Poor charlies almanack pdf free download

Bur more ofrcn we've made extra "Trickery and rreachery are the money our of morality. Ben Franklin was right for us. On occasion, Charlie will pose a challenging question to his audience, or receive one, and leave it unanswered.

By so doing, he says, he encourages his listeners co "reach" for the ans,. Charlie says his father routinely used this same technique with him, with resu lts that still benefit him today. In keeping with the promise of this book to present the wit and wisdom of Charlie Munger, we consider it a responsibility and duty to once and for all provide ans'vvers to some of the riddles and questions Charlie has long left us "reaching" for, but never quite grasping.

Question: "You cite the Warren Buffett rule for outcry auctions: 'Don't go. Answer: "Zcckhauscr-hc's the Harvard professor who is also a great bridge player. The problem, a different one, with closed bid auctions is that they are frequently won by people making a technical mistake, as in the case of Shell paying double for Belridge Oil. You can't pay double the losing bid at an open outcry auction. You don't have that problem, you have different ones.

But closed bid auctions invite a possibility for big mispricing errors. Look for more "I H ave N othing to Add" moments sprinkled throughout the book. W undoubtedly the greatest investment duo ever, so any investor who fails to learn as much as possible about these two men and how they achieved their success is, to use one of "It is a good thing for an uneducated Charlie's favorite words, "bonkers. But Charlie is n10re private: There are on ly two books about him, and he is a far less prolific writer and speaker.

For this reason, many people fail to recognize that Charlie is a genius in his own right, and that he has had a profound effect on Warren's investment philosorhy, which Warren freely acknowledges. The dynamic between them is pretty funny to watch. On stage at the Berkshire annua l meeting, Warren genera ll y takes the first stab at answering a question, but then usually turns and says, ''Charlie?

In fact, at the special meeting for the Gen Reacquisition in Septen1ber , Warren acwa ll y showed ur with a cardboard cutout of Charlie and a recording of Charlie saying, "I havc nothing to add. Drawn from my notes frotTI the Berkshire. This happe ns as the rorro ise stumbles on some particularly effective wav to apply the best previous work, or simply avoids standard calamities.

We won't do rhem. Currently, there's a culwrc in America rhar says rhar anyt hing th at won't send yo u to prison is okay. I don't thin k you shou ld come anywhere ncar that line. It helps us make more moneY. Bu r nwrc often, we've made extra money from doing the right thing. Remember Louis Vincenti's rule: Tell the truth, and you won't have to remember your lies. It's such a simple concept. Berkshire's portfolio. Capably run by Rich Sanwlli-inventor of fractional ownership-the company continues ro The businesses that Berkshire has acquired will return thirteen percent pretax expand internationally, as evidenced by on what we paid for them, maybe more.

That's the reason Berkshire shareholders needn't totally despair. Berkshire is not as good as it was in terms of percentage compounding [going forward], but it's sti ll a hell of a business. I hate to be an optimist, but we have really added a lot of wonderful businesses to Berkshire over the past few years.

Berkshire's Past Returns Berkshire's past record has been almost ridiculous. That would be mature and responsible. I like our model, and we shou ld do nicely. Buffert on the Srock. Berkshire Hathaway's value will be higher in twenty years, but it is certain that the annual rate ofpercentage growth will be much lower. All large aggregations of capita l anything; few ever accomplish it. Then eventually find it he ll on earth to grow and thus find a lower rate of return.

And rew Carnegie rose from pen niless im migrant to become Berkshire Hathaway's Culture the wealthiest man on earth. Can created schoo ls, a peace e ndowment, you imagine Carnegie hiring consultants?! It's amazing how well this approach still New York's Carnegie Hall, and 2, free public libraries. He also paid for works. A lot of the businesses we buy are k ind of cranky and old-fashioned like us.

His vision was to create For many of our shareho lders, our stock is all they own, and 'vve're acutely aware "an ideal state in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the of that. Our culture [of conservatism] runs pretty deep. We haven't pushed it as hard as other people would haYc pushed it. T'm happy having ninety percent of my ncr worth in Berkshire srock. If we ca n't do this, then that's j ust too damn bad. I don't want to go back to Go. I've been to Go. A lot ofour shareholders have a majority of their net worth in Berkshire, and they don't want to go back to Go either.

The game was created by Charles B. I think our reporting. Ours work bccau The genera l assum ption is that it must be easy to sit behind a desk and peop le will bring in one good opportunity after another-this was the attitude in vemure capital until a few years ago. It's fair to say that we were rooting arou nd. There were no commissioned salesmen. Anytime you sit the re waiting for a deal to come by, you're in a very dangerous scat.

In almost all cases, they've Sta cd on, and our " I was a good investor myself, but I couldn't do what Warren and Charlie expectations have not been disappointed. The best investing decision I What matters most: passion or competence that was inborn? I simply recogniz. And included in that realit recognition i It wou ld help current shareho lders ro hear our C EOs [of the Berkshire opera ting subsidiaries], but we promised them they could spend one hundred " If you ever want to sell your company, percent of their time on their businesses.

All they want yo u to do is go out and run your don't have to spend twenty-five percent of their time on activities they don't like. I don't feel Synergies like I sold flightSafety; I just traded my FlightSafety stock certificate for a 'l'he reason we avoid the word "synergy" is because people genera ll y claim Berkshire certificate.

Yes, it ex ists, but there arc so many false -AI Ueltschi, prom ises. Be rkshire is full of synergies-we don't avoid synergies, just claims of founder and chairman, FlightSafety International. Making the Right Personnel Decisions It's amazing how few times over the decades we've had to remove a person-far less than other compan ies. It's not that we're soft or foolish, it's that we're wise r and luckier.

Most people wou ld look back and say their worst mistake was not firing someon e soon enough. We're old- fashioned. Paul 's been running the business since he was in law school and loves it. There's such a huge time lag between when the policy is written anu when it is paid that the customer has to evaluate the insurer's future will ingness and ability to pay. I do think we get some advantage in reinsurance because people trust our willingness and ability tO pay, so it's not a commodity.

That being said, I think it's dangerous to rely on special talents- it's better to own lots of monopolistic businesses with unregu lated prices. But that's nor the. We have mauc money exercising our talents and will contin11e ro do so. I'm glad we have insurance, though it's not a no-braincr, I'm warning you. The overall result is that we're going to do preny well- meaning in the top ten Ajit Jain heads the arionallndemnity reinsu rance business of Berkshire percent [of the inclustrv]-because we do different things and we're willing to do Hathaway.

Widely considered to have some unpleasant things. Aoat for redeployment by Warren and Charlie. Growing float at a sizeable rate at low cost Warren regularly remi nds shareholders of Ajit's contributions to t heir company, as in this tribute in the I Annual is almost impossible-but we intend to do Repon:. It's impossible to overstate his I've been amazed by the growth and cost of our float. It's wonderful to generate value to Berkshire.

I , ttmpy results and being willing to write less insurance business if market conditions are unfavorable This is IIO L a sr nall advamage. A lot about Berkshire is like this. Being controlling owners is key- it wou ld be hard for a committee to make these kinds of decisions. B erkshire H athaway Repurchasing Shares In the past, when Berkshire has gotten cheap, we've found ocher even cheaper stocks to buy.

It's no fun ro have the company so lacking in repute that we can make money for some shareholders by buying out ochers. Splitting Be rkshire Stock to Create More Liquidity I think the notion that liquidity of tradab le comrnon scock is a great contributor to capitalism is mostly twaddle. The liquidity gives us these crazy booms, so it has as many problems as virwes.

But we're trying to c reate more people w ho have the problem of owning stock worth so much that li quidity is an issue. It's a good q uestion. Our approach has worked for us. L ook at the fun we, our managers, and our shareh olders arc having. It's not difficult, but it looks difficult beca use it's unconventional-i t isn't the way things are normall y done.

Tt's simple and common sense. Robert H agstrom's book, recommended by both Munger and Buffett, clearly lays out Berkshire Hathaway's successful approach for all to follow. The Maytag Repairman. Starting in , actor Jesse White portrayed the appliance repairman who, because of the great reliability of Maytag products, becomes the "loneliest man in town. In , Jump retired, and a former Mr. Goodwren ch, Hardy Rawls, took over the role.

Charlie's Influence on Warren I think those authors give me more cred it than I deserve. He here, at age 80, is ro make Warren look young. But we -Charlie at Berkshire Hathaway know more now than five years ago. What Happens When Buffett's Gone? The key is having good businesses. There's a lot of momentum here. If the stock went down, Berkshire cou ld buy it back. Therc's no reason to think it will go to hell in a bucket, and I think there's reason to believe it could go on quite wel l.

And the acquisition side wi ll do just fine. You shou ld be so lucky. What If C harlie Dies? As you can tell, we ' re planning on immortality here. What do you need-sining on a pile of money and Warren Buffett sitt ing at the parent corporation? If you ask Charlie something and he says "no," then we pur all of our "Warren is remarkably easy to work wid1-rhe best I've ever encountered. It money in it. He has a remarkable ability ro look ar the same ser of heard," then figures rhar everyone else is looking we make a at and come up with original insights and perspectives.

He docs this al l rhe more moderate time-comes up with great ideas d1ar investment. If seem so simple after you hear them, bur don't occur tO anyone else. Chuck Rickershauser, former Munger Tolles partner and friend since " W arren cold men storv one ; that, b;tck in the. The Abominable No-Man Th. All righrs resened. George GiiJespie, longtime friend:. You need a lot of curiosity for extremely considerate of his friends. To me, he is a man for aU seasons. Th at cast of "Charlie has a great store of practical wisdom.

For me, his most apt aphorism comes along, when one doesn't come along very is that 'a thing not worth doing is not wo rth doing well. Opportunity comes to the prepared 1nind. You ca n 't do it. Waiting for a Fat Pitch. Harmon Killebrew b. I' ve been waiting for this craziness to end for decades. It's been dented, but and Kansas Cicy Royals over his t:wency-rwo- year career. Famous for his abilicy tO put liu it's sti ll om there. Ar Warren once said rome, ''I'm probably misjudging academ ia genera lly [in the time of l1is election to the Hall of Fame in , he ranked fifth on the all-time think ing so poorly of it] because the people that interact with me have bonkers home run list and was second only to Babe theories.

We don 't believe that widespread d iversification wi ll yield a good result. It wasn't hyperactivity, but a hell of a lor of patience. You stuck ro your princ iples, and when opporwn ities came along, you pounced on them with vigor. Be rkshire in irs history has made money betting on sure things. Sit-on-Your-Ass Investing If you buy something because it's undervalued, then you have ro think about selli ng it when it approaches your ca lculation of its intrinsic value.

Th at's hard. That's a good thing. Take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. The second earns twelve percent, but all the excess cash must be reinvested- there's never any cash. It reminds me of rhe guy who sel ls construction equipment-he looks at his used machines, taken in as customers bought new ones, and says, "There's all of my profit, rusting in my yard.

You arc underest imating quality. An image of his w the crit icism and changed our mind. This is a good lesson for anYone: the ability mother, Mary See, also became the ro rake criticism constructivel y and learn from it. In , in a transaction initiated by Robert T. Today, See's Candies are sold in more than rwo hundred shops and in certain foreign locations, such as Hong Kong and Tokyo. We saw it, but didn't act on it. And we keep doing it.

We never get over ir. There are two types of mistakes: 1 doing nothing, what lrarren calls sucking my thumb" and 2 buying with an eyedropper things we should be buying a lot of After nearly m.

We arc apparently slow learners. These opportunity costs don't show up on financial statements but have cost us many bi llions. Since m istakes of omission [aren't visible], most people don't pay attention to them. Buying into Stock Declines Over many decades, our usual practice is that if [the stock of] something we like goes down, we buy mo re and more.

Sometimes something happens, you realize you're wrong, and you get our. H ave a prepared mind. Back then, we had just come out of a depression. Capitalism was a bad word. There had been abuses in Seated Old Mmz was painted by Pablo. A joke going Picasso at the age of ninety, just two years prior to his death. The painting is currently displayed at Musee around then was the guy Picasso, Paris. In , Picasso said, "Everything can be who said, '1 bought stock explained scientifically today, except Art.

You can go to the moon or walk under for my old age and it the sea, or anything else you like, but painting remains painting because it eludes such investigation. It remains there like a worked-in six months, question.

And it alone gives the answer. Short Selling Being short and seeing a promoter rake the stock up is very irritating. It's not worth it to have that much irritation in your life. The Moats and Sustainable Competitive A dv antage main rower of rhe castle was struck by lightning in and burned ro the ground.

In , rhe present iron and Old moats are getting filled in and new moats concrete reconstruction of the castle was undertaken; major repairs in I restored much of the castle's original are harder to predict, so it's getting harder. Learning Process I don't know anyone who [learned to be a great investor] with great rapidity. So the game is to keep learning.

You gotta like the learn ing process. T he ke. Warren and I will be disappointed if there isn't [attrac! If you have competence, you know rhe edge. If ou take the bc-. Chapter Three:. Ir's crazy. Listcning to todny's forcc,lsters N. Gregory Mankiw, on the economics is just as crazy as when t he king hircd the guy to look at the sheep g uts. It happen-. His popular tex tbooks Iris enti rel y pos. So if you think you're talented, ,e;ood luck. IPOs arc roo small for U'i, or roo high tech-we wo n't understand them.

The California-based com pany has. C hapter Three: Munj:! Future Market Returns Portrait of Hmdrickjt! L ook at w hat happened in j apan, where srocks traded at fifty to sixty times earnings. I think due was a special situation, though. If I'm wrong, it could be fora bad reason.

If stocks trade more like Rcmbrandrs in the future, then stocks will rise, but they will have no anc hors. In t his case, it's hard to predict how far. The im csrmcnr game is getting more and more compcriti' c. You can nc,cr predict which gives it a population densiry roughly three times what markcts will do. It has an estimated. There wa-; absolute chaos at the bonom tick.

We continue with the question of how Charlie monicors broad economic trends and changes:. Question: "vVhat macro statistics do you regularly monitor or find useful in your attempt to understand the broader economic landscape? Answer: "None. I find by staying abreast of our Berkshire subsidiaries and by regularly reading business newspapers and magazines, I am exposed to an enormous amount of material at the micro level.

But it's much harder to spot problc. Berkshire H athaway and the Coca-Cola Company. Holding million shares, Berkshire Hathaway is the largest shareholder of the Coca- Cola Company and has been so since the late s.

The Coca- Cola Company began in as a soda fountain beverage seller and has evolved into one of the largest companies in the world. The poor guy in the general public is getting a terrible product from the profess ionals. I think it's uisgusting. But if it makes money, we tend to do it in this COLI ntry. The Wesco Annual Meeting Stockbrokers vs. Index Funds Carolyn Denham lefi:, wife of Wesco Direcwr Robert Denham and Carolyn It's hard to sit here at this annual Carl burg right, Wesco Direcror since enjoy the proceedings at the standing-worn-only annual meeting meeting, surrounded by smart, honorable in Pasadena, California.

Although much smaller in scale than the Berkshire meeting stockbrokers who do wellfor their clients, in Omaha attendees vs. But stockbrokers, in toto, solo, on just about any subject. Transcripts of these meetings have been available over. Indexing can't work wel l forever if almost everybody turns to it. Bur it will work al l right for a long rime. The Mutual F und Scandal The business of selecting investment managers was recently shown w be even harder by the reve lation that a significant fraction of mutual fund managers took bribes to betray their own shareholders.

Ifmutualfund directors are independent, then I'm the lead character in the Bolshoi Ballet. T he bankers cared and wanted to protect thei r c lienrs. Is Charlie ps it. One day later, 'ormarH. L ou Simpson. To ha'c a lot of mone' on it. ICO Corporati on. But in the space of twenry-five years, they sold out to terrible behavior, one litt le step at a time. Once you start doing something bad, then it's easy to take the next step- and in the end, you're a moral sewer.

For example, tax shelters, with their contingency fees and secrecy, are a roral abomination. You'll better understand the evil of top audi t firms starting to sell fraudulent tax shelters when I tell you t hat one told mc that they're better [than the others ] because they only sold [the schemes] ro their cop twenty clients, so no one would notice.

It helps our - business decisions and protects Berksh ire. How did we get in situations where we're all so close ro the line? The Curse of Creative Accou nting. Using accounting for the benefit of the report maker.

The sole reason for a report is to serve the user. En ron was the most obvious example of a business culture gone wrong in a measuring stick of performance. They will nor serve rhe use r well u nless they have the long, long time.

They must be easy to read and tO understand. A partnership must be c'tra careful in its hd1a' ior. But if you ralk Unrealistic Assumptions. Calling a tail a leg doesn't Pension fund accounting is drifting into make it a leg.

It's human nature to extrapolate the recent - Buffen. Chupter Three:. I don't think it's willful dishonesty, but it might as well be. Similarly, an in The stock option systt:m may gi' e e'rraordinary rt:mucls things, the stock price willt. An ideal resource for writers, public speakers, and students, this practical, charming little book will delight all readers with its folk wisdom" Find out what he has to say! Charlie Munger is one of the most successful businessmen in the world.

He is worth more than a billion dollars and has spent his career not only honing his own business decision-making abilities but also teaching others to do the same. Now, all of his wisdom and insight into wealth management is collected in one place. Author Oxana Dubrovina wants to give you a crash course in Munger's life-changing philosophy.

This success self-help guide and motivational biography will put you on the road to a bright financial future by using Munger, as well as other inspirational leaders like Benjamin Franklin, Lee Kuan Yew, and even Jesus Christ, to illustrate important messages about how to live a good, honest, and successful life. Each year, for thirty years, two veteran investment advisors attended Berkshire Hathaway's Annual Shareholders Meeting.

After each meeting, they chronicled Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger's best lessons from that year. This book compiles those thirty years of wisdom for the first time. Both Munger and Miller believe in the lattice-work approach to investing, one that is based on a working knowledge of a variety of disciplines.

With more than pithy proverbs, this work lays out the ruiles you should live by and offers advice on such subjects as money, friendship, marriage, ethics, and human nature. Skip to content. Poor Charlie s Almanack. Author : Charles T. Poor Charlie s Almanack Book Review:. Charlie Munger. Charlie Munger Book Review:.

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