110+ Inspirational Quotes by Howard Marks on Contrarian Investing

Howard Marks is a renowned investor and one of the most successful investment managers of our time. Specializing in distressed debt investments, Marks has built his illustrious career by analyzing and capitalizing on undervalued assets. His ability to navigate complex markets and anticipate market trends has earned him a reputation as a strategic and astute investor. He is the co-founder and co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, the largest investor in distressed securities worldwide. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Howard Marks on cycle, risk, investing.

Top 10 Howard Marks Quotes

1. Awareness, price and value, successful risk dealing
2. I believe it's hard to predict the future. It's not that hard to predict the present. In other words, it's not that hard to understand what's going on today.
3. The important thing to remember about investing is that it is not sufficient to set up a portfolio that will survive on average. The key is to survive at the low end.
4. For investing to be reliably successful, an accurate estimate of intrinsic value is the indispensable starting point.
5. Most investors learn their lessons the hard way.
6. Recognizing risk, investors paying it too little heed
7. The market doesn't know everything, but it doesn't know nothing, and knowledge is cumulative. The market knows stuff now that it didn't know forty years ago, so it's harder to outperform.
8. Memory – and the resulting prudence – always comes out the loser when pitted against greed.
9. Investor psychology, priced anywhere, fundamentals
10. You have to buy an asset at a price that is attractive and reasonable for its value.

Howard Marks Short Quotes

• At turning points, future stops being like the past, large amounts of money
• Good or bad idea regardless of price
• Following the herd, average performance, extremes
• Extreme predictions are rarely right, but they're the ones that make you big money.
• Differences in correlation, portfolio management
• Everyone believes something is risky, unwillingness to buy, price falls
• There's no such thing as superior investing without superior judgment.
• Trend followers, contrarian behavior
• Investors, losers, winners
• Investing performance is what happens when events collide with an existing portfolio.

Howard Marks Quotes About Cycle

When things go badly, people become cautious. Then their caution causes things to go well, and when things go well, they become incautious. I think that's a forever cycle. — Howard Marks

Cycles, banished, extremes — Howard Marks

I believe it is highly possible to improve your long-term results by adjusting your investment position at the extremes of the cycle. Not that often. But at the extremes. — Howard Marks

Howard Marks Quotes About Risk

If you think Treasuries have no risk and high yield bonds have risk, the yield spread is there to compensate for the bearing of that incremental risk. The question is whether it is adequate. — Howard Marks

I think that the business about volatility being risk is a con job which was perpetrated primarily because volatility is machinable. — Howard Marks

Risk control, loss avoidance, risk avoidance — Howard Marks

Risk, risk aversion, prices fall — Howard Marks

Risk, things can happen, worry about permanent loss — Howard Marks

Risk cannot be quantified, even after the fact. — Howard Marks

Skillful investors, risk, stability, dependability of value, relationship between price and value — Howard Marks

Most people view risk taking primarily as a way to make money. But when risk bearing doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work, and people are reminded what risk’s all about. — Howard Marks

Risk-tolerant investors, risk-adverse investors, return — Howard Marks

Value investor, high risk, low prospective returns, high prices — Howard Marks

Howard Marks Quotes About Investing

To be a great investor, you must have an approach, and you have to stick to it, despite the times when it’s not working. — Howard Marks

Extrapolation is usually right, but not valuable, and predictions of deviation from trends are potentially profitable but rarely right. So far, macro-economic forecasting doesn't represent the path to superior investments. — Howard Marks

There's no asset so good that it can't be overpriced and become a bad investment, and very few assets are so bad they can't be underpriced and be a good investment. — Howard Marks

Fundamentals, value, price, successful investing — Howard Marks

One of the astute things I was taught is that on average, the average investor does average before fees, and below average after fees. — Howard Marks

It's not what you buy, it's what you pay. And success in investing doesn't come from buying good things, but from buying things well. And if you don't know the difference, you're in the wrong business. — Howard Marks

Investing errors, psychological factors — Howard Marks

Smart investing doesn't consist of buying good assets, but of buying assets well. — Howard Marks

Investing is a funny business. It's really easy to be average. Just buy an index fund. It's really hard to be above average. — Howard Marks

Investment survival has to be achieved in the short run, not on average in the long run. — Howard Marks

Howard Marks Quotes About Market

Believe, markets, never be beat, abstention, opportunities — Howard Marks

I've heard it said that an economist is a portfolio manager who never marks to market. — Howard Marks

Inefficient markets, generous returns, raw materials, mispricings, differential skill — Howard Marks

The truth is markets are made up of people, with their emotions, insecurities, their tendency to go to extremes, and their other foibles. Thus, they often make mistakes and swing to erroneous extremes. — Howard Marks

Market prices are often wrong. Because access to information and the analysis thereof are highly imperfect, market prices are often far above or far below intrinsic values. — Howard Marks

I believe the market accurately reflects not the truth, which is what the efficient market hypothesis says, but it accurately and efficiently reflects everybody's opinion as to what's true. — Howard Marks

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to think that overpriced and going down tomorrow are synonymous. Markets that are overpriced often keep going. — Howard Marks

One of the important factors behind the fluctuation between bull and bear markets, between booms and crashes and bubbles, is that investor memory has to fail us – and fail universally – in order for the extremes to be reached. — Howard Marks

Environment, circumstances, psychology, markets, cause-and-effect relationships — Howard Marks

Howard Marks Famous Quotes And Sayings

Waiting patiently is an essential part of being an investor. And when you do take action, do it dynamically, forcefully. — Howard Marks

For some reason, because of the way investor psychology works, people switch from only seeing the good to seeing only the bad. — Howard Marks

Herd psychology, conformity, capitulation — Howard Marks

High quality assets, risky, low quality assets, safe — Howard Marks

There's no such thing as a good idea or bad idea in the investment world. It's a good idea at a price, it's a bad idea at a price. — Howard Marks

I spend a great deal of my personal time trying to figure out one thing, which is, at a given point in time, how should you balance aggressiveness and defensiveness in your portfolio. — Howard Marks

When most people think about the future, they ignore that the future is a distribution of possibilities. — Howard Marks

I believe denying clients the ability to be hyper-traders is doing them a favor. Most people are not adept enough to take advantage of short-term mis-valuations, and I put myself in that category. — Howard Marks

Superior investing is taking advantage of the errors of others. — Howard Marks

The most important lessons in investing are learned in the tough times. — Howard Marks

The past has relevance, but it's not absolute. — Howard Marks

Best defense, thorough analysis, margin for error — Howard Marks

Selling an asset is a decision that absolutely must not be considered in isolation. — Howard Marks

Almost any asset can be risky or safe, depending on how other investors treat it. — Howard Marks

Establishing and maintaining an unconventional investment profile requires acceptance of uncomfortably idiosyncratic portfolios which frequently appear downright imprudent in the eyes of conventional wisdom. — Howard Marks

Paradoxical, things that seem obvious, broad consensus — Howard Marks

We should be very cautious in what we expect of our prescience. — Howard Marks

Price and value, investment success — Howard Marks

I don’t write to make investing easy. I write to show how hard it is so that people won’t try tricks that they can’t do. — Howard Marks

Value and growth, value today, value tomorrow, growth investing, value investing, analysis, current wealth — Howard Marks

Investment success, position, uncomfortable, popular opinion — Howard Marks

Worry is in short supply, risky borrowers, questionable schemes, precarious financial system — Howard Marks

On average, the average large-stock fund manager produces average returns before fees and below-average returns after fees. So compared with after-fee returns, an index fund is superior. — Howard Marks

Investors are right and wrong all the time for the wrong reasons. — Howard Marks

The concept of surviving on average is irrelevant. You have to survive every day. Which means, really, that you have to survive on the bad days. — Howard Marks

Being right doesn't lead to superior performance if the consensus forecast is also right. — Howard Marks

Leverage, outcomes, asymmetry — Howard Marks

Compete for deals, low returns, slender margin of error — Howard Marks

Pro-cyclical behavior is one of the greatest and one of the most frequent mistakes. — Howard Marks

Too much money, risky and new, asset prices, prospective returns, safety — Howard Marks

First-level thinkers, simple formulas, easy answers, success, antithesis — Howard Marks

Predict, prepare — Howard Marks

Failure to anticipate co-movement, investment error — Howard Marks

Successful investing, attention, aspects, satisfactory, risk, challenging, essential — Howard Marks

Return alone, quality of investment decisions — Howard Marks

Outperform, same things, others — Howard Marks

Future, probability, happen — Howard Marks

Whenever we consider an investment, we think just as much or more about what can go wrong as about what can go right, and we put the avoidance of losses on a high pedestal. — Howard Marks

The point is to consider risk control, loss avoidance, at least as important as return. — Howard Marks

Most of us have roughly the same ability to predict the future. The trouble is, being right as often as the average forecaster won't produce superior results. — Howard Marks

Bubbles, nugget of truth — Howard Marks

If something is not going to be an obvious double in a short period of time, I have to show interest. — Howard Marks

Investment risk, high prices, optimism, skepticism, risk aversion — Howard Marks

Safest and potentially profitable, buy something when no one likes it — Howard Marks

It's important to recognize that the riskiness of investing comes only partly from the things you invest in. A lot of the risk comes from the behavior of the participants. — Howard Marks

No investment vehicle should offer more liquidity than is afforded by the underlying assets. — Howard Marks

Investing is a hard area for most people to figure out what to do. — Howard Marks

I've listened to a lot of economic briefings, and I've had a lot of visits from economists, and I've never encountered one who was right consistently. — Howard Marks

Superior investor, skillful risk control — Howard Marks

Large amounts of money, underestimates — Howard Marks

The pendulum of investment psychology is constantly fluctuating between optimism and pessimism, between greed and fear, between credulousness and skepticism, between risk tolerance and risk aversion. — Howard Marks

Risk-is-gone myth, dangerous, bubbles — Howard Marks

Value, insight, different analysis — Howard Marks

Potentially profitable, nonconsensus forecasts are very hard to believe in and act on for the simple reason that they are so far from conventional wisdom. — Howard Marks

Greed, fear, envy, emotions, objectivity, significant mistakes — Howard Marks

Correlation, diversification, risk control — Howard Marks

Diversified portfolio, significant loss, investment success — Howard Marks

Greater fool theory, valuation, holding the bag — Howard Marks

Long-term investment success, risk control, aggressiveness — Howard Marks

Life Lessons by Howard Marks

1. Embrace contrarian thinking: Marks encourages investors to challenge consensus and think independently. By being willing to go against the crowd, one can identify unique investment opportunities that others may overlook.
2. Focus on risk management: Marks emphasizes the significance of evaluating and managing risk in investment decisions. Recognizing the potential pitfalls and understanding the downside helps in making informed choices and preserving capital.
3. Keep a long-term perspective: Marks stresses the importance of patience and enduring difficult periods in investment cycles. Rather than yielding to short-term market fluctuations, he advocates for a long-term approach, which enables investors to capitalize on the inherent rewards of time.