Howard Marks

And I was taught at Chicago in the mid-60s, the efficient market hypothesis that everything is priced right because everybody's working so hard to

find the bargains and the overpricings.

And of course, that's a framework and it was not true that everything was priced right.

But certainly over time, things are priced more right.

It's become more true.

Right.

Inefficiencies, which I prefer to say mistakes, things the markets misprices, where do they come from?

They come from ignorance and prejudice.

So Moody's had a prejudice against the single B bond.

It had a prejudice in favor of the nifty-fifty, as did most investors.

And I was lucky to find some things that either others didn't know about or didn't understand.

But human knowledge is cumulative.

And lately, it's been rushing forward at an incredible pace.

So it's hard to imagine that there's a piece of information that I can get off the internet

that's going to make me any money for the simple reason that everybody else can get it off the internet.

This is a zero sum game for a fixed amount of profit.

And it'll go to the people who do better at the expense of the people who do worse.

So you have to have an advantage, a knowledge advantage, a skill advantage, if you're going to be one of the people who ends up on the positive side of that equation.

And in 1978, when I left the equity area, it was really because of the terrible performance of the Nifty Fifty, which I, as director of research, was associated with.

So they said to me, what do you want to do next?