Howard Marks

Despite the all-knowing Alan Greenspan confirming there is no irrational exuberance currently, Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks is less convinced. Though he is not bearish, he lays out rather succinctly the current pros and cons for equities - based on the various 'valuation' arguments, discusses the folly of the equity risk premia, and highlights the dangers of extrapolation and what history can teach us... "appreciation at a rate in excess of the cash flow growth accelerates into the present some appreciation that otherwise might have happened in the future... it isn't just a windfall but also a warning sign."

In the following presentation, given by Howard Marks - the world's largest distressed debt investor - he warns of the perils of "investing in uncertain times." As Reuters notes, he fears the "unsound practices" from before the financial crisis are creeping back into credit markets, with private equity firms bidding increasingly high prices for companies. Marks points out the ease with which lowly rated companies were issuing debt this year, how companies were paying out record dividends to their shareholders and the increasingly high debt-to-equity multiples private equity firms were paying for companies amid a resurgence in deals. "We have a world in which nobody is thinking bullish. Everybody's worried and yet people are acting bullish," and predicts a looming "shake-out" in the hedge fund industry as he asks rhetorically, "today there are 8,000 hedge funds. Are there really 40,000 exceptional people (working for hedge funds)?" In conclusion, Oaktree Capital's founder warns that investors, in their search for returns, were becoming overly confident while the economic background was still gloomy.

One can spend all day watching financial media channels stuffed full of self-promoting index-hugging asset-managers and be left with the belief that all is well and that the market does indeed represent our reality... Or, as UBS' Art Cashin notes today (confirming what we first published a month ago - here, here, and here), there is more (well less) to today's global economy and markets than meets the eye or rests in the headlines. His excellent diatribe today reiterates our previous comments of investing icons such as Baupost's Seth Klarman and Oaktree's Howard Marks that "(The) underpinnings of our economy and financial system are so precarious that the un-abating risks of collapse dwarf all other factors."

As the markets once again approach historic highs - the overly exuberant tone, extreme complacency and weakness in the economic data, bring to mind Bob Farrell's 10 investment rules.  These rules should be a staple for any long term successful investor.  These rules are often quoted yet rarely heeded - just as they are now. Farrell became a pioneer in sentiment studies and market psychology. His 10 rules on investing stem from personal experience with dull markets, bull markets, bear markets, crashes and bubbles. In short, Farrell has seen it all and lived to tell about it. Despite endless warnings, repeated suggestions and outright recommendations - getting investors to sell, take profits and manage your portfolio risks is nearly a lost cause as long as the markets are rising.  Unfortunately, by the time the fear, desperation or panic stages are reached it is far too late to act and we will only be able to say that we warned you.

Day after day we are inundated with the apparent 'idiocy' of investors putting their hard earned money into Treasury bonds when they only earn 2% yields. Hour after hour, we hear why investors should buy stocks, 'get paid to wait', and bonds are in a bubble. So why is it that day after day, an entire generation appears to have found a new mantra of investing, preferring less risk to more, satisfied with less return as opposed to more. The simple answer comes down to two words - often misunderstood - risk and drawdown. While most consider the former to be some quantifiable measure of uncertainty (more is better because think of the upside potential); it is the latter that ends careers, crushes retirement hopes, and scars pysches for life - and is often ignored. As we discussed here previously - must read, comparing (risky uncertain cashflow stream) equity dividend yields to (risk-free certain cashflow stream) Treasuries is like comparing apples to unicorns, but more importantly as Boomers retire en masse, this chart explains why there is a third leg to the investment decision - risk, reward, and regret; and equity drawdowns are the real 'risk'. Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks explains...

We already posted Howard Marks' most recent letter in its entirety previously, but it bears reposting a section from Art Cashin's daily letter which focuses on one segment of Marks' thoughts, which is especially relevant in light of today's most recent comment from one Warren Buffett - a person who very directly benefited from the government/Fed's bailout of the banking sector in 2008 - who said that "Bank Risk No Longer Threatens U.S. Economy." The same banks, incidentally, who are TBerTFer than ever. An objective assessment or merely yet another example of the "handcuff volunteerism" (not to mention crony hubris) Marks touches on? Readers can decide on their own.

Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks begins his latest missive with a few hard truths. Anyone who has read his memos of the last 23 years will see he returns often to a few topics. This is due to the frequency with which themes tend to recur in the investment world. Humans, he notes, often fail to learn. They forget the lessons of history, repeat patterns of behavior and make the same mistakes. As a result, certain themes arise over and over. Mark Twain had it right: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” The details of the events may vary greatly from occurrence to occurrence, but the themes giving rise to the events tend not to change. Most or all of these themes have to do with behavior that’s observed in the markets over and over. The good news is that today’s investors are painfully aware of the many uncertainties. The bad news is that, regardless, they’re being forced by the low interest rates to bear substantial risk at returns that have been bid down. Their scramble for return has brought elements of pre-crisis behavior very much back to life. In 2004, I stated the following conclusion: “There are times for aggressiveness. I think this is a time for caution.” Here as 2013 begins, I have only one word to add: ditto.

Oaktree Capital's Chairman Howard Marks went on a rather more politically-positioned rant in his latest missive (pdf here) but one section caught our eye more than others given the current imbroglio:

The bottom line is that if we don't want to be Greece, we can't act like Greece. Something has to be done... and soon. Every year in which we add another trillion dollars to the national debt (and tens of billions to the annual interest bill) - and every year the excessive entitlement promises are allowed to compound - makes it harder to solve the problem.

A dismally honest reflection follows...

Even as the media desperately tries to whip everyone into a buying frenzy in an attempt to rekindle the second housing bubble, the marginal, and less than pretty truth, is finally starting to emerge. Over the weekend we presented the first major red flag about the state of the housing market - in this case commercial - when we exposed that "New York's Ultraluxury Office Vacancy Rate Jumps To Two Year High As Financial Firms Brace For Impact." What is left unsaid here is that if demand for rents is low, then, well, demand for rents is low: hardly the stuff housing market recoveries are made of. Today, on the residential side, CNBC's Diana Olick adds to this bleak picture with "Apartment Demand Ebbs as ‘Avalanche’ of New Units Open." In other words rental demand for both commercial and resi properties is imploding. But at least there is always owning. Well, no. As we have shown, the foreclosure, aka distressed, market is dead, courtesy of the complete collapse in the foreclosure pipeline as banks are effectively subsidizing the upper end of the housing market by keeping all the low end inventory on their books (who doesn't love the smell of $1.6 trillion in fungible excess reserves to plug capital holes in the morning. It smells like crony capitalism). But at least the ultra luxury, aka money laundering market was chugging along at a healthy pace. After all there are billions in freefloating dollars that need to be grounded in the US, courtesy of the NAR which is always happy to look the other way, another issue we discussed this weekend. Now even that market appears to be cracking, following the purchase of a duplex in New York's most iconic property: 740 Park, by, who else but a former Goldman partner, at a whopping 45% off the original asking price.

Oaktree's Howard Marks is mildly more positive than normal - due mainly to his belief that most people are not uber-bullish (though perhaps less so after today) - but his latest letter expounds in succinct detail on all the risks that await us (notwithstanding nominal price eruptions courtesy of QuEnfinity). Critically, he notes:

These days we hear little about anything other than macro considerations. Thus investors believe more than ever [as security movements are highly correlated] that the route to investment success lies in correct judgments about the macro future - giving rise to 'risk-on, risk-off' investing.

Playing the market in the short-term based on macro forecasts is one of the many things in investing that could add greatly to results if it could be done right... but it can't, certainly not consistently!

Summing up: "The world seems more uncertain today than at any other time in my life."

"Mistakes are what superior investing is all about" is how Oaktree's Howard Marks begins his latest treatise, adding that for a trade to turn out to be a major success, the other side has to have been a big mistake. In any trade it is generally safe to say that one side has to be wrong (since win/win transactions are far less common than win/lose) leaving the buyer and seller unequally happy. Marks believes it is highly desirable to focus on the topic of investing mistakes. First, it serves as a reminder that the potential for error is ever-present, and thus of the importance of mistake minimization as a key goal. Second, if one side of every transaction is wrong, we have to ponder why we should think it’s not us. Third, then, it causes us to consider how to minimize the probability of being the one making the mistake. From the real-world 'issues' with the efficient market hypothesis, to behavioral sources of investment error, Marks concludes: "In the end, superior investing is all about mistakes... and about being the person who profits from them, not the one who commits them."

As usual, Oaktree's Howard Marks cuts to the chase in his latest memo. Much as we just discussed the seeming complacency and drop in risk perception that currently exists, Marks scoffs at the 'It's Different This Time'-argument noting "there’s sure to be another cycle, another bubble and another crisis. There’ll be another time when people overpay for exciting investment ideas because their future appears limitless, and then a time of disillusionment and price collapse. There’ll be another period when leverage is embraced to excess, and then, consequently, a period when it gets people killed. And there’ll certainly be another time when people can only imagine the possibility of gain, and then one when – after huge sums have been lost – they can think only of further declines." Touching on the extremes of dysphoria and complacency that summarize the herd of global investors, he nails the reality of the crowd: "common sense isn’t common. The crowd is invariably wrong at the extremes. In the investing world, everything that’s intuitively obvious is questionable and everything that’s important is counter-intuitive."

A lesson to be learnt from the individuals who continue to buy European Debt

Much has been said in the past about the world's largest university endowment fund - that of Harvard University, whose most famous overseer is the current Pimco CIO and part-time blogger Mohamed El-Erian. Yet relatively little light has been shed on the endowment fund of that "other" school - the one with the original business school, and whose alums have been largely credit with shaping the modern financial world as it stands: the University of Pennsylvania. Also, the one which for many years has oddly underperformed its peers, yet which during the financial crisis suffered the least of its peer Ivy League peers. Until now. In his latest letter, Oaktree's Howard Marks shares the lessons he learned as the Chairman of the Penn endowment in the period from 2001 to 2010. He also analyzes the various angles from which one should approach in evaluating investment performance and track records, in his traditionally meticulous and informative style - a lesson very much needed in today's market climate of bipolar euphoria.

Just over a month ago we wrote in depth that while many of the supposed smartest men in the room believe we are set for a muddle-through economy that will 'maintain' asset values with no tail-risk expectation, we believed there are only 'painful' ways out of this crisis. Furthermore, we noted (and BCG agreed) that a tax-the-wealthy (and the wealth explicitly) haircut is coming. Today, the venerable Howard Marks of Oaktree, has his own inimitable take on the issue of taxing - and, just like us, sees that "Whatever action is taken now, it will not be pain-free. The unpayable debts run up in the past will have to be dealt with.". Marks sees three (simple and obvious) possibilities for our future:the promises will have to be scaled back, the tax burden will have to grow, and/or the deficits will have to be permitted to increase.