Buffett on Munger: "I probably haven't talked to anyone on Wall Street one 100th of the times I speak to Charlie."
"Charlie has the best 30-second mind in the world. He goes from A to Z in one move. He sees the essence of everything before you even finish the sentence."
When $KO was a growth stock
"it was regarded as an excellent but fully valued"
"Buffett saw franchises that were priceless, virtually immune from inflation and capable of continued growth—compound interest machines"
"None of the flashes in the pan here like Avon or Xerox"
"We realized that some company at 2-3x book value could still be a hell of a bargain because of momentums implicit in its position, sometimes combined with an unusual managerial skill plainly present in some individual or other, or some system or other."
"There are huge advantages to get into a position where you make a few great investments and just sit back. You're paying less to brokers. You're listening to less nonsense. The tax system gives you an extra one, two or three percentage points per annum with compound effects."
"Understanding both the power of compound return and the difficulty getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things."
"You know this cliché that opposites attract? Well, opposites don't attract. Psychological experiments prove that it's people who are alike that are attracted to each other. Our minds work in very much the same way."
"A lot of dominant personalities, like me, can never play the subservient role even to Warren, who is more able and dedicated than I am."
Requires "objectivity about where you rank in the scheme of things."
Freddie Mac 'no-brainer'
"Only Savings & Loans could own it. And nobody could own more than 4%. Here was the perfect inefficient market. It was obvious."
Funny, apparently Buffett was being criticized for not giving away more?
"It's more useful for Warren to be piling it up than to be giving it away."
"Beating the market averages, after paying substantial costs and fees, is an against-the- odds game; yet a few people can do it, particularly those who view it as a game full of craziness with an occasional mispriced something or other."
"On a net basis the investment management business together gives no value. That isn't true of plumbing and it isn't true of medicine. Warren agrees with me 100%. We shake our heads at the brains that have been going into money management. What a waste of talent."
"I join John Maynard Keynes in characterizing investment management as a low calling because most of it is just shifting around a perpetual universe of common stocks. The people doing it just cancel each other out."
Of course..
"Warren and I are a little different in that we actually run businesses and allocate capital to them."
"Keynes atoned for his 'sins' by making money for his college and serving his nation. I do my outside activities to atone and Warren uses his investment success to be a great teacher. And we love to make money for the people who trusted us early on, when we were young and poor."
"I've tried to imitate, in a poor way, the life of Benjamin Franklin. When he was 42, Franklin quit business to focus more on being a writer, statesman, philanthropist, inventor and scientist. That's why I have diverted my interest away from business."
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"It's like you have a cell phone and then somebody gives you the charger. Oh, I can get this thing up to a hundred anytime I want?!
"It doesn't feel like anything. Doesn't do anything. I don't get it. I don't understand it. But here's the difference: at 1pm that day, my head does not hit the desk like it used to. ... I sail through the day."
"The way I look at life, basically is it's exhausting. Being busy is exhausting. Doing nothing is exhausting. No matter what you do, it's exhausting.
Sleep is hit and miss, [transcendental meditation] is not. It's this thing that augments your need for rest.
"I would always say to the people that don't do it, I can't believe you stay up all day."
"A lot of stand up is analogies.
The phone charger is pretty tough to beat as an analogy because your phone charger never doesn't work.
And that's the great thing about TM. You never have to wonder. That's the big difference between sleep and TM. TM never doesn't work perfect."
"Trait #1 is the ability to buy stocks while others are panicking and sell stocks while others are euphoric.
When 1999 comes around and the market is going up almost every day, you can't bring yourself to sell because if you do, you may fall behind your peers."
Roughly: Investing -> returning capital -> liquidating assets.
Unexpected:
"We expected low or negative spreads between ROIC and WACC for companies newly listed, rising spreads as they mature, a decline in senescence.
What we found was nearly the opposite. The spread at the date of the IPO was high and narrowed before stabilizing."
Companies going public (selling equity to new investors) when return on capital looks most attractive (and is about to decline)?
Returns to shareholders on the other hand were most attractive for more mature companies.
Druckenmiller: "I am so tired of being a bear, and being labeled a bear."
But: Liquidity ⬇️
"Since it's taken so long, the Fed has ended up with a higher terminal rate. Inflation gets stickier the longer its in the system. That increases the probability of a hard landing."
"We always short the same way. ... I try and think of a situation 12 to 18 months from now and if I think the security prices are going to be less, I short.
Frankly, I'm not sure I've ever made money in shorts. I like it. It's fun, but you can get your head handed to you."
"When I was at Soros, I shorted $200 million worth of Internet stocks in March of 99. And in three weeks covered them at a $600 million loss. I lost $600 million on a $200 million investment in three weeks.
I was short 12 stocks. They all went bankrupt Every one of them."
ROIC and margins for companies with different moats by @mjmauboussin
"A company creates value when its ROIC is in excess of cost of capital. Stated differently, it makes a dollar worth of investment worth more than a dollar in market value.
The market broadly appreciates this, especially when growth is considered as an additional variable."
"Markets are akin to an ecosystem where investors fill various niches. Investors with a short-term horizon tend to focus on near-term metrics such as sales and earnings.
Investors with a long-term horizon focus on competitive advantage and the size of the market opportunity."
Like other great investors, Sam Zell used content as a form of leverage. His "guide to the risky art of resurrecting dead properties" earned him his nickname, the Grave Dancer.
"Some might see buying and creating value from others’ mistakes as a form of exploitation, but I see it as giving neglected or devalued assets new life.
Often in my career I’ve been the only bidder for them—the last chance for a resurrection."
"I’m not claiming to be altruistic— just optimistic, and confident that I can turn those assets around.
That, in my definition, is an entrepreneur. Someone who doesn’t just see the problems but also sees the solutions—the opportunities."