Charlie Munger 2016 Daily Journal Meeting – Full Set Of Notes – Take #2

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We posted a full set of notes of Charlie Munger speaking at the Daily Journal Meeting. A Reader was kind enough to send another set of really extensive and well done notes which he took.  Find them below (originally posted  here)

Los Angeles—Charlie Munger hosted the Daily Journal Corporation’s (NASDAQ:DJCO) 2016 annual meeting at the company’s headquarters in Los Angeles, California on February 11, 2016. Detailed notes of the proceedings appear below. These notes fall short of a verbatim transcription. Rather, they represent my best attempt at capturing Mr. Munger’s wisdom as faithfully as allowed by the circumstances.  Errors of transcription are mine.

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Charlie Munger: (Inaudibly addressing the formal business of The Daily Journal for approximately five minutes)

Unidentified Audience Member: Can you please turn the mic up?

Charlie Munger: Is this better? (Audience cheers) Some of you may remember that this same thing happened at a Wesco meeting once. Back to the Daily Journal. Like many newspapers it was once a fine business. Of course the world changed a lot, as it has for other newspapers.

[drizzle]

But some things have gone well, like our stock holdings. We made a lot of money in the foreclosure boom. We had more than 80% of the foreclosure notice business. It was huge prosperity for us and that gave us a lot of money, and we then used that money to buy securities at low prices during the panic. We were aided by that peculiar circumstances, and it offset the deterioration of our newspaper business. Of course, we’ve also entered the software business.

And what’s happened now is that we have more software properties than print properties and those businesses are doing much better. And the business is doing better because our product is way better than that of our main competitor. And there is an endless market for this stuff. District attorneys, courts; it’s hard to imagine anything more certain to flourish.

It’s agony to do business with public bodies and their bureaucracies and agencies, but it’s the agony that keeps many other software companies from coming into the market. If you’re Microsoft you’re into easy money. They did buy one of these businesses once, and it was not a success. The really big boys find it hard, and they tend to stay out. I think our prospects are thus better than our main opposition.

What you have here is a sort of venture capital approach to the software business. We’ve tacked on a software business to a newspaper.

Our stock may be reasonable if you like VC investments, but it’s not right for Ben Graham groupies. I’m not saying it won’t work, but if it does, you don’t deserve it.

(Audience laughs) With that I’ll take questions.

Questioner One: Tell us about one or two opportunities in technology and also give us one or two risks.

Charlie Munger: The one I was most excited about was getting into(inaudible, but could have been Journal Technologies). Crucial milestone. We bought this little nothing software company and now it has 80 or 99 employees. The new business is interesting because it’s in a big market. I think whoever gets entrenched in it will be in a very sticky business.

At least we will have entered a business where we’ll be hard to dislodge. The hurdle is that we want to be most important player in this new niche, which is a big niche. I don’t regard that as going poorly. It’s going well. (Authors note: Journal Technologies is a subsidiary of DJCO and supplies case management software to courts and justice agencies).

Questioner Two: I’m from Stanford. Thanks for donating the Munger building. You’ve said you want to know where you’re going to die, so you never go there. A few years ago Warren Buffet bought IBM, and some people say he walked out of the circle of competence. Can you comment in relation to the first comment?

Charlie Munger: IBM is a lot like us. They have a traditional business that is very sticky, but then the world changed. And of course, in the new world they are not the leader. Up came Oracle and Microsoft. IBM didn’t do too well with the rise of the PC.

But IBM is in a position where they have an old business and a new business. (Inaudible). The automated checklist is a great idea. It was particularly useful for Edison.

But now IBM is a kind of super market and I don’t really have an opinion about it. I’m neither a believer nor disbeliever in the new business. It could happen or it could not happen. I do think the old business is very sticky and will die slowly. On the Berkshire side, we have to play a long game. It may work in a mediocre way, it may work big.

Questioner Three: I want to thank you for sharing your wisdom with all of us. Two questions: What advice do you give to your grandchildren? Second question: do you have a favorite investment story you can share with us?

Charlie Munger: Well, regarding grandchildren I was not able to change my children very much. My situation reminds me of what Clarence Darrow said about the great poem: “I am the master of my fate master of soul. Master of my fate? I can’t even pull an oar!” That’s the way I feel about grandchildren.

(Authors note: Clarence Darrow, a prominent 19th century lawyer was quoting and challengingthe spirit of the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley. Darrow said “Instead of being the captain of his soul, as I have sometimes expressed it, man isn’t even a deck-hand on a rudderless ship! He is just floating around and trying to hang on, and hanging on as long as he can.” Source: http://darrow.law.umn.edu)

Charlie Munger: What was the second question?

Questioner Three: Do you have a favorite investing story?

Charlie Munger: Well, I have many investment stories from my younger days, but not many that I haven’t told before. Al Marshall and I did something in 1962, where we were bidding for some oil rights. I soon realized that under the rules of the rights the only people who would bid for these oil royalties were oil brokers and they were a bunch of bastards. I realized the oil royalties business was populated by shady characters, who could be outmaneuvered easily. The Mungers were getting a $100k a pop for a while. (Authors note: Munger gave much more details regarding this trade / arbitrage but they were not audible)

The trouble with that business, is it didn’t work for very long, and that’s true of most investment stories. The trick is to get one or two or three.

Questioner Four: How does the current investment energy environment compare to the 1980s?

Charlie Munger: We owned Wesco for a long time. They did a lot of transactions. But it was only five or six outcomes that carried most of the freight. Now that is really interesting. To try and do a zillion little things is hard. Try to do a few things well, and it will work out. A few good decisions over a long period of time can lead to great success.

You make your money by the waiting. A fair amount of patience is required. Like when we had all this money flowing in from the foreclosure boom, and we deployed it in a day. It wasn’t luck we had the money on hand.

Questioner Five: Historically Berkshire was built around its insurance model. What other models did you try and pursue?

Charlie Munger: In the early days we thought we had a special advantage in any float business. Now we have enormous float but it’s not that useful. It’s not a tragedy but the float business in Berkshire is large and it’s not getting a great return.

Questioner Six: The Daily Journal is in software. What do you think of the attractiveness of the average software business?

Charlie Munger: Software based businesses are like any other business. Some of them are the dumps, some of them are the best on earth. Good spots and bad spots.

Questioner Six: It seems like Journal Technologies is growing slower than its competitors, but people are paying high multiples for it. Would you ever consider selling Journal Technologies?

Charlie Munger: Well, never say never. We’ve had problems and opportunities. It’s a peculiar part of the software business. We can’t judge it like a normal business or even like a normal growth company. It’s venture capital.  You have a venture capital like business that’s not venture capital.

Those little businesses are not acquisitions of the very best businesses that are going to be foolproof like we do at Berkshire. We are going to make a venture capital like assault on the software business. Don’t judge those things by normal standards.

Questioner Seven: If you were to design CEO compensation for an insurance company or a bank, what would you do?

Charlie Munger: Well both Berkshire and the Daily Journal have our own ways of doing things, and we just try and do whatever makes sense. That’s our system here.

Questioner Eight: What are your expectations for BYD?

Charlie Munger: That too is a venture capital like company. The founder started by borrowing $300K from the Bank of China, and was going into the small batteries business. He succeeded in grabbing a small part of that market. He’s a very remarkable man, doing an insanely ambitious thing. Last month he sold 10,000 electric cars in China, which is more than Tesla sold. Most people have never heard of BYD.

Berkshire doesn’t do this venture capital stuff, and I hope that the Daily Journal works out half as well.

BYD is in a position to benefit from this electrification trend. It’s very helpful when people are dying in the streets of Beijing.

We have electric forklifts in this country. Do you really want carbon dioxide in the warehouse? It’s a very interesting venture capital investment. It was an accident that the Daily Journal is doing a venture. I only wish we came across more BYDs.

Questioner Nine: How do you use the discount rate to calculate intrinsic value?

Charlie Munger:  We don’t use numeric formulas that way. We take into account quality factors. It’s like a bridge hand, you have to think about a lot of things.

There is never going to be a formula. If that worked, every mathematical person would be rich, but that’s not the way it works.

Questioner Nine: But you value a company…

Charlie Munger: Opportunity cost is crucial, and the risk free rate is one factor.

Questioner Nine: Do you use the same rate for different businesses?

Charlie Munger: The answer is no, of course not, different businesses need different rates. They all are viewed in terms of value and weighed against one another. Of course we’re OK paying more for a good business. In the US you can make money out of a lousy business. But it’s a painful way to make money. Sometime we do it by accident, and in that case, it’s like hitting up a relative, and we deal with those the best we can, but we’re not looking for new ones.

Questioner Ten: Mental models question….what are your favorites?

Charlie Munger: Well, we’re always talking about multiple models, and that means I have many. That’s the nature of reality. There’s no way that it can be easy. You are all in the investment business – do you find it easy? Anybody who finds it easy is wrong. You are looking at an illusion. Occasionally you’ll get an easy one, but not very many. Mostly it’s hard. How many people find it hard? (Most of audience raises hands) Intelligent group of people here. We collect them.(Audience laughs)

Questioner 11: You said you try to reduce errors by avoiding auctions. What do you do in your daily life to reduce errors?

Charlie Munger: There are two things Warren and I have done. One is that we spend a lot of time thinking. Our schedules are not that crowded, and we sit around and think constantly. In a way, we look more like academics than businessman. My system has always been to sit quietly for a few hours.

I don’t mind if there are long period where nothing happens. Warren’s the same way. He’s sitting on top of an empire now. Sometimes he clears his schedule for a haircut. His calendar will say “Tuesday: Haircut day”.

All you people are very good at multitasking, and that’s fine if you are the chief nurse at a hospital. Otherwise, multitasking is bad. Juggling three balls at once is not ideal. Luckily, a lot of you are so obscure you’re not that busy (audience laughs).That advice worked for me, and it should work for you. If it didn’t work for me, I didn’t have a backup plan. I was not going to dance lead in the Bolshoi Ballet.

But I do think that the constant search for wisdom and the right reactions can help. Being angry will never serve you. You can apply that to your life. But it’s hard to do. The nature of ordinary results is that they’re ordinary.

Questioner 12: You bought Wells Fargo. Why was that a good investment?

Charlie Munger: Well I’ll take you back to when Berkshire bought Wells. The world was coming apart. Real estate was the source of the chaos. Wells Fargo had a huge exposure. But we knew that the lending officers at Wells Fargo were not normal bank lending officers. They were grownups, and they had a somewhat cynical view, and they were appropriately careful and it was the right way to run a bank.

And we knew they were better, and we knew they wouldn’t lose at much because they chose better and managed better. So we had an informational advantage. We were aware they had that special capacity, so we bought heavily.

Secondly when the Daily Journal bought Wells we again knew that bankers at Wells were more rational than normal. It’s a different kind of superiority and rationality. I don’t think anyone should buy a bank if they don’t have a feel for the bankers. Banking is a business that is a very dangerous place for an investor. Without deep insight, stay away.

Questioner 13: Two powerful mental models are the concept of specialization and taking an interdisciplinary approach. How do you reconcile the two?

Charlie Munger: You can’t say live without synthesis. Synthesis is reality. Of course we need synthesis to understand anything. The question doesn’t make sense. However, the reward system of the world does not favor focusing on synthesis. Extreme specialization is the way to succeed. Most people are way better off specializing than trying to understand the world.

Being good at synthesis is good only for some people, but it’s not great career advice for most people. Most people should get very good at one thing. Even then, synthesis should be your second attack on the world, and it’s also a really good defense. Without synthesis we’d be blind.

Questioner 14: You’ve said that rationality was the most important thing to you. How would you advise us to become more rational?

Charlie Munger: If you start working at it young, it’s a good idea. And it’s a lot of fun. I can hardly think of anything that’s more fun. I’d say you’re on the right track. Not everyone gets to be the Emperor of Japan.

Being rational means you avoid certain things. Try the alternatives. Try jealously, try anger. They don’t work. Yet some people wallow in those feelings, and of course it’s a total disaster.

Self-pity is not going to improve anything. Get self-pity out of your repertoire.

Questioner 15: Increasingly people define success in different ways. Can you weigh in?

Charlie Munger: I think different folks live different ways. One of the things I like about Asian culture is that family is important. It’s a very sound idea. If we ever lost family values, we’d be in trouble.

Questioner 16: The Daily Journal bought property recently. Can you explain the choice to purchase real estate versus deploying that capital elsewhere?

Charlie Munger: We think we’re going to be in Provo, Utah for a long time. We have a lot of employees there, they like their work, and their location. It’s part of the business operations. We have customers that come there. I never see us leaving. We bought it cheaply, we built it cheaply, and it’s a nice piece of property. Our way of getting ahead has nothing to do with real estate investments.

Questioner 17: Do you think a person who can make money in a casino should?

Charlie Munger: Any person can make money running casino. But anyone that makes money running a casino is not moral. I regard it as a very dirty business.

Questioner 18: What has given you the greatest sense of accomplishment? If you could give advice to your younger self, what would it be?

Charlie Munger: Well, my family life has been great. Cicero used to say that one way to be happy in old age was to remember your achievements. Some people say that’s too damn self-centered. I agree with Cicero. It’s OK to look back. What was the other question?

Questioner 18: What advice would you give to a younger version of yourself?

Charlie Munger: My advice is always so trite: good behavior makes your life easier, makes it work better, and is less complicated than lying. And so

I’m very old fashioned. Disciple works, old fashioned good behavior works, generosity works. We all know people who go to a funeral just to make sure someone’s dead. We don’t want to be in that crowd.

Kiplinger’s If is a great poem. Kiplinger’s If is great advice: “Keep your head, be a man my son”. Why don’t you want to be a man? Some people are so angry, there’s much to be gained by never being an angry twit.

This political situation we’re in is such a despicable mess. It’s bad that someone so mad is running for office. And they’re not all in one party. And we’ll be dealing it with a long time. If you want to operate constructively, anger is bad. There’s so much anger in politics, how do any of you think that the United States will be better off 50 years from now if were all this angry?

By the way the Muslim rules are a lot like the Old Testament rules for behavior.

Questioner 19: What do you think of oil prices?

Charlie Munger: Well, basically, sometimes oil prices are high and sometimes they’re low. But some very peculiar things have happened. What’s happened to Exxon and so on, the damn price of oil went up faster than their production went down. Name me another business who’s earnings goes up when production units go down down down?

And there’s another trick. People in the Middle East have free energy, and they are like a bunch of rich people spending capital. My answer reminds me of my old Harvard Law Professor who said “Charlie your problem is you make it harder than it has to be”.

Questioner 20: How do you deal with stress?

Charlie Munger: The answer is that I barely stress. I guess I grew out of it over the years.

Questioner 21: Last year you had some very pointed comments about Valeant. Do you have any updated thoughts or any thoughts on other companies? (Audience laughs)

Charlie Munger: I have no dog in that hunt, I have no interest in pharma, or Valeant. It’s just when you people have come so far….(audience laughs).  Valeant is such an extreme example of extreme behavior that I wanted to call attention to it. One of the Valeant shareholders said Warren is a sinner because he owned Coca-Cola. My comments drew heat on Warren. He can handle it though. He’s a very philosophical man. (audience laughs)

 

It is true that crazy false values and crazy excess is bad morals, and bad for the nation, bad bad bad. A lot of that is in American finance. And there is no question that American finance has its sins.

Elizabeth Warren and I don’t agree on many subjects, but she is basically right about American finance when she says it’s out of control.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are not two of my favorite people, but they are absolutely right on that subject. You all see what goes on. The craziness, the stock promotions, the accounting, the culture. It’s very bad for all us that we have this huge overdevelopment of finance. And yet it’s very hard to do anything about it.

It reminds of me of the English land barons. They had all the land, and what did they do? They sat around and played cards, and they gambled for high stakes and that’s what human nature does. That continued day in and day out. Multiply the capital of the world by 30, and now we have people like the lords of England who had all that time to play cards. We have a vast gambling culture, and people have made it respectable. Instead of betting on horse, they bet on securities and derivatives.

We have a huge amount of legalized gambling of and of course a public market is an ideal casino and there are whole bunch of people who want to be in a casino. Just to sit there and see it every night go higher and higher.  Other very respectable people see others getting rich and there’s way too much of that. Too much of the new wealth either owns a casino or they play in one. And I don’t think the exultation has been good for life in general, and I am, to some extent, a member of that group.

I’m always afraid that I’ll be a terrible example to the youth that want to make money. Even if you do it honestly, I don’t consider it much of a life.

It’s not a great example for other people, and it is the reason that Warren and I take care to run businesses. We’re not just buying pieces of paper. So I think we have something going in our nation that is really very serious and very bad, I hate to agree with Elizabeth Warren but I don’t see a way of stopping it.

As this cycle of gaming in securities continues what happens is the big busts hurt us more than the big booms help us, like in the Great Recession. A lot of people think that Hitler rose because of the inflation in the Weimar Republic, but Germany recovered well from the Weimar. They destroyed the old currency and issued a new one, and that worked pretty well. It worked pretty well in Argentina too.

What really enabled Hitler to rise was the Great Depression. Weimar plus the Depression was so demoralizing that the German people were snookered by a Hitler. I think this is deadly serious.

These crazy booms should be watched. Alan Greenspan didn’t think so. He’s a capable man but he’s an idiot. You should not make him the father of all banking. His hero is Ayn Rank. It’s an unlikely place to look for wisdom .A lot of people think that if an ax murderer goes around killing people in a free market it’s alright because free markets are alright.

A lot of those people are in my party by the way.

Question 22: Berkshire owns some auto companies. What about automobiles are uniquely different today that makes you own them?

Charlie Munger. The second one is easy. Berkshire is in GM because one of our young men likes it. Warren, when he was a young man, got to do whatever he wanted to do, and that’s the way it is. It is true GM may be protected by the federal government in the end, and it may be a good investment in the end, but the industry is as competitive as I’ve ever seen. Everyone can make good cars, they have the same suppliers, and cars last forever. It just has all these commoditized features. So I don’t think the auto industry is the place to be.

The culture of everyone having three or four cars is also shrinking so I think the auto industry is not great. If I were investing I’d want some way to be better than the others, and that’s hard to find.

Question 23: Can you give us more thoughts on oil?

Charlie Munger: I would not have predicted that oil would reach its present price. It’s forced me to look at things. I think it’s generally true that with commodities, there will be periods of extreme prices. I think commodities can do strange things, and of course that has huge consequences. If you’re Australia, this is a disaster. I think it’s the nature of the human condition that you’re are going to have weird periods. Weird periods of high and low prices. I’ve never been able to predict accurately. I don’t make money predicating accurately. We just tend to get into good businesses and stay there.

Question 24: Would you please recommend some books that you’ve enjoyed lately.

Charlie Munger: You people send me books. Thirty a week! I have to skim them so rapidly that I no longer have the joy of reading. You are ruining my love of reading! I’m no longer a good book source.

Question 25: (Inaudible, generally asking about Mr. Munger’s views on the prospects of world peace)

Charlie Munger: I’ve read enough bios. Carnegie thought he was so rich and so smart he could buy world peace. I watched Carnegie try it and I’ve decided if he can’t do it, I can’t. I like science, it’s a modest activity, and it’s easy to do better than others. I don’t think I have any advantage in bringing about world peace. I do what I’m good at and I suggest you do that too.

Question 26: Please give us your views on politics.  Why are people starting to “feel the Bern”?

Charlie Munger: A very good question. Because politics are corrupt perhaps. People like Bernie Sander’s attitude. But people who are really passionate about government action gave us the Soviet Union, and all the death and poverty there. They also gave us Communist China and North Korea. I’m suspicious about all this passion for equality.

If you want to look at what inequality gives us, look at China. Of course when they adopted private property what they got was growth more quickly than anyone had gotten before, but many Chinese fell behind.

I think it’s a good bargain. I don’t think Bernie wants to understand this. He’s said it for thirty years. He’s a Johnny one note. As an intellectual, he’s a disgrace.

I think Bernie’s pretty bad. He’s not worse than some of the Republicans though. They’re crazy in a different way. But differences in outcomes are seen as undeserving.  Who is getting all the underserved money in American now? A lot of the underserved wealth from the financial class is counterproductive. I think it would be nice to fix the obviously underserved wealth. If you take the ordinary investment manager, they take capital gains, and they don’t pay any income tax at all. It’s not very complicated to understand.

I think by and large inequality is a natural outcome of a natural civilization that’s good for everyone. And all of this stuff about the wealth of the 1%, what the hell does he do with it? He has to leave it somebody. He’s not really using the wealth much, and most of these guys (inaudible).

If you are rich, you realize how little influence the rich really have. Lots of rich people get practically nowhere. I think these people that are raging about it are wrong, but I think the undeserved wealth does deserve some attention. On that, I think they’re right, and a huge amount of the undeserved wealth is in finance.

Question 27: I’m pretty excited about self-driving cars, but as a Berkshire shareholder I’m worried about the prospect for the auto insurance business.

Charlie Munger: It will be bad for GEICO if cars don’t have drivers. But I think it will be quite slow. I think the auto industry, even if we don’t get self-driving cars, that the driving culture may be waning. Not so much in the third world, but in places like America.

Questioner 28: Thanks for being a great teacher. Someone asked you about books, and I sent you two, and a letter. If maybe you could publish a book list, we could keep learning?

Charlie Munger: I don’t want to be a book recommender. It would be quite time consuming.

Questioner 29: What is your view on unicorn companies on Uber, Palantir, AirBnB, Can they ever go public?

Charlie Munger: I have a circle of competence, and it doesn’t include which companies in Silicon Valley are going to succeed, so I tend to avoid the subject entirely. And it’s the same way with others.

But I will comment on one thing. The venture capital industry is a more honorable than some other areas of finance. VC is a useful member of society. But they don’t escape sin. They sneak a clause in contracts where anyone that’s new to a company is preferred. It’s a disgusting, dishonest thing to do, and worse because it’s obscured. So even in our most reputable parts of finance, there are dirty sleazy activities sneaking in. Large amounts of money make people behave badly. That’s Munger’s rule.

Questioner 30: Do you think fundamental value is losing relevance?

Charlie Munger: I don’t think fundamental value will ever lose relevance. You have to be buy things for less than they’re worth. It’s like arithmetic, it will always be with us.

High frequency trading is a complicated subject. Many such traders are admirable personally, but they are rats in the granary. They suck the resources out of civilization and contribute nothing.

Questioner 31: You mentioned that you haven’t changed your children much. Do you have an approach for quality time with family?

Charlie Munger: I don’t think I want to make myself a wonderful example of a family. We all have to live with our imperfections.

Questioner 32: Can you name a feel people you admire? Perhaps a favorite coach?

Charlie Munger: I don’t know anything about coaches. I’m better about ballet.

Questioner 32: Can you name a few people you admire?

Charlie Munger: There are lots of historical people I admire. That’s the advantage of being a reader. You can consort with the best people of all time and that’s what I do. I admire a lot of people. The best surgeons, actors who are the best actors… there are a lot of people who are instructive and generous and they build the world for the rest of us. There are lots of good examples on the Costco board.

Dan Evans, the former Senator, was an admirable politician. There are all these crazy people on the right and left, but when you find a Dan Evans, wow. There will always be admirable people. My god, that’s what we all want to be.

We all want to be admirable. You want to be the kind of person that other people name in their wills to raise their children. If people are doing that, you’re doing something right.

Questioner 33: How should we go about seeking wisdom?

Charlie Munger: If you do enough reading and thinking you don’t have to do much else.

Questioner 34: Can you speak to your relationship with fear and whether you’ve conquered it?

Charlie Munger: Generally I’ve avoided circumstances that cause fear. I mean if you want to go hang gliding, by all means.

My son Phillip is in the audience. He used to say, “if at first you don’t succeed, well so much for hang gliding” (audience laughs). I don’t seek out fear for thrills. Generally I’m not a lover of danger. That’s not my thing. I don’t think I’ve felt much fear for a long time. I’ve just lived a long time. I had fears when I was younger, but they gradually melted away.

Alright, one more question. One last question.

Questioner 35: My question is about Coke. But first I want to tell you quick story. My 17 years old son had his friends over, and we bought all the right refreshments including two bottles of Coke. At the end of the party, there was hardly any Coke consumed by these young men, and it gave me pause. Sweet beverages are on the decline. Does Berkshire’s investment gives Coke’s management cover to not address the future of the beverage business?

Charlie Munger: Easy one: Coke for many decades has been a basic product full of sugar, and it grew every year. Full sugar coke is now declining. Fortunately, the Coca-Cola Company has a vast infrastructure. Coca-Cola is declining some, but the rest of the businesses are rising. I think Coke is a strong company, and will do very well. It’s still like shooting fish in a barrel.

(Audience Applauds)

Authors Note: Following Mr. Mungers formal remarks and Q&A session, he lingered on stage to take pictures with attendees. This author was able to ask him a final question while having my photo taken with him.

Jesse Koltes: If you were starting a hedge fund right now with a much smaller amount of money would you still care as much about quality?

Charlie Munger: I’d always care about quality. But if I was running a smaller fund, I wouldn’t have to choose been Exxon and IBM. There would be a lot more interesting places to look.

Charlie Picture

Authors Notes: Please mail corrections to [email protected].

Spotted at the event: Mohnish Pabrai, Whitney Tilson, and lots of Stanford MBAs.

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