Howard Marks

Born in 1946 in New York City, Marks earned a bachelor's degree in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967 and an MBA in accounting and marketing from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 1969. He began his investment career at Citicorp and later joined TCW (Trust Company of the West), where he built expertise in high-yield bonds and distressed debt. In 1995, Marks co-founded Oaktree Capital Management with several TCW colleagues. Oaktree grew to become the world's leading alternative investment firm focused on credit and distressed strategies, managing approximately $170 billion in assets across private credit, high yield bonds, convertible securities, real estate, infrastructure, and distressed debt. Marks is equally known for his investment memos, which he has been writing and distributing since 1990. His memos analyze market conditions, investor psychology, and investment philosophy with a clarity that has made them among the most widely read documents in the investment industry. Warren Buffett has said that he reads every Marks memo when it arrives, and institutional investors worldwide consider them required reading. His 2011 book The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor distilled his investment philosophy around the concept of "second-level thinking" — the idea that successful investing requires thinking about what the consensus believes and how that belief is already reflected in prices. Mastering the Market Cycle (2018) extended these ideas to market timing based on understanding where the economy and market sit in their cycles. Marks has been consistently bearish or cautious at market peaks and willing to deploy capital during downturns, having raised large Distressed Debt funds ahead of the 2002 and 2008 crises that generated exceptional returns.