FROM THE RECORD · 4 matching entries · 2023-10-04 to 2026-05-26
What does the record say about inflation?
Selected points from existing editorial summaries and source excerpts. This covers the material on this page.
1
Marks argues the future is a probability distribution of possibilities, not a single predictable outcome. [1]
Read the supporting quotation · The Investor’s Podcast · 2026-02-21
“It's a probability distribution. It's a range of possibilities in each thing, whether it's GDP growth next year or inflation next year, or who's going to win the next election,”
Marks admits his risk aversion was costly since 1980 when optimism consistently paid off. [2]
Read the supporting quotation · Pepperdine University · 2026-03-02
“And given the, if you think about it, from 1980 when the inflation was solved, essentially to date, generally speaking, the more optimistic you were, the more money you made.”
Marks says 700 direct lending managers emerged to manage $1.7 trillion in a favorable environment with declining interest rates. [2]
Read the supporting quotation · Prof G Markets · 2026-06-12
“I'm told that there are roughly 700 direct lending managers. So the the the And the availability of that $1,700,000,000,000 put a lot of people into business and made a lot of people extremely successful along with a very favorable economy and with low or generally low or generally declining interest rates, which are salutary.”
FROM THE RECORD · 129 matching entries · 2015-03-30 to 2026-06-12
What does the record say about market psychology?
Selected points from existing editorial summaries and source excerpts. This covers the material on this page.
1
Marks cites Thinking Machine Labs raising 2 billion dollars at 12 billion valuation without disclosing its product as bubble indicator. [1]
Read the supporting quotation · Pepperdine University · 2026-03-02
“And I say in the memo, for example, that some woman left OpenAI, started a company called Thinking Machine Labs, went out to raise money, and she said this company is going to engage in AI, but I can't tell you what we're going to do. It's a secret. And people gave her $2,000,000,000 for a sixth of the company.”
Marks says holding nifty fifty stocks for five years from September 1969 resulted in 95% losses. [3]
Read the supporting quotation · Bloomberg Television · 2026-03-18
“So if you bought the stocks the day I got there, I think it was 09/22/1969, if I'm not mistaken, and if you held them tenaciously for five years, the greatest company is America, you lost about 95% of your money.”
Marks says holding nifty fifty stocks for five years from September 1969 resulted in 95% losses. [3]
Read the supporting quotation · Bloomberg Television · 2026-03-18
“So if you bought the stocks the day I got there, I think it was 09/22/1969, if I'm not mistaken, and if you held them tenaciously for five years, the greatest company is America, you lost about 95% of your money.”
FROM THE RECORD · 56 matching entries · 2022-06-30 to 2026-06-12
What does the record say about ai?
Selected points from existing editorial summaries and source excerpts. This covers the material on this page.
1
Marks cites Block eliminating 40% of its workforce in one day as evidence most people underestimate AI's impact. [1]
Read the supporting quotation · Bloomberg Television · 2026-03-18
“40% of the workforce gone in one day because AI could do the work cheaper and faster. So how many people in the world understand the potential import of that?”
Marks cites Block laying off 4,000 employees in one day because AI can do their work better, cheaper, and faster. [2]
Read the supporting quotation · CNBC Television · 2026-03-05
“we saw Friday block 10,000 employees, let 40%, 4,000 people let go in one go, who who aren't needed anymore because AI can do it better and cheaper and faster.”
Marks cites Thinking Machine Labs raising two billion dollars at twelve billion valuation without disclosing its product as bubble behavior. [3]
Read the supporting quotation · Pepperdine University · 2026-03-02
“some woman left OpenAI, started a company called Thinking Machine Labs, went out to raise money, and she said this company is going to engage in AI, but I can't tell you what we're going to do. It's a secret. And people gave her $2,000,000,000 for a sixth of the company.”
FROM THE RECORD · 52 matching entries · 2015-03-30 to 2026-06-12
What does the record say about credit cycle?
Selected points from existing editorial summaries and source excerpts. This covers the material on this page.
1
Marks reveals Bruce Karsh invested $450 million per week for fifteen weeks during the 2008 crisis. [1]
Read the supporting quotation · The Investor’s Podcast · 2025-12-13
“Bruce and I figured out that we should spend the money. He ran the fund in question and he bravely invested an average of $450,000,000 a week for the next fifteen weeks.”
Marks deployed ten billion dollars in fifteen weeks during late 2008 crisis when nerve mattered most. [3]
Read the supporting quotation · Milken Institute · 2019-01-14
“So at Oaktree, we invested $650,000,000 a week in the last fifteen weeks of 'eight, that's about $10,000,000,000 and that's really all you had to do.”
FROM THE RECORD · 38 matching entries · 2015-03-30 to 2026-06-12
What does the record say about private credit?
Selected points from existing editorial summaries and source excerpts. This covers the material on this page.
1
Marks identifies too much money chasing too few deals as the seven worst words in investing. [1]
Read the supporting quotation · Milken Institute · 2019-01-14
“Now remember, the four worst words in the world were, it's different this time, the seven worst words in the world are too much money chasing too few deals.”
Marks notes only 3 percent of 700 direct lending managers existed before the financial crisis. [3]
Read the supporting quotation · Prof G Markets · 2026-06-12
“of the 700, roughly 3% were in business before the global financial crisis. So we don't know how many of them are have what it takes to deal with a harsh environment.”
FROM THE RECORD · 32 matching entries · 2022-05-02 to 2026-06-12
What does the record say about valuation?
Selected points from existing editorial summaries and source excerpts. This covers the material on this page.
1
Marks cites Thinking Machine Labs raising 2 billion dollars at 12 billion valuation without disclosing its product as bubble indicator. [1]
Read the supporting quotation · Pepperdine University · 2026-03-02
“And I say in the memo, for example, that some woman left OpenAI, started a company called Thinking Machine Labs, went out to raise money, and she said this company is going to engage in AI, but I can't tell you what we're going to do. It's a secret. And people gave her $2,000,000,000 for a sixth of the company.”
Marks says holding nifty fifty stocks for five years from September 1969 resulted in 95% losses. [3]
Read the supporting quotation · Bloomberg Television · 2026-03-18
“So if you bought the stocks the day I got there, I think it was 09/22/1969, if I'm not mistaken, and if you held them tenaciously for five years, the greatest company is America, you lost about 95% of your money.”
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Quoted in printchestnutstreet.substack.com
“During the crisis, any optimistic scenario was dismissed as naive. Everything bad seemed possible, and therefore probable. The distinction between possibility and probability vanished. That’s the real psychological poison in markets.”
#71: Howard Marks: Lessons on Investing, Risk, and the Psychology of Markets · Luis Torras
Quoted in printchestnutstreet.substack.com
“If you want to succeed in the markets, you don’t need to predict the future. What you need is a solid understanding of where we stand today in the cycle. That alone gives you a considerable edge.”
#71: Howard Marks: Lessons on Investing, Risk, and the Psychology of Markets · Luis Torras
Quoted in printchestnutstreet.substack.com
“The pendulum of financial markets swings constantly between euphoria and depression, between celebrating good news and obsessing over bad news, and therefore between overvaluation and undervaluation.”
Howard Marks Of StartEngine On Pre-IPO AI Investing · Boaz Sobrado
X postX
@Brookfield has completed its purchase of @Oaktree, marking the beginning of an exciting new chapter. Our partnership over the past seven years has been defined by mutual respect and cooperation. Bruce Flatt and I discussed the opportunities ahead with Barron’s Andy Serwer:
“It's gone on with the interruption of the pandemic, probably the longest time in history. And so market conditions in credit are generous and borrowing is easy.”
“I think today, if you could if you could ascertain people's expectations, I personally think that the that the level of worry and the universality of worry with regard to software is probably excessive.”
“the part of private credit which loans money for mid sized buyouts we call direct lending. It went from essentially 0 fifteen years ago to 1,700,000,000,000 today. I I didn't know that was coming.”
“You apply the right financial structure, which also which often means leverage, you add value intrinsically to the operation, and you see it go to a premium valuation relative to what you pay.”
“In this period we've been through of declining interest rates, financial engineering helped a lot, merely owning assets with leverage helped a lot, things regularly went to premium valuations.”
“So the technological innovations I'm talking about, let's just for a starting point, let's say the railroads back in the 1860s And then radio in the nineteen twenties, the automobile, computers in the nineteen fifties and sixties, internet in 2000.”
“So I wrote in a memo recently this year, and I think it's true that if this technological innovation with its exuberance doesn't produce a money losing bubble, it'll be the first.”
“if this technological innovation with its exuberance doesn't produce a money losing bubble, it'll be the first. And now it could happen. You know, you can't rule these things out.”
“You know, the the the non Shiller PE ratio is about 23 or so today. The eighty year average is 16. So we're roughly 50% higher today. But in 2000, I think it was 32.”
“When I started in this business as a young man, 1969, in the research department at Citibank, the bank and most of the banks invested in what were called the nifty 50, which were considered to be the best and fastest growing companies in America,”
“When I started in this business as a young man, 1969, in the research department at Citibank, the bank and most of the banks invested in what were called the nifty 50, which were considered to be the best and fastest growing companies in America, Xerox, IBM, Kodak, Polaroid, Merck, Lilly, Texas Instruments, Hewlett Packard, Coca Cola, Avon, etcetera.”
“I'm told that there are roughly 700 direct lending managers. So the the the And the availability of that $1,700,000,000,000 put a lot of people into business and made a lot of people extremely successful along with a very favorable economy and with low or generally low or generally declining interest rates, which are salutary.”
“So the the the And the availability of that $1,700,000,000,000 put a lot of people into business and made a lot of people extremely successful along with a very favorable economy”
“I'm told that of the 700, roughly 3% were in business before the global financial crisis. So we don't know how many of them are have what it takes to deal with a harsh environment.”
“of the 700, roughly 3% were in business before the global financial crisis. So we don't know how many of them are have what it takes to deal with a harsh environment.”
“To make money in a salutary investment environment, you can do it on the basis of good judgment and hard work and skill, or you can do it on aggressiveness and getting lucky.”
“Warren Buffett, the most successful investor of all times, attributes his success to 12 investments over the last sixty, seventy years. Now he didn't have that many abject failures,”
“So the point is that that whereas, the underlying thing progresses gradually, the price fluctuates wildly around that trend line, and the main reason is, the fluctuation of psychology.”
“I wrote a memo in October of o eight, after the global financial after the bankruptcy of Lehman, with the title, the limits to negativism. And there is such a thing as being too negative.”
“I'm concerned that there could be nuclear war, and I'm concerned that there could be inflation at 20%. Mhmm. Well, can protect yourself against that.”
“I think innovation, I think if you look at the Claude and all the coding models and the way they've progressed and the way and the way Anthropix revenues have progressed, I think you have to say that this is faster than anything we've ever seen before.”
“So rather than thinking of cycles as ups and downs, which I think most people do, think of them as excesses and corrections, excesses and corrections.”
“So rather than thinking of cycles as ups and downs, which I think most people do, think of them as excesses and corrections, excesses and corrections. Fluctuations around the trend line.”
“And not only is that an interesting phenomenon to think about, but even more so, the fact that the return on the S and P, which averages 10, is almost never between eight and twelve.”
“if you bought those stocks the day I got to work in September of 'sixty nine, if you held them tenaciously for five years, you lost about 95% of your money.”
“And so, over the last forty years, on average, something like 3.6 or 3.7% of all high yield bonds have gone into default every year, and our default rate has been roughly a third.”
“over the last forty years, on average, something like 3.6 or 3.7% of all high yield bonds have gone into default every year, and our default rate has been roughly a third.”
“readily available quantitative information about the present cannot hold the key to success, because everybody has it. Success in investing is doing better than others.”
“I would imagine, tend to make somebody say, I've always done it this way, it's worked in the past, I'm an enormous success, you know, I'm worth this much money, so why should I change my approach? But you have to keep changing.”
“How can I learn to be a credit analyst who better understands the default probability than anybody else? How can I become what I call a second level thinker?”
“Are some AI models smarter than others? Since they all have super IQs, computing power, and they all are trained on the same history, are some smarter than others?”
“And, cognitive dissonance is something that you should all familiarize yourself with. And it is basically the human brain's ability to reject information which is at odds with its predisposition.”
“cognitive dissonance is something that you should all familiarize yourself with. And it is basically the human brain's ability to reject information which is at odds with its predisposition.”
“By the way, I believe that there is a predisposition to be optimistic. Not pessimistic, optimistic. Why is that? Because you have to be optimistic to be an investor.”
“Because you have to be optimistic to be an investor. What is investing? You take your money, you give it to somebody else in the hope you'll get back more later.”
“April 1, President Trump announced, second, announced some massive tariffs, more much more than had been expected, and put them on, and then a week later paused them, and then put some more on and took some off, and and the the market had a negative reaction.”
“Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan says a lot of things best. He said, you know, when you see one cockroach, there are probably more. So, people started to say, well, maybe there's something wrong here.”
“the bottom is the day before it starts going up. Right? And if that's true, then by definition, you never know when you're at the bottom because you can only tell the next day.”
2008 financial crisiscrisis investingdecision making
Transcript excerptWharton School
“we were buying the senior most debt of these companies at prices such that if these companies ended up being worth a third or a quarter or a fifth of what these great buyout firms had bought them for a year or two ago, we would be okay.”
“these great buyout firms bought a company for $4,000,000,000 and now we are we can buy the senior most debt at a yield of, I don't know, let's say 15 or 20%, such that if the company ends up being re worth $1,000,000,000 we won't lose any money.”
“When I was a kid and came into this business in '69, the Nifty Fifty were selling at PE ratios between sixty and ninety. So today's Mag seven in the thirties seem reasonable.”
“And and the government, in theory, can make up the paycheck, but they can't make up the sense of purpose and the reason to get out of bed and the structure for your day.”
“I went to visit one of my clients, a CEO, and he talked about the fact that his workers trade their four zero one k's on the sitting on the shop floor at lunch.”
“Emotion, what we call human nature, tends to get us excited when things go well. And as things go well, prices prices rise rise rise and people wanna buy more and more and more.”
“The the biggest I thought I've spent a lot of time thinking about the biggest mistake that investors make. It is the belief that something can go up more than something else forever.”
“Bob said, essentially, what we do is take advantage of the mistakes of others. And that caused me to write a memo shortly after entitled, it's all a big mistake.”
“There's only one catch. It requires cooperation for someone who's willing to sell something for less than it's worth. And who volunteers for that job?”
“It requires cooperation for someone who's willing to sell something for less than it's worth. And who volunteers for that job? We want to buy from sellers who are making mistakes.”
“And if you bought the stocks the day I got to work in '69 and you held them for five years, the greatest companies in America, you lost about 95% of your money.”
“And from March of o nine until, let's say, January '26, there generally were not profound low points. And when good times roll on that long, people forget about the possibility of bad times.”
“We actually haven't had many defaults yet, so we haven't had a chance yet to see who made bad loans. That's coming too. But I think that we were reserved in 2025.”
“the changes that are underway today, and in particular the introduction of AI, render the world much less predictable than at any time, probably any time ever, and certainly any time in my lifetime.”
“in 2011, when the banks chastened and regulated because of the global financial crisis, pulled back from lending for buyouts, so called non bank lenders stepped in and started to engage in direct lending, lending for mid sized buyouts.”
“And of course, since the demand for capital from the private equity industry was strong, and the supply of capital from the non bank lenders was limited, the non bank lenders could demand high interest rates and good safety.”
“I would say that public credit was yielding about seven, and direct lending was yielding about eight and a quarter. It struck me that 125 basis points for a liquidity premium was about fair.”
“It struck me that 125 basis points for a liquidity premium was about fair. It was probably adequate, but certainly not lush, and so, in my opinion, the specialness had gone away.”
“the stock market bottomed March 6, I think it was, of 2009, seventeen years ago, this month, and there hasn't really been a tough time in the financial market since then.”
“since roughly 09/30/2022, I would venture that the S and P has doubled. I mean, company values haven't doubled, intrinsic values, but prices have doubled, so it's been a great time,”
“I mean, company values haven't doubled, intrinsic values, but prices have doubled, so it's been a great time, and great times encourage the desire to put money to work and discourage analysis,”
“we've had seventeen years of low defaults, and the actions of the Fed made the global financial crisis, which was probably the most destructive environment I've ever lived through, have only one year of elevated defaults on high yield bonds rather than the normal two.”
“the global financial crisis, which was probably the most destructive environment I've ever lived through, have only one year of elevated defaults on high yield bonds rather than the normal two.”
“if the yield spreads are at the low end of normal range, you would have to say that the fear of elevated defaults is not present and compensation for an elevated default rate is not available.”
“I think you would have to say, optimism, not pessimism, credulousness, not skepticism, are in the ascendancy today, and when optimism and credulousness are in the ascendancy, it gets hard to make return investments that will produce what we call excess returns,”
“Well, know, when I started Citibank in September sixty nine, the bank and most of the money center banks, it's an old fashioned expression, invested in what we call the nifty 50.”
“So if you bought the stocks the day I got there, I think it was 09/22/1969, if I'm not mistaken, and if you held them tenaciously for five years, the greatest company is America, you lost about 95% of your money.”
“40% of the workforce gone in one day because AI could do the work cheaper and faster. So how many people in the world understand the potential import of that?”
“OpenAI brought out a new model. And in the descriptive materials, they said that the that the model helped build the model, which is really eye opening.”
“And you we saw Friday block 10,000 employees, let 40%, 4,000 people let go in one go, who who aren't needed anymore because AI can do it better and cheaper and faster.”
“we saw Friday block 10,000 employees, let 40%, 4,000 people let go in one go, who who aren't needed anymore because AI can do it better and cheaper and faster.”
“I think it was Walter Cronkite who said if you're not confused, you don't know what's going on. I would say if you think you know what's gonna happen,”
“I would say if you think you know what's gonna happen, you don't know understand what's going on. We're at the we're in the first inning of a very long unpredictable game.”
“We're at the we're in the first inning of a very long unpredictable game. We don't know what the rules are or or have any idea how many innings there are in the game.”
“We're at the we're in the first inning of a very long unpredictable game. We don't know what the rules are or or have any idea how many innings there are”
“And so that was very informative and it's very desirable to learn your lessons early and also preferable to learn your lessons when there's not a lot of money at stake, which I did.”
“And given the, if you think about it, from 1980 when the inflation was solved, essentially to date, generally speaking, the more optimistic you were, the more money you made.”
“Risk, in my opinion, and my view has evolved, risk is the probability negative outcome, of an undesirable outcome. It is not the volatility of the stream.”
“See, the lead up was that because we were worried in 'five and assets, we liquidated a lot of funds, if we raised funds, we raised only small funds, we increased our selectivity.”
“And the biggest fund in history was $2,500,000,000 That was our 'one fund for. And so we went out to raise $3,000,000,000 and within a month we had orders for eight.”
“There have been ninety seven or ninety eight three year periods by definition. And there have been only six which were better than the last three years.”
“And I say in the memo, for example, that some woman left OpenAI, started a company called Thinking Machine Labs, went out to raise money, and she said this company is going to engage in AI, but I can't tell you what we're going to do. It's a secret. And people gave her $2,000,000,000 for a sixth of the company.”
“some woman left OpenAI, started a company called Thinking Machine Labs, went out to raise money, and she said this company is going to engage in AI, but I can't tell you what we're going to do. It's a secret. And people gave her $2,000,000,000 for a sixth of the company.”
“And at the time I was writing the memo, she was out trying to raise more money at a $50,000,000,000 valuation for a company that wouldn't say what its product is.”
“Their incremental profitability is enormous. When your product is virtual and you're selling one, you're making some money, you want to sell two, there's almost no cost in the second one.”
“Buffett says most things best. He says, the less prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we must conduct our own affairs.”
“Most people care a little about a dollar made and a lost. Exposing yourself to the risk of loss is integral in trying to have a good investment return.”
“Exposing yourself to the risk of loss is integral in trying to have a good investment return. So, you know, even though our investment philosophy, stresses, risk control, we're not talking about risk avoidance.”
“I always make this point that the bubbles are very, very around something new because the imagination is untrammed and it can go off in a flight of fancy.”
“You're never going to have a bubble in paper stocks or timber stocks. It's too prosaic. People can say, well, we can tell how many houses you're going to build.”
“There's no doubt that the internet will produce a great increase in productivity. It's not clear that it'll have a positive impact on profitability. And I think the same is true of AI.”
“My travel, I watched CNN International and they're drumming up interest in a show. And the anchor says to a guest, You say that AI has the ability to eliminate half of entry level jobs.”
“You say that AI has the ability to eliminate half of entry level jobs. That was the whole conversation because then they cut to something else. But the point is that may be true.”
“To whom will the savings accrue? If different companies are competing to provide the AI service, maybe they'll compete on price to the point where it's not profitable for them.”
“Or do you want to invest in a great tech company, which is already existing and making a lot of money where AI could be incremental, but not life changing?”
“The future is not a set single thing that if you're smart enough, you can figure it out what it's going to be and it's going to materialize and make you right.”
“It's a probability distribution. It's a range of possibilities in each thing, whether it's GDP growth next year or inflation next year, or who's going to win the next election,”
“So solidly in the second quarter for fourteen years in a row. But interestingly, as a result, for the fourteen years overall, they were in the fourth percentile.”
“for the fourteen years overall, they were in the fourth percentile. Now that's incredible math. You would say, well, if you bounce back in '40 between '27 47, on average, you're probably about 37.”
“most investors, shoot for the stars and occasionally shoot themselves in the foot and wreck their record. And once you have a big loss, it takes a long time to get back to scratch.”
“And it happens to say in there, simply put what the pension funds record tells me is that in equities, if you can avoid the losers and losing years, the winners will take care of themselves.”
“And when we started Oaktree in 1995, I wrote that down, and that became our motto and still is. If you can avoid the losers, the winners will take care of themselves.”
“if there are a 100 high yield bonds out there and they're all 8% bonds, and you know that 90 will pay and 10 will default, it doesn't matter which of the 90 that pay you buy because they're all 8% bonds, they all get the same return.”
“When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in mid September of o eight, we had raised the biggest distressed debt fund in history by a factor of about three.”
“When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in mid September of o eight, we had raised the biggest distressed debt fund in history by a factor of about three. We had $10,000,000,000 sitting on the shelf.”
“We had $10,000,000,000 sitting on the shelf. Lehman goes under. Most people think the financial world is gonna melt down. Question is whether you spend the money.”
“Bruce and I figured out that we should spend the money. He ran the fund in question and he bravely invested an average of $450,000,000 a week for the next fifteen weeks.”
“He ran the fund in question and he bravely invested an average of $450,000,000 a week for the next fifteen weeks. That's $7,000,000,000 in one quarter.”
“There's no doubt that the Internet will produce a great increase in productivity. It's not clear that it'll have a positive impact on profitability. And I think the same is true of AI.”
“if you can produce The US GDP and eliminate half the entry level jobs, it could be more profitable or certainly more productive. But the question is, will it be more profitable?”
“I mean, in order to be a smart lender, you have to have good visibility on the extent to which the thing has is likely to repay interest and principal.”
“You certainly shouldn't do that in in in activities that have a high probability of not paying off at all because then you have unlimited downside and limited upside.”
“And the Fed manipulations are a form of price controls. You know, they control the price of money. And if Fed puts money artificially cheap, then it induces behavior like risk taking.”
“And if Fed puts money artificially cheap, then it induces behavior like risk taking. It forces people into riskier activities because the returns on safe activities are so low.”
“Historically, if you bought at this PE ratio, your return over the next ten years averaged in the very low single digits. So I I think we're in a moderate return scenario.”
“And as I said in the addendum, When we lost jobs to automation and offshoring, I think that that coincided with the opiate epidemic and not only in amount but also in location.”
“And I think it's a natural consequence of people sitting around all day. And even if we if we can find a way to replace their income I worry about purposelessness”
“And I think it's a natural consequence of people sitting around all day. And even if we if we can find a way to replace their income I worry about purposelessness and you know we get so much job so much from our jobs other than a paycheck and you can't replace that stuff.”
“And even if we if we can find a way to replace their income I worry about purposelessness and you know we get so much job so much from our jobs other than a paycheck and you can't replace that stuff.”
“I think there's relatively little doubt that AI will change the world. And AI has been successful as an investment, and people are piling in, and there's some fear about being left out.”
“the efficient market hypothesis posits that because of the concerted action of investors, prices converge with fair value, everything is priced right, and you can't beat the market.”
“the efficient market hypothesis says you can't beat the market. And what I would say is it's not that you can't beat the market, but it's hard. And rather few people can do it.”
“if you look at equity mutual funds, most equity mutual funds don't even do as well as the S and P five hundred before fees, and then they charge you a high fee for their efforts, and they do notably worse after fees.”
“if it were true that taking more risk is the surefire path to a higher return, then it wouldn't be risky. Can't be right. So I was always unsatisfied with that.”
“assets that are expected to be riskier have to appear to offer a higher return or nobody will make those investments. That makes a 100% sense, doesn't it?”
“assets that are expected to be riskier have to appear to offer a higher return or nobody will make those investments. That makes a 100% sense, doesn't it? So that's what this relationship means”
“you watch the shows on TV and you get somebody on who says, you should buy and some people buy and then the next guest says you should sell and things go like this.”
“I'd say, look at this piece of junk that got issued yesterday. There's something wrong. If a deal like this can get done, the world is exercising inadequate prudence.”
“So as you say, we invested $450,000,000 a week for the next fifteen weeks in that fund, which was 7,000,000,000 and Oaktree overall invested an average of $650,000,000 a week for the next fifteen weeks.”
“The academics developing investment theory, largely at the University of Chicago in the early sixties, just a couple years before I got there, adopted volatility as their measure of risk.”
“The fact that you experienced a downward fluctuation might have been uncomfortable for a little while. But by the time the new high is achieved, you're you're you're back to to your cost and more.”
“My friend Rick Kane once said that 96% of financial history has occurred within two standard deviations, but everything interesting has happened outside of two standard deviations.”
“I think it's important to grasp a concept. Risk is hidden, and risk is deceptive. Loss is what happens when risk, the potential for loss, collides with negative events.”
“My conclusion was it's not what you buy, it's what you pay. And investment success doesn't come from buying good things, but from buying things well.”
“There are no assets that are so good that they can't become overpriced and dangerous. There are very few assets that are so bad that they can't be cheap enough to be attractive as investments.”
“Very simply, if it were true that riskier assets produce higher returns, then they wouldn't be riskier, would they? So that can't be the right explanation.”
“What the upward sloping line, the positive correlation, means is that investments that are perceived as being risky have to be perceived as offering higher returns to induce people to make those investments.”
“I believe imprecise qualitative expert opinion about the probability of loss is far more useful than precise but largely irrelevant numbers concerning past and projected volatility.”
“I think the right model for thinking about whether we need risk control isn't American football, it's soccer. In American football, the team with the ball has the offense on the field.”
“One thing within your control is the quality of your output. Amen. You should have a simple goal to put out a product which is the highest quality you can.”
“I couldn't disagree more. There are happy accidents. There are unhappy accidents. Now, you know, people say luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
“I think now we're up to 300,000 subscribers and hopefully they pass it around. And and so it's it's a lot of fun now and I get great responses and I enjoy it.”
“One thing that's within your control is the quality of your output. Amen. And so you should have a simple goal which is to put out a product which is the highest quality you can.”
“And if if they ever kept a scorecard on the things that they wrote about what's gonna happen tomorrow, they would see that on average they get it right half the time”
“Yeah. Well, I think visually, and graphically, and I think of these images which help me to distill my thoughts, and then I think they're very helpful in explaining it to people.”
“To me, the real accomplishment is making money with the risk under control. And that's what thinking about risk, I think, helps you do. So, you know, Bernstein's, writing is very important.”
“rates are likely to be between two and four, not between zero and two, the Fed funds rate. And, you know, between zero and two is, an emergency measure.”
“You went to the bank. They said we'll lend you 800,000,000 at 5%. Now the loan is up for renewal. You go in. They say, fine. We'll lend you 500,000,000 at 8%.”
“The great investors are right 60%, 70%, maybe 80% of the time. If you're the kind of person who has to be right all the time, you shouldn't be in in investing.”
“I'd hold up an article from the news, I said, Look at this piece of crap that got issued yesterday. If a company can raise money on this basis, there's something wrong in the market.”
“Either the financial system is going to melt down or it's not. If it melts down, it doesn't matter whether we bought or not, because it's, you know, it's game over for everything.”
“And if it were true that every overpriced markets reverts and becomes fairly priced, then we would never get a bubble because they would stop going up here.”
“successful investing requires the adoption of uncomfortably idiosyncratic positions. Everybody has the same influences, everybody thinks pretty much the same,”
“Everybody has the same influences, everybody thinks pretty much the same, everybody anoints the same winners and criticizes the same losers, and obviously tomorrow's winners are usually found on the pile of today's losers,”
“You have to understand that and process it, but it's not enough because everybody else has it readily available and it's quantitative, so everybody can process it.”
“I don't think it can look at five business plans and figure out which is the next Amazon. These are subjective judgments about the future, not based on past data.”
“I believe that achieving an average return with below average risk is an equally significant accomplish, but easily overlooked because only the risk is evident, only the return is evident.”
“achieving an average return with below average risk is an equally significant accomplish, but easily overlooked because only the risk is evident, only the return is evident.”
“Einstein, there's a great quote from Einstein, who said that not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
“risk is unquantifiable in advance. You can make reference to the historical volatility, the historical standard deviation, but number one, that's not a very good indicator of risk.”
“Even when it's over, you can't tell. Was that a safe investment that it was sure to produce a double? Or was it a risky investment where you got lucky?”
“the riskiest thing in the world is the belief that there's no risk. Because when police when people believe there's no risk, they act in very risky ways, which makes the world a risky place.”
“prior to the subprime crisis, the fraudulent mortgages that gave rise to the global financial crisis, there had never been a nationwide wave of mortgage defaults.”
“I also believe that risk is hidden and deceptive. This is really important. Loss is what happens when risk, the potential for loss collides with negative events.”
“it's not what you buy, it's what you pay that determines whether your investment is risky or not. B, that good investing is not a matter of buying good things, but buying things well.”
“if you can count on higher returns from a risky asset, then by definition, it's not risky. So it's kind of an oxymoron. And I was never comfortable with this graphic.”
“the outcome of pulling a ticket from the bowl, the outcome of which investment performance will occur, never amounts to one ticket picked from among many.”
“after the global financial crisis, some people thought it represented an existential threat, we swung into action and we were able to invest $650,000,000 a week on average for fifteen weeks between Lehman's September 15 bankruptcy and the end of the year, that's $10,000,000,000”
“If you say to them, you know, well that happened twenty and forty years ago and it ended badly, what they say is they use the four worst words in the world.”
“Richard Feynman, the great physicist, said that, physics would be much harder if electrons had feelings. We walk in the room, we turn on the light switch, the lights go on every time.”
“I think that if you want to exist in the investment world and you want to, you can just buy and hold good things if you want to take that approach, But if you want to improve upon that, I think it's very important to understand the ebb and flow of psychology and act accordingly.”
“So at Oaktree, we invested $650,000,000 a week in the last fifteen weeks of 'eight, that's about $10,000,000,000 and that's really all you had to do.”
“the big realization of the last ten, forty years is that just about every asset can get cheap enough so that it's a good investment, and most investments can get so expensive that they're a bad investment. And the revolution of the high yield bond industry was really to say,”
“Now remember, the four worst words in the world were, it's different this time, the seven worst words in the world are too much money chasing too few deals.”
“good decisions fail to work all the time. Bad decisions work all the time. The investment business is full of people who are, quote, right for the wrong reason.”
“you should not act as if the things that should happen are the things that will happen. Again, in the world of the physical sciences, you can probably bet that that's true.”
“There's a professor at the London Business School who put it succinctly. He said risk means more things can happen than will happen. And again, this is profound in my opinion.”
“risk means more things can happen than will happen. And again, this is profound in my opinion. In the economic world, people generally make their decisions based on something called expected value,”
“if you bought the bonds of Hewlett Packard, PerkinElmer, Texas Instruments, Merck, Lilly, Xerox, IBM, Kodak, Polaroid, AIG, Coca Cola, and Procter and Gamble, and if you bought them all in 'sixty eight and you held them until 'seventy three, you lost 90% of your money.”
“if you bought the bonds of Hewlett Packard, PerkinElmer, Texas Instruments, Merck, Lilly, Xerox, IBM, Kodak, Polaroid, AIG, Coca Cola, and Procter and Gamble, and if you bought them all in 'sixty eight and you held them until 'seventy three, you lost 90% of your money. Why? Because they were overpriced.”
“You give me $100 and I promise to give you 5% interest every year and then give you a bonding back in twenty years. Fixed income, it's called, because all the events are fixed.”
“What percentile do you think that fund was in for the whole fourteen years? Four. Four. And if you think about it, it's really almost mysterious. Why the fourth, not the thirty seventh?”
“we brought out the first distressed debt fund. Now we're not investing in companies that have a risk of default. We're investing in bonds that are either in default or sure to be.”
“And we've made about 23% a year for twenty eight years investing in distressed debt before fees without any leverage. So that's pretty astronomical. Why?”
“we've made about 23% a year for twenty eight years investing in distressed debt before fees without any leverage. So that's pretty astronomical. Why?”
“ [ 4 ]
Marks focuses on risk management and says that investors should set investment strategy according to their personal situations and ask themselves whether they worry more about the risk of losing money or the risk of missing an opportunity. [ 4 ] Marks believes that it is hard to gain an investment advantage through research since so many smart people are doing it already; the ways to get an advantage are through better inferring the consequences implied by current company data, managing the psychology of investing, and assessing the present stage of the business / market cycle. He hopes to have average returns during a bull market , while minimizing losses during bear markets due to his belief that losses do more harm than any benefit investors obtain from gains. Marks does favor using market timing strategies to have cash available to be invested during a downturn. [ 5 ] Marks notes that it is important for investors to admit what they don't know instead of believing something is certain. He aims for a ”
American businessman (b. 1946) · Contributors to Wikimedia projects
Quoted in printen.wikipedia.org
“, are widely admired in the investment community. They detail his investment strategies and insight into the economy and are posted publicly on the Oaktree website. He has also published 3 books on investing. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] According to Warren Buffett , ”
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“@Brookfield has completed its purchase of @Oaktree, marking the beginning of an exciting new chapter. Our partnership over the past seven years has been defined by mutual respect and cooperation. Bruce Flatt and I discussed the opportunities ahead with Barron’s Andy Serwer:”
