저자: HowardMarks · 외국인
요약 보기
영상은 시장 예측은 대부분 어렵다는 입장이다. 'I don't know'를 인정하는 것이 중요하며, 과거 Howard Marks가 50년간 시장을 정확히 5번만 예측했다고 언급한다. 대신 개별 기업의 재무제표, 특히 영업현금흐름(CFO)을 분석하는 것이 미래 예측에 더 유용하다고 주장한다. CFO가 매출·이익과 함께 꾸준히 성장해야 건전하다고 설명한다.
다듬은 글
In the investing business, there are a lot of people who think they can predict the future. Perhaps more importantly, I believe there are a lot of people who think it's their job to predict the future. And there are people who believe that if they say they can't predict the future, then they'll lose their job.
You know there are people who feel that if the client comes to you and they say so what is the market going to do tomorrow and you say I don't know which is the only right answer then they'll say their night the nightmare is that the client will say well I'm going to go down the block because that guy told me he does know what's going to happen tomorrow and we're all afraid I shouldn't say we're all because I'm not but many people are afraid that if they acknowledge that they can't predict the future then the clients will go to the people who claim they can and so uh I think it's you know some of the there there are three words which are among the most important words in our business I don't know and if you don't know something and there's a lot we don't know you should admit it to yourself and to everybody around you.
And I think personally that it's very freeing to say I don't know. I think it's very almost depressing to feel that you have to have an opinion on every subject, even the ones where you where by definition you can't have superior knowledge. And um so I think that people make too many judgments in a world in which those judgments are unlikely to work.
And I'll I'll end on this question with a quote from Mark Twain who was one of America's great humorists. U and Mark Twain said very importantly for everybody in the investment business. It's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for certain that just ain't true. And if you think about it, nobody ever got into big trouble by saying, "I don't know." The way you get into big trouble is by saying, "I know." And betting heavily on your opinion and being wrong.
So if I have to drive, which of course in the thought of driving in Hong Kong would give me a headache, but if I had to drive from here to Macau and if I say, you know, I don't really know how to go, then what would I do? I would ask directions. I would turn on the GPS and I would get a map and I would drive slowly in order to make sure I don't make any wrong turns.
And chances are I would get there eventually. But if I say I know, then I'm not going to get directions or a map or GPS and I'm going to drive fast because I'm confident and I probably will end up in Beijing. So, it's it's it's saying you know when you don't know that causes the problem in our business.
Uh and acknowledging uh the fact that you don't know is just fine. And most of the time in the middle ground we don't know uh what the implications of the cycle are for future performance. Investing is a challenging field because investing consists of dealing with the future positioning our capital uh to have an optimal future even though the future is not knowable.
The future is unpredictable and the future is beset with randomness. And if has anybody here read the book Fooled by Randomness? Few heads are nodding. And and I think it's an important book. And I think it's it's important to understand the nature of randomness among other things to understand how unpredictable the future is.
And um I think that it is important to acknowledge that can you predict the market movement? If your answer is yes, then you might already be on the wrong track. Even Howard Marx, one of the greatest students of market cycles, has perfectly predicted the market only five times in 50 years. And he openly says we can't predict, but we can prepare.
If someone off experience isn't confident about prediction, we should accept that the probability is always 50/50. You either get it right or you get it wrong. And even if you get it right once, it just gives you another chance to be wrong the next time. So, philosophical lessons aside, what should we actually do if predicting the market is a waste of time?
There are many answers, but the most practical one is this. Stop trying to forecast something that is almost impossible to forecast and instead focus on something you can study and understand an individual business. A company's historical numbers such as P&L, balance sheet and especially cash flows tell you more about the future than any macro prediction.
The probability of getting a business analysis right is far higher easily 80 to 90% if you study it well. Let's take an example cash flow from operations. When you look for CFO, check if it is consistently growing. If it is rising in line with revenue and earnings, if not, something is wrong. If CFO is falling, something is very wrong.
CFO tells you whether the business is generating real cash from its core operations, not accounting profits, not cash from financing, not money from selling assets. As Charlie Manga said, show me the incentives and the numbers and I will tell you the outcome. So CFO is one of those numbers that exposes the real health of a company.
So why am I talking about CFO in a video about market prediction? Because studying the financial history of one company is way easier and far more useful than trying to predict the global macro trends. In every video, I'll try to break down one financial metric like we discussed CF for today. If this helped you, do leave a like or comment that tells us we should make more videos like this.
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