market folly

Oaktree Capital's Chairman and founder Howard Marks was recently on Bloomberg TV talking about his company's recent initial public offering (IPO).


On pricing an IPO and investing in general: "You can't ignore your environment when you take investment action." He mentions this because he had to reduce Oaktree's offering and it priced at the lower-end due to the rough market as of late.

His thoughts on the environment: "We're not at the bottom.  I don't think we're at the top. I don't detect frothy psychology.  I don't see peak valuations, if you look at things like P/E ratios on stocks or yield spreads on riskier bonds. I think we're on some middle ground."

On how he's approaching things now: "Our mantra is move forward... but with caution.  We do have a good level of caution, primarily because of the macro concerns."

We also highlighted how David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital disclosed a stake in Oaktree after it went public.

Embedded below is Marks' interview with Bloomberg TV:



Be sure to also check out an excerpt from his book we've posted up: Marks on contrarianism.