Charlie Munger Quotes

The typical big winner in the Lynch portfolio generally takes three to ten years to play out.

Sometimes it takes longer to create value, but if the companies generate more earnings, the stocks will ultimately reflect that.

Well, there's always risk in long-term investment.

True innovation takes at least 10 to 15 years, whereas the longest that private venture capitalists are routinely willing to wait is five years. They don't join the game until all the riskiest plays have already been made - by governments.

If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio's market value.

Investment based on genuine long-term expectations is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable.

Time is the friend of the wonderful business. It's the enemy of the lousy business. If you're in a lousy business for a long time, you're going to get a lousy result, even if you buy it cheap. If you're in a wonderful business for a long time, even if you pay a little too much going in, you're going to get a wonderful result if you stay in a long time.

No one knows what stocks will do tomorrow, but the evidence is clear as to how they'll perform over 10 or 20 years. They will almost certainly go up.

Finding a single investment that will return 20% per year for 40 years tends to happen only in dreamland. In the real world, you uncover an opportunity, and then you compare other opportunities with that. And you only invest in the most attractive opportunities. That's your opportunity cost. That's what you learn in freshman economics. The game hasn't changed at all. That's why Modern Portfolio Theory is so asinine.

If your fund doesn't last for the long term, how can you invest for the long term?

If, when making a stock investment, you're not considering holding it at least ten years, don't waste more than ten minutes considering it.

We regard using [a stock's] volatility as a measure of risk is nuts. Risk to us is 1) the risk of permanent loss of capital, or 2) the risk of inadequate return. Some great businesses have very volatile returns - for example, See's [a candy company owned by Berkshire] usually loses money in two quarters of each year - and some terrible businesses can have steady results.

As I have mentioned before, we cannot make the same sort of money out of permanent ownership of controlled businesses that can be made from buying and reselling such businesses, or from skilled investment in marketable securities. Nevertheless, they offer a pleasant long term form of activity (when conducted in conjunction with high grade, able people) at satisfactory rates of return.

Absent a lot of surprises, stocks are relatively predictable over twenty years. As to whether they're going to be higher or lower in two to three years, you might as well flip a coin to decide.

You should be unconcerned about short-term price action when you own the securities directly, just as you were unconcerned when you owned them indirectly through BPL. I think about them as businesses, not "stocks", and if the business does all right over the long term, so will the stock.

If you are not willing to own a stock for 10 years, do not even think about owning it for 10 minutes.

It seems like for the last 10 years, I've just been investing in the future.

Stocks are a safe bet, but only if you stay invested long enough to ride out the corrections.

Playing 13 years is a long time, but I feel really good. It's not like I'm [old]. I'm just thankful.

All the people that still believed in me, after seven years - it's a long time.

I cannot tell you how long it takes for your exercise to work. If you haven't seen any results in a year or six months you're doing something wrong.

In most cases the favorable price performance will be accompanied by a well-defined improvement in the average earnings, in the dividend, and in the balance-sheet position. Thus in the long run the market test and the ordinary business test of a successful equity commitment tend to be largely identical.

The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years.

Los Angeles has interested me for a long time. I was in Texas for five years, for the same reason. I wanted to photograph there.

Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.