저자: HowardMarks · 외국인
요약 보기
미래를 예측하는 것은 대부분 불가능하며, 투자 실패의 주된 원인은 미래를 안다고 착각하는 것과 감정 통제 실패다. 투자자는 거시경제·금리·환율 같은 큰 그림을 알 수 없다는 점을 인정하고, 알 수 있는 것(개별 기업·산업·증권)에 집중해야 한다. 2016년 대선 사례처럼 확실해 보이던 예상이 빗나가는 등 무작위성 때문에 예측은 자주 틀린다. 한두 번 맞춘 예측가가 유명해지지만 지속성은 드물다. 현재 시장 위치를 이해하고 사이클 반대로 행동하는 것이 핵심이다. 시장은 공포와 탐욕 사이를 오가며 대부분 잘못된 방향으로 움직인다. 강세장은 소수만 개선을 아는 1단계, 대다수가 개선을 인식하는 2단계, 영원히 좋아질 것이라 믿는 3단계로 나뉜다. 1단계에서 사고 3단계에서 조심해야 한다. 1970년대 니프티 50처럼 우량주도 고점에서 사면 큰 손실을 본다. 중요한 것은 무엇을 사느냐가 아니라 언제, 어떤 가격에 사느냐다. 남들이 과도하게 낙관할 때 신중하고, 남들이 공포에 질려 매도할 때 공격적으로 매수하라는 역발상 원칙을 강조한다.
다듬은 글
now most investors act as if they can see the future and they base their investment decisions on their view of the future either they think they can or they think they have to pretend that they can for their business now I think it's dangerous because if it turns out that they really can't as I believe then then there's a problem it was a behaviorist named Amos fursky at Stanford University and he said something that I thought was brilliant he said it's frightening to think that you don't know something but more frightening to think that by and large most people go around acting as if they do we have an American humorist Mark Twain who said it even better it's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble it's what you know for certain that isn't true and this is extremely important I can't emphasize enough the importance of of keeping this in mind if you if you if everything you say as for me if every sentence you say starts with the words I may be wrong but or I don't know but then you're unlikely to get into trouble the way you get into trouble is thinking that you really do know what the future holds and of course in my opinion being wrong now in our business once in a while somebody gets famous for a particularly brilliant prediction but it usually turns out that they can't repeat that and so I say that our business is full of people who got famous for being right once in a row and of course being right once in a row doesn't do any good because you never know if the next one has any value but that's the way it is and almost nobody is Right much more than once in a row and everybody in our business makes predictions of what's going to happen and if you look at the great investors of the world virtually none of them got famous by being able to predict the future of what we call macro and what I'm talking about forecast today I'm talking about the macro economies markets currencies interest rates these are the big picture factors they're very important everybody would like to know what they imply but they just can't and Warren Buffett said to me one time for a piece of information to be desirable it has to satisfy two criteria it has to be important and it has to be knowable and the macro is extremely important and everybody says to me how can you not base your investment approach on macro it's so important I say yes but it's not knowable and if it's not knowable then trying to base your approach on macro is really a waste of time all worse now one of the main reasons for the difficulty of making predictions is the enormous influence of randomness and you know things often we know how it should go but it something else occurs instead impossible things happen all the time and things that are extremely likely to happen fail to happen all the time now let's go back in my country exactly two and a half years to November of 2016.
there were two things that were considered certainties not probable certainties number one Hillary Clinton would be elected president and number two if by some Quirk of Fate Donald Trump won the market would collapse and so instead Trump won and the market went straight up and if that's not enough to convince people that they don't know what the future holds then I don't think I can but that's what happened and uh so nothing is more common than investors who are right for the wrong reason and they get famous but of course we shouldn't follow them that's the importance of randomness I think that investors should accept the fact that they can't see the macro future and restrict themselves to doing the things that are within their power these include gaining insight into what I call the knowables companies Industries and securities and those are things where you can know more than the other person if you work hard and have skill and wisdom and the other thing we can do is we can behave in what I call a contrarian or counter cyclical way and that's most of what I'll talk about this morning how do you prepare for the future if you don't know it and the answer is we may not know what lies ahead but we should understand where we are today and what that implies for the cycle and I think it's it's possible to improve investment results by making tactical decisions based on where we stand today and whether it calls for more aggressiveness or more defensiveness and these decisions do not have to be made on the basis of guesses about the future they can be made based on an understanding of the present where are we today and what does that imply for the future and what does that imply for how we should behave so the thing that gets most people into trouble in investing is not the inability to see the future it's the inability to control their own emotions and we'll talk a lot about that today investors swing like a pendulum between fear and greed and optimism or pessimism risk tolerance and risk aversion and usually they swing in the wrong direction and they warm to things as things go well and prices rise and they get afraid as things go poorly and prices fall and we want to try to do the opposite most investors behave Pro cyclically they follow the cycle rather than anti-cyclical as I will describe and it's essential in my opinion to behave counter cyclically the cyclical ups and downs do not go on forever usually if they feel like they will they feel like there's either a virtuous circle that will make things go well forever or a harmful Circle that will make them go badly forever but usually that's not the case usually we have ups and downs and 45 years ago somebody did me the favor of explaining to me gave me the the greatest gift the greatest regalo the three stages of the bull market and if you understand this you're almost ready to become a professional the first stage when only a few exceptionally bright people understand that there could be Improvement the second stage when most people understand that Improvement is actually taking place and the third stage when everybody believes that things will get better forever so if you buy in the first stage when most people don't see a better future when there's very little optimism included in asset prices you'll get a bargain and you can make a lot of money if you do it in if you buy in the second stage when everybody understands that Improvement is taking place you don't get a bargain you do okay you follow the cycle you buy in at a fair level but if you buy in the third stage when everybody thinks things will get better forever and when asset prices reflect a great deal of optimism you pay high prices which set you up for substantial losses so it it the interesting thing about investing is it's not what you do it's when you do it it's not what you buy it's when you buy it under what conditions and at what prices so the key to investing is not buying good things it's buying things well you have to understand the difference between a Bueno and bien and it's buying bien that makes for Success when I started at Citibank which was uh uh 50 years ago this month the bank bought the stocks of what were called the nifty 50 the 50 best and fastest growing companies in America companies that were so terrific that it didn't matter what price you paid that was the official Theory and they were selling at very high prices because they were such wonderful companies and if you came in and you held them for five years my first five years in the business you lost almost all your money investing in the best companies in America so buying high quality assets is not the key because they were buying in the third stage the key is to understand where you are and to buy Assets in the first stage and be careful in the third stage that's a big part of today's message so it's important to practice what is called contrarian Behavior and to do the opposite of what others do at the extremes because the others are primarily wrong uh and there's a belief that things are safe when things are going well actually that's the riskiest thing the riskiest thing in the world is the belief that there's no risk since this makes prices very high and sets the stage for bad experiences we must sell when others are buying most aggressively and by when they're selling most aggressively and Buffett says it great as usual he says the less prudence with which others conduct their affairs the greater the Prudence with which we must conduct our own Affairs when other people are unafraid and forcing prices High we must be cautious when other people are terrified and selling and pushing prices down we should turn aggressive and it's it's it's it's that that's the bottom line uh of course if only it was that simple
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