The Parallels of Past and Present in Finance - Mark Higgins | #594

The Meb Faber Show - Better Investing

The Idea Farm

Management, Investing, Business

4.8 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s guest is Mark J. Higgins, a Senior VP for IFA Institutional, where he focuses on providing advisory services to institutions. He’s also the author of Investing in U.S. Financial History: Understanding the Past to Forecast the Future, which is one of my favorite books on financial history. In today’s episode, Mark explores the parallels between historical financial crises and today’s economic landscape. He touches on the disturbing trends in private markets, the ethics of asset management, the evolution of U.S. debt, the future of the U.S. dollar, and more. (0:00) Starts (1:23) Mark Higgins' financial history insights (2:19) History of insider trading (4:14) Historical perspective on debt and reserve currencies (19:49) Gold, Bitcoin, and the evolution of financial markets (26:16) Passive vs. active management and private markets (37:19) Private market concerns (45:10) Historical figures and retirement plan changes (47:11) Inflation concerns (50:02) Mark's most memorable investment ----- 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

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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 Cambri's funds on this podcast.
0:25.8	All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinions and do not reflect
0:28.9	the opinion of Cambria Investment Management or its affiliates.
0:31.2	For more information, visit camriainvestments.com.
0:34.7	If you were interested in participating in a 351 ETF exchange, you can find more information at
0:41.0	CambriaF funds.com forward slash 351, or you can email us for more info at 351 at cambriainvestments.com.
0:53.2	Cambria funds are distributed by Alps Distributors, Inc.
0:55.0	Investing involves risk, including possible loss of capital.
0:57.9	Welcome back, everybody. It feels like summer's winding down. I don't know what happened.
1:02.8	I feel like as a kid, summers were like three, four months, and now they feel like they're like
1:06.8	two. Anyway, beautiful time here in SoCal. We got a great episode today. Our guest is Mark Higgins.
1:14.4	Mark is a senior VP at IFA Institutional, where he specializes in advisory services to institutional plans,
1:20.8	like endowments, foundations, pension plans, the big money, the real money. He's also the author of
1:26.6	investing in U.S. financial history,
1:29.5	this big doorstop here. You guys know I love it just from the title, Understanding the
1:35.4	Past to Forecast the Future. It's one of my favorite books on financial history. And more
1:39.7	importantly, he's a fellow Wahoo, another UVA alum on the podcast. Mark, welcome the show.
1:45.3	Thank you for having me, Matt. Where do we find you today? I am in Portland, Oregon, which is
	...

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