“There are exceptional loyalties and there are old fashion ideas about how you get loyalties, and after all the auditorium is full of people who have co-owned shares with the managers for many decades, and in many cases they co-invested when everyone was young and obscure. Also when you come back to a place like that you are celebrating old loyalties, and of course the basic idea behind so much of Berkshire is the old fashioned idea that the best way to get loyalty is to deserve loyalty.”
Luck
“Well, some of our success we predicted and some of it was fortuitous. [Regardless,] like most human beings, we took a bow. (Laughter)” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/wscmtg05notes.pdf
Management
“I think corporate managers should learn to be better investors because it would make them better managers.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg05notes.pdf
“Understanding how to be a good investor makes you a better business manager and vice versa.” http://www.kiplinger.com/personalfinance/features/archives/2005/11/munger.html
“We don’t train executives, we find them. If a mountain stands up like Everest, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that it’s a high mountain.” http://www.designs.valueinvestorinsight.com/bonus/bonuscontent/docs/Tilson_2006_BRK_Meeting_Notes.pdf#search=%22Charlie%20munger%20and%20foundation%20and%20croupier%22
“Our success has come from the lack of oversight we’ve provided, and our success will continue to be from a lack of oversight. (Laughter) But if you’re going to provide minimal oversight, you have to buy carefully. It’s a different model from GE’s. GE’s works – it’s just very different from ours.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg05notes.pdf
” …management matters…. I do not think it takes a genius to understand that Jack Welch was a more insightful person and a better manager than his peers in other companies….you do get an occasional opportunity to get into a wonderful business that’s being run by a wonderful manager. And, of course, that’s hog heaven day. If you don’t load up when you get those opportunities, it’s a big mistake.” averaged out, betting on the quality of a business is better than betting on the quality of management. In other words, if you have to choose one, bet on the business momentum, not the brilliance of the manager. But, very rarely, you find a manager who’s so good that you’re wise to follow him into what looks like a mediocre business.” http://ycombinator.com/munger.html
“Good businesses can survive a little bad management.” http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2000/foth000907.htm
Management Fees
“All the equity investors, in total, will surely bear a performance disadvantage per annum equal to the total croupiers’ costs they have jointly elected to bear. This is an inescapable fact of life. And it is also inescapable that exactly half of the investors will get a result below the median result after the croupiers’ take, which median result may well be somewhere between unexciting and lousy.” http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:mgSaxC3O1IoJ:www.philanthropyroundtable.org/magazines/1999/march/munger.html+Master%27s+Class:+Berkshire+Hathaway%27s+vice+chairman+shreds+the+conventional+wisdom+on+foundation+investing+-+By+Charles+Munger+(Philanthropy+Magazine+March+1999)&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
“Why would you want to invest with a guy whose thought process says, “If a second layer of fees is good, then let’s add a third layer.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg04notes.doc
“If a foundation, or other investor, wastes 3% of assets per year in unnecessary, nonproductive investment costs in managing a strongly rising stock portfolio, it still feels richer, despite the waste, while the people getting the wasted 3%, “febezzelers” though they are, think they are virtuously earning income. The situation is functioning like undisclosed embezzlement without being self-limited. Indeed, the process can expand for a long while by feeding on itself. And all the while what looks like spending from earned income of the receivers of the wasted 3% is, in substance, spending from a disguised “wealth effect” from rising stock prices. ” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/Mungerwritings2001.pdf#search=%22%20%22charlie%20Munger%22%20Outstanding%20investor%20digest%22
Margin of Safety
“In engineering, people have a big margin of safety. But in the financial world, people don’t give a damn about safety. They let it balloon and balloon and balloon. It’s aided by false accounting. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
Marriage:
What’s the best way to get a good spouse? The best single way is to deserve a good spouse because a good spouse is by definition not nuts.” http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2003/commentary030509wt.htm
Math:
“If you want to understand science, you have to understand math. In business, if you’re enumerate, you’re going to be a klutz. The good thing about business is that you don’t have to know any higher math….” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg04notes.doc
“There is bound to be a regression toward the mean.” http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/1997/07/01/228497/index.htm
Even in pure mathematics they can’t remove all paradox, and the rest of us should also recognize we are going to have to endure a lot of paradox, like it or not. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/Mungerwritings2001.pdf#search=%22%20%22charlie%20Munger%22%20Outstanding%20investor%20digest%22
Without numerical fluency, in the part of life most of us inhabit, you are
like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.” Damn Right! Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Cha lie Munger, Janet Lowe john Wiley &Sons, 2003 http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471446912,descCd-tableOfContents.html and
Mental Models:
“You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies. I can never make it easy by saying, ‘Here are three things.’ You have to derive it yourself to ingrain it in your head for the rest of your life.” http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2002/foth020515.htm
For some odd reason, I had an early and extreme multidisciplinary cast of mind. I couldn’t stand reaching for a small idea in my own discipline when there was a big idea right over the fence in somebody else’s discipline. So I just grabbed in all directions for the big ideas that would really work. Nobody taught me to do that; I was just born with that yen. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/MungerUCSBspeech.pdf
“You must know
