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all right oak tree Capital group coach here Howard marks really needs no introduction more than 50 years of experience with a very unique and evolving assessment of what constitutes value his periodic memos must reads and his latest it focuses on two major sea changes that he navigated in his career and a third sea change underway right now that has taken us from a low return world to what he says is a full return world that should provide much better opportunities for bargain hunters please to say Howard marks joins us for an exclusive interview right now Howard great to see you I see you Romaine you talk about these sea changes two big ones of course that really marked your career a lot of it having to do with sort of a recalculation and I guess a reassessment of what risk is and whether you should embrace it of course a low interest rate environment they're dominated for basically four almost five decades and now you say we're basically in the middle of a third sea change what is it well if you look at the period from the end of the global financial crisis roughly 09 through the appearance of the pandemic and and then in the 20 and 21 uh we were you know the the FED took Extreme Measures to save the economy they worked very low interest rates the lowest in history zero for much of that time and uh quantitative easing the buying of bonds which puts liquidity into the economy these things produced what I would call was an easy environment uh in the economy and the markets it was we had the longest economic recovery in history it was easy to make money right we had low-cost Capital it was easy to make a profit we had very few defaults in bankruptcy it was easy to stay in business it was easy to access Capital everything was easy at that time and in the last year of course with the appearance of the uh of the inflation and the increasing of rates to try to Stamp Out the inflation things have gotten harder I imagine people today saying well when are we going back to normal like it was was five six seven years ago and and the important thing to know is that that wasn't normal right that was the easiest the best of times right and and I my own belief is we're not going back there we're now in an environment of more normal and uh right uh circumstances and we're going to roughly stay this way well do we go back I mean what do we go back to at all because when I sort of read that memo and I look at Sea changes it sounds like everything new is new it's never really a reversion to where we were in the past right well that that's what a sea change is it's a complete transformation uh not just a minor uh cyclical fluctuation so you know look I think that the business world the economic world is not supposed to be easy it's not supposed to be easy to make money right uh it's not supposed to be easy for uh companies with bad business models to stay in business as it has been for the last 14 years right um so I think we go back to a period in which we have moderate interest rates we have moderate event availability of capital we have a moderate default rate and so forth all of which will feel much less accommodative I think than the last 14 years but so much of the objects on the market right now is of course people trying to figure out what that new rate is right if you want to call it a neutral rate or whatever but I mean when was the last time that you could remember that we had a stable and persistent neutral rate well the depends on your definition of stable time wise but of course I think that the FED became activist with the arrival of Alan Greenspan in the mid 90s and I think that it it's you know we we had you know people started to talk about the arrival of the Greenspan put that if there was a problem in the economy the FED would just squirt in some liquidity and solve it and uh and they frequently did and they frequently did including Y2K and and other real and imaginary uh crises the arrival of the the bursting of the TMT bubble for example so I would say that that's 25 years that we haven't had what I call a free market in money but what gives you conviction that Jay Powell and whoever his successor might end up be being are going to sort of move in a different direction where they're not going to necessarily kowtow to the market in a way that the market has come to expect uh I'm applying Common Sense uh you can't always count on Common Sense yeah uh but uh you know the events of recent years tell me that it's not great to have interest rates at zero uh zero interest rates are really in an emergency measure uh somebody gets a heart attack you give them a shot of adrenaline works right that doesn't mean you start your day with a shot of adrenaline every day for seven years right we had rates at seven at zero for seven years and I think that uh you know and by the by the way by the time uh 16 17 18 rolled around people started to say well shouldn't rates be a little higher so that if we have a recession the FED can cut rates and and become accommodative well if rates are a zero or a quarter or a half you can't do that yeah so I think that's an important reason why rates should be positive and if you want to fight inflation and and kill off inflationary psychology which is very important you need a positive real fed funds rate that is the funds fed funds rate has to exceed the rate of inflation way to go yeah before that's the case well is there any historical precedent that you sort of look to that maybe if not a parallel at least maybe gives you a little guidance you know uh not really because Mark Twain said history does not repeat but it Rhymes we haven't had many uh much experience with inflation you know I lived through the last one which was in the 70s most uh unpleasant uh decade right but then I think the situation was different uh the the court the sources of the inflation were different of course it reached uh the mid-teens right I think we're not going there this time I think that the the uh the original reasons for the current bout of inflation too much money chasing too few goods money from pandemic relief money people put in the bank in 20 because they couldn't spend it and then a a supply mechanism that was sputtering right too much money chasing too few goods that will correct over time okay the extra money will get spent right Supply will catch up I think the the the forces behind inflation will Abate okay so that puts us in a situation where the risk profile is going to be a lot different I mean you started your career at a time when risk was a much different thing at least relative to what we saw over the last right 15 years or so here so what does that mean for the next generation of investors what are they facing when it comes to how they have to assess that risk well anybody who joined after 09 right pretty much only saw Good Times except for a couple of bad months in 2020 in connection with the pandemic right shutdown uh but you know for my first 30 years in high yield bonds 78 to 08 the average default rate was about four percent a year in the last four decade it was only two percent a year I think four is more normal and you know it defaults and bankruptcy should not be that scarce and we I think we'll be going back to a somewhat harsher environment well let's unpack that I mean start off first with the rally that we've been seeing lately in high yield what do you make of that do you see it as sustainable persistent um well I think the prices the current prices are roughly sustainable the when you say is the rally sustainable they're not going to keep going up that is to say yields are not going to keep coming down in my opinion uh you know I think that that rates are roughly where they can stay except that I I think it's important to recognize that the the uh the debate today is being dominated by people who are optimistic by people who think that the recession won't be too bad yeah won't be too long that the inflation will give way and that the FED will be able to turn accommodative right soonish are you optimistic uh not on that subject I mean I I you know I think that the FED is going to want to be somewhat strict and hold that position well say throughout the year okay I don't think the FED wants to be seen as being optimistic you know hawkish dobbish hawkish dubs they want to have some uh constancy okay so then what's the temperature out there right now in the markets I mean when you are sort of looking at where we stand right now more importantly for investment opportunities what is the temperature that you're seeing I think that in in in many areas in the stock market for example uh that that a significant degree of optimism is ruling the day today okay and if you want to look at pessimism look at June look at September uh you know that's then people were not so optimistic about this pivot towards uh dovishness so and we've been going back and forth and the the s p for example has been trading in a channel between 3 700 and 4 000 yep depending on whether the optimists or the pessimists were in the ascendancy right now I think the optimists are in the ascendancy who knows how the events will bear them out so when you look for opportunities as an environment whether it's you or or the folks over at Oak Tree I mean what are you looking for right now Are there specific areas that you think might end up being more attractive or is this just kind of you know pick your battles one by one well we do it one by one we're what's called bottom-up investors we're not strategic we don't say we want to have so much in America and so much in Europe and so much in steel and so much in paper and let's find some companies we just look for pieces of paper that look reasonable from companies that we think will stay in business what gives you confidence though in some of those companies now particularly if the easy money is error so if you're talking about a company that's uh in distress levels or near distress levels what gives you that confidence that that ends up paying off um I would say value you know if if we as creditors can buy the debt of a company that we think can stay in business because it has a good business model and some margin for error in tough times uh and if we can buy the debt at a at a place in the capital structure where we create ownership in that company potentially at a reasonable valuation that that's what we look for you mentioned the word value and and you came up at a time were you and to a certain extent kind of redefine for the broader market value is what risk is not just you but of course milk and a few others out there and I don't know what was in the water in L.A back in uh the 70s and 80s but it seems like everyone who ended up making their Fortunes in the distressed area all seems to be concentrated out there well I mean what was it that you saw back then that sort of gave you that idea well what we saw really was this sea change Romaine you know prior to 77 which I think or 78 we which was the Advent of high-yield bonds a a bond rated below investment grade could not be issued yeah Moody's defined a B rated Bond as follows fails to possess the characteristics of a desirable investment in other words bad idea after Milken and others arrived in 77-78 the the new way of thinking was well it's not a great company but the promise rate of interest is enough to compensate for the risk and for the last 45 years and I think for the for the rest of time we don't think of good idea bad idea we think risk return risk return is it how risky is it is the risk is the promised return adequate to compensate for the risk and and you know that's very important so the point is that the people who started to do this early right you know I was lucky to be asked the asked of the former Ohio bond fund by Citibank in 78.
the people who started doing it earlier could find places that people were saying oh no we wouldn't touch that that's low grade yeah and and where you could get a high return without taking much risk that you know that was kind of a free lunch yeah efficient markets tend to cause free lunches to go away but it was great to get there early
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