Offense vs Defense

To me, the most important single question at a point in time with regard to strategy — I’m not talking about tactics, I’m not talking about what’s going to go up tomorrow, I’m not talking about eternity, but for the middle term, let’s say three to five years — the most important thing at a given point in time is how you’re balancing offense and defense… we want to have a lot of offense when prices are low, psychology is depressed and the outlook is bad to most people but we don’t think it’s so bad. And we want to have defense when prices are high, psychology is buoyant and everybody sees a brilliant future, and we don’t think the future may live up.

– Howard Marks