We Asked Meb Faber Why US Stocks Won for 250 Years — And If It Can Continue

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When you're advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales. Using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at accenture.com/spotify.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:30)
The new LinkedIn Hiring Pro can't undo your last hire, the no show. Who set you back because they didn't show up on day one, or day two, or ever again? Now your product launch is delayed because you're talking to alien abduction podcasters to track them down.
But LinkedIn Hiring Pro can help make sure your next hire sticks. In fact, businesses who use LinkedIn are 24 percent less likely to reopen a role in the next 12 months. Hire right the first time with LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Post a free job today at linkedin.com/quality.

**Meb Faber** (1:00)
The reality is you gotta remember like even at the start of the 20th century, you look at where the US was, I don't think it was preordained that this is guaranteed to happen. If you look at any of the surveys, are Americans, is it a good idea to start a company? It's like 90 percent. The rest of the world, it's like 10 percent.
What percentage of Americans own stock and how much do they put in stock? Just order a magnitude greater than if you go talk to people in Europe. In addition to not having air conditioning, they generally don't invest in stocks. Stocks are the less volatile that bonds at the 20 year time horizon, which is crazy to think about, right? But on average, it's true. There's a great quote that we end the book on from old JP Morgan. He said, the man who is a bear on the future of the United States will always go broke.

**Matt Zeigler** (1:54)
You're watching Excess Returns, the channel that makes complex investing ideas simple enough to actually use, or better questions lead to better decisions. I'm Matt Zeigler. Justin Carbonneau is with me. We have an old friend of the show with a new book, Investing in America, Co-Founder and CIO at Cambria Investment Management, Meb Faber. Welcome back.

**Meb Faber** (2:12)
What's up, y'all? Good to be back.

**Matt Zeigler** (2:15)
This book, let's be honest, you're answering the age-old question that I've long wondered, which is we're Washington and Franklin, really just the Andreessen Horowitz of America, A to Z. It's a beautiful thing.
You happy with this book? You happy with how this came out?

**Meb Faber** (2:30)
I learned a lot. This is book number eight, and I haven't written one in a decade. I had a child, so that's part of it.
I've definitely never done a coffee table book, and I've definitely never done a coffee table book on my own. So this is self-published, and we learned a lot for sure.
We were joking on Twitter. First 10,000 people that buy the book get the exclusive privilege of not having a picture of me anywhere in the book. There's no author photo about the author. I forgot to put it in. But it was a really fun experience to show how good I am at marketing. I don't think anyone in history has ever published a book on a Saturday, in the summer, on a holiday. It's like a triple witching of things not to do when publishing a book, and I don't care. I'm doing it. July 4th, baby. 250 year birthday. Happy birthday, America.

**Matt Zeigler** (3:25)
Take that marketing lessons. So start me with this one.
The US as the ultimate VC success story. I actually think this is a beautiful framing. Take a deep pull on that coffee, stir the thoughts. Tell me why we're a VC success story.

**Meb Faber** (3:42)
So I'm going to tell you guys something that I don't know if I've shared widely. There's actually going to be two coffee table books.

**Matt Zeigler** (3:51)
How many coffee tables do you think a modern American has?

**Meb Faber** (3:54)
The first one I wrote was actually a history of global stock markets back to 1600
Because the party got started before we even existed as a country. Party got started in Amsterdam and some other places before that perhaps, but really in force in Amsterdam.
And then the locus of power shifted to London. But we got started in 1792, Buttonwood Agreement, which by the way, I learned Buttonwood Tree is just a sycamore, which is an interesting takeaway. Anyway, a lot of little facts you learn. But when you're doing a lot, one of the most interesting parts about writing this book was of course the research. And so I probably read, skimmed, I don't know, 30, 50, 70 financial history books that I'd never heard of, which was super fun. Like everyone knows a lot of the most well read ones, but there's a whole right tail of financial history books that were super fun to skim through. But as you start to dig, one of the takeaways was there's the narrative that we all learned in elementary school. Hey, America was founded by a lot of immigrants coming over and they were escaping religious persecution. They were in search of a better life and freedom. And while all that is true, if we know anything about incentives and money, a lot of it was these were funded, not necessarily by the Crown in some cases, but in some cases by joint stock companies. And so you had things like the Virginia Company, chartered 1606 So this was before the founding of the US, the Jamestown Colony, which may be not be the most successful example, but there were so many other examples. You had Plymouth Colony, the Mayflower was financed. You have even the Puritans, everyone's like, God, they would never do this. Yeah. The Massachusetts Bay Colony. And it wasn't just the Brits. You had the Dutch with New Netherlands, West India Company, and even the Swedes with New Sweden. But you even had examples because I mean, think about it's like when you talk about venture capital, and the phrase actually originated with this concept of, they call them, adventure merchant adventurers or adventure merchants, which sounds like venture capitalists.