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Thursday, 28 October 2021
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Howard Marks updates his views on markets and whether we are in a bubble, but his comments on fund managers in public markets, liquidity premiums in private markets and the role of SPACs were most original.
Dr Rodney Brown's article last week on taxing the rich and inequality led to a lively discussion. As a follow up, we republish Oaktree's Howard Marks on the popular 'beer' example to explain the tax system.
Global markets are more uncertain today than at any other time in our lives. Nobody knows the future but we must make decisions about it. A solid dose of intellectual humility is essential.
Howard Marks is the largest investor in the world in distressed securities. What does he think after checking the virus positives and negatives, and how much has he changed his mind in only a few days?
Howard Marks distills a lifetime of investing into his new book, and perhaps as a sign that he has really mastered the market cycle, he has just sold a majority stake in Oaktree to Brookfield.
In his latest memo to clients, Oaktree's Howard Marks quotes the popular 'beer' example to explain the tax system, and we reproduce it here.
Howard Marks' memos to his clients are always worth reading, and when a highly successful manager acknowledges the strengths of index investing, it's worth checking what he says.
Howard Marks explains that he has never told investors 'it's time to get out', and while he does not see bubble conditions, future returns are likely to be subdued based on current high prices.
Howard Marks issues a regular memo to his clients, and the latest shares his concerns about high market valuations and tech companies priced for perfection. He accepts 'looking like an old fogey'.
The memo from Howard Marks titled 'Expert Opinion' explains how forecasting is more art than science, and we give too much weight to many expert opinions which are little more than a 50-50 guess.
Howard Marks is best known in the global investment community for his ‘Oaktree Memos’ to clients which detail investment strategies and economic insights. Here are some extracts from his latest memo, Risk Revisited Again.
Howard Marks tells a New York conference that there's no way to predict commodity prices, as we cannot know what will happen in the future.
We tend to forget that house prices often fall. Direct lending controls are more effective than rate rises because macroprudential limits affect the volume of money for housing leaving business rates untouched.
The survey drew a fantastic 2,000 responses with over 1,000 comments and polar opposite views on what is good policy. Do most people believe the home should be in the age pension asset test, and what do they say?
Any policy decision needs to recognise who is affected by a change. It pays to check the data on who pays taxes, who owns assets and who earns the income to ensure an equitable and efficient outcome.
With articles on the pensions assets test read about 40,000 times, 3,500 survey responses and thousands of comments, there was a lot of great reader participation. A few comments added extra insights.
It is hard to think of any area of widespread public concern where the same policies have been pursued for so long, in the face of such incontrovertible evidence that they have failed to achieve their objectives.
There are reasons to believe inflation will stay under control, and although we may see a slowing in the global economy, two companies should benefit from the themes of 'Stable Compounders' and 'Structural Winners'.