commissioned salesmen. Anytime you sit there waiting for a deal to come by, you’re in a very dangerous seat.
http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
Opportunity Costs:
If you take the best text in economics by Mankinaw, he says intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs — in other words, it’s your alternatives that matter. That’s how we make all of our decisions. The rest of the world has gone off on some kick — there’s even a cost of equity capital. A perfectly amazing mental malfunction. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
“There is this company in an emerging market that was presented toWarren. His response was, ‘I don’t feel more comfortable buying that than I do of adding to Wells Fargo.’ He was using that as his opportunity cost. No one can tell me why I shouldn’t buy more Wells Fargo.
Warrenis scanning the world trying to get his opportunity cost as high as he can so that his individual decisions are better.”
http://news.morningstar.com/article/article.asp?id=169398
Finding a single investment that will return 20% per year for 40 years tends to happen only in dreamland. In the real world, you uncover an opportunity, and then you compare other opportunities with that. And you only invest in the most attractive opportunities. That’s your opportunity cost. That’s what you learn in freshman economics. The game hasn’t changed at all. That’s why Modern Portfolio Theory is so asinine. http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentary06060104.htm
Opportunitycost is a huge filter in life. If you’ve got two suitors who are really eager to have you and one is way the hell better than the other, you do not have to spend much time with the other. And that’s the way we filter out buying opportunities” http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?PreviewFeed=7799
Overconfidence:
Most people who try it don’t do well at it. But the trouble is that if even 90% are no good, everyone looks around and says, “I’m the 10%.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/wscmtg04notes.doc
“..in the 5th century B. C. Demosthenes noted that: “What a man wishes, he will believe.” And in self-appraisals of prospects and talents it is the norm, as Demosthenes predicted, for people to be ridiculously over-optimistic. For instance, a careful survey in Swedenshowed that 90 percent of automobile drivers considered themselves above average. And people who are successfully selling something, as investment counselors do, make Swedish drivers sound like depressives. Virtually every investment expert’s public assessment is that he is above average, no matter what is the evidence to the contrary.” http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:mgSaxC3O1IoJ:www.philanthropyroundtable.org/magazines/1999/march/munger.html+Berkshire+Hathaway%27s+vice+chairman+shreds+the+conventional+wisdom+on+foundation+investing&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
“[GEICO] got to thinking that, because they were making a lot of money, they knew everything. And they suffered huge losses.
All they had to do was to cut out all the folly and go back to the perfectly wonderful business that was lying there. http://ycombinator.com/munger.html
Panic:
When you have a huge convulsion, like a fire in this auditorium right now, you do get a lot of weird behavior. If you can be wise [during such h times, you’ll profit]. http://www.designs.valueinvestorinsight.com/bonus/bonuscontent/docs/Tilson_2006_BRK_Meeting_Notes.pdf#search=%22Charlie%20munger%20and%20foundation%20and%20croupier%22
Passion:
What matters most: passion or competence that was born in? Berkshireis full of people who have a peculiar passion for their own business. I would argue passion is more important than brain power. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
Patience:
most people are too fretful, they worry to much. Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it’s time http://www.tilsonfunds.com/wscmtg04notes.doc
If you took the top 15 decisions out, we’d have a pretty average record. It wasn’t hyperactivity, but a hell of a lot of patience. You stuck to your principles and when opportunities came along, you pounced on them with vigor. With all that vigor, you only made a decision every two years. We do more deals now, but it happened with a relatively few decisions and staying the course for decades and holding our fire until something came along worth doing. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/wscmtg04notes.doc
“We just keep our heads down and handle the headwinds and tailwinds as best we can, and take the result after a period of years.” http://www.law.harvard.edu/alumni/bulletin/2001/summer/feature_1-1.html
We just throw some decisions into the “too hard” file and go onto others. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg05notes.pdf
We don’t feel some compulsion to swing. We’re perfectly willing to wait for something decent to come along.” “We’re rich in relation to the business that we’re doing. “In certain periods, we have a hell of a time finding places to invest our money. We are in such a period.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
“Patience:
The art of waiting without tiring of waiting.” http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:sVtHPKWG-bwJ:www.wedgecapital.com/documents/WW2Q05.pdf+%22Charlie+Munger%22+%22to+us,+investing+is+the+equivalent+of%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
“It is occasionally possible for a tortoise, content to assimilate proven insights of his best predecessors, to out run hares which seek originality or don’t wish to be left out of some crowd folly which ignores the best work of the past. This hap pens as the tortoise stumbles on some particularly effective way to apply the best previous work, or simply avoids standard calamities. We try more to profit by always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric. It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
People:
“When you have doubts about a person, you can pass,” he said. “There’s enough nice people to interface with.” http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/1996/10/21/newscolumn6.html
“You know the cliché’ that opposites attract? Well, opposites don’t attract. Psychological experiments prove that’s it’s people who are alike that are attracted to each other. Our minds [his and Buffett’s] work in very much the same way.” http://www.metnews.com/opinion/persp-munger.htm
“It’s amazing how few times over the decades we’ve have to remove a person — far less than other companies. It’s not that we’re soft or foolish, it’s that
