Money and Finance
- The Question Warren Buffett Used To Ask Every Ceo...
From Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor: Munger is a believer in the investment approaches and ideas of Philip Fisher. Fisher was a successful investor based in California who wrote an influential book entitled Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits,...
- Finding The Balance Between Curiosity And Focus...
From Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor: "Curiosity can provide both fun and wisdom, and occasionally trouble." —CHARLIE MUNGER, POOR CHARLIE’S ALMANACK, 2005 Curiosity about life and restraint about difficult decisions are part of Munger’s...
- Learning From Mistakes...
From Tren Griffin in his book Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor: Buffett has said that if you cannot explain why you failed after you have made a mistake, the business was too complex for you. In other words, Munger and Buffett like to understand...
- Berkshire's No. 2 Man Helps From The Background
Buffett's No. 2 man Charlie Munger plays his role at Berkshire mostly in private The two men who run Berkshire Hathaway Inc. have an arrangement: Warren Buffett is the face of the company and Charlie Munger stays mainly in the shadows. That works...
- Interview With Peter Bevelin, Author Of Seeking Wisdom - From Darwin To Munger
Being such a big fan of Peter Bevelin's book, Seeking Wisdom - from Darwin to Munger, and the Charlie Munger approach to learning, I felt quite lucky when Mr. Bevelin agreed to answer a few questions. If you haven't yet read his book or Poor Charlie's...
Money and Finance
It’s a matter of reading and asking questions
A QUESTION Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are often asked is: how do you learn to be a great investor?
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“First of all,” says Charlie Munger, “you have to understand your own nature. Each person has to play the game given his own marginal utility considerations and in a way that takes into account his own psychology. If losses are going to make you miserable — and some losses are inevitable — you might be wise to utilise a very conservative pattern of investment and saving all your life. So you have to adapt your strategy to your own nature and your own talents. I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all investment strategy that I can give you."
“First of all,” says Charlie Munger, “you have to understand your own nature. Each person has to play the game given his own marginal utility considerations and in a way that takes into account his own psychology. If losses are going to make you miserable — and some losses are inevitable — you might be wise to utilise a very conservative pattern of investment and saving all your life. So you have to adapt your strategy to your own nature and your own talents. I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all investment strategy that I can give you."
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“Next”, says Munger, “you have to gather information. I think both Warren and I learn more from the great business magazines than we do anywhere else. It’s such an easy, shorthand way of getting a vast variety of business experience just to rifle through issue after issue covering a great variety of businesses. And if you get into the mental habit of relating what you’re reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom about investing. I don’t think you can get to be a really good broad-range investor without doing a massive amount of reading. I don’t think any one book will do it for you."
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Nor should reading be random: “… you have to have some idea of why you’re looking for the information. Don’t read annual reports the way Francis Bacon said you do science — which, by the way, is not the way to do science — where you just collect endless data and then only later do you try to make sense of it. You have to start with some ideas about reality. And then you have to look to see whether what you’re seeing fits in with proven basic concepts.
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“Frequently, you’ll look at a business having fabulous results. And the question is, ‘How long can this continue?’ Well, there’s only one way I know to answer that. And that’s to think about why the results are occurring now — and then to figure out what could cause those results to stop occurring."
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“On the other hand,” says Charlie, “if it weren’t a little difficult, everybody would be rich."
- The Question Warren Buffett Used To Ask Every Ceo...
From Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor: Munger is a believer in the investment approaches and ideas of Philip Fisher. Fisher was a successful investor based in California who wrote an influential book entitled Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits,...
- Finding The Balance Between Curiosity And Focus...
From Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor: "Curiosity can provide both fun and wisdom, and occasionally trouble." —CHARLIE MUNGER, POOR CHARLIE’S ALMANACK, 2005 Curiosity about life and restraint about difficult decisions are part of Munger’s...
- Learning From Mistakes...
From Tren Griffin in his book Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor: Buffett has said that if you cannot explain why you failed after you have made a mistake, the business was too complex for you. In other words, Munger and Buffett like to understand...
- Berkshire's No. 2 Man Helps From The Background
Buffett's No. 2 man Charlie Munger plays his role at Berkshire mostly in private The two men who run Berkshire Hathaway Inc. have an arrangement: Warren Buffett is the face of the company and Charlie Munger stays mainly in the shadows. That works...
- Interview With Peter Bevelin, Author Of Seeking Wisdom - From Darwin To Munger
Being such a big fan of Peter Bevelin's book, Seeking Wisdom - from Darwin to Munger, and the Charlie Munger approach to learning, I felt quite lucky when Mr. Bevelin agreed to answer a few questions. If you haven't yet read his book or Poor Charlie's...