Recently, I was listening to Oaktree Capital’s Co-Founder Howard Marks, it was clear I needed to pull up my notes and write down these 6 Investing Principles that give Oaktree’s Team an Investing Edge in the Market.
Like most value investors we all know the steps of using Benjamin Graham’s strategy from the Book Intelligent Investor when valuing a Stock or Investment that is trading at a steep discount. Well like Graham, Mr. Howard Marks puts his twist and strategy to work while adhering to a few universal basics that Graham has taught us all as Value Investors. It is said that when Mr. Marks writes an Annual Letter, or his famous Yearly Memo and releases it, Warren Buffett stops what he is doing and reads it.
During an interview recently, Mr. Marks shared “I wrote my yearly memo for nearly twelve years and knew that not many people would read it, but one day after the fifteenth year or so, it basically became an overnight success”. That gives me hope that my little Investment Blog might one day be as interesting as Mr. Howard Mark’s Annual Memos.
These Principles Guide Our Investment Process
Risk Control: Managing risk should be an Investment Management’s Greatest Investment Objective. Without managing risk through extensive diligence and heavy research and planning, our investment thesis may be unproven.
Consistency: When thinking about making Bad Investments to knocking one out of the park like a baseball player, an Investor must be consistent with the performance of their investments. On a scale of 1-10, it’s great to be hitting home runs with Investments that always win, but when things go bad, and they often do with unforeseen risks with Investments, it’s better to be averaging a success rate range in the upper middle of 3-6 max, and not allowing the bad beats of Bad Investments to bring down your Median Average of Consistency. This is very important.
Be selective and look inside the less efficient markets for opportunities: Most markets are highly efficient, but there are places within markets where efficiency is lacking. Those are the spaces where you will be able to apply the Value Investor Graham Basics and WIN! Finding Investments that are “cheap” and look over-leveraged, may be exactly what you have been looking for to apply the skills we have learned over the years. Marks says you will find deals in Emerging Markets where information is not as transparent and available.
Focus on a high degree of Specialization: Mr. Marks says, “Our people at Oaktree do a few things well. We are not Generalists”.
Investment decisions are not driven by Macro Forecasts: Don’t allow the wind blowing over the markets to catch your sails and take you off course to faraway lands. We are Fundamental Analysts; we use the Bottom-Up Strategy.
We are not Market Timers: Mr. Marks emphasizes, “If it’s cheap today, we buy it! We don’t need to wait six months and see if it will be cheaper. That makes no sense”. I tend to agree with Mr. Marks. When you’re looking for investments, your thesis is proven correct or it’s not. Apply the Rules and Skills we have been taught.
Additional notes from Mr. Marks that are relevant to Investment Management and Investing for Success:
“You can’t predict, but you can prepare”.
“Having a large number of Good Investments is our Mantra”.
“Find good companies with correctable Bad Balance Sheets”.
“Distressed Debt holds opportunities”.
“Find good companies that have fallen on hard times”.
“Look for companies with good management, with Too Much Debt”.
“How do we fix this?”
“Our Credit committee during the bankruptcy process can fix and raise the value. We receive profits from our efforts”.
“We reject onerous Debts”.
“We are not turnaround artists”.
“All we focus on is Senior Secured Debt Obligations”.
In the end, our team avoids Losers and Bad Companies!
In Conclusion
In conclusion to this week’s post on Investing Philosophy, if you adhere to and adopt the unique and proven principles in this post for your own purposes, you will likely be happy with the results. I do hope you learned something from Mr. Howard Mark’s Investing Principles.
Feel free to share today’s article. With that, I thank you for stopping by and reading. And I hope you will come back and visit my Investment Blog soon.
I am about to share some Value Investing information that will make your jaw drop. If your anything like myself and the gang of us on Twitter who are Value Investors? You are a Junkie for information so you can put your research to work for the purpose of outperforming your latest Investment Portfolio’s compounding unrealized gains. Today’s Post is special for Investment Professionals.
You know that S&P 500 Growth Index your about to invest in? It’s likely there is a better index option with higher returns. FACT! By the way THIS IS NOT A SALES PITCH. NOR INVESTMENT ADVICE.
Hear me out! Thank you. I would like to introduce a well known Investment Advisor who has focused his career on Institutional Investing in the North East, and for the last 10 years has lived and practiced in Tucson Arizona, I listen to his fantastic Podcast while I work at night driving around town listening to his Podcast, “Money for the rest of us“.
Mr. Stein has a gift explaining complex and sophisticated Financial Products, and Investing Topics that make it very easy to compute. Furthermore one of the Episodes he recorded recently was fundamentally explosive for me as a fellow Investor. He went on to explain that not all Index Investing is created equal. Now I do see this will begin to shift opinions with what I am about to share. But before I begin addressing the Questions you may have about this Morally Hazardous Claim. First I have to share why we came to this conclusion.
Data Mining Index Markets on to a Software Application
Mr. Stein and his small Investment Team and a few Software Developers and Architects of Digital Computer Programs recently released a secret project that details charts and tons of Data of Index’s across the globe in different Markets. They measured different ETF’s, Value Index’s, Growth Index’s, Growth ETF’s, ETN’s, Japan Index’s, UK Index’s, US S&P Index’s and tons more.
What did they find?
They found that not all Index Investing is the same. A very valid argument for Investment Advisers and Money Managers can be made that with this new DATA? The old practice of Value Investing is very much alive and out performing it’s counter part of Growth Funds. This post is general findings I heard on the podcast. However I suspect if you listen to the exact episode I listened to you will find it fascinating all the data and inflection points to that Index Investing is a Art not a Science. The following points of interest and listed topics will keep you on topic as you listen to Mr. J. David Stein share some incredible Data about “how to make your Index Research interesting? And how you should begin looking at data with his latest Software Application for Investing. This is what you will learn?
Index Providers divide the stock universe into large and small, growth and value.
The Difference Between the price to earnings ratio and earnings yield and which is better?
How earnings volatility can impact annual earnings growth and what to use to estimate future earnings?
How value stocks often grow earnings faster than growth stocks
How value has outperformed growth in the last three years?
Click the Photo below for Access to the Episode about Asset Camp and the Points and Topics shared above.
If your like me and would like to see these Data and Research Points? I would recommend sign up for the Data Suite Software for Investment Advisors and Sophisticated Professional Investors Asset Camp
