Howard Marks Quotes

100 Howard Marks Quotes

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Patient opportunism – waiting for bargains – is often your best strategy.
Howard Marks

Be alert to what’s going on around you with regards to the supply/demand balance for investable funds and the eagerness to spend them.
Howard Marks

To achieve superior investment results, your insight into value has to be superior. Thus you must learn things others don’t, see things differently or do a better job of analyzing them – ideally all three.
Howard Marks

Your view of value has to be based on a solid factual and analytical foundation, and it has to be held firmly. Only then will you know when to buy or sell. Only a strong sense of value will give you the discipline needed to take profits on a highly appreciated asset that everyone thinks will rise nonstop, or the guts to hold and average down in a crisis even as prices go lower every day. Of course, for your efforts in these regards to be profitable, your estimate of value has to be on target.
Howard Marks

Economics and markets cycle up and down. Whichever direction they’re going at the moment, most people come to believe that they’ll go that way forever. This thinking is a source of great danger since it poisons the markets, sends valuations to extremes, and ignites bubbles and panics that most investors find hard to resist.
Howard Marks

The power of psychological influences must never be underestimated. Greed, fear, suspension of disbelief, conformism, envy, ego and capitulation are all part of human nature, and their ability to compel action is profound, especially when they’re at extremes and shared by the herd. They’ll influence others, and the thoughtful investor will feel them as well. None of us should expect to be immune and insulated from them. Although we feel them, we must not succumb; rather we must recognize them for what they are and stand against them. Reason must overcome emotion.
Howard Marks

Most trends – both bullish and bearish – eventually become overdone, profiting those who recognize them early but penalizing the last to join. That’s the reasoning behind my number one investment adage: ‘What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end.’ The ability to resist excesses is rare, but it’s an important attribute of the most successful investors.
Howard Marks

It’s impossible to know when an overheated market will turn down, or when a downturn will cease and appreciation will take it’s place. But while we never know where we’re going, we ought to know where we are. We can infer where markets stand in their cycle from the behavior of those around us. When other investors are unworried, we should be cautious; when investors are panicked, we should turn aggressive.
Howard Marks

If they go on long enough and gain enough force, investment styles turn into bubbles. And bubbles give thoughtful investors lots of things to sell and sell short.
Howard Marks

Our goal is to find underpriced assets.
Howard Marks



We must recognize when the odds are less in our favor and tread more carefully.
Howard Marks

It can require patience and fortitude to hold positions long enough to be proved right.
Howard Marks

Many more investors assume they have knowledge of the future direction of economies and markets – and act that way – than actually do. They take aggressive actions predicated on knowing what’s coming, and that rarely produces the desired results. Investing on the basis of strongly held but incorrect forecasts is a source of significant potential loss.
Howard Marks

In both economic forecasting and investment management, it’s worth noting that there’s usually someone who gets it exactly right… but it’s rarely the same person twice. The most successful investors get things ‘about right’ most of the time, and that’s much better than the rest.
Howard Marks

An important part of getting it right consists of avoiding the pitfalls that are frequently presented by economic fluctuations, companies’ travails, the markets’ manic swings, and other investors’ gullibility. There’s no sure fire way to accomplish this, but awareness of these potential dangers certainly represents the best starting point for an effort to avoid being victimized by them.
Howard Marks

One of the essential requirements for investment success – and thus part of most great investors’ psychological equipment – is the realization that we don’t know what lies ahead in terms of the macro future. Few people if any know more than the consensus about what’s going to happen to the economy, interest rates and market aggregates. Thus, the investors time is better spent trying to gain a knowledge advantage regarding ‘the knowable’: industries, companies and securities. The more micro your focus, the great the likelihood you can learn things others don’t.
Howard Marks

Certain common threads run through the best investments I’ve witnessed. They’re usually contrarian, challenging and uncomfortable – although the experienced contrarian takes comfort from his or her position outside the herd. Whenever the debt market collapses, for example, most people say, ‘We’re not going to try to catch a falling knife; it’s too dangerous.’ They usually add, ‘We’re going to wait until the dust settles and the uncertainty is resolved.’ What they mean, of course, is that they’re frightened and unsure of what to do. The one thing I’m sure of is that by the time the knife has stopped falling, the dust has settled and the uncertainty has been resolved, there’ll be no great bargains left. When buying something has become comfortable again, it’s price will no longer be so low that it’s a great bargain. Thus a hugely profitable investment that doesn’t begin with discomfort is usually an oxymoron. It is our job as contrarians to catch falling knives, hopefully with care and skill. That’s why the concept of intrinsic value is so important. If we hold a view of value that enables us to buy when everyone else is selling – and if our view turns out to be right – that’s the route to the greatest rewards earned with the least risk.
Howard Marks

The seven scariest words in the world for the thoughtful investor – too much money chasing too few deals…
Howard Marks

Reason must overcome emotion.
Howard Marks

The best opportunities are usually found among the things most others won’t do.
Howard Marks



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