The Meb Faber Show - Better Investing

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 allocations for most investors today, and talk about the current weights of emerging market indexes and the implications for investors. Kevin gets into launching and running EMQQ, and how the index is constructed. He follows with a discussion on emerging market internet company valuations and the current pace of revenue growth. Meb then poses what he thinks is some of the most common “pushback” he hears about why people can’t invest in China. Kevin addresses some of the arguments he hears for not investing in China, including made up numbers and communism and explains why he doesn’t think there is a lot of merit to those arguments. As the conversation winds down, Kevin covers his thoughts on India, which he thinks is a particularly interesting opportunity from the standpoint of population size and growth. All this and more in episode 187, including Kevin’s 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 Scott take over this special episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 farmland investing, the platform, and the process AcreTrader goes through to bring investment opportunities to market as well as the ultimate vision for the platform.Next, Meb and Carter also get into some examples of additional opportunities for farmland property including potential income opportunities like wind farms, solar farms, and mining that may be available to some properties.As the conversation winds down, Carter lays out his thoughts on how farmland fits with investment portfolios and highlights the role it can play from a wealth preservation standpoint as a noncorrelated asset class in addition to providing protection from inflation.All this and more in episode 186. 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 Larry take over this special episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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