Money and Finance
- The Tenets Of Capital Cycle Analysis
From Ed Chancellor in his introduction to Capital Returns: Investing Through the Capital Cycle: A Money Manager's Reports 2002-15: The essence of capital cycle analysis can thus be reduced to the following key tenets: Most investors devote more time...
- Howard Marks Memo: What Does The Market Know?
Link to Memo: What Does the Market Know? My buddy Sandy was an airline pilot. When asked to describe his job, he always answers, “hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.” The same can be true for investment managers, for whom...
- Howard Marks Memo: On The Couch
Link to Memo: On the Couch I woke up early on Saturday, December 12 – the morning after a day of significant declines in stocks, credit and crude oil – with enough thoughts going through my mind to keep me from going back to sleep. Thus...
- Howard Marks Memo: Dare To Be Great Ii
Link to: Howard Marks Memo: Dare to Be Great IIIn September 2006, I wrote a memo entitled Dare to Be Great, with suggestions on how institutional investors might approach the goal of achieving superior investment results. I’ve had some additional...
- John Mauldin: The Dark Side Of Deficits
Secular Bull and Bear Markets Market analysts (of which I am a minor variety) talk all the time about secular bull and bear cycles. I argued in this column in 2002 (and later in Bull's Eye Investing) that most market analysts use the wrong metric...
Money and Finance
Howard Marks Memo: The Race Is On
I’ve written a lot of memos to clients over the last 24 years – well over a hundred. One I’m particularly proud of is The Race to the Bottom from February 2007. I think it provided a timely warning about the capital market behavior that ultimately led to the mortgage meltdown of 2007 and the crisis of 2008. I wasn’t aware and didn’t explicitly predict (in that memo or elsewhere) that the unwise lending practices that were exemplified in sub-prime mortgages would lead to a global financial crisis of multi-generational proportions. However, I did detect carelessness-induced behavior, and I considered it worrisome.
As readers of my memos know, I believe strongly that (a) most of the key phenomena in the investment world are inherently cyclical, (b) these cycles repeat, reflecting consistent patterns of behavior, and (c) the results of that behavior are predictable.
Of all the cycles I write about, I feel the capital market cycle is among the most volatile, prone to some of the greatest extremes. It is also one of the most impactful for investors. In short, sometimes the credit window is open to anyone in search of capital (meaning dumb deals get done), and sometimes it slams shut (meaning even deserving companies can’t raise money). This memo is about the cycle’s first half: the manic swing toward accommodativeness.
An aside: I recently engaged in an exchange with a reader who took issue with my use of the word “cycle.” In his view, something is a cycle only if it’s so regular that the timing and extent of its ups and downs can be predicted with certainty. The cycles I describe aren’t predictable as to timing or extent. However, their fluctuations absolutely can be counted on to recur, and that’s what matters to me. I think it’s also what Mark Twain had in mind when he said “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” The details don’t repeat, but the rhyming patterns are extremely reliable.
- The Tenets Of Capital Cycle Analysis
From Ed Chancellor in his introduction to Capital Returns: Investing Through the Capital Cycle: A Money Manager's Reports 2002-15: The essence of capital cycle analysis can thus be reduced to the following key tenets: Most investors devote more time...
- Howard Marks Memo: What Does The Market Know?
Link to Memo: What Does the Market Know? My buddy Sandy was an airline pilot. When asked to describe his job, he always answers, “hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.” The same can be true for investment managers, for whom...
- Howard Marks Memo: On The Couch
Link to Memo: On the Couch I woke up early on Saturday, December 12 – the morning after a day of significant declines in stocks, credit and crude oil – with enough thoughts going through my mind to keep me from going back to sleep. Thus...
- Howard Marks Memo: Dare To Be Great Ii
Link to: Howard Marks Memo: Dare to Be Great IIIn September 2006, I wrote a memo entitled Dare to Be Great, with suggestions on how institutional investors might approach the goal of achieving superior investment results. I’ve had some additional...
- John Mauldin: The Dark Side Of Deficits
Secular Bull and Bear Markets Market analysts (of which I am a minor variety) talk all the time about secular bull and bear cycles. I argued in this column in 2002 (and later in Bull's Eye Investing) that most market analysts use the wrong metric...