Charlie Munger: Don’t Let a Bad Day Destroy You | Final Interview with CNBC 2023

[Transcript]

CHARLIE MUNGER: What was interesting about Berkshire’s history is what turned the first $300 million of Berkshire net worth into the first $3 billion of Berkshire net worth. Now some people have now gone back and checked all the figures, so some people have figured it out. But the results we got in turning $300 million into $3 billion really quickly helped us a lot.

BECKY QUICK: What was it?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, it was Blue Chip Stamps and See’s Candies and the Buffalo News newspaper and the early insurance operations under Ajit Jain when he came to us. Everything worked at once — and we made these unholy profits out of these piddling businesses that weren’t that good. And it was a very remarkable thing and there was some luck involved.

BECKY QUICK: Warren has said that his worst trade ever was buying Berkshire Hathaway itself, the mills.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. Sure.

BECKY QUICK: What was your worst trade?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well I think my worst trade was buying a block for the Munger family in Alibaba, which is a pretty good company. But I think it got over-hyped — and Jack Ma made mistakes in dealing with the Chinese government. I had some bad trades. Everybody has some bad ones. You have an off day. The greatest tennis player goes out there some days to the center court and has a bad day. It happens.

BECKY QUICK: I think people learn more from their mistakes than their successes.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, from their bad days even. But, it's knowing you can have a very bad day, do not live your life in such a fashion that a bad day can kill you.

BECKY QUICK: Which means what when it comes to investing? Making sure you don’t use leverage?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, they aim for the fences. It’s like a hitter in baseball who tries to hit a home run on every pitch. The great home run hitters do not remotely swing at every pitch that looks halfway good. They wait for one that they can really handle. That’s what great stock pickers do too.
 

Source: https://youtu.be/H5Oom5Rjp_Y?si=ZEkkZkAN6WyOWcl9

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