Meb Faber is a SoCal-based investor I have known for a number of years. Meb is the CIO of a quant firm called Cambria Investments. He has authored a number of books on investing and is very active on Twitter if you want to follow his stream of consciousness tweeting. What is most interesting about Meb is that, even though he is a quant, he has a fascination with how active investors select individual securities and construct portfolios. In our conversation, Meb asked a lot of thoughtful questions about Cove Street’s process and philosophy. Accordingly, I had the opportunity to go pretty deep into the weeds regarding nuances of our due diligence that rarely come up within casual conversation. Other topics included:

• A previously untold story about my teenage entrepreneurship
• My most memorable investing mistake
• Introducing UCLA value investing students to the proxy statement
• Cove Street’s checklist for assessing company management
• Unflattering items that companies intentionally bury in their filings
• Navigating a world of expensive stocks while sticking to our valuation discipline

Just like my great conversation with Toby Carlisle on The Acquirers Podcast, I believe that this discussion with Meb highlights the unique aspects of Cove Street’s research process and provides insight into why we think value investing opportunities are evergreen.

You can find the audio version of our conversation here:

Episode #185: Ben Claremon, Cove Street, “Value Investing Will Always Have A Place”

I hope you enjoy the podcast and please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or comments. Thanks for listening!

– Ben Claremon

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