Charlie Munger Passes at 99

[Castanza]

Rest in peace Charlie 

 

https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/charlie-munger-berkshire-hathaway-dead-74d476a8?st=pa3ju0m0ihbnwyz&reflink=article_copyURL_share

[schin]

Sad.  Was looking to see him make his 100th birthday. Legend.

[zippy1]

Rest in peace, Charlie.

[cubsfan]

2 minutes ago, zippy1 said:

Rest in peace, Charlie.

My hero. A great, great human being.

[LC]

Oh wow. Part of me thought he’d never go. Rest in peace, we all owe a lot to him. 

[Parsad]

Feel free to post your best Munger quotes, interviews, barbs, etc on this thread.  Here is one of my favorites from his last Wesco meeting in 2011:

 

https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2011/07/05/berkshires-munger-retires-from-cult/

 

Cheers!

[Luke]

R.i.p Charlie!!!! Cant believe it.

[nwoodman]

Such a formative figure and at the top of his game to the very last.  

 

“We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side”

 

In terms of his framework invert to solve, the courage to blow up your best idea and arguing both sides of an argument were a game changer for me.  Still haven’t mastered it, but at least he made me aware.

[CorpRaider]

Charlie joins the eminent dead.  R.I.P.  He made a huge impact on me.

Edited November 28, 2023 by CorpRaider

[Saluki]

Sad day.  I hoped he would make it an even 100, and hopefully attend the Omaha meeting one last time  

 

I loved his snarky sense of humor. In a book about him, there was a story about him driving a beat up clunker after his divorce drained him of money and he was working his way back from the bottom. His daughter was ashamed to be seem in that car and asked him why he drove such an ugly car.  He said "I'm trying to discourage the gold diggers."

[Luke]

Just now, Saluki said:

Sad day.  I hoped he would make it an even 100, and hopefully attend the Omaha meeting one last time  

 

I loved his snarky sense of humor. In a book about him, there was a story about him driving a beat up clunker after his divorce drained him of money and he was working his way back from the bottom. His daughter was ashamed to be seem in that car and asked him why he drove such an ugly car.  He said "I'm trying to discourage the gold diggers."

Yeah, his humor and take on life, the occasional interviews with him where he just said the blatant truth, not caring what other people think, never been so said about a "celebrity" passing. Rest well!!

[Munger_Disciple]

Very sad day. He was a father figure to me, and I already miss him. 

[Blake Hampton]

Rest in peace Mr. Munger

[DooDiligence]

A sad day. RIP to the GOAT

 

It takes character to sit with all that cash and to do nothing. I didn't get to the top where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.

 

If you keep learning all the time you have a huge advantage.

 

People calculate too much and think too little.

 

A majority of life's errors are caused by forgetting what one is really trying to do.\

 

Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant.

 

It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be intelligent.

 

Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one's mind...when you're young it's easy to drift into royalties and when you announce that you're a loyal member...and you're gradually ruining your mind.

 

People should take away less than they're worth when they are favored by life...I would argue that when you rise high enough in American Business you've got a moral duty to be underpaid

 

No man is fit to hold office who isn't perfectly willing to leave it at any time...

 

We recognized early on that smart people do very dumb things, and we wanted to know why and who, so that we could avoid them.

 

We have three baskets for investing: yes, no, and too tough to understand.

 

Live within your income and save so you can invest. Learn what you need to learn.

 

It's waiting that helps you as an investor and a lot of people just can't stand to wait. If you didn't get the deferred -gratification gene, you've got to work very hard to overcome that.

 

A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.

 

The big money is not in buying or selling, but in the waiting.

 

A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they've got terrible temperaments.

 

We're not interested in taking a substantial chance of taking a lot of very decent people back to 'Go' so we can have one more zero on our net worth.

 

The liabilities are always 100 percent good. It's the assets you have to worry about.

 

Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.

 

Everywhere there is a large commission, there is a high probability of a rip-off.

 

You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best-loved ideas.

 

No wise pilot, no matter how great his talent and experience, fails to use a checklist.

 

If something is too hard, we move on to something else. What could be more simpler than that?

 

The best armor of old age is a well-spent life perfecting it.

 

There is no way you can live an adequate life without making mistakes.

 

Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward.

 

[tooskinneejs]

This Charlie quote is pretty important these days...

 

"Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one’s mind. ... 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." – Charlie Munger, USC Law Commencement Speech, May 2007

[Sweet]

A good principled man.  Sad to see him go.

[glider3834]

RIP Charlie Munger 

 

“The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. That’s one you can easily arrange. And if you have unrealistic expectations, you’re going to be miserable all your life."

 

[Rustycage]

Rip, a true giant

[nafregnum]

“This has been attributed co-Samuel Johnson. He said, in substance, that if an academic maintains in place an ignorance that can be easily removed with a little work, the conduct of the academic amounts to treachery. 'that was his word, "treachery." You can see why I love this stuff. He saves you have a duty if you're an academic to be as little of a klutz as you can possibly be, and, therefore, you have gotta keep grinding out of your system as much removable ignorance as you can remove.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

[nafregnum]

Page 56 in Poor Charlie's Almanack:

 

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.»

-John Kenneth Galbraith

 

Charlie has developed an unusual additional attribute a willingness, even an eagerness, to identify and acknowledge his own mistakes and learn from them. As he once said, "If Berkshire has made a modest progress, a good deal of it is because Warren and I are very good at destroying our own best-loved ideas. Any year that you don't destroy one of your best-loved ideas is probably a wasted year."

 

Charlie likes the analogy of looking at one's ideas and approaches as "tools."

 

"When a better tool (idea or approach) comes along, what could be better than to swap it for your old, less useful tool?

Warren and I routinely do this, but most people, as Galbraith says, forever cling to their old, less useful tools."

[Munger_Disciple]

I love this Charlie quote on focus in life: "When something is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing well."

 

There will never be another one like him. True legend!

[nafregnum]

Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in 2018. “Charlie has given me the ultimate gift that a person can give to somebody else. He’s made me a better person than I would have otherwise been. ... He’s given me a lot of good advice over time. ... I’ve lived a better life because of Charlie.”

 

I've been trying to come up with some way to say how I feel about Charlie.  Warren expressed it right there.  

[Gregmal]

Yea it’s hard to be sad because you know this guy lived life how it should be lived, did it the right way, and got the most out of everything. 99 great years, sharp and seemingly in great health til the end, generous, on his own terms…if only we d all be so lucky. 
 

Will selfishly miss what he brought to this world in terms of wisdom, but this is a life that should be celebrated. 

Edited November 29, 2023 by Gregmal

[ValueArb]

R.I.P. Charlie. My condolences to Warren, I know this must hit him very hard.

[Xerxes]

Rest in Peace.