Dividend Myths That Distort Markets (w/ Sam Hartzmark) | #628

The Meb Faber Show - Better Investing

The Idea Farm

Management, Business, Investing

4.8 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2026

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s guest is Samuel Hartzmark, a finance professor at Boston College. In today’s episode, Sam explores why dividends are so often misunderstood by investors. He explains the “free dividends fallacy” and how it can lead to inflated valuations and price dislocations. He also examines the tradeoffs between dividends and buybacks and how payout policies influence investor behavior. To close, Sam briefly touches on his research on prediction markets and ESG. (0:00) Starts (1:59) Sam Hartzmark on dividend misconceptions (15:24) Mutual funds juicing dividend yields (27:26) Buybacks, shareholder yield, and reinvesting dividends (39:57) Tax optimization (43:40) Importance of total return (52:26) Divestment, prediction markets, and memorable investments ----- 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 the Medfavor Show, where the focus is on helping you grow and preserve your wealth.
0:10.9	Join us as we discuss the craft of investing and uncover new and profitable ideas, all to help you grow wealthier and wiser.
0:16.9	Better investing starts here.
0:19.5	Metfabor is the co-founder and chief investment officer at Cambria Investment Management.
0:22.5	Did it industry regulations, he will not discuss any of Cambria's funds on this podcast.
0:25.8	All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Cambria investment management or its affiliates.
0:31.2	For more information, visit cambrainvestments.com.
0:34.3	Must remember.
0:36.6	Do not forget.
0:41.0	Remind me to bring photo ID.
0:44.0	Reminder, set.
0:45.8	Babe, can you make sure I don't forget my photo ID when I vote?
0:49.7	All right, love.
0:50.7	However you remember, you'll need photo ID to vote in the elections in England on the 7th of May.
0:56.2	Don't have ID. Apply for free voter ID today. Find out more at electoral commission.org.comission.org
1:02.0	slash voter ID. Welcome back, everybody. Today we got another awesome episode. My guest is Sam Hartsmark,
1:09.5	professor of the Sider Department of Finance at Boston College
1:13.5	Carroll School of Management. He studies asset pricing, behavioral finance. Good buddy of West Gray,
1:19.3	that crazy guy said, Sam, you got to have Sam on the show. So here we are talking about all
1:23.5	sorts of fun stuff. Sam, welcome the show. Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.
1:28.4	There's a topic we're going to start with, which should be like the most basic topic in all
1:35.0	of investing. It should be something that is like table stakes, but I feel like a lot of people don't
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next 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.