The market suffered a sharp sell-off after the Fed announced a radical 75 basis point rate hike in mid-June.

At this time, Howard Marks, Oaktree's co-founder and debt investor, began to appear "aggressive", saying in a recent interview: "the time is ripe to snap up bargains".

The main measure of junk-rated corporate debt in the u.s. has fallen nearly 13% this year, the biggest drop since the 2008 financial crisis, according to Ice Data Services.

In response, Max said:

Everything we trade today is much cheaper than it was six or 12 months ago, such as high-yield junk bonds, leveraged loans, mortgage-backed securities and mortgage obligations.

In addition, the data show that the price of loans to low-rated corporate borrowers has fallen by more than 5%, with an average transaction price of 93.27 cents, compared with the last time such a cheap price was in November 2020. Max felt that the time had come to snap up bargains, he said:

I think waiting for the bottom is a terrible idea. We can't tell when the market will hit bottom, when we think we can buy assets at discounted prices, that is, to get value cheaply.

The assets we see right now may be cheaper than valuations, in which case we will buy more.

Max is a famous Wall Street investor, he has more than 50 years of investment experience, has witnessed many times caused financial market turmoil and even collapse of the "fuse". In Buffett's view, Max's memo is "must-read by investors."