5GQ Mebane Faber - Invest with the House

Meb Faber is a co-founder and the Chief Investment Officer of Cambria Investment Management.  Faber is the manager of Cambria’s ETFs, separate accounts and private investment funds.  Mr. Faber has authored numerous white papers and several books: Global Asset Allocation, Shareholder Yield, The Ivy Portfolio, Global Value, and Invest with the House.   He is a frequent speaker and writer on investment strategies and has been featured in Barron’s, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Mr. Faber graduated from the University of Virginia with a double major in Engineering Science and Biology.

 

 It seems like a basket composed of each gurus’ highest conviction pick would be a smart strategy.  Yet you found their top pick was the worst performer of their top 10!  How is that possible?  And what can we do to benefit from that information?
If I believed in following a copycat 13F strategy, how would I go about doing that in an intelligent, systematic manner? Only 25% of stocks are responsible for all of the market’s gains.  What implication does this have for stock picking vs. indexing? As ETFs proliferate and various strategies become available, do you think people will still pay 2% and 20% for these kind of strategies when you could have all of them for a fraction of the expense? I know this doesn’t fit your investing style, but if you had to pick one of these managers to invest 100% of your net worth, who would it be and why?  You have to factor in age and length of potential service to you.