Howard Marks' Memos

In the first of the four memos, Nobody Knows II, I described the distinction made by Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch.  He said there are (a) facts, (b) informed extrapolations from analogies to other viruses and (c) opinion or speculation.  At that point, I thought the scientists were trying to make informed inferences, and there wasn’t enough data regarding the novel coronavirus to enable them to turn those inferences into facts.  I also noted that anything a non-scientist said was highly likely to be a guess.  In that vein, I wrote the following to an Oaktree colleague last week: “These days everyone has the same data regarding the present and the same ignorance regarding the future.”  That pretty much sums up the state of affairs.

‍

‍Read the Full Memo Here: https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/howard-marks-memos

‍