Charlie Munger, a longtime lieutenant of
Berkshire Hathaway
‘s Warren Buffett, was known for his sharp commentary on life and investing. Munger has died at age 99, just short of his 100th birthday.
Over the years, Munger appeared alongside Buffett to take questions from Berkshire shareholders at the conglomerate’s annual meeting, and his comments often upstaged the boss.
Many of Munger’s often-repeated quotes about investing were said during television interviews, or at other public meetings. And some were recorded in his 2005 book Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger.
The following are some of Munger’s thoughts on life and investing, pulled from a variety of sources, including the Almanack.
- “It takes character to sit with all that cash and to do nothing. I didn’t get to the top where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.”
- “The big money is not in the buying and selling…but in the waiting.”
- “The idea of caring that someone is making money faster [than you are] is one of the deadly sins. Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There’s a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?”
- “Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day, if you live long enough, like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.”
- “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren reads, and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
Then there are the seemingly off-the-cuff comments Munger made in response to audience questions in public forums over the years.
- “I think life is a whole series of opportunity costs. You know, you got to marry the best person who is convenient to find who will have you. Investment is much the same sort of a process,” he told shareholders in 1997 at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.
- “I think value investors are going to have a harder time now that there are so many of them competing for a diminished set of opportunities,” Munger said in May at this year’s annual meeting. “My advice to value investors is to get used to making less.”
- “If you mix raisins with turds, they’re still turds,” Munger told a shareholder at the 2000 Berkshire meeting after a question about speculation in Internet stocks.
-
“Sometimes I call it crypto crappo, sometimes I call it crypto sh—. It’s just ridiculous that anybody would buy this stuff,” Munger said at the annual shareholder meeting of
Daily JournalCorp.
earlier this year. “I’m not proud of my country for allowing this crap.”
And at the 2018 Berkshire annual meeting, Munger answered a question about political polarization this way: “There’s a tendency to think that our present politicians are much worse than we had in the past. But we tend to forget how awful our politicians were in the past.”
Write to Liz Moyer at [email protected] and Janet H. Cho at [email protected]
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