Charley Ellis on How America Actually Got Built (Investing in America Series) | #633

The Meb Faber Show - Better Investing

The Idea Farm

Investing, Management, Business

4.8 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2026

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

My guest today is Charles Ellis, founder of Greenwich Associates, longtime member of Yale’s investment committee, and author of more than 20 books, including the classic Winning the Loser’s Game. In today’s episode, Charley reflects on writing the first major book on share repurchases 50 years ago, when the idea was so foreign that Goldman mailed it to 1,000 corporations as a “legitimizer.” Charley also walks us through his new book, Great American Investments: A History of the Bold Initiatives that Shaped a Nation, covering 14 audacious public investments from the Louisiana Purchase to the Marshall Plan. He explains how each came down to one or two obsessed individuals, why Alaska turned out to be the bargain of the century, and how Frances Perkins muscled Social Security into law. As the episode winds down, he shares the lunch with Sandy Gottesman in the early 1970s that led him to buy Berkshire Hathaway at $700 a share — and hold it ever since. (0:00) Starts (1:54) Charley on stock buybacks (8:06) Current state of investing and behavioral economics (11:37) Advice for young investors and long-term strategies (16:41) Charley's new book: Great American Investments: A History of the Bold Initiatives that Shaped a Nation (25:42) The origins of social Security (32:46) American entrepreneurship (36:43) Will AI be the next great American investment? (42:34) Most memorable investment ----- Sponsor: ⁠Ivy Invest ⁠- To learn more about Ivy Invest's SEC-registered endowment-style fund, view the prospectus, and learn how to invest, visit ⁠ivyinvest.co/fund ----- Follow Meb on X, LinkedIn and YouTube For detailed show notes, click here To learn more about our funds and follow us, subscribe to our mailing list or visit us at cambriainvestments.com ----- Follow The Idea Farm: X | LinkedIn | Instagram | TikTok ----- Interested in sponsoring the show? Email us at Feedback@TheMebFaberShow.com ----- Past guests include Ed Thorp, Richard Thaler, Jeremy Grantham, Joel Greenblatt, Campbell Harvey, Ivy Zelman, Kathryn Kaminski, Jason Calacanis, Whitney Baker, Aswath Damodaran, Howard Marks, Tom Barton, and many more. ----- Meb's invested in some awesome startups that have passed along discounts to our listeners. Check them out here! -----Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to a special series of the Meb Faber Show on the past, present, future of America.
0:12.3	I'm sitting down with some of the most notable historians, thinkers, investors in the U.S. financial history, all tied to my new coffee table book,
0:20.2	investing in America, the rise of a 250-year
0:23.4	bull market out July 4th.
0:26.9	Metbae is the co-founder and chief investment officer at Cambrian Investment Management.
0:29.9	Due to industry regulations, he will not discuss any of Cambrey's funds on this podcast.
0:33.2	All opinions expressed by...
0:34.2	This episode is brought to you by Ivy Invest.
0:37.3	You know I've talked a lot on the show
0:38.7	about endowment style investing the yale model the swinson playbook public markets private equity private
0:44.0	credit real estate all blended together into a portfolio built for the long game the data on this approach
0:49.3	is pretty compelling the problem has always been the same it's basically impossible for regular
0:53.8	investors to
0:54.5	actually do it. Well, here's somebody who lived through that world from the inside. Wendy Lee spent
0:59.3	18 years managing multi-billion dollar endowment funds in New York, and at some point she had a
1:04.4	pretty simple realization. This is exactly how she had wanted to invest her own money, but even she
1:09.3	couldn't access it as an individual.
1:11.5	So she built the thing that didn't exist. Ivy Invest is one of the first endowment style funds
1:16.6	designed for everyday investors. You get a single fund with exposure to private equity, real estate,
1:22.2	private credit, and public markets. The whole mix starting at just $1,000. I actually had Wendy on the podcast.
1:28.5	Go back and listen to that episode. It's worth your time. For now, check them out at ivyinvest.co.
1:33.9	That's ivy-y-invest.com. Before investing, carefully consider the investment objective,
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 25 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Idea Farm, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Idea Farm and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.