Howard Marks, co-chairman and one of the core founders of Oaktree, successfully predicted the technology stock crash in 2000 and the financial crisis in 2008.

Its Oak Capital is the world's largest non-performing assets investment institution, known as the "king of troubled assets investment" and "Wall Street vulture" in the investment community, and currently has more than $120 billion in assets under management.

Howard. Max's investment philosophy is very similar to that of Buffett. Another similarity between the two is that global investors are looking forward to Buffett's annual letter to shareholders, while professional investors are also looking forward to the investment memo written by Howard Marks. "the most important thing to invest" is actually a collection of investment memos he has written over the past 20 years.

The following is an excerpt of 50 sentences from "the most important thing to invest" for readers to read.

1. Remember, your investment goal is not to reach the average, what you want is to be above average. Therefore, you must think better than others-stronger and at a higher level. Other investors may be very smart, well-informed and highly computerized, so you have to find an advantage they don't have. You have to think about what they don't want, see what they don't see, or have insight that they don't have. Your reaction and behavior must be different. In short, being right may be a necessary condition for successful investment, but it is not a sufficient condition. You have to do it more correctly than anyone else. The implication is that your way of thinking must be different.

two。 Second-level thinkers have a lot to consider: what is the scope of possible future outcomes? What kind of result do I think will happen? What are the chances of me being right? What is the consensus of the people? How different is my expectation from what people agree on? To what extent is the current price of assets in line with what the public thinks of as future prices and what I think of as future prices? Is the consensus reflected in the price too optimistic or too pessimistic? If the public view is correct, what will happen to asset prices? What will happen to asset prices if I am right?

3. Before you compete in a zero-sum world of investment, you have to ask yourself if you have a good reason to be in the lead. To outperform the average investor, you must think more deeply than the group consensus.

4. Inefficiency is a necessary condition for outstanding investment. Trying to beat a fairly efficient market is like flipping a coin: the best you can expect is a 50% chance of winning. If investors want to win, there must be available inefficiency in the basic process (market defects, mispricing).

5. It seems to me that the real choice is not between value and growth, but between current value and future value. Growth investment bet on the performance of a company that may or may not be realized in the future, while value investment is mainly based on the analysis of the current value of the company.

6. There are two basic elements of profiting in a falling market: you must understand the intrinsic value, and you must be confident enough to hold shares firmly and keep buying, even if the price has fallen to a time when it seems to imply that you are doing something wrong.Oh, by the way, there is a third basic element: you have to be right.

7. Successful investment does not lie in "buying good", but in "buying well".

8. Facts have repeatedly proved that no matter how good the asset is, if the purchase price is too high, it will become a failed investment. At the same time, few assets are so bad that buying at a low enough price cannot be converted into a successful investment.

9. The key to determining value is skilled financial analysis, while the key to understanding prices, value relationships and their prospects mainly depends on insight into the thinking of other investors. Investor psychology can lead to almost any pricing of securities in the short term, regardless of their fundamentals. The most important discipline is not accounting or economics, but psychology.

10. Investment is a popularity competition, and buying is the most dangerous when it is most popular. At that time, all the positive factors and views had been included in the price, and there would be no new buyers.

11. The safest and most profitable investment is to buy when no one likes it. Over time, once a security is popular, its price can only change in one direction: rising.

12. "the price is too high" and "the next step will fall" are two completely different meanings. Securities may be overpriced and last for quite a long time. Even go up further. In any case, value will eventually come into play.

13. Everyone wants a buyer who is willing to buy the assets he wants to sell at a high price. But obviously you can't expect such a buyer to show up as you wish. Unlike underpriced assets rising to their fair value, the appreciation of fairly priced or overpriced assets is based on the irrationality of buyers, so it is absolutely unreliable.

14. Buy at a price below value. In my opinion, this is the true meaning of investment-the most reliable way to make money.

15. The combination of conceit, ignorance of risk and laissez-faire and a little bit of development is enough to bring disaster. Disaster can happen to anyone who doesn't take the time and effort to understand the basic process of their portfolio.

16. It is generally believed that the absence of risk is the greatest risk in itself, because the risk premium will be included in the expected return only when investors properly avoid the risk. It is hoped that investors will fear risk and demand a risk premium in the future, and we should continue to be wary of their failure to do so.

17. The perception that risk has disappeared is one of the most dangerous sources of risk and a major contributor to the bubble. When the pendulum of the market reached its peak, the crowd was so excited by the belief that the risk was very low and that the investment must be profitable, so that they lost their due vigilance, worry and fear of loss, and only fretted about the risk of missing opportunities.

18. The greatest investment risk exists in the least detectable places, and vice versa:When everyone believes that something is risky, their reluctance to buy usually lowers the price to a completely risk-free level. Widespread negativity minimizes risk because all optimism in the price is eliminated.

19. In the final analysis, the job of investors is to take risks intelligently for the purpose of profit. Being able to do this well is the difference between the best investors and other investors.

20. Cleverly accepting accepted risks for profit is the basis for the wisest and most profitable investments-even if (perhaps because) most investors avoid them as dangerous speculation.

21. It is important to remember that everything has a cycle. I'm sure there aren't many things, but the following words are true: the cycle always wins at the end. Nothing can go on forever in the same direction.

twenty-two。 There are two concepts we are confident to grasp: rule one: most things are cyclical. Rule 2: when others forget the law for a while, some of the biggest opportunities for profit and loss will come.

23. Ignoring cycles and extrapolating trends is one of the most dangerous things investors can do.

24. We may never know where we're going, but we'd better know where we are. In other words, even if we cannot predict the timing and magnitude of cyclical fluctuations, it is important to try to figure out which stage of the cycle we are in and act accordingly.

25. The mood swings in the stock market are similar to the movement of the pendulum. Although the midpoint of the arc best illustrates the "average" position of the pendulum, the pendulum actually stays there for a very short time.

twenty-six。 When investors tolerate too much risk, securities prices reflect higher risks rather than returns. When investors avoid risk excessively, the return reflected by the price is higher than the risk.

twenty-seven。 The combination of greed and optimism makes investors pursue low-risk and high-return strategies again and again, buy hot stocks at high prices, and hold on to their shares with the expectation of appreciation when the price is already too high. It was only afterwards that people discovered the problem: expectations were unrealistic and risks were ignored.

twenty-eight。 Risks are deceptive. Regular events are easy to estimate, such as recurrent events are likely to happen again. However, abnormal and once-in-a-lifetime events are difficult to quantify.

twenty-nine。 When a market, an individual, or an investment technology achieves high short-term returns, it usually attracts excessive (blind) worship. I call this method of making high profits a "silver bullet". However, silver bullets do not exist, and no strategy can lead to risk-free high returns.

thirty。 As overpriced stocks fared better, or underpriced stocks continued to fall, the right thing to do became easier: sell the former and buy the latter. But people don't do that. The tendency to self-doubt is intermingled with rumors of the success of others, creating a powerful force for investors to make the wrong decisions, and the strength increases as the tendency lasts longer.

thirty-one。 Assets can be difficult to control because of the actions of others. There may be a time when you look wrong and the group members seem (or feel) right. Comparing yourself too much with others is a process of eroding the will-although it's natural-and it puts too much pressure on you.

thirty-two。 It is important to remember that when things look "too good to be true", they are usually not true.

thirty-three。 It takes the greatest courage to buy when others are depressed and to sell when others are excited to buy, but it brings the greatest profit.

34. The key to successful investment is to go against the trend: not to follow the crowd. Those who realize that others are wrong can make a lot of money by investing in the opposite direction.

thirty-five。 "buy low and sell high" is an old saying, but investors involved in the market cycle often do the opposite. The right thing to do is reverse investment: buy when people are snub and sell when people are after them.

thirty-six。 When the price deviates significantly from the intrinsic value, you need to have the ability to perceive; you must be willing enough to challenge conventional wisdom and resist the myth that the market is always efficient and therefore always correct.

thirty-seven。 You have to make sure that when you make reverse investments, you know not only that they are contrary to what the public is doing, but also where they are wrong. Only in this way can you stick to your point of view and be more likely to buy more when the position seems wrong or the loss is much higher than the gain.

38. In the end, the most profitable investment behavior is what we define as reverse investment: buy when everyone sells (so the price is very low), or sell when everyone buys (so the price is very high).

thirty-nine。 When the knife stops falling, the dust has settled and the uncertainty is resolved, the lucrative bargains will cease to exist. When buying something feels safe again, it will no longer be so cheap. As a result, it is often contradictory to be profitable and secure in investment.

forty。 One of the greatest advantages of investment is that you will suffer losses only if you really make a failed investment. If you don't make a failed investment, there will be no loss, only a return. Even if there are adverse consequences of missing the opportunity to win, it can still be tolerated.

forty-one。 The more attention to detail, the more likely it is to gain knowledge advantage. Through hard work and professional technology, we can know more about individual companies and securities than others, but it is difficult to do so in terms of our understanding of the market and the economy as a whole. Therefore, I suggest that we should strive to be "knowable".

forty-two。 We do not know how long a trend will last, when it will reverse, or the factors that lead to the reversal or the extent of the reversal. But I believe that the trend will end sooner or later. Nothing can last forever.

forty-three。 In the long run, good decisions are bound to bring returns on investment. In the short term, however, when good decisions do not yield a return on investment, we must be patient.

forty-four。 It will make you miserable to assume that what is going to happen will not happen. Even if you correctly understand the basic probability distribution, you can't expect things to go the way you want them to. Successful investment should not rely too much on the normal results of aggregate distribution, but must take into account the existence of outliers.

forty-five。 One of the basic requirements of successful investment, and one of the necessary psychology of the greatest investors, is to recognize that we cannot predict the macro future. Few people, if any, have views on the future economy, interest rates and market aggregate beyond the consensus of the group. Therefore, investors' time is best spent on obtaining "knowable" knowledge advantages: relevant information about industries, companies and securities. The more you pay attention to the micro, the more likely you are to know more than others.

forty-six。 Successful investment requires a firm stand, even if it is disturbing because of its differences with the group consensus. Rash promises will lead to failure, exposing portfolio managers to the double danger of buying high and selling low.

forty-seven。 Investors can sell overspeculative stocks and buy stocks that are undervalued only if they have the confidence to make decisive decisions from a robust decision-making process.

forty-eight。 One of the most interesting things I find about investment is its contradiction:The most obvious things that everyone agrees with often turn out to be wrong.

forty-nine。 Conformity-and swinging with the pendulum-will only bring you long-term average performance and make you fail in extreme markets.

fifty。 The process of outstanding investment begins with investors' deep insight, originality, maverick or early investment. This is why successful investors are so lonely.