I sat down with Howard Marks, the co-founder of Oaktree and the man who has been writing the memos every serious investor on earth opens first for over thirty years, and what was supposed to be a conversation about debt and cycles became a conversation about how anyone gets above-average at anything in a world where everyone smart is already trying. We covered why he picked bonds over stocks for an entire career and got rich doing the opposite of what everyone wanted to do, why the S&P returns 10% a year but almost never between 8 and 12, why he changed his mind on AI after a single conversation with Claude, what AI can't do that great investors still can, why he thinks India's biggest export business sits in the crosshairs of AI, and where the $10 bill nobody has picked up is hiding right now.

00:00 Introduction

02:05 From Queens to Wharton beginnings

08:10 Mujo and independence of events

15:17 Why cycles exist in markets

22:09 Pandemic, recessions, and recovery age

28:38 Where we are today

36:08 Drifting versus seeing the river

42:57 Oak Tree and accidental entrepreneurship

49:45 Why bonds over equities

57:14 Distressed bonds and excess returns

1:05:36 Beginning a new career today

1:12:42 Active management versus indexation