Howard Marks

You see a lot of people sewing their own clothes today?

If so, you travel in different circles from me.

But that was considered a company that could never be heard.

Maybe Sears was in there.

I forget.

But the concept of disruption was never considered.

the moats were considered inviolate.

The thinking was really simple.

Nobody thought about the fact that if Xerox priced their copies at 30 cents a piece, somebody from abroad could produce it, and that presented a price umbrella that somebody else could get underneath.

So in those days, the Wall Street Journal used to run a box on the first page whenever something would crap out showing the losses in a certain category.

And we had lots of companies where you lost more than 90% from the high to the low.

Well, I think the greatest example, one of the industries that all the value people thought were impregnable, great moats, was the newspapers.

Because you had your newspaper, you didn't have to worry about competition from the newspaper in the town next door.

You were entrenched.

It only cost 15 cents, so nobody would stop buying it in tough times.

And if you wanted to advertise, you wanted to advertise in the paper with the most circulation.

And the local movies had to be in the local paper, the local want ads, the local car ads.

And the great thing was that if the consumer bought it today, guess what?

They had to buy it again tomorrow because it had a one-day shelf life.

What could be a better business?