic need 2) Does it have a long history of profitability 3) Does it have a wide moat 4) Does it generate high and consistent cash flow 5) Can the company be purchased at a discount 6) Business must be shareholder friendly 7) The company must have a strong balance sheet 8) The company must have strong insider ownership.

Meb then asks Bill to elaborate on the investment landscape, and what he’s seeing in a specific pocket of the market. Bill discusses the parabolic move in e-commerce companies, and issues he sees in the strategies and valuations of companies like Amazon.

As the conversation winds down, Bill lays out the thesis that the Millennials are in position to drive the economy in the future.

All this and more in episode 150, including Bill’s most memorable investment.

Apr 3, 2019

In episode 149 we welcome back our guest from Episode 122, Phil Haslett. Meb and Phil begin the episode with a chat of the IPO environment so far in 2019, and the recent Lyft IPO. Phil then gets into the cyclicality of IPOs in general, and that IPOs tend to be most successful when the market is not so volatile.

Meb asks Phil about the IPO process. Phil starts with banking and how the banking relationship works, and what some companies have done to avoid the high costs of going through the IPO process. Google was the first to give an alternative approach to the IPO process a shot, and Spotify found huge success through a direct listing.

Next, Phil gets into the changing characteristics of what firms look like in today’s IPO cycle, vs. the past. He discusses that the value of which companies go public is far higher than it used to be, and they are going public much later. This stems from companies raising large amounts of capital as private companies. Eventually, though, they’ll need to go public for a couple of reasons. 1) venture capital investors that invested early, may run out of patience waiting for an exit, 2) the need to address liquidity for other shareholders 3) recognition, and 4) be able to issue stock and raise capital for potential future M&A.

The conversation then shifts back to Lyft, and their S-1 filing.

Phil mentions some interesting points he and his team found in the S-1. He discusses Lyft’s $300 million R&D spend, signaling the likelihood it is making major investments, possibly in autonomous driving. They also found that the company has presented itself as a transportation as a service (TaaS) company.

Meb brings up the topic of dilution, and why it is so important in understanding venture capital investing, and Phil walks through the fundamentals of capital raising, and shareholder dilution, and what it really means to early investors.

Next, employee wealth, and how to think about managing it is addressed. Phil shares some advice of being diversified to offset the concentration that comes with both owning shares and earning a paycheck from the same company.

As the conversation begins to wind down, Phil covers his take on the future of the private investment space.

Hear all this and more in episode 149, including the future of EquityZen, and Phil’s predictions for the 2019 IPO market.

1