A sound investment process and strong management team underpin Cambria Tactical Yield ETF's Morningstar Medalist Rating of Silver. The portfolio maintains a sizable cost advantage over competitors, priced within the least expensive fee quintile among peers.  

 The strategy's investment process inspires confidence and earns it a High Process Pillar rating. The strategy’s management team earns an Above Average People Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm a Below Average Parent Pillar rating. People Pillar and Parent Pillar ratings for this strategy are indirectly assigned by a Morningstar analyst rather than algorithmically derived. Please see the notes following each pillar section for more details. The details of assigning methods can be found in each pillar section.

Analyst Rating

Morningstar's style-agnostic investment process evaluation looks for strategies that should be able to outperform their Morningstar Category index on a risk-adjusted basis over time. Cambria Tactical Yield ETF earns a High Process Pillar rating.    The leading factor in the rating is the parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio of 88%. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that survived and beat their respective category's median Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return for the period. The firm's five-year retention rate of 100% also bolsters the process. The parent firm's strong risk-adjusted performance, as shown by its average overall Morningstar Rating of 3.4 stars, contributes to the process as well.

 The investment strategy as stated in the fund's prospectus is as follows: 


The investment seeks income and capital appreciation.  The fund is actively managed using a model-based approach and seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing, under normal market conditions, at least 80% of its net assets, plus borrowings for investment purposes, in fixed income securities, and including individual bonds as well as exchange traded products and ETFs that invest primarily in bonds.

High

Process

Cambria Tactical Yield ETF earns an Above Average People Pillar rating. Mebane T. Faber, the longest-tenured manager on the strategy, provides strong guidance, bringing forward 17 years of listed portfolio management experience. The average Morningstar Rating of the strategies they currently manage is 3.3 stars, indicating that their risk-adjusted returns have been in line with the category average. Mebane T. Faber draws on only one other listed manager. Together, they are adequately equipped with nine years of average listed portfolio management experience. As a team, they manage two investment vehicles together, with a Gold asset-weighted average Morningstar Medalist Rating, demonstrating their potential to deliver positive alpha in aggregate. None of the managers here invest any money in the strategy, which is disappointing, as such investments help align managers' interests with fundholders. 

 Note: The People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst. The longest-tenured manager of the fund also manages a different product rated by an analyst. Their analyst-assigned People Pillar rating is combined here with the People scores (algorithmic or analyst-assigned) for the fund’s other managers on a tenure-weighted basis.

Above Average

People

Cambria Investment Management is a small, niche exchange-traded fund provider that adequately serves its investors but carries considerable key-person risk, and recent changes raises questions.

Cambria focuses on active, systematic-equity and asset-allocation strategies that differentiate it from larger ETF firms. The firm’s ETF lineup is unique, with a focus on yield-, momentum-, and value-oriented funds as well as more-specific options such as its Cannabis ETF. Few of the firm’s 12 ETFs hold significant assets under management—its largest by far is Cambria Shareholder Yield, with USD 760 million in assets under management. The funds are priced well. Cambria hasn’t merged or liquidated funds but repurposed two since it entered the ETF business in 2013. It has also registered, but not yet launched, additional ETFs, and it’s unclear when they will be available.

Co-founder, majority owner, CEO, and CIO Meb Faber maintains a public profile that drives a notable investor following, underlining considerable key-person risk at the firm. Although Faber is largely detached from the operational aspects of the small firm, he sets the firm’s direction and is one of three investment professionals who support Cambria’s strategies (and serves as their only named portfolio manager). Cambria will add Toroso Investments as a subadvisor to its suite of ETFs effective Sept. 1, 2023. Toroso’s cofounder and CIO, Michael Venuto, had been an independent trustee on Cambria’s three-person ETF board since 2019. Venuto abstained from voting on the Toroso hire and recently resigned from the board. Although Cambria’s choice of Toroso to implement its funds’ portfolio construction is reasonable, the decision nonetheless raises questions.

Below Average

Parent

Cambria Tactical Yield ETF

TYLD is an actively managed fund that tactically allocates between fixed income securities and US T-Bills based on yield spreads. The fund may invest in bonds of any credit rating and maturity issued by governments and corporations from around the globe.

Cambria Micro and SmallCap Shareholder Yield ETF

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cambria Investment Management announced the launch of Cambria Micro and Small Cap Shareholder Yield ETF (MYLD) and Cambria Tactical Yield ETF (TYLD).

News for Cambria Tactical Yield ETF ETF (TYLD)