Charlie Munger
Charlie Munger
Charles Thomas Mungeris an American businessman, lawyer, investor, and philanthropist. He is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett; in this capacity, Buffett describes Charlie Munger as “my partner." Munger served as chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 through 2011. He is also the chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, based in Los Angeles, California, and a director of Costco Wholesale Corporation...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth1 January 1924
CountryUnited States of America
I regard it as very unfair, but capitalism without failure is like religion without hell.
Capitalism is a pretty brutal place.
I call myself the assistant cult leader.
At Berkshire Hathaway we do not like to compete against Chinese manufacturers.
As I continued through Cicero's pages, I found much more material celebrating my way of life ...
Cicero's words also increased my personal satisfaction by supporting my long-standing rejection of a conventional point of view.
When I run into a paradox I think either I'm a total horse's ass to have gotten to this point, or I'm fruitfully near the edge of my discipline. It adds excitement to life to wonder which it is.
Part of [having uncommon sense] is being able to tune out folly, as opposed to recognizing wisdom. If you bat away many things, you don't clutter yourself.
Black-Scholes works for short-term options, but if it's a long-term option and you think you know something [about the underlying asset], it's insane to use Black-Scholes.
Black-Scholes is a know-nothing system. If you know nothing about value - only price - then Black-Scholes is a pretty good guess at what a 90-day option might be worth. But the minute you get into longer periods of time, it's crazy to get into Black-Scholes. For example, at Costco we issued stock options with strike prices of $30 and $60, and Black-Scholes valued the $60 ones higher. This is insane.
Financial institutions make us nervous when they're trying to do well.
Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one's mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers (many have minds made of cabbage) but it can also happen with political ideology. When you're young it's easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you're a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you're doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you're gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It's a big danger.
Of course the self-serving bias is something you want to get out of yourself. Thinking that what's good for you is good for the wider civilization and rationalizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on this subconscious tendency to serve one's self is a terribly inaccurate way to think.
Of course you want to drive that out of yourself because you want to be wise, not foolish. You also have to allow for the self-serving bias of everybody else because most people are not going to remove it all that successfully, the human condition being what it is. If you don't allow for self-serving bias in your conduct, again you're a fool.