Howard Marks – Navigating Private Credit (EP.439)
2025/4/7
Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
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Howard Marks
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WCM
Howard Marks: 我在投资生涯中最重要的经验教训是，投资成功与否不在于买什么，而在于你以什么价格买。没有哪种资产好到不会被高估和变得危险，也没有哪种资产差到便宜到一定程度就不能成为一个好主意。我的投资策略是寻找那些被市场低估的资产，即使这些资产所属的公司并非优秀公司。在高收益债券市场起步阶段，我抓住机会获得了成功。
我撰写备忘录的灵感来源很多，既有新闻事件，也有与客户的讨论。我会尝试解答他们的疑问，并从中找到备忘录的主题。
我的写作和投资的逻辑性是相辅相成的，我的大脑擅长逻辑思考、文字表达和线性思维，这有助于我的投资决策。
信贷市场的结构性变化主要体现在杠杆收购业务的兴起、高级贷款市场的出现以及私人信贷市场的蓬勃发展。私人信贷市场的风险和机遇是相辅相成的，当市场上没有人愿意投资某种资产时，往往存在着良好的投资机会，但随着越来越多的人涌入，机会就会消失，只剩下风险。目前私人信贷市场的信贷标准有所放松，但并未达到极度宽松的程度，这仍然存在风险。
我们通过坚持投资理念中的风险控制原则，以及公司文化建设，来保持投资纪律。债券投资的关键在于避免购买违约债券，而不是选择那些会支付利息的债券。
私人信贷与公共信贷的主要区别在于流动性、市场定价和对信贷风险的评估方式。投资者不应被私人信贷市场不进行市场定价的特性所迷惑，而应理性评估其风险。我认为未来经济衰退不可避免，届时私人信贷市场将面临违约风险，其影响尚不明确。
私募股权曾被视为“银弹”，但在利率上升的环境下，其投资优势已有所下降。我不认为自己是一个未来学家，无法预测未来的投资热点。我们公司能够长期保持稳定发展，关键在于坚持价值投资理念，避免盲目追逐短期利益。
将Oaktree出售给Brookfield的决定，对公司和行业来说都是一个积极的举措。并购活动在投资行业中变得越来越普遍，但关键在于能否通过并购提升公司价值。上市公司需要承受市场波动的压力，但上市能够带来流动性，这对于公司发展是有利的。
未来几年，我将专注于提升对投资过程的理解，并平衡工作与生活。我不太理解那些实施庞氏骗局的人的心理，他们是如何认为这种行为能够一直持续下去的。
我的人生比我预期的更加成功，这主要归功于机遇和早期的经验教训。
Ted Seides: 作为主持人，Ted Seides主要负责引导话题，提出问题，并对Howard Marks的观点进行总结和补充。
WCM: WCM是一家全球股票投资管理公司，其核心价值观是独立思考、创新和追求卓越的投资业绩。他们致力于将文化研究融入投资流程，并通过“护城河轨迹”的概念推进“宽护城河投资”，从而在构建与众不同的集中型投资组合的同时，获得差异化收益。
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Howard Marks: 'I just have to get an idea, but I get ideas all the time of something that's worth writing about. It might be something in the news. And a lot of them come from discussions with clients because their questions tell me what's on their minds and I want to be responsive to that.'
Howard Marks: 'I always think it's because my brain is logical. I operate largely on the left side, logical, literate, linear. That can help you invest, but I just don't think it's essential.'
Howard Marks: 'You're quite right. When I started, it was actually the beginning in 1976, I I think it was impossible for a company without an investment grade rating to issue a bond. And in 77, 78 is when it became possible.'
Howard Marks: 'Well, of course, the risk is the flip side of the opportunity. In my experience, and you can trace the narrative, you get the times when nobody wants to do something. I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole. Usually, if you're willing to do it and nobody else is, you can get a pretty good deal.'
Howard Marks: 'It's not a bargain. It's not languishing cheap. If the pendulum swings from hate them to love them, I would say that where the credit standards are on the somewhat to the undemanding side, not terribly.'
Howard Marks: 'You just constantly go on and on about the importance of risk control. We have an investment philosophy, which we wrote down when we started.'
Howard Marks: 'So you improve your performance not by what you buy, by what you exclude, QED, negative art.'
Howard Marks: 'In theory, it's the same question. If I lend this company money, will they pay me back? But the big differences are that, of course, if you buy a private credit and you change your mind, you shouldn't be able to expect to sell it.'
Howard Marks: 'Well, the people who run these funds pretty much like the fact that they don't mark the market, because then in the bad times, when the headlines in the papers are so negative, they don't have to go to the treasurer of the organization and say, we're down 10%. They can say, oh, great news, we're only down 2%.'
Howard Marks: 'I think we'll have another recession someday. I think cyclicality in a person-driven thing like the economy can't be avoided because you have excessive optimism and then corrections.'
Howard Marks: 'I think that's a big topic. It hasn't become a public topic inside baseball, I think. I mentioned that private equity was latched onto as the silver bullet.'
Howard Marks: 'I don't have that fertile mind. I'm lucky that I've been able to adapt to the changes, but I don't think I predicted or even caused any of the changes. I just don't consider myself a futurist.'
Howard Marks: 'It's a very important question. There's not always something exciting to do. I wrote a memo in October of '22 called "What Really Matters?" We had a conference and everybody was asking me, "When is the Fed going to start cutting rates and how much? When's the recession going to start and which month?" I said, "These are all short-term questions and they don't matter. What really matters is can you buy interests in companies that grow and can you lend money to companies to pay you back?"
Howard Marks: 'We still exist as an autonomous freestanding business. Brookfield happened to own about 70% of Oaktree now. But they had an idea that they wanted to round out their product offering and they didn't have credit. They had real estate, private equity, renewables and infrastructure. They wanted to be able to give their clients credit. And so they thought that partnering with Oak Tree was the best way to do that.'
Howard Marks: 'Some people are doing it all the time. Just buying and selling companies doesn't add value unless you can do something better. There are usually some cultural challenges in integrating companies. They shouldn't be underestimated.'
Howard Marks: 'We were semi-public from 07 to 12, and then public from 12 to 19. And people would say, how is that? I'd say, well, it's fine, except that every day you get a report card from somebody who doesn't know your business that well, called the market. They say your stock's up a buck or down a buck.'
Howard Marks: 'I'm at the stage, Ted, where I'm just drilling down intellectually and just trying to understand it better. The things we've been talking about, the cycles, the swings of the pendulum, investor psychology, the quest for the new, these will always go on.'
Howard Marks: 'When you watch these people who run these Ponzi schemes, Madoff, for example, puts out fictitious statements and we see a Ponzi scheme every once in a while or what Galbraith used to call a good bezel. How do they think it's going to end?'
Howard Marks: 'It's about balancing work and non-work. It's about continuing to understand the investment process better while at the same time having a really good time, fun with my wife and my kids and my grandchildren and my non-investment pursuits, my philanthropy, all at the same time. And it would be great if I could stay healthy.'
WCM: 'They believe that being based on the West Coast, away from the influence of Wall Street groupthink, provides them with the freedom to live out their investment team's core values, think different and get better.'
WCM: 'As advocates of integrating culture research into the investment process and advancing wide moat investing with the concept of moat trajectory, WCM has delivered differentiated returns while building concentrated portfolios designed to stand out from the crowd.'
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