저자: HowardMarks/진행:AlperDaglo · 외국인
요약 보기
결론: 현재 시장은 낙관이 지배하는 국면이므로 공격보다 방어적 포지셔닝이 필요하다는 주장이며, 종목·지수에 대한 구체적 가격 예측은 없다. 시장 사이클 진단: 2022년 약세 이후 4분기부터 낙관이 우세해졌고, 최근 39개월간 시장이 강세를 보였다. S&P 500의 최근 3년(2023~2025) 수익률은 100년 중 7번째로 좋은 3년 구간이라는 점을 근거로 들었다. 낙관이 높을 때는 가격이 내재가치보다 높고 기대수익은 낮으며 불확실성 리스크가 커지므로 신중해야 하고, 비관이 지배할 때는 가격이 내재가치보다 낮아 공격적으로 전환할 때라고 설명했다. 향후 전망: 미래는 여전히 예측 불가능하며, 2차대전 이후 후반세기 고성장을 이끈 요인(회복, 기술·경영 발전, 세계화)이 앞으로는 약해질 수 있다고 봤다. 이에 따라 투자는 신중하게, 공격보다 방어 강화가 필요할 수 있다고 제시했다. 투자 원칙: 최대 수익 추구와 예측 가능성 제고, 공격과 방어 사이에는 상충관계가 있다. 가치투자 관점에서 예측 가능성이 높은 투자(전문성, 투기적 기술·지식재산 배제)를 강조했다. AI는 세상을 바꿀 것이 확실하지만, 문제는 어떻게·언제·누가 수혜를 입는지이며 종목 선택이 핵심이라고 언급했다. 특정 AI 관련 종목이나 지수에 대한 방향 예측은 없다. 심리와 역발상: 가장 큰 공포 구간(2008년 9월 19일, 2020년 3월)이 실은 매수 적기였다고 회고했다. 모두가 팔고 싶어 하는 순간 가격은 내재가치 대비 최저에 가깝고, 모두가 좋아하는 자산은 바겐 가격에 있을 가능성이 낮다고 경고했다. 불편함을 느끼는 것이 좋은 투자의 신호일 수 있다는 취지다. 장기 투자 장애요인: 인간 본성(상승장 추격·하락장 공포 매도), 기관 제약(성과보상 구조가 손실회피 편향을 낳음), 변동성을 리스크로 보는 관행이 주요 장애다. 단기 금리 인하·인상 시점 같은 관심사는 장기 가치와 무관하다고 지적했다. 사모자산·운용사 환경: 사모자산은 유동성이 낮고 시가평가가 없어 변동성이 보이지 않는 장점이 있으나 불확실성도 크므로, 각자 이해한 만큼만 비중을 둬야 한다고 했다. 기관들은 운용사 수를 줄이고 장기 전략적 파트너십을 선호하는 추세이며, 운용사 수는 종목 선택 능력에 따라 집중 또는 분산을 결정해야 한다고 봤다. 모든 투자자에게 맞는 정답은 없다는 점을 강조했다. 출연자 전망: 특정 국내외 종목·지수·금리·환율에 대한 1~3개월 가격 방향 예측은 없고, 시장 전반에 대해 낙관 과열에 따른 신중한 방어적 태도를 제시했다.
다듬은 글
Welcome to Brookfield Perspectives, a podcast that explores the Brookfield ecosystems role in creating sustainable wealth on a global scale. On today's episode, we step back from transactions and trends to examine a more fundamental question. Where are we in the market cycle and how could that shape the way we invest?
Howard Marx joins Brookfield's Alper Daglo for a thoughtful conversation about investor psychology, risk positioning, and the balance between offense and defense. Here's their conversation. Howard, great seeing you. You often say we never know where we are going, but we surely should know where we are.
Before we get into specifics about the market cycles, investments, portfolios, I would love to start there. Well, Alper, you know, everybody in investment business talks about where we're going. They would like to know where we're going. I would like to know where we're going. It's just that it's not possible.
and actions taken in reliance on an expectation of what's going to happen a year or two from now are uh often wrong. But we should know where we stand and I believe that where we stand has a lot to do with what's coming up. But uh so where are we today? Um, I think the most important thing to to bear in mind if you're interested in uh managing your portfolio with short-term or intermediate term considerations, you can ignore this stuff.
If you say I'm only interested in 20 years, but if you care about the short to intermediate term, short is one year or two. Intermediate is let's say up to three or five. I think it's important to note that in this market optimism is in the ascendancy. I think that the main thing that changes from week to week or month to month or even year to year is the level of optimism versus pessimism.
When optimism is riding high, prices are probably high relative to intrinsic value. Prospective returns are modest. uncertainty risk is relatively high and that means we should behave in a more cautious manner when pessimism rules prices are probably very low relative totrinsic value so that means we should turn highly aggressive that's the main dimension on which I think about managing money in the short to medium term is it optimism or pessimism should we be aggressive or defensive.
And I think that uh you know uh optimism after after a very rough 2022, optimism took over in the fourth quarter and as a consequence for the last 39 months, the markets have been on a tear. The period uh 2345 is for the S&P 500 is I think the seventh best three-year period out of the last hundred. seventh out of a 100 and that tells us what's going on.
It has implications for what's coming next. So I think that investors should bear in mind that today's market is dominated by optimism that the world is unpredictable as usual or maybe more so. Mhm. and some of the rapid growth that we saw in the last half of the 20th century because of recovery from World War II, technological and managerial advances, um, uh, globalization, etc.
Uh, some of those growth factors are probably going to be less in the years ahead. So if you if you sum up prevalent optimism, unpredictability and maybe moderate growth, I think you would say uh you have to invest carefully and maybe uh maybe this isn't the time for sheer aggression rather for an upgrading of defensiveness.
As investors, one of our most important jobs we have is to really erh understand the importance of investment selection and risk positioning. I think what you say risk positioning piece it it defines beautifully but also is equally important there's investment selection piece there as well. Can you can you can you put those pieces together for our audience like how you think about that?
One essential tradeoff in investing is between offense and defense and the other one is between return maximization and enhancing uh predictability. And usually the things you do to maximize uh uh return you sacrifice on predictability. the things you do to maximize reliable outcomes, you have to give on maximization of outcomes.
That's a trade-off. It's important to note that just because we don't know what the future holds doesn't mean we shouldn't take action. But I think we should emphasize uh uh events where the returns are uh more predictable and uh maybe deemphasize uh maximization of return and um that's what investment selection is all about.
And uh everybody wants uh high returns uh predictably. It's just that they're elusive and you generally have to uh decide which of those factors to emphasize and um you know uh the value investor which is what I think Brookfield and Oakree really are uh emphasizes investments where the predictability comes from [clears throat] a superior understanding of what the future holds and uh uh specialization in a few areas u non reliance on shall we say speculative technologies and intellectual property and things like that uh I think that those are the important elements in in investment selection today
going back to this balance between offense and defense you wrote nobody knows at the really at the middle of the global financial crisis I think the day was September 19 2008 when everything felt completely unknowable. I remember personally sitting at my desk feeling like the entire financial global financial system is really collapsing and it's really it's like one after another there is a domino effect.
You always talk about the how good investing often feels uncomfortable. Right. Truly attractive valuations appear in environments marked by extreme fear, right? Extreme uncertainty and and usually some force selling. So in fact, comfort and good investing, they don't typically coexist. Can you talk about that dynamic from from your perspective?
Well, Albert, what you're asking about leads to a great uh example of what I call second level thinking. September 19th of '08, couple days after the Leman bankruptcy, was certainly one of the most uncertain days in my 80 almost 80 years. uh the the only thing comparable was the low point of the pandemic in March of 2020 when when the world was equally uncertain and when I also wrote a memo entitled nobody knows true
I recycled that that uh title yes so the question is not is the future foreseeable of course we think it never is perfectly foreseeable and sometimes even less than at other times But when people embody the feeling that you described of hopelessness and you know abject terror with the possibility that the financial sector will melt down.
Their negativity tends to make prices low relative to intrinsic value. And it's really the relationship between price and intrinsic value that we want to key on. And it's it's obvious that when when people love things and feel good and are optimistic and are happy and feel positive about the future, prices are probably high.
When prices are high, prospective returns are low and risk is high. So when they feel the worst about the environment, that's probably the moment when the price is as low as it can be relative to intrinsic value, meaning that prospective returns are high and risk is low. And and you know, one of the ways I put it is that the riskiest thing in the world is the belief that there's no risk.
So, one of the safest things in the world is the belief that risk is everywhere because it it it puts prices so low that risk is, shall we say, minimal. Now, let's talk about discomfort. If you committed to spend money as we did on September 19th and you're not uncomfortable, there's something wrong with you.
It's only human to feel uncomfortable when you're staring into the abyss, but we have to do it anyway. And in fact, it's more important to do it that day than on the day we feel great. Mhm. Uh we have to ma master the courage to do our jobs. What what should make it easier for us, if it can be made easier, is the confidence to know that as we were on September 19th, that we're the only person in the world who will buy and everybody else wants to sell.
And isn't that the perfect opportunity for the buyer? If an investment that we make, it feels easy or universally accepted, what should that be telling about the price, right? When people are terrified, prices are at a minimum relative to intrinsic value. It's all a buy. When prices are when people are uh euphoric, carefree, prices are at a maximum relative to intrinsic value.
And you have to be uh very cautious. And we have to if you embody the same emotion or we may say psychology or investor sentiment as everybody else then you will fluctuate al along with them. You'll you'll buy at the top of a bubble just like they do. That's how bubble tops get formed. You'll sell at the bottom of a c of a crash.
That's how bottoms get formed. and you'll do no better than the average investor. Our goal is to do better than the average investor. So we have to diverge from the average investor. In fact, optimally we have to uh behave as contrarians. Buffett says most things best. He says uh the less prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we must conduct our own affairs.
So, uh, [clears throat] if you think about it, it's it's nothing short of an oxymoron to say, you know, this is a bargain price security that everybody loves. When everybody loves something, it it's unlikely that it'll be on the bargain counter. Uh and so if you're thinking about investing it, you have to be uh leerary of the elevated nature of investor psychology.
Uh one of the most popular discussion topics today is AI and most people think AI is going to change the world. I'm confident that AI will change the world. That's not the question. The question is how, when, with what impact, who will benefit. I think it's all about the it comes down to investment selection.
Two investments, especially to touch on AI, they're not created equal and they don't have the same journey. And maybe another thing that you always talk about the what what the most important thing is the having the able to to align yourself with asset managers or other participants who are specialized who have done this before or who are cycle tested in this type of assets and they can
still participate on the upside. but also your first principle thinking about the risk management and the and also understand the downside and I think that's to me that's what differentiate the the good investing from not good investing some of us are inherently aggressive some of us are inherent inherently defensive I'm so inherently defensive that I can't turn to aggression until I believe that the odds are overwhelmingly on my side uh each of of us has to as they say in football play within ourselves.
We have to do the things that come naturally to us. Uh uh the the chicken uh should not be uh assigned uh to do daredevil feat and the and the daredevil should not uh be assigned to carefully uh shepherd money. Um so and the the client might choose to hire some of each. Mhm. And if they can find a brilliant aggressive manager and a brilliant defensive manager and put them together, maybe the aggressiveness and the defensiveness will offset or diversify each other, but maybe they'll end up with brilliance and and and and that would be a great way to go.
As you say, all investments are not created equal. You have to have a good uh idea of what you want to accomplish. Not merely the fact that you want to uh uh participate in AI but again with what balance of aggressiveness and defensiveness. It's that to me that question uh underlies everything you ever do in investing including or starting with asset selection.
One of the themes that runs through your memos and your investment philosophies also is the power of truly long-term investing. And from your experience, what are the biggest obstacles that get in the way of behaving truly long term? How much time do you have? I mean, that's that's that's the greatest question.
And it's the probably the most fun for me to answer. Uh but it it's a big question with with a long answer. Most of the elements of human nature are designed to prevent us from be good investors. uh when things are going well, the economy is performing well, companies are reporting record earnings, stock prices are rising, people get more excited and they want to uh buy more of something until it reaches a an apogee at which they want to buy everything.
When things go poorly and the the news is bleak and the prices are cascading downward, uh they lose heart. they want to sell and and when we approach what might eventually turn out to be the bottom, they want to sell everything. Well, that's the opposite of what you should do. You should buy low and sell high, not buy high and sell low.
Um, but it's against human nature. And I if if you want to if you get depressed and and and your your enthusiasm for selling increases as prices fall, isn't that the opposite of what we do in every other walk of life? In every other walk of life, we buy more when things go on sale. In the markets, we sell more when things go on sale.
So, this just indicates the the the essentially wrong nature of of of investor sentiment. And then again, uh you know, we have we have the nonlinear uh what we call the nonlinear utility function. Uh most people care a little about a dollar made and a lost. Exposing yourself to the risk of loss is integral in trying to have a good investment return.
Uh so you know even though our investment philosophy uh stresses uh risk control, we're not talking about risk avoidance. We're talking about intelligent bearing of risk. But people's psyches are warped to prevent them from viewing risk objectively. You have to take some risk in order to make money.
U so that's another problem. Then so investor psychology human nature. Then we have something called institutional constraints. So if your job is if you have if you're an employee, what we call an agent, and your job is to manage somebody else's money, what is your payoff structure? You make a good investment decision, you get a pat on the back, handshake, maybe a raise.
Make a bad investment decision, you get fired. So that means that your incentives are directed more at avoiding losses than at achieving gains. and maybe to an extent which has a negative impact. So uh so you have to overcome the institutional constraints. Dave Swinson who ran the endowment at Yale with great success from 85 to 2020 said that uh investment management requires non-institutional behavior from institutions establishing a a a conundrum that is not easily resolved.
Um and how can you make how can institutional uh uh employees, agents act as contrarians, act as knowing bearers of risk for profit and how can they uh increase their uh order for buying as prices fall rather than as they rise. Then then the third factor in addition to investor psychology and institutional constraints is volatility.
Mhm. And you know when when prices fluctuate uh especially uh well especially uh agents but even principles get uncomfortable. And so uh in the investment industry as a whole there has grown up over the last 50 years since I attended University of Chicago a concept which was developed at University of Chicago which is that volatility is risk and volatility is to be avoided and uh I think that uh seeing prices fluctuate up and down is part of life.
It's not a negative in itself. It's not to be avoided in itself. Um, and if you are wellunded, you don't have to withdraw the money. Uh, uh, you can't get a sell order from your clients, then volatility in itself is not to be avoided. And I think that the excessive nature of the concern with interim volatility is one of the wrongest things about the investment propensation.
Buffett again, Buffett says, "I'd rather have a lumpy 15% return than a smooth 12." And I would say to people, if you'd rather have a smooth 12 than a lumpy 15, you have to ask yourself what's going on. Look, it reminds me the the one of the memo you wrote in I think late 2022 called what really matters and yeah there you gave the example as a kid how we are told don't just sit there do something.
Yeah and in investing actually probably you got to reverse that. Well, you know, uh I I wrote that memo in October of 22, uh because uh you know, I participated in a conference where everybody's question was, "Well, what month will the Fed stop raising interest rates?" And and I said, "Why do you care?
This doesn't matter. What matters is whether we buy pieces of companies that grow in value." Mhm. and whether we lend money to companies that pay us back and what month the Fed is going to stop cutting interest rates or whether security prices rose by 1% yesterday or fell doesn't matter. Uh and yet these latter two things are the things that command attention and that's largely because uh the things that really matter are determined in the long run and once you make your commitment you have to wait a long time to know if you were right and you have to sit there and not do something.
I will come back to what you just said about also about the the the the relative performance and and in investing. We always talk about how it's extremely easy to achieve average results but also it's extremely difficult to consistently be above average. And in your dare to be great and dare to be great two memos, right?
you wrote about that you to be great investors must dare to be different, must dare to be wrong, but also must dare to look wrong, right? And and the and when we talk about the things that interfere with good performance, this this nails it. Mhm. You know, again, Dave Swenson used my favorite two-word phrase that good investing requires the adoption of uncomfortably idiosyncratic positions.
Uh, you have to dare to be different from others. If I mean it it it it's obvious that if you invest the same as everybody else, you can't be superior. But I just want to jump to one final topic given we are coming up to the up to the time. One of the also if you take a giant step back think about the with your experience 57 years in the business in the asset management landscape changed dramatically over the last 57 years and and it feels to us that that change even accelerating further over the last 5 10 years giving the it feels like we are in doorsteps of something really major in terms of the of the public markets and private markets and alternative investment and traditional investment all those different pieces getting a little bit more converging the similar direction.
Can you provide with our audience your view about the general asset management landscape and what are your views about the where the puck is going? Well, it's a complex question. Uh I think the important thing is that the the things that matter never change. Understanding the nature of investor psychology, institutional constraints over emphasis on volatility, those are not going to change.
The importance of risk control, consistency, uh non-reliance on forecasting, these things never change. uh investors are always looking for the silver bullet that will permit them to make a high return uh without bearing risk. That will never exist. Um superior investment will always be a matter of superior judgment which is always in my opinion going to be personal and not machinable.
That's my hope. But um you know there's a lot of discussion now centered primarily around uh increasing the exposure of non-institutional investors to private asset. Private assets are not an exchangeraded. They're not liquid. You can't get out the day you change your mind. Sometimes [clears throat] you can't get out at all until the investor uh the manager concludes the process and returns your money.
there's no trading taking place. So when you buy the asset, you have you don't have a reference point that tells you that other people think this is the fair price. So there's a lot of uncertainty associated with investing in private assets. There are also great pluses. You get to buy things other people aren't.
You get to buy uh things that don't mark to market and consequently don't demonstrate volatility and people don't get fussed about. Uh these are not assets. You know, every stock is posted on the stock exchange every day. These are assets that maybe your manager can find that other people can't find or maybe your manager can understand that other people cannot understand as as well.
So there are advantages and disadvantages in private investing and you have to take a sober view and you have to only do the amount of private investing that is right for you. You can you you should only do it if you understand what you're doing and if you're sure your manager understands that what what what he or she is doing and embodies your views.
I mean the the easiest thing to say about investing is that there's nothing that's right for everybody. Mhm. And and and if you combine that with the fact that there's no silver bullet, that means in what you said earlier, investments have to be chosen with care in each case. asset selection and you and I we spend a lot of time and the others spend a lot of time meeting with our most uh sophisticated and largest client around the world and it feels to us that there is also broader trend where investors and asset owners and allocators are looking to have smaller number of relationship meaning smaller number of asset manager relationship or general partner relationship in a private sense but more deeper strategic thinking about the different capabilities and integrate something a little bit you know thinking about the not just the next vintage or next year but thinking about the next three five 10 years trying to solve the things that they try to solve could be asset liability could be liquidity could be other objects objectives they may have and basically building a relationship where they feel like the asset management or GPS are almost like a extension of their broader organization and teams.
I would love to get your take on that. Well, I mean obviously the ideal condition would be to find a manager or a stable of managers who uh understand and reflect your point of view uh are capable of giving you performance that will fit your needs and make you happy and have the skill to do so. Um, as you say, people uh most people want to do uh more with fewer managers these days to simplify uh their lives and and uh and and try to find those managers who will do the best job of giving them what they want, they need.
Um uh and there's no magic number. uh you know uh we we uh just as in asset selection with manager selection we uh we concentrate uh to take advantage of what we believe uh we diversify to protect against what we don't know and we have to strike a balance. Very few people have one manager but we know that if you have a thousand managers you'll have average performance.
What's the magic number? A lot has to do with the ability uh having the ability to select the right ones. If you can't if you can't find select the right ones, you might want to diversify heavily. If you can select the right ones and find a few that really appeal to you, uh then you might want to concentrate heavily.
Uh uh institutional behavior uh dictates uh diversification of managers. Um but uh of course this is another decision for which there's no magic solution. It's all all these things in the end come down to uh judgment and insight. Howard as always thank you for your insights. My pleasure. Thank you for your time.
Say it is a great great pleasure to have you here. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to another episode of Brookfield Perspectives. Make sure to follow us wherever you listen. You'll be the first to hear when new episodes drop.
Comments 0