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Intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you're really going to excel in it.

Charlie Munger

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Charlie Munger
Age: 100
Born: 1924
Born: January 1
Business Person
Financier
Investor
Lawyer
Omaha
Nebraska
Charlie Thomas Munger
Charles T. Munger
Charles Thomas Munger
Excel
Indispensable
Intense
Subject
Subjects
Interest
Going
Really

More quotes by Charlie Munger

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How could economics not be behavioral? If it isn't behavioral, what the hell is it?
Charlie Munger
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Accounting is a big subject and there are huge forces in play. The entire momentum of existing thinking and existing custom is in a direction that allows terrible follies to happen, and the terrible follies have terrible consequences.
Charlie Munger
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Wesco had a market capitalization of $40 million when we bought it [in the early 1970s]. It's $2 billion now. It's been a long slog to a perfectly respectable outcome - not as good as Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft, but there's always someone in life who's done better.
Charlie Munger
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There are worse situations than drowning in cash and sitting, sitting, sitting. I remember when I wasn’t awash in cash — and I don’t want to go back.
Charlie Munger
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Failure to handle psychological denial is a common way for people to go broke: you have made an enormous commitment to something. You have poured effort and money in. And the more you put in, the more that the whole consistency principle makes you think, Now it has to work. If I put in just a little more, then it will work.
Charlie Munger
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You must have the confidence to override people with more credentials than you whose cognition is impaired by incentive-caused bias or some similar psychological force that is obviously present. But there are also cases where you have to recognize that you have no wisdom to add - and that your best course is to trust some expert.
Charlie Munger
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Creative accounting is an absolute curse to a civilization. One could argue that double-entry bookkeeping was one of history's great advances. Using accounting for fraud and folly is a disgrace. In a democracy, it often takes a scandal to trigger reform. Enron was the most obvious example of a business culture gone wrong in a long, long time.
Charlie Munger
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To some extent, stocks are like Rembrandts. They sell based on what they've sold in the past. Bonds are much more rational. No-one thinks a bond's value will soar to the moon.
Charlie Munger
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A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.
Charlie Munger
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The number one idea is to view a stock as an ownership of the business and to judge the staying quality of the business in terms of its competitive advantage. Look for more value in terms of discounted future cash-flow than you are paying for. Move only when you have an advantage.
Charlie Munger
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It would be nice if this [finding really cheap stocks] happened all the time. Unfortunately, it doesn't.
Charlie Munger
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The reason we avoid the word 'synergy' is because people generally claim more synergistic benefits than will come. Yes, it exists, but there are so many false promises.Berkshire is full of synergies - we don't avoid synergies, just claims of synergies.
Charlie Munger
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We have a passion for keeping things simple.
Charlie Munger
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Derivative trading with mark-to-market accounting degenerates into mark-to-model. Two firms make a big derivative trade and the accountants on both sides show a large profit from the same trade.
Charlie Munger
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Quoting Demosthenes, 'For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.' I would rather make money playing a piano in a whorehouse than arguing that no cost is incurred when employees are paid in stock options instead of cash. I am not kidding.
Charlie Munger
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Stock-picking is like gambling: those who win well, seldom bet, but when they do, they bet heavily.
Charlie Munger
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The big money is not in the buying and selling ... but in the waiting.
Charlie Munger
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If you get into the mental habit of relating what you're reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom.
Charlie Munger
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It's dangerous to short stocks.
Charlie Munger
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The general systems of money management [today] require people to pretend to do something they can't do and like something they don't. It's a terrible way to spend your life, but it's very well paid.
Charlie Munger