저자: 미상 · 외국인
요약 보기
하워드 막스의 『투자자가 가장 중요하게 여겨야 할 것』 2부로, 위험(리스크)을 다룬다. 변동성(표준편차)·샤프지수 같은 지표는 위험의 단순화된 척도일 뿐이며, 위험은 개인마다 다르다(손실, 낮은 수익, 유동성 등). 과거 데이터 기반 VaR는 극단적 상황을 측정하지 못하고, 미래는 예측 불가능하므로 위험은 항상 존재한다. 위험은 인식하고 통제해야 하며, 저평가 자산 매수가 위험 통제 수단이 될 수 있다. 장기적으로는 공격보다 방어적 플레이가 유리하고, 큰 손실은 회복이 어렵다(50% 손실 후 100% 수익 필요).
다듬은 글
제목: O MAIS IMPORTANTE PARA O INVESTIDOR - Howard Marks - O Risco - Pt.2 채널: O Financista 화자: (미상)
참고: 원문이 영어 자동자막이라 아래는 원문을 다듬은 영어본입니다.
Hey everyone, how's it going? Welcome to my channel, The Financier. If this is your first time here, we talk about financial education and investments, and we're going to continue our series of studies on Howard Marks's book, *The Most Important Thing for the Investor*. He is a great investor and co-founder of Oaktree Capital. In the first video, we talked about two things he considers very important: second-level thinking and the concept of value.
Today we're going to study what, in my understanding after reading this book, he considers the most important: risk. He dedicates more than one chapter to it because he understands it as the central point of investing. He has a phrase saying that investing is paying attention to the future, and since none of us can predict the future, we always take risks.
So how can we have a healthy relationship with risk? Risk is usually something bad, something we want to avoid. However, more modern economic theory has brought a concept of risk based on the school he studied at, the University of Chicago, if I'm not mistaken. The idea is that the higher the return you want, the more risk you will have to take. So the higher the risk, the higher the return you're willing to receive. By return, I mean yield, your profitability.
For this, a graph called the SML, or Security Market Line, was developed. You'll see it here on the screen: this line is always rising. At a certain point you have a risk-free rate, let's say the Selic rate in Brazil, and the further you go beyond this line, the more your return increases. However, your risk also increases.
From this, concepts were developed to quantify risk. Today, for example, we talk about volatility, which is measured by standard deviation. Going back to our math lessons, standard deviation is how far a sequence of numbers is from its average. If you have a very high standard deviation, those numbers are very volatile, and according to this theory, high volatility means a much higher risk. So for them, volatility is risk.
But Howard Marks says this doesn't seem to be the most human concept of risk. When you make any investment, you don't just think, "This is very volatile, so I'll stay out." It's not quite like that. Naturally, risk varies from person to person. Measures like volatility and the Sharpe ratio, which tells you how much return you get per unit of risk, are simplified measures. Ultimately, volatility and the Sharpe ratio don't show the real risk of something. They have some use, but they're not the main factor.
Risk varies from person to person. In an investment, one person might fear losing money, which is the biggest risk for them. For another, it might be the risk of earning too little. For yet another, the risk could be liquidity: the ability to recover your investment. For example, you invest in a CDB (bank certificate of deposit) that you can only redeem in three years. That's a liquidity risk, the risk of needing that money before then and not being able to get it. So for some people, the real risk is liquidity.
Because risk varies so much, a simple standard measure can't capture it. Risk is hidden, forward-looking, and theoretical, because what we actually observe is the outcome. Imagine a meteorologist on TV saying, "The probability of rain today is 70%." If it rains, he was right; if it doesn't, he was also right, because it was only a probability.
That's why when you look at the result of an investment portfolio or fund and see a 12% return, you can't know how much risk that manager or you yourself took, because the result is only one, while the possible outcomes are many. Say you make an investment with a 99% chance of a positive result and a 1% chance of a negative one. If that 1% happens, it doesn't mean you invested unsafely; it means the probability played out. Nobody can predict the future, and when we see a final result, it is just one of thousands of possible outcomes.
A major criticism Howard Marks makes of risk tools like VaR (Value at Risk), which funds and professional managers use widely, is that they cannot measure extreme situations. These models only go up to a certain limit of what has already happened in the past. We human beings, he argues, tend to underestimate the past's extremes. He draws heavily on Nassim Taleb, author of *The Black Swan* and *Fooled by Randomness*, who argues that we are often deceived by looking to the past and assuming it will always repeat itself.
An example is COVID-19. Nobody was expecting it. So how can you build an investment model that predicts something like that? There are these difficulties. When I talk about investments in lectures, courses, or consulting, I always say that anything can happen. In Brazil, for example, the direct treasury bond is considered the safest investment, and a government default is difficult, very difficult, but it can happen, because I don't have all the tools to predict the future. Nobody does. Investment funds and managers with large teams can't predict the future either. So because of this difficulty, you have to understand that risk will always be present.
Risk isn't just in investments; it's in your personal relationships too. You've probably had a relationship that ended, but when it started you thought it would last forever. Most people think that way: I'm going to get into a relationship, it will evolve into marriage, and so on. You didn't expect it to end. Or you lost a loved one younger than you, a friend, and so on, and you didn't expect them to die sooner. Every time we commit ourselves, there's always a risk that the relationship breaks, whether by the other party, by death, or even by you. If there's risk even in these things, how could there not be risk in investments?
Risk is part of the picture. There is no completely risk-free investment. In investment theory, if we use Brazil's Selic rate or the US interest rate as the risk-free rate, that rate is only a benchmark, not a guarantee against every risk. This leads to another point Howard Marks makes: we need to recognize and control risk.
First, recognize it. We have to understand that risk exists and that we can't run away from it, because if we completely avoid risk, we won't get a return. What would completely avoiding risk look like? "I'll leave my money under the mattress." Even then there's risk: if your house catches fire, the money goes with it. "Then I'll buy gold bars, which fire won't destroy." But someone could still steal them. So there's no way to be completely free of risk. You have to recognize it.
Second, control it. How can we control risk? Howard Marks doesn't teach a formal risk-control methodology in the book; he has his own approach. But one thing he talks about is value, which I also mentioned in the previous video. The cheaper something is relative to its value, the better. Investing cheaply means the price you pay is much lower than the asset's value.
For example, say you're going to invest in a stock, and after all the research you can do, you conclude it's worth R$5. But its current price is R$2. "Wow, there's a difference here, it's cheap!" If I invest, I take less risk, because if it falls, I lose less, and my potential gain is much greater. This is a simplified explanation. When you invest in CDBs and Treasury bonds seeking a higher rate, the higher the rate, the bigger the discount you're getting when buying that asset. So think about value when you invest: the less risk you take in terms of value, the less risk you take overall.
Remember that risk is not something we can measure or quantify perfectly, because if we only look at the past, the past doesn't repeat itself in the future. It's like someone saying they see the future repeating the past. Investing has principles and rules, but it isn't a recipe. The future is uncertain. So we have to be very careful and recognize that risk is part not only of investing but of life.
Another point he makes, moving us toward the end, is that in the long run it's better to be defensive than aggressive. He cites an article called "The Losers' Game," whose author I've forgotten (I'll put the reference below). The author compares investing to amateur tennis. In amateur tennis, the player who makes fewer mistakes wins more often. Why? Because you play just to keep the ball in play, and most points are won through the opponent's errors. In investing, although we aren't directly competing with anyone, we're in the market. Generally it's a game of winners and losers; someone is buying and someone is selling. It isn't 100% true, but there is some of that competition too.
Playing defensively in the long run brings better results, because if you play very aggressively and take a large loss, recovery is much harder. Numerically, if your portfolio loses 50%, you need a 100% gain to get back to even. Say you have 10,000 invested in stocks, a major crisis hits, and it falls 50%, so your 10,000 becomes 5,000. To recover, you don't need a 50% gain. A 50% gain on 5,000 is 2,500, leaving you at 7,500. You'd need a 100% gain on what's left, which is much harder. So when you're exposed to very large losses, recovering that value is difficult. That's why he says it's better in the long run to play defensively.
If you've read this book or are considering buying it, I want to add a few things. He talks a bit about the vision of an investment manager, as he is. A fund manager doesn't have the mindset of an average investor like you and me, because the manager is accountable to the fund's shareholders and investors. You and I only answer to ourselves unless we manage a fund. So part of what he says is tied to fund management, but a good part also applies to ordinary investors like us.
This book is very rich, and there are other factors he mentions that I want to bring to you: market cycles, the market pendulum, opportunities, the role of luck, and psychological factors in investing. There's still a lot to discuss.
If you're enjoying the series, leave a comment below. Do you have any book suggestions? Post them here so we can discuss reading this book together and bring up this topic. And if you liked this video, please leave a like and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. That will help us grow and keep bringing you content.
That's it, folks, until next time. God bless you, a big hug, and we're in this together!
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