Charlie Munger, the right-hand man of billionaire Warren Buffett, died Tuesday at the age of 99.
Munger, a legendary investor in his own right, was known for his quick wit, humor, and no nonsense approach to business. He was the vice chairman of holding company Berkshire Hathaway, working with Buffett since 1975 and becoming a billionaire in the process.
Though not as well known by the public as Buffett, Munger was revered by the investing community and financial press. Over the years, he gave away much of his wealth, donating more than 75% of his Berkshire stock, according to Business Insider, to organizations including Planned Parenthood and Stanford University (most recently, to the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Museum in San Marino, California). Still, his current net worth is around $2.6 billion, according to Forbes.
"I'm deliberately taking my net worth down," Munger told The Omaha World-Herald in 2013. "My thinking is, I'm not immortal...I won't need it where I'm going."
Among his most famous advice to Buffett was to stop searching for only bargain basement prices. It's better to buy three wonderful businesses, after all, than dozens of average ones. Buffett credits Munger with changing his investing outlook and the way Berkshire Hathaway operates today. "Forget what you know about buying fair businesses at wonderful prices; instead, buy wonderful businesses at fair prices," Buffett says Munger told him.
Munger dropped plenty of wisdom over the years for the average investor.
"It’s so simple to spend less than you earn, and invest shrewdly, and avoid toxic people and toxic activities, and try and keep learning all your life, and do a lot of deferred gratification," he said at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting in May. "If you do all those things, you are almost certain to succeed. If you don’t, you’re going to need a lot of luck."
Munger was highly critical of speculative investing, calling it a kind of addiction that causes harm to the country. He was a fan of the buy and hold approach to investing and advocated having patience in all things.
Buffett also credited Munger with saying, "all I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there." Essentially, that encourages people to always consider long-term consequences and analyze actions to avoid potential pitfalls. Or as Munger more colorfully put it, "to identify the main stupidities that do bright people in and then organize your patterns for thinking and developments, so you don’t stumble into those stupidities." That's advice not just for investing, but for life.
In his most recent annual letter to shareholders, Buffett touted the rules Munger lives by, which includes gems like, "the world is full of foolish gamblers, and they will not do as well as the patient investor," and "early on, write your desired obituary—and then behave accordingly."
Munger was critical of venture capitalists and cryptocurrency, among other financial realities. His disdain for crypto was especially strong: Earlier this year, he published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, urging regulators to ban investments in the asset, writing, "a cryptocurrency is not a currency, not a commodity, and not a security. Instead, it’s a gambling contract with a nearly 100% edge for the house."
"Sometimes I call it crypto ‘crappo,’ sometimes I call it ‘crypto s---.’ It’s just ridiculous that anybody would buy this stuff," Munger said on CNBC earlier this year. "It’s totally absolutely crazy, stupid gambling."
The investor was revered for his intelligence and business acumen, particularly by Buffett, who said the key to their success was continuing to learn and grow as the world changed.
In the 2022 letter to shareholders, Buffett wrote that two sentences from Munger have been his "decision-clinchers for decades."
"'Warren, think more about it,'" Buffett recalled. "'You’re smart and I’m right.'"
