Insight
Howard Marks: The Value Versus Growth Dichotomy Should Not Be Hardwired
“And by the way, when I say the value investor does this and the growth investor does that, Probably the biggest single theme of the memo was that that dichotomy should not be so hardwired.”
Insight
Howard Marks: Internet information cannot provide an investing edge
“Human knowledge is cumulative, and lately it's been rushing forward at an incredible pace, so it's hard to imagine that there's a piece of information that I can get off the internet that's going to make me any money for the simple reason that everybody else c…”
Insight
Howard Marks: Computers cannot pick the next Amazon or Steve Jobs
“I always say that I don't think that a computer can sit down with five business plans and figure out which one is Amazon in advance, or meet five CEOs and know which one is Steve Jobs.”
Insight
Howard Marks: Teaching second-level thinking is like coaching height
“People say to me, can you teach somebody to be a second level thinker? And I said, I don't know. It's kind of like asking the basketball coach to coach height. All his efforts won't make his players any taller. Some people get it, some don't.”
Insight
Howard Marks: Trimming winning investments just to lock in profit is a mistake
“This idea that as soon as there's a profit, you should take some of it off the table, seems like a huge mistake.”
Insight
Howard Marks: Managers should raise smaller funds following strong performance
“Most firms, if they have a very successful fund, will follow it up with another fund which is larger on the back of that. But if you think about it, if you had a success in a given area, the good performance of that fund is synonymous with appreciation. In oth…”
Insight
Marks: High-yield debt succeeds through aware, analyzable, and diversified risk
“How can they insure people's lives when they know they're all gonna die? And the answer is, number one, it's risk they're aware of... Number two, it's risk you can analyze... Number three, it's risk you can diversify... Number four, it's risk they're well paid…”
Opinion
Howard Marks: Top drug analysts can only pick Merck versus Lilly 50% accurately
“You can take the best drug analyst in the world and sit him down on the first day of every year and ask him which is going to perform better, Merck or Lilly. And my guess is he'll get it right half the time.”
Insight
Howard Marks: Investor edge requires better data analysis, qualitative judgment, or forecasting
“If everybody has all the company data about today and the means to massage it, How do you get a knowledge advantage? And the answer is you have to either somehow do a better job of massaging the current data, which is challenging, or you have to be better at m…”
Insight
Howard Marks: Investors should rebrand the selling decision as 'unbuying'
“You know, it all comes down to maybe we can think better about the selling decision if we rebrand it and we call it the decision to unbuy. The thought process should be the opposite of the buying decision and not some chicken stuff about being afraid to lose.”
Assertion Contradicted
Marks: Holding the Nifty Fifty for five years from 1969 wiped out capital
“If you bought the nifty 50 the day I got to work, and if you held it tenaciously for five years, you lost almost all your money in the best companies in America for the main reason that they had been priced too high.”
Disclosure
Howard Marks: Oaktree avoids lone wolves and single-year individual performance pay
“We don't want the lone wolf. We don't want the you eat what you kill kind of person. And we don't pay people on the basis of their one year's quantitative performance as an individual, and we don't want people to work that way.”
Insight
Howard Marks: Investor selling behavior is primarily driven by avoiding regret
“And a huge amount of people's preoccupation, in my opinion, is with avoiding regret. Embarrassment in front of others, regret themselves.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Howard Marks: Consistent median performance compounds into top-decile overall returns
“In 1990, I went to visit a client in the Midwest who told me that the pension fund he ran for 14 years was between the 27th percentile and the 47th percentile every year for 14 years... That pension fund was in the fourth percentile of all pension funds for th…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Howard Marks: 'Something of Value' is his most popular memo ever
“That's right, David. Previously, that was held by a, when I wrote, I think it was in January of 14 or 15, called Luck, in which I talked about how lucky I've been and that I'm a big believer in luck and it's great to be on the right side of it. And I listed ab…”
Disclosure
Howard Marks: Oaktree Historically Avoided Contact With Tech Companies
“In the credit field, where I've spent the last 44 years, we historically have not had contact with what you would call a tech company.”
Disclosure
Howard Marks: Oaktree memos received zero client feedback for ten years
“For the first 10 years I never had a response. Not only did nobody say it was good, nobody ever said, I got it.”
Disclosure
Marks: Oaktree raises its largest funds during crises and cuts fund sizes afterward
“There were debt crises, or crises in general, in 1991, oh one oh two, oh eight oh nine, and then of course a brief one in 2020. And the biggest funds we've raised were the funds that invested in those years. Usually because we had some foresight about what lay…”
Howard Marks