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Warren Buffett's investment strategies have been discussed in many articles and videos. Although Charlie Munger is one of the most successful investors, he is often underestimated. Munger may not be among the top five richest people in the world, but he is an active philanthropist . The funds he donates to universities help develop education.
Bill Gates described Munger as the broadest thinker he had ever met. Watch this video until the end to learn from the master, Charlie Munger, how to improve your investing style and strategies . Looking back on your life experiences, what is the most important piece of advice you would give to everyone here tonight as they look to the future?
Well, there are some obvious tips. They are all ancient. Ben Franklin, here he is. Marriage is like the most important decision you make, not your business career. Uh, it will do more for you , good or bad, than anything else. And Ben Franklin had the best marriage advice ever given. He says, "Keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half- closed after it." Well, it's amazing, like if you just get up every morning, keep working, have some discipline, and keep learning , and it's amazing how it works.
And I don't think it's unreasonable to have ambitions to become the president of the United States, a billionaire, or something like that, because the odds are too great against you. It's much better to aim low. I had no intention of getting rich. I wanted to become independent. I just cheated. And by the way, while you're clapping , some of the trickery was accidental.
There are some, There is a great...You can be very worthy, very intelligent and very disciplined. But there is also a luck factor involved. And the people who achieve good results, who seem extraordinary, are people who have discipline, intelligence, and good virtue, plus tremendous luck. Why should n't the world work like that?
So one should not accept the unusual. Um, a lot of my fraternity mates used to say, "Old George was a duck sitting on a pond, and they raised the stakes." There are many people who are just lucky enough to fall into the right place and rise, and there are many very outstanding people who have many advantages but have one small flaw or one failure and they are mired in suffering their whole lives .
But that's what makes all this diversity interesting. I wondered how one could thrive as a polymath in a world that glorified specialization. Well , that's a good question . I don't think operating across multiple disciplines like I do is a good idea for most people. I think it's fun, that's why I do it.
And I understand this better than most people. And I don't think I'm the best at differential equations. So, for me, that's a great path, but I think the right path for everyone else is to specialize, to become really good at something that society rewards, and to become very effective at it. But even if you do, I think you should spend 10 or 20% of your time trying to understand all the big ideas in all the other disciplines.
Otherwise, I use the same phrase over and over again. Otherwise, you'll be like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking competition . This won't work very well. You have to know the big ideas in all disciplines to be safe if your life is lived outside the cave. Acquiring wisdom was a moral obligation. This is not something you do just to get ahead in life.
Acquiring wisdom is a moral obligation. And as a consequence of this statement, which is very important. This means that you are committed to lifelong learning. And without lifelong learning, you people will not succeed. You won't prepare for real life based on what you already know. You will advance in life because of what you learn after you leave here .
If you take Berkshire Hathaway, which is certainly one of the most respected corporations in the world, and it has arguably the best long-term investment track record in the entire history of civilization. The skill that helped Berkshire survive one decade would not be enough to survive the next decade with such achievements.
If Warren Buffett weren't a learning machine, a continuous learning machine, this record would be absolutely impossible. The same applies to the lower classes of society. I constantly see people rise in life without being the smartest, or sometimes not even the hardest working. But they are learning machines.
They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they woke up. And, boy, does this habit really help, especially when you have a long, er, race ahead of you . As for choosing what to do, I want to let you all know that in my entire life I have never been successful at something I was n't interested in.
So I don't think you'll be successful if what you do all day doesn't interest you. And you need to find something that interests you, because it's too much of human nature to expect you to be very good at something you really don't like. And this is one big problem. And of course, you need to play a game where you have some unusual talents.
You don't want to play if you're 155 cm tall, you don't want to play basketball against a guy who's 240 cm tall. It's just too difficult. So you need to come up with a game where you have an advantage. It should be something that interests you deeply . Coming into business not as business school graduates, but as people who own portfolios of securities, we thought like capitalists because we were always focused on shareholders.
Many people who run businesses think like careerists. And believe me, you have to think like a careerist to some extent if you have a career. But it also helps to look at business strategy issues as if you were the owner. So my advice to you is: if you don't want to be, you'll never get far enough in your career to not see it from an owner's perspective.
That's exactly what General Motors did. They had a bunch of careerists, and the owner would have immediately realized that the situation was hopeless. And they just went through it with a lot of denial , stupidity, and pomposity, and of course they went bankrupt. The most powerful company in the world went bankrupt.
And none of these brilliant leaders thought like an owner. They would understand that it was hopeless. Well, cloning, of course, is very...it's not a double-meaning word when you use it in biological terms. But when you look at it in some other field, cloning is a very interesting idea. You are really removing ideas from one place and moving them to another.
If it's cloning, I do it all the time. Of course , it's helpful for you to look at what other people you consider great investors are doing to find ideas. The problem is that if you pick people at such a late stage in the game as Berkshire Hathaway, you buy into our limitations caused by size. You really need to do this with someone who works in smaller places and finds places with a bigger advantage.
And of course, it's hard to identify people in small businesses. But this is not an idea that wo n't work. If I were you, I would certainly do that. What do you mean? I would like to know what real people do, and I would certainly look at each of them. It would be obvious to me. You actually form a law firm and then practice law for a period of time.
I had no alternative. And then you almost immediately have an army of children. I backed myself into a corner. Yes. So lack of choice is a pretty powerful force. Yes, of course. Yes, of course. So, you practice law , and then you leave the law firm you helped found and go into investing. Well, but help us understand this.
Surprisingly. Actually, it was quite interesting . I probably made about $350,000 in my first 13 years of practicing law. And I had an army of children. And no capital to start with. And when I chose this alternative career, hmm. I had over $300,000 in liquid instruments. So, I had it, and it was 10 years of living expenses.
So, I was not a brave, adventurous, admirable person. I was a cautious little squirrel who collected more nuts than she actually needed and didn't dig very deep into her pile of nuts. And so it wasn't so bold, and I kept one foot in the law firm while I tried my capitalist career. But once the capitalist career took off, I was determined to get that second leg up , because I recognized the potential of legal practice as I saw it then, I didn't expect the boom that came to the big firms.
Uh, I just found it more difficult, and I wanted more independence than I could get as a lawyer. I hated sending other people bills and needing money from richer people. Well, I thought it was unworthy. I wanted my own money. Not because I loved comfort or social prestige. I wanted independence. You said that any year in which you don't destroy one of your most beloved ideas is a year wasted.
Uh, it's well known that you helped Warren transition to quality, which was a difficult transition for him . I would like to know if you could tell me about the most difficult idea you have ever destroyed. Well, I've done so many stupid things. Uh, I ...I'm really busy destroying bad ideas, because they keep coming to me.
Therefore, it is difficult for me to simply single out one from such a multitude. But I actually like it when I destroy a bad idea because I think I'm right...I think it's my duty to destroy old ideas. I know so many people whose main problem in the world is that old ideas are crowding out new, better ideas.
This is an absolutely standard outcome in life. There is an old German folk proverb that describes this. It says: "We grow old too soon and grow wise too late." This is everyone's problem. And the reason we come to our senses too late is because of the stupid ideas we always have, we already have, and which we cannot get rid of.
Well, it's a good thing we have this problem. In marriage, it can be good for the stability of the marriage if we stick to our old ideas. But in most areas, we want to get rid of our old ideas. And this is a good habit. And that gives you a big advantage in the comparison game of life, because other people are very bad at it.
What happens is that when you express ideas, you cram them in. And so you have these ideas, and then you start campaigning, expressing them, and so on . And of course, the person you're really convincing is you, who already has these ideas. You just push them harder and harder. One of the reasons I don't spend a lot of time telling the world what I think about how the Federal Reserve should behave, etc., is because I know I'm just stuffing these ideas into my head when I think I'm telling other people how to run things.
So I think you need to have mental habits, and I don't like it when young people are forced to be convinced about every damn thing or something, and they think they know everything. Some 17-year- old wants to tell the whole world what to do and throw out a bunch of abortions or foreign policy in the Middle East or something.
All he or she does when he or she talks about something they deeply believe in is reinforce the ideas they already have. This is a very stupid idea when you are just starting out and have a lot to learn. Therefore, it is very important to have the habit of getting rid of stupid ideas. And one of the things I do is pat myself on the back every time I get rid of a stupid idea.
And you say, "Well, can you really reinforce your own good behavior?" Yes, you can. When other people don't praise you, you can praise yourself. I have a great praise system. Every time I get rid of a good but much-loved idea, I pat myself on the back, sometimes multiple times. And I recommend this same mental habit to all of you.
The price we pay for the ability to embrace a new idea is simply incredibly high. I consider my background to be absolutely privileged. I'm proud to be an Omaha guy. I sometimes use the old saying: " They took the guy out of Omaha, but they never took Omaha out of the guy." And to have all these old-fashioned values come first, so you can help others when problems arise, uh, sensible, intelligent, a moral obligation to be sensible, more important than anything else, more important than wealth, more important than importance.
Absolute moral obligation. Because none of my intelligent relatives suffered terribly for not advancing. Berkshire, Warren, and you were known as value investors. Isn't that already a core discipline of Berkshire Hathaway , or does it even matter? Well, you have to remember that in our way of thinking, all smart investments are value investments.
Because why buy something that isn't worth as much as you paid for it ? And who wouldn't like to buy something for less than it costs? So, the only difference when people talk about value investing is that you will always be a value investor . There are many ways to find value investments , just as there are many places to fish.
And the first rule of fishing is to fish where the fish are. The first rule of value investing is to find a place to catch value investments where there is plenty of it. And of course, it has become difficult to find easy value investments in the United States because the world is so competitive. And that explains a lot of what you see at Berkshire, where we're buying stocks like Apple that we would n't have bought in the past, when we had more mundane things that served us very well .
So we're just looking in different places, but we're value investors. So some people, when they say value investor, mean someone who emphasizes working capital or something else. That is, they should, you should fish in that particular place. But I think that's all I... I think it's a misuse of language to think that there's a difference between value investing and other good investing.
All good investments are value investments by definition. So these are just different places to catch value investments. And of course, as the world becomes more complex, you have to fish in places you haven't fished before. This is Charlie, I'm Warren. You can tell us apart because, uh, he hears and I see.
That's why we, uh, work so well together. We usually have our own specialization. What is your dream now? He says, "My dream." Well, let's skip the first one. Sometimes, when I'm particularly wishing, I think, "Oh, that he were 90 again." Charlie says all he wants to know is where he's going to die so he never ends up there, you know, and so you...But life has been very good to Charlie and me , so we have no complaints.
You don't want to be like that man who had a funeral and the priest said, " Now it's time for someone to say something nice about the deceased." And no one came out. And no one came out. He said: " Surely someone can tell someone something nice about the deceased." And no one came out. And finally a man came up and said, " Well," he said, " his brother had it worse." Yes.
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