저자: HowardMarks · 외국인
요약 보기
Howard Marks는 팬데믹 같은 외생적 충격으로 시장이 공포에 빠진 상황에서 투자자는 '얼마나 오를지/내릴지'를 맞히려 하기보다 현재 가격과 장기 가치를 비교해야 한다고 강조한다. 현재 주가는 고점 대비 약 12% 하락한 상태로, 그는 이것이 큰 하락이지만 정확히 적정한지는 알 수 없다고 본다. 다만 이전 몇 년간은 자산이 대체로 고평가되어 싸게 사기 어려웠으나, 지금은 불과 2주 전보다 훨씬 싸졌고 공포 속에서 개별 종목 간 옥석 가리기가 일어나 바겐세일 기회가 생겼다고 평가한다. 바닥을 정확히 알 수는 없으며, 바닥은 사후적으로만 판단된다. 싸다고 판단되면 매수하고, 더 떨어지면 평가가 맞다면 추가 매수하며 버티라는 입장이다. Oaktree는 지금 실제로 매수 중이며, 일부 자산은 distress 수준으로 거래되고 있지만 전체 주식시장이나 신용시장은 아직 그 수준이 아니라고 본다. 이번 사태가 2008년이나 2000년 같은 재현인지는 알 수 없다. 핵심 변수는 충격이 얼마나 지속될지인데, 2개월 내 종식될 수도 있고 백신이 나오는 18개월까지 갈 수도 있다. 후자라면 심각한 경제 이벤트가 될 것이라고 경고한다. 이번 충격은 중앙은행 정책 실패나 금융 과열이 아닌 외생적 충격이라는 점을 짚는다. 가치 투자자에게는 가격과 가치의 관계가 중요하며 원인 자체는 핵심이 아니라고 본다. 사람들이 미지의 것을 두려워하기 때문에 팬데믹 같은 사건이 큰 공포를 유발한다고 설명한다.
다듬은 글
most people fear the unknown... (원문 본문은 아래 한국어 다듬은 글에 반영)
Most people fear the unknown. Most people say, oh, let's see, a pandemic — that's a scary word. And I think these things cause a lot of fear. You wrote in your latest memo that nobody knows how bad the viral outbreak will be or how deep its economic impact will be. And of course that's true. Nobody — not even Dr. Fauci — knows how bad this is going to be. But investors need a framework for deciding what to do. It's as simple as saying "buy if you're a coronavirus minimalist, or sell if you're a coronavirus maximalist." Well, that would be a trading mentality, guessing what's going to happen next week or next month. I'm not a trader, I'm an investor. What an investor would do is ask how the current price of a given asset compares with what I think is its long-term value. The point is that stocks are down about 12% from their high. Is that enough of a decline, too much of a decline, or about right? I think it's a big decline. I think the economy and the markets will have bad showings for a while, and then I think we'll come back.
You say in the memo, and it's more or less what you just described, that one needs to evaluate the price change against the degree to which the fundamentals have worsened. That's impossible right now. So why not evaluate the price change against the degree of uncertainty? Because that's where we were the last time you wrote a memo called "Nobody Knows." We were on the brink of the economic collapse that followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. If you went to cash right after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and then waited to buy, you did relatively well. It was a whole lot easier to sell in September than in November or December. Why not do the same thing now?
Well, I'm not sure I follow that. I don't think it was easier to sell — everybody wanted to sell. The competition was on the selling side. The easy part was buying, and things got worse, things went further down. Okay, I don't think in terms of days and weeks, so you have me at a disadvantage. But directionally, the question is whether things are cheap or rich now. As you say, it's impossible to say. But I've been coming on your show for a couple of years saying that things were steep. There was a lot of risk-taking going on, things were priced for perfection, people were exercising optimism, we were being cautious, and it was hard to buy things for less than their worth. It was hard to get a bargain. That was the recurring theme. Now, we can't be too doctrinaire about whether things are cheap or rich, but we know they're a heck of a lot cheaper than they were two weeks ago, and we know there is panic. And by the way, when I say 12%, that's the overall. We know there are great exceptions. One of the things is that in times of chaos, investors fail to make fine distinctions, so things go down more than they should and less than they should. We have an opportunity, we think, to find the things that have gone down more than they should. It's a better climate for getting bargains today than it was two months ago.
Some people want to wait for the bottom. Well, is it better to buy now if you see a bargain than to wait for the bottom? I could ask you, what is the bottom, Eric? And I have no idea. Well, no, that's easy — the bottom is the day before it starts going up. But how do you know? The bottom is only judged in retrospect. You never know when you're at the bottom, but you might have a feeling that something's cheap, and if it's cheap you should buy it. If it goes down more, buy some more and keep your nerve, and continue as long as your assessment is right. Howard, people want to know: is Oaktree out there right now catching falling knives? Well, we're certainly buying. If you're a distressed investor, you must turn more aggressive when you're given good chances. I'm not saying this is the bottom, but this is certainly a time to do some buying. Some things are trading at distressed levels. The overall stock market certainly isn't, or even close. Or the credit market, for that matter.
Do you believe this will become the distressed credit opportunity that Oaktree and others have been waiting for, after these painful years of relentlessly rising stock markets? Well, I would guess that it will. What I can tell you is the magnitude. Is it a replay of '08? I can't tell you. Or of 2000? I can't tell you. The real question is how long it will last. It's among the things we don't know. As you enumerated, is it going to last two months, with the virus disappearing when the warm weather comes, or 18 months, which is the outside date when Mr. Fauci says we'll have a vaccine? That's a lot of spread. If it goes 18 months, we're going to have a serious event here, economically speaking.
This outbreak is what economists call an exogenous shock. Yes, it is. The economic impact isn't produced by faulty central bank policy, for example pulling the punch bowl away. It's also not the product of financial overexuberance, or of company behavior. Correct. Is that an important distinction? Probably not. If you're a value investor and what you care about is the relationship between price and value, you don't care why you got there. Exogenous events can have a great impact, and this one, I think, is particularly terrifying to most people. It's unknown. Most people fear the unknown. Most people say, oh, a pandemic, that's a scary word. And I think these things cause a lot of fear.
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