The Oracle of Pasadena... Charlie Munger died this week at 99. He was vice-chairman of holding company Berkshire Hathaway, which he helped biz partner and BFF Warren Buffett build into one of the largest public companies. Munger’s influence on the business world was reflected in the tributes for him: leaders from Bank of America, Apple, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, and Microsoft wrote about his influence.
Famous investing philosophy… Buffett said Berkshire was “built to Charlie’s blueprint,” and he credited Munger with inspiring him to pay more for “wonderful businesses.” Munger was the driving force behind Berkshire buying See’s Candies, an investment so successful it inspired Berkshire to invest $1B in Coca-Cola. But Munger also turned down countless investments (FYI: he called bitcoin “rat poison”).
2 traits: Munger was known for being frugal (like Buffett, he lived in the same modest house for decades) and pragmatic, sometimes to a fault. Remember the windowless dorms?
Quotable: Our favorite bit of Munger life advice: “I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than when they got up.”