Howard Marks：Risk, Excerpt 13

What does it mean to intelligently bear risk for profit? I’ll provide an example. In the early 1980s, a reporter asked me, “How can you invest in high yield bonds when you know some of the issuers will go bankrupt?” Somehow, the perfect answer came to me in a flash: “The most conservative companies in America are the life insurance companies. How can they insure people’s lives when they know they’re all going to die?” Both activities involve conscious risk bearing. Both can be done intelligently (or not). The ability to profit from them consistently depends on the approach employed and whether it’s done skillfully. For companies selling life insurance, I said, the keys to survival and profitability are the following: It’s risk they’re aware of. They know everyone’s going to die.

Source： https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default-source/memos/2006-01-19-risk.pdf
Locator：Memo, excerpt 13 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

版权仍存续；仅摘录并链接橡树资本官网原文，不托管全文。

This text is still in copyright. Only a short excerpt is shown; read the full text at the official link above. Copyright

← Back to the library