Charlie Munger on How We Made $1 Billion with $10 Million? | Caltech 2008 【C:C.M Ep.244】

 

[Transcript]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was pleased to hear you speak about common sense and the Lollapalooza effect in your latticework of mental models.

 

I'm wondering if you could give us a specific example of how you integrated these ideas to recognize a great investment? That would be a great help to those of us trying to understand and replicate your success.

 

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, some of the ideas were so simple.

 

We noticed that in city after city, the Monopoly newspaper made more money every year. And in some cities, there were still two newspapers and one was slowly dying. And so we bought the one that was sure to win. Does this strike you as a complicated idea?

 

And one time we did that with the Washington Post, we made a billion dollars, with 10 million. So a lot of these things are perfectly obvious and you just have to train yourself to –

 

You have to develop the knack of using the knowledge you have. It's a knack, you have to work at it. It won't come in just over the transom because you'd like to have it.

 

(Source: https://youtu.be/4ibabROYccs?si=AGQznfOPmt9tv3yg)

 

[YAPSS Takeaway]

You got to train yourself on how to USE your knowledge and that's the key.