Quote

I don't invest in what I don't understand. And I don't want to understand Facebook.

Charlie Munger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Understand
Invest

More quotes by Charlie Munger

Image
We both (Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.
Charlie Munger
Image
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
Image
Your life must focus on the maximization of objectivity.
Charlie Munger
Image
We have a passion for keeping things simple.
Charlie Munger
Image
The SEC does way more good than harm - the last thing I would do is get rid of the SEC...if accounting were thoroughly fixed, a lot of other sins would go away. We're paying a huge price for deterioration of accounting.
Charlie Munger
Image
Some people seem to think there's no trouble just because it hasn't happened yet. If you jump out the window at the 42nd floor and you're still doing fine as you pass the 27th floor, that doesn't mean you don't have a serious problem. I would want to address the problem right now.
Charlie Munger
Image
When you borrow a man's car, always return it with a tank of gas.
Charlie Munger
Image
They [Mc Donalds] take people and give them a first job, which enables them to get a second job. They do a very good job of educating troubled young people to be good citizens and they're probably more successful than charter schools.
Charlie Munger
Image
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
Image
You must value the business in order to value the stock.
Charlie Munger
Image
A lot of share-buying, not bargain-seeking, is designed to prop stock prices up. Thirty to 40 years ago, it was very profitable to look at companies that were aggressively buying their own shares. They were motivated simply to buy below what it was worth.
Charlie Munger
Image
I don't spend much time regretting the past, once I've taken my lesson from it. I don't dwell on it.
Charlie Munger
Image
Since those don’t hit financial reports, the opportunities you had but didn’t accept, most people don’t bother thinking about them very much. At least that is a mistake we don’t make. We rub our own noses in our mistakes in blowing opportunities, as we just did.
Charlie Munger
Image
Investing is where you find a few great companies and then sit on your ass.
Charlie Munger
Image
It took us months of buying all the Coke stock we could to accumulate $1 billion worth - equal to 7% of the company. It's very hard to accumulate major positions.
Charlie Munger
Image
I have a name for people who went to the extreme efficient market theory-which is bonkers. It was an intellectually consistent theory that enabled them to do pretty mathematics. So I understand its seductiveness to people with large mathematical gifts. It just had a difficulty in that the fundamental assumption did not tie properly to reality.
Charlie Munger
Image
It is an unfortunate fact that great and foolish excess can come into prices of common stocks in the aggregate. They are valued partly like bonds, based on roughly rational projections of use value in producing future cash. But they are also valued partly like Rembrandt paintings, purchased mostly because their prices have gone up, so far.
Charlie Munger
Image
We've got great flexibility and a certain discipline in terms of not doing some foolish thing just to be active - discipline in avoiding just doing any damn thing just because you can't stand inactivity.
Charlie Munger
Image
We bought a doomed textile mill [Berkshire Hathaway] and a California S&L [Savings & Loan Wesco] just before a calamity. Both were bought at a discount to liquidation value.
Charlie Munger
Image
It's a finite and very competitive world. All large aggregations of capital eventually find it hell on earth to grow and thus find a lower rate of return.
Charlie Munger