298 results for "memo":
Showing 151 - 160 of 298 results
The Impact of Debt
My partner Bruce Karsh recently supplied me with a newspaper article about chess that inspired me to write a brief memo called The Indispensability of Risk ., Thus encouraged, I’m following up with another short memo., Housel’s approach to thinking about debt – and especially his illustrations – reminded me of my December 2008 memo, Volatility + Leverage = Dynamite ., (Unless otherwise indicated, this memo is the source of the quotations that follow; in all cases, emphasis is in the original.), In that memo, I used a series of simple graphics to show that the lower a company’s debt load is, the greater the decline in fortune it could survive.
The Indispensability of Risk
That’s why I’ve written a memo comparing investing to sports in each of the four decades I’ve been writing memos and one connecting investing and card playing in 2020., The motivation for this memo comes from an article in The Wall Street Journal of April 12 that my partner Bruce Karsh sent me entitled “Chess Teaches the Power of Sacrifice” by Maurice Ashley, a chess grandmaster who has been inducted into the U.S., Few people know that Bruce is a chess player, and I hadn’t thought about this fact for years, but the article provided a good reminder and moved me to dash off this memo., Relevant lessons from sports (included in past memos) are easily accessed and also very helpful: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky, NHL Hall of Famer “You have to give yourself a chance to fail.” – Kenny “The Jet” Smith, two-time NBA champion I’ll sum up with a paragraph from my memo of last September, Fewer Losers, or More Winners?
Pigweed
A l l R i g h t s R e s e r v e d Memo to: OaktreeClients From: HowardMarks Re: Pigweed A t C i t i b a n k b a c k i n t he ’70s, Chief Investment Officer Peter Vermilye placed a lot of emphasis on building team spirit., TIn a memo on hedge funds in October 2004, I mentioned that when there’s a big increase in the number of little fish attempting to live off each big fish’s leavings (or in the number of hedge funds relative to mainstream investors), the pickings become slimmer., TURisk Management and Risk Managers TYou know from my memo of February entitled “Risk” that I’m not a big fan of quantitative risk management., TIn the memo on risk, I enumerated several criteria that should be present if modeling is to prove effective., When sellers’ urgency increases, they’re likely to have to give on price in order to achieve the “immediacy” they crave (see my memo “Investment Miscellany,” November 16, 2000).
Is It a Bubble?
© 2025 Oaktree Capital Management, L.P All Rights Reserved Follow us: Memo to: Oaktree Clients From: Howard Marks Re: Is It a Bubble?, During my visits to clients in Asia and the Middle East last month, I was often asked about the possibility of a bubble surrounding artificial intelligence, and my discussions gave rise to this memo., I took the quote that opens this memo from Derek Thompson’s November 4 newsletter entitled “AI Could Be the Railroad of the 21 st Century., As I wrote in my January memo On Bubble Watch, bubbles are temporary manias in which developments in those areas become the subject of what former U.S., Derek Thompson, who supplied the quote with which I opened this memo, ended his newsletter with some terrific historical perspective: The railroads were a bubble and they transformed America.
Hemlines
Memo to: OaktreeClients From: Howard M a rks Re: Hemlines While the details change, the pendulum-like fluctuation of investment styles is a constant., This memo will be about recurring patterns, the history of stocks and bonds as I know it, and the adage’s applicability to that history., (Given that I average a memo every couple of months, I find the very idea daunting.)
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 Best of. . .
Memo to: Oaktree Clients From: Howard Marks Memo to: Oaktree Clients From: Howard Marks Re: The Best of . . ., I described in my last memo, "What Lies Ahead?, ” That prompted this memo in response., In my memo What Really Matters?, What was I to do but start in on a memo?
The Folly of Certainty
And, with that, I had the subject of this memo: not whether Biden will continue campaigning or drop out – or whether he’ll win if he continues – but rather how anyone can be without doubt., , has supplied an interesting tidbit for this memo on the subject of economists’ conclusions: I use the Philly Fed’s Anxious Index (the probability of a decline in real GDP in the upcoming quarter) as an indicator that a recession has ended., Back in mid-2020, when the pandemic seemed to have become a more or less understood phenomenon, I slowed the pace of my memo writing from the one-a-week pattern of March and April., P.S.: Last summer’s Grand Slam tennis tournaments provided the inspiration for my memo Fewer Losers, or More Winners?, Similarly, this past Saturday’s women’s final match at Wimbledon has provided a snippet for this memo.
What Does the Market Know?
All Rights Reserved Follow us: Memo to: Oaktree Clients From: Howard Marks Re: What Does the Market Know?, ” That prompted this memo in response., The rest of this memo will be about fleshing out this theme (meaning you can stop reading here if you’ve had enough or are short on time)., If “On the Couch” wasn’t successful in convincing you this isn’t possible, this memo probably won’t be, either., I set a trap at the beginning of this memo, and I want to spring it now.
Sea Change
As I wrote in the memo On the Couch (January 2016), whereas events in the real world fluctuate between “pretty good” and “not so hot,” investor sentiment often careens from “flawless” to “hopeless” as events that were previously viewed as benign come to be interpreted as catastrophic.