The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition
1578645018
Peter D. Kaufman, Ed Wexler, Warren E. Buffett, and Charles T. Munger
Notes
Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of our lifetime…A few major opportunities, clearly recognizable as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind that loves diagnosis involving multiple variables…And then all that is required is a willingness to bet heavily when the odds are extremely favorable, using resources available as a result of prudence and patience in the past.
Especially important examples of these models include:
- redundancy/backup system model from engineering
- compound interest model from mathematics
- breakpoint / tipping-moment / autocatalysis models from physics and chemistry
- modern Darwinian synthesis model from biology
- cognitive misjudgement models from psychology
To identify potential “yes” candidates, Charlie looks for an easy to understand, dominant business franchise that can sustain itself and thrive in all market environments. Understandably, few companies survive this first cut. Many investor favorites such as pharmaceuticals and technology, for example, go straight to the “too tough to understand” basket. Heavily promoted “deals” and IPOs earn immediate “no’s”. Those that do survive this first winnowing are subject to the screens and filters of Charlie’s mental model approach. The process is intense and Darwinian, but also efficient. Charlie detests “placer mining,” the process of sifting through piles of sand for specks of gold. Instead, he applies his “Big Ideas from the Big Disciplines” to find the large, unrecognized nuggets of gold that sometimes lie in plain sight on the ground.
…a man working with his cognitive apparatus has to know its limitations.
A careful technique in assessing the veracity of reported earnings is to compare the purported good news in the annual report with the stark reality of income taxes actually paid. Since managers are seldom as eager to juice reported results to the IRS as they are to shareholders, the “cash income taxes paid” footnote in a corporation’s 10K is often a more accurate and truthful indicator of the company’s real earnings.
…therefore, by custom, and as would be predicted from the psychological force called “reciprocity tendency,” in a really advanced graduate course, the professors always gave an A.
I have what I call an “iron prescription” that helps me keep sane when I drift toward preferring one intense ideology over another. I feel that I’m not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think I’m qualified to speak only when I reach that state.
Four Types of Checklists
Two-Track Analysis
- What are the factors that really govern the interests involved, rationally considered?
- What are the subconscious influences, where the brain at a subconscious level is automatically forming conclusions?
Investing and Decision Making Checklist
- Risk
- Margin of safety
- Avoid questionable characters
- Risk-adjusted compensation
- Inflation / interest rate exposures
- Avoid big mistakes
- Independence
- Objectivity and rationality
- Correctness of your analysis and judgment – not what others think of you.
- Group-think = regression to the mean
- Preparation
- Lifelong self-learner
- Will to prepare
- Mental models
- Why?
- Intellectual Humility
- Circle of competence
- Reconcile disconfirming evidence
- Resist false precision / false certainties
- Never fool yourself – you are the easiest to fool
- Analytical rigor
- Determine value apart from price
- Focus on the obvious, not the esoteric
- Analyze the business, not market, economy, or securities
- Totality of risks and consequences – first, second and third order
- Invert
- Allocation
- Opportunity costs
- Bet heavy on good odds
- Don’t fall in love
- Patience
- Compound interest
- Avoid taxes and fees – dont take unnecessary action
- Alert for luck
- Enjoy the process
- Decisiveness
- Fearful when others are greedy
- Seize opportunity
- Opportunity meets preparation
- Change
- Adapt to the world, it won’t adapt to you
- Kill your darlings
- Recognize reality – even when you don’t like it
- Focus
- Reputation and integrity – built over lifetime, lost in a heartbeat
- Guard against hubris and boredom
- Don’t overlook the obvious while drowning in minutiae
- Exclude the unnecessary or sloppy
- Face your big troubles
Ultra-Simple General Problem-Solving Notions
- Big “no brainer” questions first
- Apply numerical fluency
- Invert
- Apply elementary, multidisciplinary wisdom. Never rely on others.
- Lollapalooza effect
Psychology-Based Tendencies
- Reward and Punishment Superresponse tendency
- Liking/Loving Tendency
- Disliking/Hating Tendency
- Doubt-Avoidance Tendency
- Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency
- Curiosity Tendency
- Kantian Fairness Tendency
- Envy/Jealousy Tendency
- Reciprocation Tendency
- Influence-from-Mere-Association Tendency
- Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial
- Excessive Self-Regard Tendency
- Overoptimism Tendency
- Deprival-Superreaction Tendency
- Social-Proof Tendency
- Contrast-Misreaction Tendency
- Stress-Influence Tendency
- Availability-Misweighing Tendency
- Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency
- Drug-Misinfluence Tendency
- Senescence-Misinfluence Tendency
- Authority-Misinfluence Tendency
- Twaddle Tendency
- Reason-Respecting Tendency
- Lollapalooza Tendency
Cicero
Anthony Trollope
Archimedes
Cato the Elder
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
The Intelligent Investor
Guns, Germs and Steel
The Selfish Gene
Ice Age
Darwin’s Blind Spot
Conversion
Warren Buffet Portfolio
Objective Accounting – Braun
Fiasco
Plato
Ulysses
Deep Simplicity
Samuel Johnson
Paradise Lost
Epictetus
If – Kipling
Winning – Jack Welch
Sam Walton
How to think like Benjamin Graham and Invest like Warren Buffett
The Wealth of Nations
Little Red Hen
Steven Pinker
Demosthenes
Michael Faraday
Elmer Gentry
Captain James Cook
Serpico
Only the Paranoid Survive
Men to Match My Mountains
Hornblower series
B.F. Skinner
Max Planck
Pythagoras
Aristotle
Ten Commandments
Sir Isaac Newton
Richard Thaler
Process and Reality
Vitamin C and the Common Cold
A Philosophical Essay of Probabilities – Laplace
Getting to Yes
Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman
Jared Diamond
Thomas Carlyle
When Genius Failed
Peter Drucker – Flaherty
John Kenneth Galbraith
Capitalism – Galbraith
The Affluent Society
The New Industrial State
Socrates
Sophocles
Microeconomics – Mankiw
David Ricardo
Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
Godel, Escher, Bach
John Maynard Keynes
The Morals of Confucius
Benjamin Franklin
Be Quick – But Don’t Hurry
Pilgrim’s Progress
Judith Rich Harris
Ice Age
Models of My Life
A Matter of Degrees
Andrew Carnegie – Wall
The Third Chimpanzee
Influence
Living Within Limits
Titan
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
Three Scientists and Their Gods
Les Schwab
Men and Rubber