Howard Marks

I'm glad to be with you this morning.

Of course, as, as the quote you just put up on the screen, uh, indicates, um, you know, this is all just feeling and, and, uh, and, uh, an opinion.

None of this is factual, but it, it, it does seem that, that stocks are expensive relative to what I call fundamentals or you might call reality.

And, uh, you know, the outstanding reason I think is that, um,

There hasn't been a serious market correction in 16 years, so people get out of the habit of thinking about market corrections.

The biggest single mistake I've been thinking

lot what is the biggest single mistake investors make and i've concluded that it is that they conclude that that the way things are today is the way it'll always be and the things that have been happening will always continue to happen whereas uh reversion to the mean is is much more likely so i just think that it's worked very well uh being being an equity uh investor has worked very well doing it on leverage has worked even better

Concentrating in a few stocks has gone very well.

Investors are by nature optimistic and that optimism dies hard.

And I just think that the fluctuations of the market are mostly related to psychological fluctuations.

And people go from neutrality to liking stocks, to liking them a lot, to liking them a ton, to liking them too much.

And that's the continuation that creates bubbles.

And we're probably in the early days of that.

Well, I guess, Lisa, the last time was probably around 1997 when the market was kind of falling in love with tech stocks.

You know, the market was rocketing along.

People were not worried about the level of valuations.

People were extremely optimistic about the opportunities for the Internet.

And, you know, Alan Greenspan famously said,

cautioned that there might be irrational exuberance.

Now, I picked 97 because even though Greenspan was concerned about exuberance, the market went on to rise for another