저자: CharlieMunger/WarrenBuffett · 외국인
요약 보기
버핏·멍거가 소수 종목 장기 보유와 기업가치 기반 투자를 강조하며 주식시장은 돈 벌기 가장 편한 곳이라고 주장. EBITDA는 비용을 뺀 이익을 과장하는 넌센스로 비판. 천연가스가 석탄보다 가치 있어 석탄을 먼저 쓰고 가스는 아껴야 한다는 입장. 월마트 멕시코 뇌물 스캔들은 이익 잠재력에 큰 영향이 없다고 평가. 대기업의 직원 비위는 불가피하며 빠른 보고 체계가 중요하다는 관리 관점.
다듬은 글
In general, everything in the Munger family comes down to two or three things. Diversification is something I'm not interested in , except when it happens automatically in a large company like Berkshire. Uh-huh. I was glad the day I got rid of the quote machine , and I like this approach: buy and hold.
It's a great way to live, you deal with the best people, and it's worked out well for all of us. So I don't think it's worth worrying about where Warren puts his investments through Berkshire, because they're relatively small, so...if that's your main concern in life, then you have a very privileged life.
Well, if you keep 98.5% of your money in Berkshire and try to think about what's best for the remaining one and a half percent, you're a little crazy. You have Berkshire to think about, which I assure you I do . When you used the word EBITDA, I thought to myself that I don't even like hearing that word.
There are so many crazy ideas related to EBITDA. This is profit before what is actually included in expenses. Yes, we prefer EBE, meaning profit over everything. That's right. This is just nonsense. I mean, if you compare a business that, say, rents pencils, where everything is depreciated over two years, and a business that uses almost no capital , like See's Candies.
This is just nonsense. But it is beneficial for those who are selling the business. It's like that friend of Charlie's who used to sell fishing flies. Jerry, right? Yes. I'm not selling these baits to fish. What matters is that you make decisions based on what you think the business is worth. And if you make buying and selling decisions based on business valuation, and stick to companies that you have good reason to believe can be valued, you are simply bound to succeed with stocks.
The stock market is the most convenient place to make money in the world because you don't have to do anything. You just sit there while thousands of companies have the same price for both buyer and seller, it changes every day, you have a lot of information about most of them, and you don't have to do anything.
Compare this to any other investment alternative. You can't do that to farms. If you own a farm and your neighbor has a farm next door and you want to buy it, he won't be naming the price every day at which he will buy your farm or sell his to you. But with companies like Berkshire Hathaway or IBM, you can do it.
It's a great game, and the rules are on your side, as long as you don't turn them upside down and start acting like a drunken psychopath instead of being the one who benefits from it. Charlie, what's interesting about this place is that we had a lot more fun once we got rich enough. So we bought businesses and stocks to hold, not to resell.
This is a much more constructive life. So the sooner you can reach our position, the better for you. And you should be very encouraged by the fact that he's only 88 and I'm only 81. Just keep in mind that it might take a little while. Well, I want to report that Warren's views on taxes for the rich have reduced my popularity at one of my country clubs.
If it keeps him from hanging around the country club, I'm all for it . And this is the inconvenience I am willing to endure for the sake of participating in this matter. Yes. Charlie and I don't disagree on things as often as you might think, but we've certainly had our differences over the course of 53 years.
We have never had a fight in all these 53 years. And maybe you can start one fight here if you make an effort. But all this doesn't matter. I mean, about half the country will think one way in November, and the other half will think differently. And if you start choosing your investments, your friends, or your neighbors, trying to get people to agree with you completely, you're going to live a pretty strange life.
I think what's happening now — and I'll use your word — is idiocy. We waste a valuable resource that is needed to create fertilizers, etc., and we conserve a resource that is valuable, but not as much, which is thermal coal. If I ran the United States, I would use up every ounce of coal before I touched a drop of natural gas.
But the generally accepted opinion is just the opposite. I believe that these natural gas reserves that we have just discovered are the most valuable things that we could leave to our descendants. I'm in no hurry to spend it. And gas is worth more than coal, despite the strange price fluctuations we've seen, especially the ratio of natural gas to oil prices.
You can't change—I mean, the installed capacity in electricity generation is so huge that you can't change the percentages significantly, although there has been a shift in recent months where gas generation is feasible and is replacing some of the coal. And of course, in the future you will see a decrease in the share of electricity generated from coal in this country.
But it wo n't be radical, because it simply can't be radical. You simply can't— the megawatts involved are too huge to make any major changes. It will be very interesting to see how this gas- to-oil ratio evolves, because it has changed everyone's thinking, and it has changed in a very short period of time.
I mean, three years ago people wouldn't have said this was possible. Yes. The generally accepted view among economics professors is that if something happens in the free market, it must be good and in the end everything works out for the best. This does not 100% coincide with my view. I think there are exceptions to this idea and I think it's crazy to waste natural gas at these prices.
One of Berkshire's biggest investments in recent years has been Walmart. Has your opinion of this company changed as a result of the Mexican corruption scandal? No, I think they made it look like, if you read the article in the New York Times, and there's always the other side, but it looks like they may have, indeed, made a mistake in the way it was handled, but I don't think it's—and it could very well result in a significant fine, you know, but I don't think it changes the fundamental dynamic.
Walmart operates on a low gross margin, which means low prices, and that works in retail, and a lot of the other things they do work in retail, too. So I don't see—it's a huge distraction from management time, it's expensive and all that , but I don't think Walmart's profit potential in five years will be significantly affected by the outcome of this situation.
Charlie, well , those are interesting questions. I'm not aware of any place where Berkshire is cutting back on this, but we have so many employees that it's entirely possible there could be some miscalculations somewhere. And, uh, when you get as big as Walmart, you're going to have failures from time to time .
I don't think there is anything fundamentally dishonest about Walmart. When you have something as big as Berkshire, you have glitches from time to time. I mean, we have 270,000 people working today , interacting with customers, government officials, suppliers, and many others. I guarantee you that someone is doing something wrong.
In fact, I guarantee that at least, well, probably 20 people are doing something wrong. You can't have a city of 270,000 people and have nothing happen there. And we can talk until we're blue in the face about what people should and shouldn't do , but sometimes people don't get the message the way you present it.
And they, you know, we are many levels removed from the people who work in other departments. And a lot of people just do crazy things. So this, I mean, this is a real concern if you're running a business like this. You don't worry about the fact that someone is doing something wrong, because there will always be someone doing something wrong.
You worry that it's something significant and nothing is being done, and that you act quickly if you learn about something, and you know, we have hotlines, all the means of communication and everything . But that doesn't change the fact that right now someone is doing something wrong at Berkshire, and, uh, if we ever get twice as big, we'll have more people, and we're trying to get across to managers that when they learn something, they need to act immediately and let us know.
We can cope with bad news if we receive it in time. But, uh, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who manages hundreds of thousands of people, because of the problems of those who , you know, sometimes don't even think they're doing anything wrong. I mean, if you get 270,000 people together, maybe even a crowd that size, you're going to find some very strange people in the group .
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