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Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.

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Any Mebane Faber fans here (hint: free books)

If so you can download a couple of his books for free for the next few days. Scroll down until you see the posting for Free Books.

http://mebfaber.com/

The books are "Global Value" and "Shareholder Yield". They are the Kindle edition but if you have the Kindle App for iPad it works just as well.

Comments

  • Yes indeed! I own them all...not free, but pretty inexpensive through Kindle. Highly recommended. Ha! Especially at current price =).
  • @Mark/@Charles: Thanks. I just downloaded both of them to Kindle for PC.
    But I'm not familiar with Mebane Faber and haven't read anything by him.

    What do you like about him?

    How has his information influenced the way you invest?

    I see he's got another book called The Ivy Portfolio, plus I'm sure he must have articles that present his main points.

    Which of his articles or books do you think discuss his main points the best, or do you recommend the most?

    thanks
  • edited April 2014
    @rjb112.

    Please start here: Timing Method Performance Over Ten Decades.

    He's been discussed on the board quite a bit, actually. I believe Scott was first to point out that while his books and blog (World Beta) are exceptional, his first exchange traded fund has disappointed: GTAA. Since that launch, however, his newer in-house ETFs have enjoyed better success.

    Much more soon.

    Working on an extended piece for upcoming commentary.

    Charles
  • Thanks Charles. Looking forward to your upcoming commentary.
  • @rjb112, echoing Charles' comments I looked into him with the publishing of The Ivy Portfolio as an alternative to PRPFX the Permanent Portfolio. The concept is far more attractive to me than trying to wrestle with a stable of mutual funds or paying the fees for PRPFX. I have been tracking and considering SYLD but so far have held off.
  • Yes, very interesting. And it seems that Mebane Faber is doing something that John Templeton used to do, that is, find undervalued stock markets around the world. Robert Shiller was on WealthTrack a few weeks ago, and said that he invested in I believe it was Italy this year, based on the stock market in Italy being very cheap based on the CAPE. Seems to be in some sense the global application of the principles of Ben Graham.
  • Just finished his book Global Value (Kindle for PC).
    I was impressed with the book.
    He says that the U.S. stock market is the most overvalued stock market in the world now, based on the CAPE ratio. The CAPE for the U.S. is roughly 25.

    He says that at a minimum, we should have 50% of our equities outside the U.S., since that is a market cap weighting. But.....a global GDP weighting would only have 20-40% of the equities as U.S. stocks.
    However, to have an equity allocation aligned with the theme of his book, he states: "Similarly, ponder a value approach to your equity allocation. Consider overweighting the cheapest countries and avoiding the most expensive ones. Currently, this would mean a low, or zero, allocation to US stocks. Note: This does not mean simply picking one or two countries, but rather a basket of the cheapest countries – 10 is a reasonable number."

    Looks like his Cambria Global Value, GVAL would accomplish that.



  • edited April 2014
    @rjb112. Very cool. He has a lot of compelling ideas. I don't agree with all of them. But he's enough of a student of the market and various investing strategies that I find all his stuff worth reading.
  • etf.com/publications/journalofindexes/joi-articles/16017-global-value.html?fullart=1&start=8
    Mebane Faber article on Global Value.
    Contains most of the best information in his book in a much shorter version.
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