Howard Marks

And then right around the same time, there was a deep value firm in New York and they invested very heavily in the banks that year and the banks did horribly.

So the president comes out and he says, well, obviously, if you want to be in the top 5% of money managers, you have to be willing to be in the bottom 5%.

And the dichotomy between the implications of those two stories really caused me to write the first memo, the juxtaposition.

My clients don't hire me to be in the top 5%.

I don't care if I'm in the top 5% in any given year.

I'm absolutely unwilling to be in the bottom 5%, and I think so are they.

So that thing about being willing to be in the bottom 5% sounds to me like a post-justification.

But anyway, that's not how I choose to operate.

And so it was a great opportunity to write that up.

And so I wrote that one in 1990.

I think I wrote another one in 91.

Then I wrote one in 93.

There was no regularity.

And one of the things I like to mention, David, is that for the first 10 years, I never had a response.

Wow.

Not only did nobody say it was good, nobody ever said I got it.

And these were mail?

This was pre-fax?

This was the old days of mail, but they only went to our clients.

So probably a few hundred.