Stop Chasing Performance: Meb Faber's Advice for Financial Advisors - Part 1

Most advisors have a plan for the next client meeting. Far fewer have a written plan for what they'll do when the market drops 30% and the phones start ringing. On this episode of The Advisor's Fuel, Adam Koós sits down with Meb Faber, co-founder and CIO of Cambria Investment Management and host of The Meb Faber Show. Meb holds the CMT and CAIA designations and has spent more than two decades researching rules-based strategies like trend following, value, and tactical allocation.

They work through the investing beliefs Meb thinks most pros get wrong: why stocks beating bonds can take decades, where the 10-month moving average idea came from, why dividends get misunderstood, what bonds and gold are actually for, and why an exit plan is worthless without a re-entry plan. Whether you run a solo practice, lead a growing RIA, or sit on your firm's investment committee, this one will sharpen how you build portfolios and how you talk to clients when things get rocky.

00:00 Why you have to be asset class agnostic

01:10 Meet Meb Faber

03:15 From the biotech bubble to quant investing

06:15 The belief almost everyone holds: stocks for the long run

09:20 Where the 10-month moving average idea came from

12:30 Power laws, bear markets, and why volatility explodes in downtrends

21:00 Missing the best days vs. missing the worst days

34:00 Is dividend investing overrated?

40:00 Bonds, T-bills, and the real safest asset

44:00 Gold and the case for owning a little of everything

49:30 The biggest portfolio mistake advisors make

54:15 The two things clients want to know in every correction

1:01:30 The most underrated bias: ignoring fees and taxes

💡 Stocks beat bonds over time, but "over time" can mean decades. Clients want certainty on a timeline that markets don't honor, and that gap drives most bad decisions.

💡 Trend following is more than a century old, and Meb argues a market-cap-weighted index is itself a simple trend-following strategy. Price is the only variable in it.

💡 The famous "miss the 10 best days" stat tells half the story. Most of the best and worst days cluster in downtrends, when volatility is highest.

💡 A high dividend yield often means the price fell. Yield alone says nothing about quality.

💡 Chasing performance is still the biggest portfolio mistake Meb sees, from solo advisors all the way up to giant institutions.

💡 In every correction, clients want to know two things: am I going to be okay, and are you doing something about it. "It always comes back" is getting harder to sell.

🗣 "It's better to be Rip Van Winkle than Nostradamus when it comes to investing a lot of your money." - Meb Faber

🗣 "It's okay to have an exit, but you have to have the re-entry." - Meb Faber

🗣 "They wanna know A, am I going to be okay? And B, are you doing something about what's going on right now?" - Adam Koós

Quotes are pulled from the transcript. Verify wording against the final audio.

Cambria: https://www.cambriainvestments.com/

Blog: https://mebfaber.com/

X: https://x.com/MebFaber

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mebanefaber/

YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKvWzzrVUA_DSCoKXL6GU2w?sub_confirmation=1 Podcast: www.themebfabershow.com

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Email: info@adrenalineadvisor.com

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Connect with Adam Koos: Adam Koos, CFP, CMT, CFTe, CEPA

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamkoos

Website: https://www.adrenalineadvisor.com