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Howard Marks는 코로나19 위기 초기 경기와 시장에 대해 전반적으로 비관적 전망을 제시했다. 실업수당 청구 급증, 2분기 GDP 15~25% 감소 전망 등 경제 지표가 나빠지고 있으며, 방역이 완화돼도 재확산 위험이 있어 경기 회복이 늦어질 것이라고 봤다. 주식시장에 대해서는 명확한 방향 예측을 하지 않았다. 본인은 예측을 하지 않는다고 강조했고, 낙관·비관 모두 근거가 부족하다고 말했다. 다만 주가가 한 달 전보다 싸졌고 낮은 가격이 많은 손실을 상쇄한다며 저평가 가치는 인정했다. 투자 전략으로는 전액 투자나 전액 현금 보유 모두 지지하지 않고 분산 헤지를 권했다. 손실 위험뿐 아니라 상승장을 놓치는 위험도 함께 고려해야 한다고 강조했다. 신용·부채 측면에서는 최근 대출 기준이 느슨해져 한계기업이 많이 대출받았기 때문에 향후 1년 내 상당한 디폴트가 발생할 것이라고 전망했다. 다만 covenant가 약한 부채 구조 덕분에 일부 완충 효과는 있다고 봤다. 2008년 금융위기와 유사한 점이 있지만 은행 레버리지는 훨씬 낮다고 설명했다. 전반적 결론: 경기와 신용 리스크는 비관적으로 보지만 주식의 단기 방향은 불확실하며 분산 대응을 권장.
다듬은 글
and joining us on the phone billionaire investor Howard Marks he's the co-founder and co-chairman of oaktree capital management so Howard I want to start big picture here with where you think we are right now where we find ourselves in America in terms of the economy and the labor market and the stock market do you have a sense that there is opportunity right down here well where we are in terms of the things you mentioned obviously first of all I don't make forecasts I only regurgitate other people's forecasts no homeless little jobless claims were 211 thousand two weeks ago two hundred eighty one thousand last week for a major increase at least one brokerage firm is saying two and a half million for next week so obviously we're heading into an enormous unemployment challenge the economy likewise most forecasters are saying that GDP will decline by fifteen twenty twenty-five percent in the second quarter which I imagine would be the worst quarter in history so these things are not going well at the present time obviously there's a lot of optimism around the feds actions and certainly the Fed and the government are throwing everything at this financially that they can and I don't believe that anything is off the table and you know where will it go how fast will it trickle down how fast will at work these are the questions you you know millions of small businesses have had to close now for a couple of weeks they'll probably be closed for another couple of weeks that people will lose their jobs in the millions and how fast will the economy come back these are all economic questions on top of that we have the challenge of the of the corona virus disease itself and we shouldn't lose track lose track of the fact that that's the problem and you know it I don't think you can buy the virus off so the point is the economy will stay closed for some period of time exactly how long we don't know but if it's brought if we attempt to bring it back too fast I believe we'll have an echo a rebound in in in cases the u.s.
is has not taken the Ciccone in actions that a Singapore Korea China and maybe Italy have taken you know people are still socializing I still shudder at those pictures of college kids on the beach and what happens when they go home from the beach to their home communities where until now there haven't been outbreaks so you know I think that I think the outlook for the economy is is is weak the outlook for the disease is bad on the other hand there's good value in the markets I like them before they went up nine percent today more than I do now but there there is good value and you know I put out a memo Thursday saying that there's no argument for spending all your money now but there's all in my opinion there's also no argument for not spending any you know Howard you've written a lot about cycles and the the shape that they take over time and you mentioned that you don't make forecasts you just regurgitate what others make but he rattled off some of those GDP numbers and and those were revised three four or five times by some strategists just in the span of a week and when you see people on the street people in this business scrambling to throw bigger and broader numbers out there to get a sense of what might happen does that say anything to you about what part psychologically of this cycle Wall Street might be in well look first of all I you probably know I put out a memo a couple weeks ago and the title was nobody knows so nobody knows what's going to have with the disease or I don't think what's going to happen with the economy and if anybody has a strong position they should get in touch with me because I'll bet them they're wrong whatever it is so you know there's there's just no justification for for having a confident view at the present time in my opinion and you know Wall Street's takes it as its job to fill the void with forecasts or information I was talking to one of the major investment houses last week and at that time they had cut their earnings estimate for the S&P 500 for the year from 173 to 158 which was a decline of about 15% and when I next caught up with them their estimate was 115 so the question in my mind is to these estimates do any good on the one hand people like to have information but what good is it to have information if it's probability of being correct is is low as in my opinion it usually is the point is nobody knows you can decide to be optimistic today you can be site to pessimistic I don't think you should rely on so-called data because there is no data with regard to the future and you know in the in the face of uncertainty my approach is to hedge my bets not to go it all in or stay all out even now can we talk about that a little bit more I guess I mean you are known as managing risk and that's what everyone's trying to figure out right now is to how to manage risk given all the unknowns that are out there that that you're talking about right now does that mean just keeping your powder dry does it mean trying to find some of the values that exist today how do you manage risk in this environment I think that your question is indicative of the of the challenge and when people most people say manage risk what they mean is avoid the potential for loss but there's another risk which is the risk of missing out on gains so you know let's let's say that you and I are talking and we say well there's the 60% probability that the market will be down three weeks from now let's say you and I agree so the question number one is what do we do in our portfolios about the 60% probability of a decline but we mustn't lose track of the fact that we all show also should deal explicitly with the 40% probability to the top and what do you do about that so you know if you say to somebody there's a 60% probability of a decline it's easy to say well then you should get out of the market but what do you do about the 40% probability that it goes up and if you're out of the market and that what happens then you really will will have missed out on something and will regret it so you know I I prefer to think of risk as the probability of having undesirable outcomes not just losses but also gains that you miss out on and you have to balance the two and I think that the fundamental outlook as I said for the disease and for the economy is is poor but on the other hand you know stocks are on sale relative to where they were a month ago and I think that that that that low sale prices cover a lot of the carnage so as I said before I don't think there's a good case for investing all your cash today but I also don't think there's a good cash for not investing in a good case for not investing any hard I want to ask you about what you called some illogicality x' in your in your letter a couple of weeks back one of them was the you know not specifically you may have been made the mention that some people compare this to 911 and you mentioned that that's a one then you hold on one second please just always thank email not still here hello yeah I mean I think challenging time and you know interesting comments so far from Howard we'll see if we could get him back here yeah the idea of keeping some other guy I think resonates a lot Ari I'm sorry to have jumped away oh no worries Howard I just wanted to ask you about you know comparisons from from this moment sooo to any prior points in your career I think a lot of people in the investing world right now really struggling to find any decent analogs to the past one that you know you mentioned in your letter that didn't make much sense to you was 9/11 that hasn't really been mentioned quite as often but it certainly was in the beginning of this phase something people who compared it to are any pockets of this market that you're looking at reminding you of anything from the past or we just across the board in uncharted waters here well I do think that it has a lot of similarities to the global financial crisis because that was a sweeping crisis it began in the financial markets and the biggest culprit was leverage there was chaos there was there were major markdowns across most asset classes of course it started with subprime mortgages and their and their defaults but it spread rapidly and when when assets are marked down rapidly in price anybody who owns them either on margin that is using leverage or more than they should be holding let's say intestinal e more than they have the intestinal fortitude to hold in tough times anybody who's holding assets in either of those circumstances is it may be forced to sell and then you know declines produce sales sales produce further declines so you have a downward spiral and we had a bunch of that in global financial crisis it turned out to be a crisis of lever and liquidity and this one is as well although not to the same extent the good news you know but there are also differences that was a financial crisis this starts off as a health crisis at that time our lives were not in danger as they are now that's one number two that time that that the banks were levered 33 times their equity 32 times their equity and so you know there were rumors of bank meltdowns and of course even some real cases that's at this time they're levered one third of that so nobody's talking about problems at the banks themselves so differences but similarities and I think is I think it's a relevant comparison but let's remember what Mark Twain said history doesn't repeat although it rhymes so we've got a little bit of rhyming going on and of course there are the liquidity issues that you mentioned what about the solvency concerns as somebody who has a lot of experience in distressed assets what do you think we're going to be seeing here in the next few months well part of it depends on how fast they bring the economy back and part of it depends on how broadly they distribute these that these uh let's say bailout programs but if they if they can't bring the economy back let's say you know I've seen a lot of forecasts that had the economy up in the third quarter I think that's very optimistic and if the economy goes six months from now in negative territory and starts off down let's say 15 to 20 percent in the second quarter then I think you're going to have a lot of defaults now on the one hand the most debts today don't have covenants which means you can't be forced into default because you have too little net worth or too little cash or what-have-you the only way in this climate the main way in this climate to have a default on on outstanding debt is to not be able to pay interest or principal so that's good news that means fewer defaults on the other hand you know in the last five years lending standards have been low and companies that shouldn't have got loans have gotten loans and when your business goes to zero so a bunch of those will will default on their interest payments so I think we'll have substantial defaults you know in the next year Howard Marks so great to talk with you oak tree capital I wish it were under different circumstances but yes on a day like this we really appreciate it I'll come back to discuss the good news in the future fantastic thank you you too and hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later good ok all right
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