Spewing Shrapnel on a Podcast

There was a time when I devoured investing podcasts. One of my early favorites came from Meb Faber’s interview with Adam Butler, Rodrigo Gordillo, and Michael Philbrick of ReSolve Asset Management.

At the time, I was looking for investment managers who held similar investing views to my own. Stock picking still seemed most common. Focusing entirely on equities was common too. The investment universe was (and still is) awash in either quant factor investors or trend followers. Not my style.

So I very much enjoyed listening to these three talk about:

1. Investing in top down, macro type, diverse asset classes, not individual stocks or commodities.
2. Building adaptive portfolios with high diversification based on “current” correlation and volatility.
3. Rebalancing fairly frequently.
4. Adaptive use of leverage.

Here was a group that held similar views to my own. I find these four points foundational and yet, until I discovered ReSolve, hadn’t uncovered anyone who I believed really expressed these beliefs fully in an investment strategy and talked about it openly.

Now we absolutely have our differences as well. Very simplified, I think we view the “estimating the arithmetic return” challenge differently, and have a slightly different investment target. But many of the ideas that seem foundational to their strategy are also foundational to mine,¹ while strangely being absent from other popular investment strategies.

Invest ReSolve Podcast

So when Adam Butler recently asked me to be a guest on their Gestalt University podcast, I was honored and happily said yes.

Invest ReSolve Breaking the Market Podcast

The interview was harder than I expected.² It’s difficult talking about these topics on the fly. Unlike people in the industry, I don’t speak about investing often. When I do, I’m usually talking at a very broad level to an average investor. Most people don’t posses Adam’s intellectual prowess when it comes to investing.

Adam paid a huge complement by asking questions as he would any other professional investor, even though I’m not one. I don’t think he expected any less out of our discussion than he does of his other guests. And in the process I picked up a few topics to deepen my own understanding.

I thoroughly enjoyed recording this podcast and I hope you enjoy listening just as much.

1-Others have noticed this too, as I’ve seen comments on other message boards comparing their work to mine.

2-For anybody who goes on a podcast, I think it’s common to feel awful about the experience afterwards. Recording it was great, but soon after I feared I sounded terrible, and it made me miserable for a day. It brought back memories of the first few time I published blog posts, and the fear of exposing myself to other critics. The blogging fear was easier to get over since I knew only a few people were reading the blog. This interview would likely be seen by thousands. I chatted with a few people afterwards, and they said they often felt similarly after a podcast interview too. So I think it’s a universal experience. Once I heard the interview myself I felt much better. If any readers ever go on a podcast, understand you’re not alone if you initially feel miserable after recording. You did fine and it will pass.