Last week, Howard Marks delivered his latest memo. In what he describes as a break with precedent, he chose the topic based not on "a series of events [that] can be interestingly juxtaposed," but on "a request."
According to Marks, a colleague (Ian Schapiro, who leads Oaktree’s Power Opportunities group) suggested Howard write something about negative rates.
Howard's knee-jerk reaction (which he calls "immediate and unequivocal") was that such a request wasn't doable because when it comes to negative rates, "I don’t know anything about them."
After thinking about it, Marks realized that was precisely