Quote

Clever derivatives broke dozens of companies. It killed them. Bankrupt. We don't need these kinds of innovation in finance. It's OK to be boring in finance. What we want is innovation in widgets.

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
Needs
Clever
Kind
Broke
Companies
Derivatives
Innovation
Dozens
Boring
Bankrupt
Kinds
Finance
Company
Dozen
Need
Killed

More quotes by Charlie Munger

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I don't invest in what I don't understand. And I don't want to understand Facebook.
Charlie Munger
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I think there's an awful lot of twaddle and bullshit on EVA. The whole game is to turn retained earnings into more earnings. EVA has ideas about cost of capital that make no sense. Of course, if a company generates high returns on capital and can maintain this over time, it will do well. But the mental system as a whole does not work.
Charlie Munger
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...all man's desired geometric progressions, if a high rate of growth is chosen, at last come to grief on a finite earth. And the social system for man on earth is fair enough, eventually, that almost all massive cheating ends in disgrace.
Charlie Munger
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You must know the big ideas in the big disciplines, and use them routinely - all of them, not just a few. Most people are trained in one model - economics, for example - and try to solve all problems in one way. You know the old saying: to the man with a hammer, the world looks like a nail. This is a dumb way of handling problems.
Charlie Munger
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If the technology hadn't changed, they [newspapers] would still be great businesses. Network TV [in its heyday], anyone could run and do well. If Tom Murphy as running it, you'd do very well, but even your idiot nephew could do well. Fortunately, carbide cutting tools [such as those made by Iscar] don't have these types of substitutes.
Charlie Munger
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You have to realize the truth of biologist Julian Huxley's idea that 'Life is just one damn relatedness after another' So you must have the models, and you must see the relatedness and the effects from the relatedness.
Charlie Munger
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The name of the game is continuing to learn. Even if you're very well trained and have some natural aptitude, you still need to keep learning.
Charlie Munger
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I don't want to sell credit to people who are going to hurt themselves with it. You should only sell products that are good for the people who use them. Some disagree with this, but I know I'm right. That is to say, you're talking to a Republican who admires Elizabeth Warren.
Charlie Munger
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Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you are trying to improve your cognition.
Charlie Munger
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All intelligent investing is value investing - acquiring more that you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.
Charlie Munger
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I always like it when someone attractive to me agrees with me, so I have fond memories of Phil Fisher. The idea that it was hard to find good investments, so concentrate in a few, seems to me to be an obviously good idea. But 98% of the investment world doesn't think this way.
Charlie Munger
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Litigation is notoriously time-consuming, inefficient, costly and unpredictable.
Charlie Munger
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The world is getting very much more competitive.
Charlie Munger
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Part of [having uncommon sense] is being able to tune out folly, as opposed to recognizing wisdom. If you bat away many things, you don't clutter yourself.
Charlie Munger
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Ben Franklin and Samuel Johnson, he credits their wisdom for his success. They were both utterly brilliant men. And powerful communicators. Both have helped me all the way through life. Their lessons are easy to assimilate.
Charlie Munger
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You could argue that [the decline of public schools] is one of the major disasters in our lifetimes. We took one of the greatest successes in the history of the earth and turned it into one of the greatest disasters in the history of the earth.
Charlie Munger
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Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs.
Charlie Munger
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...being an effective teacher is a high calling.
Charlie Munger
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It's not a competency if you don't know the edge of it.
Charlie Munger
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The old culture had come out of poverty, out of English customs.
Charlie Munger