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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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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
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Mark
Degenerates
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Trade
Trading
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Derivative
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Accountants

More quotes by 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's stupid the way people extrapolate the past -- and not slightly stupid, but massively stupid.
Charlie Munger
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There are two kinds of businesses: The first earns 12%, and you can take it out at the end of the year. The second earns 12%, but all the excess cash must be reinvested - there's never any cash. It reminds me of the guy who looks at all of his equipment and says, 'There's all of my profit.' We hate that kind of business.
Charlie Munger
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Fancy computers are engaging in legalized front-running. The profits are clearly coming from the rest of us - our college endowments and our pensions. Why is this legal? What the hell is the government thinking? It's like letting rats into a restaurant.
Charlie Munger
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I think corporate managers should learn to be better investors because it would make them better managers.
Charlie Munger
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Capitalism is a pretty brutal place.
Charlie Munger
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For years I have read the morning paper and harrumphed. There's a lot to harrumph about now.
Charlie Munger
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I like people admitting they were complete stupid horses' asses. I know I'll perform better if I rub my nose in my mistakes. This is a wonderful trick to learn.
Charlie Munger
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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 that I am qualified to speak only when I've reached that state.
Charlie Munger
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I would argue that a majority of the horrors we face would not have happened if the accounting profession developed and enforced better accounting.
Charlie Munger
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If you don't keep learning, other people will pass you by. Temperament alone won't do it - you need a lot of curiosity for a long, long time.
Charlie Munger
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I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it.
Charlie Munger
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Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.
Charlie Munger
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One metric catches people. We prefer businesses that drown in cash. An example of a different business is construction equipment. You work hard all year and there is your profit sitting in the yard. We avoid businesses like that. We prefer those that can write us a check at the end of the year.
Charlie Munger
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Strategic plans cause more dumb decisions than anything else in America.
Charlie Munger
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Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs.
Charlie Munger
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If people tell you what you really don't want to hear what's unpleasant-there's an almost automatic reaction of antipathy. You have to train yourself out of it.
Charlie Munger
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If (investing) weren't a little difficult, everybody would be rich.
Charlie Munger
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Tthe first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form.... You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life.
Charlie Munger
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When it gets into these spikes, with shortages and uproar and so forth, people go bananas, but that's capitalism.
Charlie Munger