Tall and trim with a handshake like a warm vise, Mr. Munger shows his age only in the slight quaver that has crept into his baritone voice. A reporter’s notes can only approximate the subtlety and complexity of Mr. Munger’s conversation, but here is an edited summary of what he had to say.
On how Warren Buffett influenced him:
Warren talked me into leaving the law business, and that was a very significant influence on me. I was already thinking about becoming a full-time investor, and Warren told me I was far better suited to that. He was right. I would probably have done it myself, but he pushed me to it. I have to say, it isn’t an easy thing to work very hard for many years to build up a significant career, as I had done, and then to destroy that career on purpose. [Mr. Munger left the law firm he founded, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, in 1965 to serve as Mr. Buffett’s right-hand man at Berkshire and to run a private investment partnership.] That would have been a lot harder to do if not for Warren’s influence on me.
It wasn’t a mistake. [Laughter.] It worked out remarkably well for both of us and for a lot of other people as well [the investors in Berkshire].
On Benjamin Graham, the great investor who was Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)’s revered mentor:
I don’t love Ben Graham and his ideas the way Warren does. You have to understand, to Warren — who discovered him at such a young age and then went to work for him — Ben Graham’s insights changed his whole life, and he spent much of his early years worshiping the master at close range. But I have to say, Ben Graham had a lot to learn as an investor. His ideas of how to value companies were all shaped by how the Great Crash and the Depression almost destroyed him, and he was always a little afraid of what the market can do. It left him with an aftermath of fear for the rest of his life, and all his methods were designed to keep that at bay.
I think Ben Graham wasn’t nearly as good an investor as Warren Buffett is or even as good as I am. Buying those cheap, cigar-butt stocks [companies with limited potential growth selling at a fraction of what they would be worth in a takeover or liquidation] was a snare and a delusion, and it would never work with the kinds of sums of money we have. You can’t do it with billions of dollars or even many millions of dollars. But he was a very good writer and a very good teacher and a brilliant man, one of the only intellectuals – probably the only intellectual — in the investing business at the time.
Continue reading: blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/09/12/a-fireside-chat-with-charlie-munger/
