Experience
“If you’re going to be an investor, you’re going to make some investments where you don’t have all the experience you need. But if you keep trying to get a little better over time, you’ll start to make investments that are virtually certain to have a good outcome. The keys are discipline, hard work, and practice. It’s like playing golf — you have to work on it.” http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2002/foth020515.htm
Experts:
“… some important factor doesn’t lose its “share of force” just because some “expert” can better measure other types of force.” 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
Extraordinary Charges
“If it happens every year like clockwork, what’s so extraordinary about it?” http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2001/foth010508.htm
Evil:
“Avoid evil, particularly if they’re attractive members of the opposite sex.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg04notes.doc
Facts
“Tthe first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form…. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life.” http://ycombinator.com/munger.html
“An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it’s more available to you.”
Failure
It’s a good habit to trumpet your failures and be quiet about your successes. http://www.designs.valueinvestorinsight.com/bonus/bonuscontent/docs/Tilson_2006_BRK_Meeting_Notes.pdf#search=%22Charlie%20munger%20and%20foundation%20and%20croupier%22
You don’t want to be like the motion picture exec who had so many people at his funeral, but they were there just make sure he was dead. Or how about the guy who, at his funeral, the priest said, “Won’t anyone stand up and say anything nice for the deceased?” and finally someone said, “Well, his brother was worse.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
Float:
“Growing float at a sizeable rate at low cost is almost impossible — but we intend to do it anyway.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
“I’ve been amazed by the growth and cost of our float. It’s wonderful to generate billions of dollars of float at a cost way below Treasury notes.” http://www.fool.com/boringport/2000/boringport000501.htm
Focus Investing:
“Our investment style has been given a name — focus investing — which implies 10 holdings, not 100 or 400. Focus investing is growing somewhat, but what’s really growing is the unlimited use of consultants to advise on asset allocation, to analyze other consultants, etc. http://www.fool.com/boringport/2000/boringport00051500.htm
Food:
“My idea of a good place to shop is Costco – it has these heavily marbled fillet steaks. The idea of eating some wheat thing and washing it down with carrot juice has never appealed to me.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg04notes.doc
Forecasts:
“People have always had this craving to have someone tell them the future. Long ago, kings would hire people to read sheep guts. There’s always been a market for people who pretend to know the future. Listening to today’s forecasters is just as crazy as when the king hired the guy to look at the sheep guts. It happens over and over and over.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/brkmtg04notes.doc
“It’s human nature to extrapolate the recent past into the future, but it’s terrible that managements go along with this.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
“We have the same problem as everyone else: It’s very hard to predict the future…” http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2002/foth020515.htm
Foreign Currencies:
“In effect about half our spare cash was stashed in currencies other than the dollar. I consider that a non-event. As it happens it¹s been a very profitable non-event.” http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto050720060912107064&page=2
Foreign Investing:
“As for what we like least, we don’t want kleptocracies. We need a rule of law. If people are stealing from the companies, we don’t need that.” http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentary06062914.htm
“We have a problem outside the U.S.because we aren’t well known. The reason we could buy Iscar is because [Iscar was] so smart. We weren’t smart enough to find them; they were smart enough to find us.” http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentary06062914.htm
“I agree with Peter Drucker that the culture and legal systems of the United Statesare especially favorable to shareholder interests, compared to other interests and compared to most other countries. Indeed, there are many other countries where any good going to public shareholders has a very low priority and almost every other constituency stands higher in line. ”http://www.tilsonfunds.com/Mungerwritings2001.pdf#search=%22%20%22charlie%20Munger%22%20Outstanding%20investor%20digest%22
Franchises
“You’ll find many markets where bottlers of Pepsi and Coke both make a lot of money and many others where they destroy most of the profitability of the two franchises. That must get down to the peculiarities of individual adjustment to market capitalism. I think you ’d have to know the people involved to fully understand what was happening. http://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/pdf/page173.pdf
Fraud:
“If we mix only a moderate minority share of turds with the raisins each year, probably no one will recognize what will ultimately become a very large collection of turds.” http://www.bluechipinvestorfund.com/munger.html
“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
