Oaktree Capital

In January of two thousand, Howard Marks published a memo warning investors that internet stocks were dangerously overvalued. The tech industry dismissed him. Venture capitalists and retail traders were convinced the dot-com boom would never end. Two months later the market collapsed. Marks had been right. Marks built Oaktree Capital around a single insight: the best returns come when everyone else is terrified. He hired teams to analyze distressed debt. He waited for moments when companies defaulted and bonds crashed. Then he moved. In two thousand and eight, he raised ten point nine billion dollars. This was the largest distressed debt fund ever assembled. Lehman Brothers had just failed. Banks were collapsing. Credit markets had frozen.