Money and Finance
- Charlie Munger On What Makes Investment Hard
From Poor Charlie's Almanack:What makes investment hard...is that it's easy to see that some companies have better businesses than others. But the price of the stock goes up so high that, all of a sudden, the question of which stock is the...
- A Few Notes From The Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
I'll put up some of the better transcripts that start to appear over the next few days, but until then, here are a few highlights from the notes that I took during the meeting. These are based on my scribbling and aren't exact quotes, just summaries...
- Book Review: Tren Griffin's "charlie Munger - The Complete Investor"
A key question I had going into reading Tren Griffin's new book "Charlie Munger - The Complete Investor" was - what would the work add to the previous books on Munger? I am happy to report that the book is an excellent addition to the family of Munger...
- Use An Investing Strategy That Any Idiot Can Use
Great recommendation from Harold Pollack that your investing goals should fit on a standard 4x6 index card. Simplicity has a quality all its own. One of my investing mantras is based on an old Peter Lynch quote, invest in businesses that any idiot can...
- Three Wise Men On Quality Income Investing
Charlie Munger is a guy who knows how to get to the point. I came to investing for dividends via value investing. It took me a long time to appreciate what the important differences are. Charlie Munger managed to sum it up in on paragraph: "If you buy...
Money and Finance
Charlie Munger on high quality businesses and management
This is from Munger's speech "A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business". A couple of things that stood out to me reading it this time around, that maybe I didn't pay enough attention to before, were "...if a business earns 18% on capital over 20 or 30 years, even if you pay an expensive looking price, you'll end up with a fine result." and "Occasionally, you'll find a human being who's so talented that he can do things that ordinary skilled mortals can't....These people do come along—and in many cases, they're not all that hard to identify. If they've got a reasonable hand—with the fanaticism and intelligence and so on that these people generally bring to the party—then management can matter much....very rarely, you find a manager who's so good that you're wise to follow him into what looks like a mediocre business." The latter excerpt reminded me of a quote (HERE) from Bill Gates on about how the world's best companies are built by fanatics.
We've really made the money out of high quality businesses. In some cases, we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the big money's been made in the high quality businesses. And most of the other people who've made a lot of money have done so in high quality businesses.
Over the long term, it's hard for a stock to earn a much better return than the business which underlies it earns. If the business earns 6% on capital over 40 years and you hold it for that 40 years, you're not going to make much different than a 6% return—even if you originally buy it at a huge discount. Conversely, if a business earns 18% on capital over 20 or 30 years, even if you pay an expensive looking price, you'll end up with a fine result.
So the trick is getting into better businesses. And that involves all of these advantages of scale that you could consider momentum effects.
How do you get into these great companies? One method is what I'd call the method of finding them small get 'em when they're little. For example, buy Wal-Mart when Sam Walton first goes public and so forth. And a lot of people try to do just that. And it's a very beguiling idea. If I were a young man, I might actually go into it.
But it doesn't work for Berkshire Hathaway anymore because we've got too much money. We can't find anything that fits our size parameter that way. Besides, we're set in our ways. But I regard finding them small as a perfectly intelligent approach for somebody to try with discipline. It's just not something that I've done.
Finding 'em big obviously is very hard because of the competition. So far, Berkshire's managed to do it. But can we continue to do it? What's the next Coca-Cola investment for us? Well, the answer to that is I don't know. I think it gets harder for us all the time....
And ideally and we've done a lot of this—you get into a great business which also has a great manager because management matters. For example, it's made a great difference to General Electric that Jack Welch came in instead of the guy who took over Westinghouse—a very great difference. So management matters, too.
And some of it is predictable. 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. Nor do I think it took tremendous genius to understand that Disney had basic momentums in place which are very powerful and that Eisner and Wells were very unusual managers.
So 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.
Occasionally, you'll find a human being who's so talented that he can do things that ordinary skilled mortals can't. I would argue that Simon Marks—who was second generation in Marks & Spencer of England—was such a man. Patterson was such a man at National Cash Register. And Sam Walton was such a man.
These people do come along—and in many cases, they're not all that hard to identify. If they've got a reasonable hand—with the fanaticism and intelligence and so on that these people generally bring to the party—then management can matter much.
However, 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.
- Charlie Munger On What Makes Investment Hard
From Poor Charlie's Almanack:What makes investment hard...is that it's easy to see that some companies have better businesses than others. But the price of the stock goes up so high that, all of a sudden, the question of which stock is the...
- A Few Notes From The Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
I'll put up some of the better transcripts that start to appear over the next few days, but until then, here are a few highlights from the notes that I took during the meeting. These are based on my scribbling and aren't exact quotes, just summaries...
- Book Review: Tren Griffin's "charlie Munger - The Complete Investor"
A key question I had going into reading Tren Griffin's new book "Charlie Munger - The Complete Investor" was - what would the work add to the previous books on Munger? I am happy to report that the book is an excellent addition to the family of Munger...
- Use An Investing Strategy That Any Idiot Can Use
Great recommendation from Harold Pollack that your investing goals should fit on a standard 4x6 index card. Simplicity has a quality all its own. One of my investing mantras is based on an old Peter Lynch quote, invest in businesses that any idiot can...
- Three Wise Men On Quality Income Investing
Charlie Munger is a guy who knows how to get to the point. I came to investing for dividends via value investing. It took me a long time to appreciate what the important differences are. Charlie Munger managed to sum it up in on paragraph: "If you buy...