Howard Marks

Howard Stanley Marks was born in 1946 in Queens, New York, to a Jewish family but raised as a Christian Scientist. He pursued finance early, earning a B.S.E. in finance (cum laude, with a minor in Japanese Studies) from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1967, where he joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. In 1969, at age 23, he obtained an MBA in accounting and marketing from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, winning the George Hay Brown Prize, and later became a CFA charterholder in 1975. Marks launched his investment career in the late 1960s as an equity research analyst at Citibank, focusing on conglomerates. By the early 1970s, he rose to Director of Research at Citicorp, then became Vice President and senior portfolio manager at Citicorp Investment Management, overseeing convertible and high-yield securities. In 1985, he joined TCW Group, where he led high-yield debt and convertible securities groups and co-organized one of the first distressed debt funds from a major institution with Bruce Karsh in 1988. In 1995, Marks, Karsh, and three others left TCW to found Oaktree Capital Management in Los Angeles after a dispute over fund management fees, building it into a global firm managing over $100 billion in alternative investments, particularly distressed assets. His philosophy stresses risk management, contrarian investing, psychological discipline, and recognizing market cycles—ideas he shares via widely read investor memos and books. Marks retired from daily management but remains co-chairman, influencing investing through writings like The Most Important Thing (2011) and Mastering the Market Cycle. Marks has engaged in philanthropy, creating the Howard S. Marks Terms Scholarship in 1992 and endowing the Marks Family Writing Center at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009. His career spans nearly 50 years, emphasizing self-assessment, experience, and staying within one's circle of competence over predictive formulas.