Charlie Munger
About
Charlie Munger was Warren Buffett's partner at Berkshire Hathaway for decades and arguably the most influential single voice in Buffett's own investing evolution.
Munger pushed Berkshire away from Ben Graham's classic "cigar-butt" style (buying statistically cheap, mediocre companies for one last puff) toward paying a fair price for wonderful businesses and holding them essentially forever. Purchases like See's Candies were Munger's fingerprints.
Beyond stock picking, Munger championed a "latticework of mental models" drawn from psychology, physics, biology, and history — arguing that better decisions come from combining disciplines, not from mastering finance alone.
- "The big money is not in the buying and the selling, but in the waiting."
- He popularized the maxim "Invert, always invert." — solve problems by studying what would guarantee failure and avoiding that.
- A great business at a fair price beats a fair business at a great price.
From the record
Historical positions — for education, not a current portfolio.
- Berkshire Hathaway — Vice Chairman for decades, and the voice that steered Berkshire toward paying up for wonderful businesses.
- Costco — longtime director and famously an unapologetic fan of the business.
- Daily Journal Corp — the portfolio Munger oversaw disclosed large bank positions and a notable Alibaba stake.
Read Charlie in their own words
Poor Charlie's Almanack
The definitive collection of Munger's talks, letters and mental models.
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Munger reshaped Berkshire — and value investing — by insisting a great business at a fair price beats a fair business at a great price. His "latticework of mental models" is now standard vocabulary for serious investors.