저자: HowardMarks · 외국인
요약 보기
리스크는 자산의 품질이 아니라 가격에 따라 결정되며, 가격이 오르면 오히려 위험이 커진다. 신용등급은 가격 리스크를 반영하지 못했고(2007 주택저당증권 AAA 16,000건 vs 기업 AAA 4곳) 군중 심리가 기회와 위험을 만든다. 미래를 확실히 알 수 없다는 전제에서 자신이 모르는 것을 인정하고 기업·산업·증권 단위의 상대 우위를 추구해야 한다는 주장.
다듬은 글
risk. It's another area that you've really cover in the book and you've devoted it into three parts kind of understanding it, recognizing it, and controlling it. Let's walk through um how you look at risk and how investors, as you've pointed out a couple times here, commonly misjudge risk. Well, number one, most people equate risk with lowquality assets and safety with high quality assets, and they still do.
I mentioned the nifty50, high quality. People thought you know, there's there's an old saying, you can't get hurt buying IBM. and we documented you lost 80 to 90% of your money. On the other hand, what about low quality? Is that a source of of risk? Uh you know, when I got started in high yield bonds back in 78, I looked up in Moody's.
What does it mean to be single B? And Moody's defined a single B bond as follows. Quote, fails to possess the characteristics of a desirable investment. In other words, lowquality asset can't be a good investment. Well, is there no price at which a lowquality asset becomes a good investment? You know, if if if we went out after this session to the parking lot and I said to you, I'd like to sell you my car.
Would you like to buy it? And let's say you like my car and you have money and you need a car. Hopefully, there's one question you would ask me before saying yes, and that's what's the price. And here Moody's was saying that a B-rated bond is a bad investment. Well, what about at 75 cents on the dollar?
What about a 50? What about a 25? Is there no price? And so this is the kind of herd error that you can take advantage of. So risk is not quality. And um you know most people believe that as something is rising in uh price it's that means that people think better of it. it's less risky. Well, I think that when something rises in price, it becomes more risky.
Most people believe that the things that everybody think are risky are risky. I think the things that everybody thinks are risky are safe because their aversion to it forces down the price to the point where it is safe and potentially lucrative. What is the most the riskiest thing in the world is the belief that there's no risk.
risk is perverse. That's the important thing that that's what the the chapter in the book talks about is the it's the perversity of risk and it's the belie like in 07 the belief that there was no risk is what made the world risky and in late '08 after Lehman Brothers melted down the belief that there was no potential future is what created a great potential future and I think to follow up what Howard said here the rating agencies keep the same rating on a security whether it's 100 or 25.
It might be a triple A at right at 25. It might be a single A at 50. And by the way, rating a you know we should we should you and I should have a word for the rating agencies. I was once I was speaking at Wharton one time and somebody said to me, what is the role of the rating agencies in this process?
I said the role of the rating agencies is to be wrong because it gives us something to game against. You know, uh I don't know how many people in this room know how many corporations are rated AAA today, but the answer is four. How many mortgage obligations were rated AAA in the in the mortgage wave?
Mike tells me 16,000. That's right. I believe him. So, is it possible that after a hundred years of economic history, our our economy only created four AAA rated companies, but in a few years, Wall Street was able to create 16,000 AAA rated mortgage obligations. And it was probably the greatest uh opportunity to make money in a lifetime in a short period.
You know, people say to me, "What is my greatest regret?" And I always say, "My greatest regret is that I wasn't John Pollson." Uh, but uh, you know, his his little mutual fund made $16 billion that year on the mortgage trade. Well, Howard, you had the chance to buy many bonds at 10 cents on the dollar.
True. 20 cents on the dollar that have already paid off at pars. Yeah. And in probably, you know, a large volume. Let's talk about one of your favorite chapters in the book. Knowing what you don't know, okay? Overestimating. Yeah. What you're capable of knowing and doing the extremely dangerous things rather than working within your limits.
Why don't we talk about that? Well, look, I think Mike and I know you agree that the investment world is a world of excess testosterone where people believe that they have to prove Well, we we have a little women play a much larger role now. Well, they have they may have it too. Okay, good. But but people believe that it's their job to know what the future holds.
That you can know what the future holds. that they do know what your future or if they don't know what the future holds that they have to act like they do because if they admit they don't they'll get bounced. And I believe that you can't know what the future holds. You can uh figure out which outcomes are the most likely and how likely they are and what alternative outcomes are likely to happen and how likely they are and which extreme outcomes could happen.
uh and you can so you can kind of sort the world into a probability distribution and I think the best people in the world are the people who are best at visualizing that distribution of possibilities but there's almost nothing in the world which is which is determined everything is uncertain and uh Elroy Dimson who's a professor at the London business school says that risk means more things can happen than will happen there are very few things uh of which only one thing can happen and uh yet people tend to invest under the assumption that they know what's going to happen.
And I think that this is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. You know, uh Mark Twain said, "It's not what you don't know that gets you killed. It's what you know for certain that just ain't true." And and I think this is very very important. There's nothing wrong with saying I don't know and acting accordingly.
And most people never get killed in that way. The real danger is in saying I know and acting on the the assumption that it's correct and then being wrong. You know, if if if after this session you and I are going to drive to uh Barstow and we I could but first I have to go to Africa. Ah okay. Well, but but but if we say if if we say we don't know how to go, then we're going to get a map, use GPS, ask directions, and drive slowly to make sure we don't make a wrong turn.
But if we assume we know we don't get a map, and not just because we're men, and we don't ask directions, not just because we're we don't use the GPS and and we drive fast because we're confident. And if it turns out you didn't know, then you end up in Africa. So, so the point is I I think that it's very important to know what you don't know and to act accordingly uh and to respect what you don't know and you don't the point is you don't have to know the future to be a good investor and especially the macro future.
You know, today there's a great belief that macro rules the markets and so you should figure out when the Fed is going to let interest rates rise and stop stimulating. What's going to happen in Europe uh in terms of its staying together and how it bails out the peripheral countries and whether and how how low China's growth rate goes.
uh that these things are the things that are going to move the market and so that's where you should spend your time. Now the interesting conundrum is that in the short run they are the things that are going to move the market but I believe you can't know them and if you can't know them then you're wasting your time trying to know them and you should know the knowable and the knowable consists of getting an advantage versus other investors with regard to companies, industries and securities. And these are the things that where hard work and skill will pay off.
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