# Not The Time To Be Buying: Howard Marks



## Garpal Gumnut (20 June 2020)

Howard Marks is a very well respected investor, adviser and fund manager. He is associated with Oakridge which he founded. 

His advice in the latest memo is not good for those piling in to the market at present. It applies as much to Australia as to the US markets.

He makes sense. Many of his thoughts and conclusions have been discussed on ASF since March 2020. It's good to have it all in one document. 

https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/howard-marks-memos/

gg


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## Dona Ferentes (20 June 2020)

Marks has written nine memos to investors so far in 2020; he wrote just eight for all of 2018 and 2019.

Marks doesn’t have a prediction for where the market goes next. Instead, he suggests investors need to consider whether asset prices reflect only the positives and not enough of the negatives.

It’s the old question of _*risk versus reward.*_


> “As such, it seems to me that the potential for further gains from things turning out better than expected, or valuations continuing to expand doesn’t fully compensate for the risk of decline from events disappointing or multiples contracting,” Marks says.
> 
> “In other words, the fundamental outlook may be positive on balance, but with listed security prices where they are, the odds aren’t in investors’ favour.”


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## Garpal Gumnut (20 June 2020)

Garpal Gumnut said:


> Howard Marks is a very well respected investor, adviser and fund manager. He is associated with Oakridge which he founded.
> 
> His advice in the latest memo is not good for those piling in to the market at present. It applies as much to Australia as to the US markets.
> 
> ...



Of course that should be Oaktree not Oakridge. 

A meaty memo. 

gg


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## Dona Ferentes (24 November 2022)

Garpal Gumnut said:


> Howard Marks is a very well respected investor, adviser and fund manager. He is associated with Oakridge which he founded.
> 
> His advice in the latest memo is not good for those piling in to the market at present. It applies as much to Australia as to the US markets.
> 
> He makes sense.




- and now, suiting the times, he is saying macro events, short-term performance and even volatility shouldn’t matter to most investors, but focus on fundamentals such as earnings potential, and buy stocks and bonds that look cheap relative to this.

Howard Marks’ 10 elements for investors​
_Forget the short run – only the long run matters._
_Decide whether you believe in market efficiency. If so, is your market sufficiently inefficient to permit outperformance, and are you up to the task of exploiting it?_
_Does your investment style match your personality? Do you tend more towards aggressiveness or defensiveness? Will you try to find more and bigger winners, or focus on avoiding losers, or both? (Hint: “both” is much harder to achieve than one or the other.)_
_Think of your normal balance between aggressiveness and defensiveness based on your financial position, needs, aspirations, and ability to live with fluctuations. Will you vary this balance depending on what happens in the market?_
_Adopt a healthy attitude towards return and risk. Understand that higher returns are usually accompanied by increased risk, while avoiding risk usually leads to avoiding return as well._
_Insist on an adequate margin of safety, or the ability to weather periods when things go less well than you expected._
_Stop trying to predict the macro; study the micro like mad in order to know your subject better than others. Understand that you can expect to succeed only if you have a knowledge advantage, and be realistic about whether you have it or not._
_Recognise that psychology swings much more than fundamentals, and usually in the wrong direction or at the wrong time. Understand the importance of resisting those swings and profiting if you can by being counter-cyclical and contrarian._
_Study conditions in the investment environment – especially investor behaviour – and consider where things stand in terms of the cycle. Where the market stands in its cycle will strongly influence whether the odds are in your favour or against you._
_Buy debt when you like the yield, not for trading purposes. In other words, buy 9 per cent bonds if you think the yield compensates you for the risk, and you’ll be happy with 9 per cent. Don’t buy 9 per cent bonds expecting to make 11 per cent thanks to price appreciation resulting from declining interest rates_.


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## Garpal Gumnut (24 November 2022)

Dona Ferentes said:


> - and now, suiting the times, he is saying macro events, short-term performance and even volatility shouldn’t matter to most investors, but focus on fundamentals such as earnings potential, and buy stocks and bonds that look cheap relative to this.
> 
> Howard Marks’ 10 elements for investors​
> _Forget the short run – only the long run matters._
> ...



I saw that. 

Good advice. 

gg


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## divs4ever (24 November 2022)

Garpal Gumnut said:


> Howard Marks is a very well respected investor, adviser and fund manager. He is associated with Oakridge which he founded.
> 
> His advice in the latest memo is not good for those piling in to the market at present. It applies as much to Australia as to the US markets.
> 
> ...



 WHOOPS !!!

  i didn't so much 'pile in ' as buy opportunistically  ( but carefully ) right through  March to late December 2020 ,

 could i have done better ??  sure  but i did do OK just the same


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