On the Other Hand

All Rights Reserved Follow us: Memo to: Oaktree Clients From: Howard Marks Re: On the Other Hand It often happens that just as I’m about to release a memo, I come across something that absolutely has to be incorporated., I think the topic is very important, so much so that I’m now going to devote a memo to the subject of Fed interest-rate management, A L L R I G H T S R E S E R V E D Legal Information and Disclosures This memorandum expresses the views of the author as of the date indicated and such views are subject to change without notice., This memorandum is being made available for educational purposes only and should not be used for any other purpose., This memorandum, including the information contained herein, may not be copied, reproduced, republished, or posted in whole or in part, in any form without the prior written consent of Oaktree

Calibrating

All Rights Reserved Follow us: Memo to: Oaktree Clients From: Howard Marks Re: Calibrating I set a personal record by writing four memos in the month of March, responding to the rapidly unfolding coronavirus crisis., My roughly quarterly memos pale when compared to the output of Doug Kass, who writes at least daily., My message wasn’t uniform across the four memos, but there were some common threads, Portfolio Positioning One of the benefits I derive from writing my memos is that the more I work on a memo about something, the more it comes into focus., Thus the four March memos gave me a great opportunity to ponder what the events imply for investment behavior.

Knowledge of the Future

All Rights Reserved Follow us: Memo to: Oaktree Clients From: Howard Marks Re: Knowledge of the Future As I showed by using it again in last week’s memo, I was impressed by the observation of Marc Lipsitch, Harvard epidemiologist, that there are (a) facts, (b) informed extrapolations from analogies to other viruses and (c) opinion or speculation., I chose the title of this memo because it’s such an oxymoron: there’s practically no such thing as meaningful knowledge regarding the future investment environment., Thus, this memo will be about some things people think they know but may not., This memorandum is being made available for educational purposes only and should not be used for any other purpose., This memorandum, including the information contained herein, may not be copied, reproduced, republished, or posted in whole or in part, in any form without the prior written consent of Oaktree

Transcript - The Insight Conversations - Howard Marks and Annie Duke

Howard’s 2020 memo, Yo u B e t !, So today we’re going to be talking about ideas from Annie’s book, from Howard’s memos., This idea also features quite prominently in Howard’s memo, Yo u B e t !, I took a look at the memo, Yo u B e t !, Howard I was going to say it was the last memo before lockdown.

PCQ 1Q2024

(a memo I thought mattered but which garnered relatively little response), the answers to questions about rate cut details aren’t meaningful, as any impact is likely to disappear within a few months.

2023 Oaktree Responsibility Report

Transportation Infrastructure 2023 Oaktree’s Real Estate team began to (a) perform climate risk assessments as part of its diligence process and (b) include a summary of its findings in investment committee memos., Holocaust Memorial Museum in celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month and learned the personal story of a Holocaust survivor.

The Illusion of Knowledge

It was that lunch that started me thinking about writing yet another memo on the futility of macro forecasting., Together, the lunch and these items inspired this memo’s theme: the reasons why forecasts are rarely helpful., I found Ferguson’s article so relevant to the subject of this memo that I’m including a link to it here., * * * In a 2001 memo called What’s It All About, Alpha?, This memorandum is being made available for educational purposes only and should not be used for any other purpose.

The Roundup: Top Takeaways from Oaktree’s Quarterly Letters - June 2023 Edition

As a bonus, we’ve also included an excerpt from Howard Marks’s recent memo to clients. 1 Market Outlook: Tug-of-War Howard Marks Co-Chairman The overarching theme of my sea-change thinking is that, largely thanks to highly accommodative monetary policy, we went through unusually easy times in a number of important regards over a prolonged period, but that time is over., Thus, after decades of accommodative monetary policy, cheap debt, and robust equity returns, we may now be entering a new era, as our co-chairman Howard Marks eloquently described in his 2022 memo Sea Change.

The Roundup: Top Takeaways from Oaktree Conference 2024

In the beginning of the last credit cycle, when investors were still smarting from the fallout of the Global Financial Crisis, risk tolerance was extremely low, and few borrowers could obtain leverage greater than six times EBITDA.20 However, as the cycle progressed, memories of the carnage from 2008-09 began to fade and risk-taking increased.

Behind the Memo - I Beg to Differ