Munger
Our article in the August 2011 edition of the Valor Investe magazine, discussing the financial education of Warren Buffett. The entire section on Financial Education in this edition is worth the time and couldn’t be more vital today – with the mess in Europe, the US debt/ global banking system imbroglios and general volatility. In a country like Brazil, the lack of concern with financial education is even more worrying. Initiatives such as this one are very important.
Charlie Munger’s presentation at the Wesco annual meeting was his solo act, now possibly gone since Berkshire bought the rest of Wesco it didn’t already own. Even so he did a “farewell” meeting and we have a few links on it. Good reading material as always.
We provide links to the best stories we’ve found on the web about the 2011 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. When reading the stories or watching the videos, always remember to keep an open eye to the writer’s biases, experiences, leanings and incentives – as well as to your own, of course. Also keep in mind the relevant subjects discussed in the meeting that just weren’t given enough media because of the Sokol affair, such as the insurance cycle.
UPDATE: The Berkshire Hathaway annual was live when we published the post below, and the Wall Street Journal really was the best source for live coverage during the day. In fact, not only because of the content, but also because of the mobile/smartphone-friendly page. We hope this source was useful for our readers, and expect to post here links to the best post-meeting coverage and analysis.
The Audit Committee of Berkshire Hathaway has just concluded its report regarding Dave Sokol’s trading in Lubrizol shares. They found that “Mr. Sokol’s conversations with Mr. Buffett and others at Berkshire Hathaway were ‘intended to deceive’ and ‘its effect was to mislead.’ ” Now that the “hype” is unprecedented in terms of a Berkshire “conflict”, and that the noise levels are bound to get even higher, it’s important to try and separate what’s relevant.
While we were searching for the Charlie Munger quotes for the Thursday post (“Aha! moments vs. strategy”), we found an interesting text by Li Lu, the chinese investor who had been shortlisted as a candidate for the CIO position at Berkshire post-Buffett. It’s the preface to the Chinese edition of the spectacular book Poor Charlie’s Almanac, where Li Lu writes a lenghty profile of Charlie Munger in a rare first-person account that even Warren Buffett hasn’t really provided yet.
We highlight a very interesting article called “How Aha! Really Happens”. In it, the author argues that the notion of the brain’s two hemispheres being extremely specialized – “left” being rational/ analytical, “right” creative/ intuitive – has been proven inadequate since 1998, which means that companies focusing on “right-side brainstorming” exercises to foster innovation are not doing themselves many favors. The main point is this: “(…) our most-accepted approach to problem solving is grounded in an incorrect premise about the source of creativity in the brain.” The implications are very interesting.
Well, this is unusual – Warren Buffett and Jay-Z (not a typo, the rapper) together in an interview about success (videos inside). Buffett apparently really likes rap, judging by the GEICO commercial of a few years ago. Then this September 13th video is a more conventional talk by Charlie Munger at the University of Michigan. It’s almost two hours long and nothing terribly new for those who read up about him, but always nice. The CNBC “host” focused a bit too much on economics and politics, but Mr. Munger still shines.
Munger’s classic speech in 1995 at the Harvard Law School is the quintessential example of the multitude of his mental models. In it Mr. Munger describes 24 “standard causes for human misjudgement” in separate, but then reminds us that these can combine to create potentially multiplied consequences. Since it can happen for good or bad, we’re better off informed and much smarter for the effort.
A few (seemingly) random thoughts and quotes on misdirection, disorientation and how to benefit from it. If that doesn’t convince the reader to click on “read more”, there’s a Charlie Munger quotation inside worth the read.
