Charlie Munger Quotes

Don't invest in pieces of papers (stocks), invest in great businesses underlying them

There are three important principles to Graham's approach. [The first is to look at stocks as fractional shares of a business, which] gives you an entirely different view than most people who are in the market. [The second principle is the margin-of-safety concept, which] gives you the competitive advantage. [The third is having a true investor's attitude toward the stock market, which] if you have that attitude, you start out ahead of 99 percent of all the people who are operating in the stock market - it's an enormous advantage.

Warren Buffett is famous for talking about the 'intrinsic value' of stocks. But while many people parrot this phrase, few know what it really means.

Investment philosophy is the clear understanding that by owning shares of stocks he owns businesses, not pieces of paper.

I believe that the mutual fund industry's biggest shortcoming is too much focus on the momentary price of a stock - an illusion - and too little focus on the intrinsic value of the corporation - the ultimate reality. I'm comforted by the fact that Warren Buffett feels the same way.

When Berkshire buys common stock, we approach the transaction as if we were buying into a private business.

If you know how to value businesses, it's crazy to own 50 stocks or 40 stocks or 30 stocks, probably because there aren't that many wonderful businesses understandable to a single human being in all likelihood. To forego buying more of some super-wonderful business and instead put your money into #30 or #35 on your list of attractiveness just strikes Charlie and me as madness.

All intelligent investing is value investing - acquiring more that you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.

The key thing when you short is to make sure you're not wrong on the fundamental intrinsic value.

Too many investors overvalue companies in the near term while undervaluing them in the long term.

When high-growth companies slow down, growth and momentum junkies often sell indiscriminately, which can create great opportunities for value investors. Just be careful not to anchor on the stock's previous price or earnings multiple, which are no longer relevant.

Nirvana, to a value investor, is paying a cheap price for a company that is growing in value every year at a nice rate - this largely explains why today we own stocks like Berkshire Hathaway, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Costco and Anheuser-Busch.

What we really want to do is buy businesses that we would be happy to own forever.

Like the stocks of both Berkshire and Wesco to trade within hailing distance of what we think of as intrinsic value. When it runs up, we try to talk it down. That's not at all common in Corporate America, but that's the way we act.

The future is never clear; you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty actually is the friend of the buyer of long-term values.

A price decline is of no real importance to the bona fide investor unless it is either very substantial say, more than a third from cost or unless it reflects a known deterioration of consequence in the company's position. In a well-defined bear market many sound common stocks sell temporarily at extraordinary low prices. It is possible that the investor may then have a paper loss of fully 50 per cent on some of his holdings, without any convincing indication that the underlying values have been permanently affected.

You should have an investment thesis that essentially says why you think this is potentially a good idea.

Ignore the stock market, ignore the economy, and buy a business you understand.

Our investments continue to be few in number and simple in concept: The truly big investment idea can usually be explained in a short paragraph. We like a business with enduring competitive advantages that is run by able and owner-oriented people. When these attributes exist, and when we can make purchases at sensible prices, it is hard to go wrong (a challenge we periodically manage to overcome).

We say we are trying to buy into businesses with excellent economics, run by honest and able people at a decent price. We buy very few securities, so we look at it as "focused" investing.

[In picking stocks] You really have to know a lot about business. You have to know a lot about competitive advantage. You have to know a lot about the maintainability of competitive advantage. You have to have a mind that quantifies things in terms of value. And you have to be able to compare those values with other values available in the stock market.

Allowing short selling is allowing people to sell - instead of having to buy the stock and then sell it, which doesn't do much; allow them to sell it, and then buy it. In which case they can express that information and the idea is that you would get more accurate valuation of companies by letting people express both their positive information and their negative information through either long or short selling.

One of the best investors around, Joel Greenblatt, has written a popular, charming and funny book about investing in great companies at low P/E multiples. To simplify an already simple book, great companies are generally measured as companies that can generate lots of profit without requiring a lot of capital. This means that they have high ROEs.

An investor should ordinarily hold a small piece of an outstanding business with the same tenacity that an owner would exhibit if he owned all of that business.

Investors must keep in mind that there's a difference between a good company and a good stock. After all, you can buy a good car but pay too much for it.