Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger

Investor, Businessman

Charlie Munger is a prominent investor and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, known for his insights on rational decision-making and multidisciplinary learning.

Thinking People Investing Long Ideas Years
Born
August 1, 1924
Quotes
517
Rank
#309

Quote collection

Charlie Munger quotes (page 7 of 26)

517 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Charlie Munger Investor, Businessman
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"Over the long term, it's hard for a stock to earn a much better return that the business which underlies it earns. If the business earns six percent on capital over forty years and you hold it for that forty years, you're not going to make much different than a six percent return - even if you originally buy it at a huge discount. Conversely, if a business earns eighteen percent on capital over twenty or thirty years, even if you pay an expensive looking price, you'll end up with one hell of a result."

Years Long Twenties
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"Move only when you have an advantage. It's very basic. You have to understand the odds and have the discipline to bet only when the odds are in your favor."

Moving Odds Discipline
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"Just avoid things like racing trains to the crossing, doing cocaine, etc. Develop good mental habits."

Good Man Racing Etc
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"Even bright people are going to have limited, really valuable insights in a very competitive world when they're fighting against other very bright, hardworking people. And it makes sense to load up on the very few good insights you have instead of pretending to know everything about everything at all times."

Fighting People World
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"One metric catches people. We prefer businesses that drown in cash. An example of a different business is construction equipment. You work hard all year and there is your profit sitting in the yard. We avoid businesses like that. We prefer those that can write us a check at the end of the year."

Writing Hard Work Years
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"It's not given to human beings to have such talent that they can just know everything about everything all the time. But it is given to human beings who work hard at it - who look and sift the world for a mispriced bet - that they can occasionally find one. And the wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time they don't. It's just that simple."

Wise Hard Work Opportunity
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"Part of [having uncommon sense] is being able to tune out folly, as opposed to recognizing wisdom. If you bat away many things, you don't clutter yourself."

Common Sense Bats Tunes
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"We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side."

Change Learning Ideas
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"Bull markets go to people's heads. If you're a duck on a pond, and it's rising due to a downpour, you start going up in the world. But you think it's you, not the pond."

Thinking Ducks People
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"Where you have complexity, by nature you can have fraud and mistakes. You'll have more of that than in a company that shovels sand from a river and sells it. This will always be true of financial companies, including ones run by governments. If you want accurate numbers from financial companies, you're in the wrong world."

Running Mistake Government
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"There must be some wisdom in the folk saying: Its the strong swimmers who drown."

Strong Swimmer Folks
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"We tend to buy things - a lot of things - where we don't know exactly what will happen, but the outcome will be decent."

Outcomes Decent Happens
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"And, partly, I had found that theory-structure was a superpower in helping one get what one wanted. As I had early discovered in school wherein I had excelled without labor, guided by theory, while many others, without mastery of theory failed despite monstrous effort. Better theory I thought had always worked for me and, if now available could make me acquire capital and independence faster and better assist everything I loved."

School Effort Independence
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"If you have competence, you know the edge. It wouldnt be a competence if you didnt know where the boundaries lie. Asking whether youve passed the boundary is a question that almost answers itself."

Lying Asking Answers
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"An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it's more available to you."

Ideas Facts Available
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"What's fascinating . . .is that you could now have a business that might have been selling for $10 billion where the business itself could probably not have borrowed even $100 million. But the owners of that business, because its public, could borrow many billions of dollars on their little pieces of paper- because they had these market valuations. But as a private business, the company itself couldn't borrow even 1/20th of what the individuals could borrow."

Pieces Paper Littles
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"Over the very long term, history shows that the chances of any business surviving in a manner agreeable to a company's owners are slim at best."

Long Slim Chance
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"Most people will see declining returns [due to inflation]. One of the great defenses if you're worried about inflation is not to have a lot of silly needs in your life - you don't need a lot of material goods."

Silly People Needs
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