Howard Marks Memos
Oaktree co-chairman Howard Marks's client memos since 1990 on risk, cycles, credit and investor psychology. They are the plainest-spoken education in market judgment you can get for free.
Free to read
Marks began writing memos to Oaktree clients in October 1990, and the archive on Oaktree's site now runs to well over 100 pieces, each posted as a PDF or web page. The themes come back again and again: second-level thinking, risk as the chance of permanent loss rather than volatility, the pendulum of investor sentiment, and the futility of macro forecasting. Many memos were written in the middle of real events, from the dot-com peak and the 2008 crisis to the end of zero rates, so you can watch an experienced credit investor reason in real time.
The writing is plain and conversational, with few charts and no jargon, which makes the memos work for a first-year analyst as well as a portfolio manager. Marks built his books, including The Most Important Thing, from this material, so the memos are the source text.
Read the classics first, then the most recent memos to see how the framework applies to current markets. Oaktree also posts a compiled best-of collection for the 35th anniversary of the memos and a complete-collection PDF, which are handy for reading offline.
Start with
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1
bubble.com (January 2000)
The memo that called the dot-com top and made Marks's reputation outside credit circles.
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2
The Most Important Thing (July 2003)
The compact version of his whole philosophy, later expanded into the book of the same name.
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3
Sea Change (December 2022)
His argument that the end of four decades of falling rates changes which strategies win.
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4
The Best of . . . (October 2025)
Marks's own selection of his strongest memos, released for their 35th anniversary.
