저자: CharlieMunger · 외국인
요약 보기
뮤거는 투자 능력을 특정 요인 하나로 예측하기 어렵다고 말하며, 다수 요인의 상호보완성과 판단의 불확실성을 강조한다. 솔로몬 CEO 선임 사례처럼 완벽한 공식은 없다고 인정한다. 투자의 본질은 자산이 미래에 창출할 현금흐름의 할인가치이며, 타인이 나중에 지불할 가격에 의존하는 것은 투기라고 구분한다. 시즈캔디 매입과 과거 리츠 투자도 현금흐름 기준으로 설명한다. 금리 등 경제 상관관계 분석은 신뢰하지 않는다고 밝힌다.
다듬은 글
When multiple factors are causing success, you get these anomalies. You could have two people who are going to be equally successful and one is terribly good at A and terrible at Z and the other is terribly good at Z and is very good at Z and terrible at A. They're equal. Which factor is most important?
The answer, it doesn't matter in that case. When you got multiple factors, great strength in one will compensate some for weakness in another. And the factors can be quite different. I think the investment world is full of people who are succeeding uh based on quite different sorts of talent. If you had to predict who would be the superior investors from a group of young bright people who share your investment philosophy and possess the realism and discipline you referred to earlier, which characteristics or work habits would you like to know about the individuals in the group?
And what waiting would you place on each factor to ensure the greatest probability of your prediction being correct? Well, that's too easy a question for me. So, I'll let Charlie answer that. I think the fair answer to that one is that I'm not capable of answering it. No, but I do think I think this I I I think that's exactly right.
I mean if you ask me what should how should you pick a wife you know 18% to humor 12% to looks you know 17% you know to parents I I can't give you the formula but I think you'll make the right decision you know when you get and I think if Charlie and I were around a dozen very bright MBAs with good records and all of that and we spent some time with them uh I think we'd have reasonable chance of picking somebody from that group that might not necessarily be number one, but they they they they would be in the upper quartortile in terms of how they actually turned out.
And I but I can't tell you I I can't tell you how to, you know, I can't I can't write out a a software program or anything that will enable you to do that. It it you know I had that I had that problem exactly at Solomon when on that Saturday morning whatever it was August 17th and I had to pick a guy to run the place and there were a dozen or so people that all thought that they were the ones or a number of them thought they were the ones to run it and they all had they all had high IQs and they all had lots of experience in investment banking and everything and I you know in the end I had to pick one and I I I did pick the right one I will say that and you know was I could I be 100% sure at that time was the right one?
Well, probably not. But I felt pretty sure I I had the right one. And I I can't tell you. I've had people say to me, "Well, what did you ask them and how did you evaluate it all?" Because I only had about three hours to do it. And I don't know. I mean, I can't write you out a uh a set of questions that you should ask somebody.
And you know, some of it may be body language and different things of that sort. it. There are a lot of variables in it, but I think in the end, you would have picked the same person I picked. If you if you if you'd been in that spot, you'd had to pick somebody in the in the in the three hours. And it but quantifying it for you, I just I I can't do it.
I'm very ler of economic correlations. I mean, I I spent years fooling around with that sort of thing. And I mean, I I I correlated stock prices with everything in the world. And the, you know, the problem was when I found a correlation. I mean, it's uh, you know, you've seen these things on on on whether the AFC or the NFL wins the Super Bowl and all of that sort of you can find something that correlates with something else, but in the end, a business or any economic asset is going to be worth what it produces in the way of cash over its lifetime.
And if if you own a if you own an an oil field, if you own a farm, if you own an apartment house, you know, with the oil field, it's the life of the oil field and what you can get out of it. And maybe you get secondary recovery, maybe you get tertiary recovery, but whatever it may be, it's worth the discounted value of the oil that's going to come out.
And then you have to make them estimate as to volume and as to price. With a farm, you make an estimate as to crop yield and costs and and and crop prices. And the apartment house, you make an estimate as to rentals and operating expenses and how long it'll last and when people will build other new apartment houses that that potential renters in the future will find preferable and so on.
But all investment is is laying out some money now to get more money back in the future. Now there's two ways of looking at the getting the money back. One is from what the asset itself will produce. That's investment. One is from what somebody else will pay you for it later on irrespective of what the asset produces.
And I call that speculation. So if you are looking to the asset itself, you don't care about the quote because the asset is going to produce the money for you. And that's how that's what society as a whole is going to get from investing in that asset. Then there's the other way of looking at it is what somebody will pay you tomorrow for it even if it's valueless and that's speculation and of course society gets nothing out of that eventually but one group profits to at at the expense of another and of course you had that operate in a huge way in the bubble of a of a few years ago.
You had all kinds of things that were going to produce nothing but where you had great amounts of wealth transfer uh in the in the in in in the in the short term as investments, you know, they were a disaster. As means of wealth transfer, they were terrific for certain people and they were for the other people that were on the other side of the wealth transfer, they were disasters.
U we look solely, we don't care whether something's quoted because we're not, we don't buy it with the idea of selling it to somebody. We look at what the business itself will produce. We bought Seas Candy in 1972. The success of that has been because of the cash it's produced subsequently. It's not based on the fact I call up somebody at a brokerage house every day and say, "What's my C's candy stock worth?" And that that is our approach to anything on interest rates.
I'm no good. Uh I bought some REITs a couple of years ago because I thought they were undervalued. Why did I think they were undervalued? Because I thought they could produce 11 or 12% in terms of the assets that those companies had and I thought an 11 or 12% return was attractive. Now the REITs are selling at higher prices and you know they're not as attractive as they were then.
But you just look at every asset class, every business, every farm, every REIT, whatever it may be, and say what is this thing likely to produce over time and that's what it's worth. It may sell at vastly different prices from time to time, but that just means one person is profiting it against another, and that's not our game.
It doesn't make any sense to compensate me uh the way this world has and it wouldn't have happened if I'd been born in Bangladesh or wouldn't happen if I'd been born 200 years ago. You know, somebody another one of those genie stories. Imagine, you know, when I was 24 hours before I was born and there had been some guy with exactly my DNA right next to me who was also going to be born in 24 hours.
and a genie had come to the two of us and said, "We're now going to have a bidding contest and the one that bids the most of their future income gets to be born in the United States and the one that loses in this is born in Bangladesh. And what percent of your future income will you give to be born in the United States?" I'd have gone pretty high in the bidding.
You know, I mean that that would have been an interesting test of how how important I thought my own abilities were compared to the to the soil in which I was going to be planted.
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