9 ms·

Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

67 points by fadymak 3y ago

cactusplant7374 3y ago
Love listening to Munger. He feels more genuine than any other successful businessman I have come across — other than Buffett.
johnwheeler 3y ago
I like the part in the book where he talks about getting rich by doing nothing “sit on your ass investing”
- readyplayernull 3y ago
  Lottery?
  - WJW 3y ago
    Decades-long buy and hold investing. Buy once then sit on your ass for 40 years. This works quite well but is actually surprisingly hard to do for most people.
    - mihaic 3y ago
      Yes, because it's getting harder to get enough money to buy anything on which you'd sit for 40 year.
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  It will be interesting if it repeats. He may just be a guy that existed in one of the most privileged eras in human history for making money like that, like a colonist writing a book about how easy it is to get free land in America. https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/ https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/
  - oh_sigh 3y ago
    If it was just luck, shouldn't we expect a bunch of billionaires who followed a similar easy path?
    - jilko 3y ago
      Not necessarily. For the record I'm in the camp "they didn't just get lucky," but it's totally plausible to argue that they did. Taleb does this exact thought experiment in "Fooled By Randomness." He imagines a pool of investors who are weeded out purely by random luck each iteration of some process. You still end up with people that get some insane track records, purely by chance. In fact, he spends quite a bit of the book talking about barely fictionalized people he knew in the trading world whose strategies made money for long periods of time before blowing up simply because they happened to be in the market at the right time. I suspect the nuance we need to add to OP's comment was "they were there at the right time AND won the iteration game purely by luck." So they were the tippy top of a cohort in a generally advantaged time where their strategy happened to be optimal. Again I don't personally think that's the case (I believe there's something more fundamentally correct in their approach), but it's a totally reasonable thing to argue even in the absence of other examples.
    - Mistletoe 3y ago
      I wish I could find it again but I can’t, but there was a fascinating applet kind of thing that showed even with perfectly equal odds starting out after it runs for a while you see some of the bars start accumulating wealth and it does not end up evenly distributed. It’s actually quite skewed at the end with a top class that accumulated most of the wealth. It taught me a lot about the rich and how they got there and how much I should listen to their advice. Now I’m not saying the rich don’t make smart moves, because some certainly do, but even in a completely equal world we would still have some people that didn’t do anything at all except be lucky get to that tier. I do think there are things you can massively do to increase your odds such as saving, investing intelligently using compound interest, not buying crap you don’t need, not get divorced, invest in your health, work hard, etc.
_2d30 3y ago
Easy buy. Stripe Press has a fantastic aesthetic and quality to their books and this is a classic. Less than $25 with taxes on Amazon.
- simonebrunozzi 3y ago
  Why I see $30?
  - soneca 3y ago
    On Amazon I see $22,49 (despite the Stripe page’s link stating $30). I am in Brazil though, so the shipping adds more $25,53
    - _2d30 3y ago
      $22.49 is what I saw (and paid) as well.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Your prime isn't as prime as theirs? Some are just more prime than others. It's the natural way
    - otteromkram 3y ago
      That was a nice prime rib.
  - _2d30 3y ago
    Did you go to Amazon from the linked page? Mine was lower than the claimed $30 but maybe it was targeted? $22.49 before tax.
bulbosaur123 3y ago
OG HODLER
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Luc 3y ago
Great book, I am glad it is now easier to purchase worldwide.
jebraat 3y ago
Love Charlie, love his insights, love listening to the little nuggets he has to say in the shareholder meetings. But holy moly, this book has been a drag for me to read. I actually stopped about half way through. This is 100% on me, of course. I highly recommend reading a sample before buying.
- tquinn 3y ago
  I've read it a few times. I would recommend reading: Talk One: Harvard School Commencement Speech (aka Prescription for Guaranteed Misery in life) Talk Eleven: The Psychology of Human Misjudgement which is the most important talk in the book. Interestingly enough it doesn't have any illustrations or sidebar notes like the other talks. Then go from there.
  - 6stringmerc 3y ago
    So basically a Norm Macdonald perfect joke? It’s reflexive and a tautology - Munger’s best point is actually the point of the existence of the book it is contained within. Turtles all the way down.
  - jebraat 3y ago
    Thanks for the recommendations! Will have a look
kaycebasques 3y ago
I have the unwieldy hardcover version [1] published by Walsworth in 2005. It's a great read. It's hard for me to hate a guy who ascribes his success to being fiercely curious about everything. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Poor-Charlies-Almanack-Charles-Expanded/dp/1578645018 https://www.amazon.com/Poor-Charlies-Almanack-Charles-Expand...
- gizajob 3y ago
  Why, what’s wrong with being like that?
mpalmer 3y ago
Does it cover the prison-like windowless monstrosity of a dorm he designed for UCSB? https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/02/architect-resigns-grotesque-design-university-california-munger-hall/ https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/02/architect-resigns-grotesqu...
- tim333 3y ago
  The previous one that got built seems popular. 8.3/10 in reviews here https://www.veryapt.com/ApartmentReview-a7222-munger-graduate-residences-ann-arbor https://www.veryapt.com/ApartmentReview-a7222-munger-graduat...
- orzig 3y ago
  I don't have a horse in the race, but maybe before jumping to conclusions people should read the reactions of students themselves? They're very easy to find: https://www.independent.com/2022/07/27/mixed-reviews-ucsb-munger-hall-dormzilla-santa-barbara/ https://www.independent.com/2022/07/27/mixed-reviews-ucsb-mu... It's no puff piece, and students aren't uniformly positive, but it's a reminder that there are many trade-offs in life, and some are pretty open to it
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    UCSB is notoriously sparse on housing, so it sounds like a lot of students do prefer the privacy and quiet of Munger's dorm to the more fratty atmosphere of IV. But if options were better...
  - foobarqux 3y ago
    The question isn't whether windowless dorms are good or bad, it's whether the students who live in dorms should decide or should it be dictated by the richest people in the world. The common retort is that it's the rich people's money so that they should be able to impose whatever living conditions they want on the deprived.
boh 3y ago
Charlie isn't as effective of a philosopher as Warren(Charlie). When Warren cites Charlie he tends to filter out the more impulsive or outdated ideas. No filter Charlie tends to get cringey at some point.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
epolanski 3y ago
One of the most brilliant pieces of wisdom I got from Munger comes from his early years when he was a flight operator at some navy or air force base. At the beginning he felt the job to be difficult and stressful, he had to know how to assist planes fly safely and it wasn't always clear what had the highest priority. So he inversed the problem: what could he do to make the planes crash? It was easier to do his job by focusing on the things he could do wrong and just avoid those. It's a powerful framework I use consistently in my life. I really like Munger. I also love how unfiltered he is.
- blueridge 3y ago
  Yeah, I like this and I think the same way. Except it's not popular at work, where everything has to be polite and pleasant and delivered gently. I'm constantly thinking about what could go wrong, poking holes in plans, trying to minimize bad outcomes. People don't like this. But in general this is how I've always learned. And some of my best teachers and mentors over the years have been laser focused on what not to do. This really resonates with me, though I find most people aren't built this way. It comes across as a "negative" mindset.
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    A better way to frame this for colleagues might be: if we want this project to fail, what would we do?
  - taneq 3y ago
    This kind of adversarial design work is great if you can get the right people involved. The problems I’ve seen when you get the wrong people, though, are: 1) Often it’s much easier to point out potential issues than it is to properly address them. It can end up as a Gish gallop of low effort criticisms which must be countered on the spot or the initial idea is deemed entirely wrong. 2) If roles aren’t rotated regularly, some people settle into the “problem finder” role and start to prioritise finding problems over the success of the overall project, and now you have a saboteur on the team.
  - tasty_freeze 3y ago
EdwardCoffin 3y ago
I read this book fairly carefully a number of years ago, found a lot of good stuff worth taking notes on. I'm glad to see it becoming more easily available. Stripe is also good. I have their printing of Hamming's The Art of Doing Science and Engineering and am quite happy with the quality of the printing and binding. In a discussion thread [1] on this same book, on this same website back in 2016 I was able to find a citation that the book does not give, for a book Munger did not specify, only described, when I quoted the bit from the book [2] someone was able to come up with what was almost certainly the book Munger had in mind [3]. Reproducing the essential bits of that thread to save the click throughs: In section 17, Stress-Influence Tendency (p21-22), he mentions some final work by Pavlov, but doesn't provide a citation. I spent some time trying to find it when I first read this years ago, but was unable to. I'm wondering whether it's even reliable: I'd think that work by Pavlov could be found with him as an author, rather than in a "popular paperback" written by an un-named psychiatrist. If anyone knows what book he must have been talking about, or can point to the particular papers by Pavlov, I'd like to know. [1] ""...popular paperback, written by some Rockefeller-financed psychiatrist, when I was trying to figure out.."" Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing - How Evangelists, Psychiatrists, Politicians, and Medicine Men Can Change Your Beliefs and Behavior - William Sargant [4] "In 1938 Sargant was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship" says author's wiki. I think this book fits the bill." [2] It does indeed seem to be the book. Thanks. The author seems to be controversial. The Wikipedia entry on him [1] says things like "his reliance on dogma rather than clinical evidence have confirmed his reputation as a controversial figure whose work is seldom cited in modern psychiatric texts.", and others "described him as 'autocratic, a danger, a disaster' and spoke about 'the damage he did'". [3] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159242 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159503 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159809 [4] https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Mind-Brainwashing-Evangelists-Psychiatrists/dp/1883536065 https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Mind-Brainwashing-Evangelists-...

67 points by fadymak 3y ago

Love listening to Munger. He feels more genuine than any other successful businessman I have come across — other than Buffett.

johnwheeler 3y ago

I like the part in the book where he talks about getting rich by doing nothing “sit on your ass investing”

readyplayernull 3y ago
Lottery?
- WJW 3y ago
  Decades-long buy and hold investing. Buy once then sit on your ass for 40 years. This works quite well but is actually surprisingly hard to do for most people.
  - mihaic 3y ago
    Yes, because it's getting harder to get enough money to buy anything on which you'd sit for 40 year.
Mistletoe 3y ago
It will be interesting if it repeats. He may just be a guy that existed in one of the most privileged eras in human history for making money like that, like a colonist writing a book about how easy it is to get free land in America. https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/ https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/
- oh_sigh 3y ago
  If it was just luck, shouldn't we expect a bunch of billionaires who followed a similar easy path?
  - jilko 3y ago
    Not necessarily. For the record I'm in the camp "they didn't just get lucky," but it's totally plausible to argue that they did. Taleb does this exact thought experiment in "Fooled By Randomness." He imagines a pool of investors who are weeded out purely by random luck each iteration of some process. You still end up with people that get some insane track records, purely by chance. In fact, he spends quite a bit of the book talking about barely fictionalized people he knew in the trading world whose strategies made money for long periods of time before blowing up simply because they happened to be in the market at the right time. I suspect the nuance we need to add to OP's comment was "they were there at the right time AND won the iteration game purely by luck." So they were the tippy top of a cohort in a generally advantaged time where their strategy happened to be optimal. Again I don't personally think that's the case (I believe there's something more fundamentally correct in their approach), but it's a totally reasonable thing to argue even in the absence of other examples.
  - Mistletoe 3y ago
    I wish I could find it again but I can’t, but there was a fascinating applet kind of thing that showed even with perfectly equal odds starting out after it runs for a while you see some of the bars start accumulating wealth and it does not end up evenly distributed. It’s actually quite skewed at the end with a top class that accumulated most of the wealth. It taught me a lot about the rich and how they got there and how much I should listen to their advice. Now I’m not saying the rich don’t make smart moves, because some certainly do, but even in a completely equal world we would still have some people that didn’t do anything at all except be lucky get to that tier. I do think there are things you can massively do to increase your odds such as saving, investing intelligently using compound interest, not buying crap you don’t need, not get divorced, invest in your health, work hard, etc.

_2d30 3y ago

Easy buy. Stripe Press has a fantastic aesthetic and quality to their books and this is a classic. Less than $25 with taxes on Amazon.

simonebrunozzi 3y ago
Why I see $30?
- soneca 3y ago
  On Amazon I see $22,49 (despite the Stripe page’s link stating $30). I am in Brazil though, so the shipping adds more $25,53
  - _2d30 3y ago
    $22.49 is what I saw (and paid) as well.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Your prime isn't as prime as theirs? Some are just more prime than others. It's the natural way
  - otteromkram 3y ago
    That was a nice prime rib.
- _2d30 3y ago
  Did you go to Amazon from the linked page? Mine was lower than the claimed $30 but maybe it was targeted? $22.49 before tax.

bulbosaur123 3y ago

OG HODLER

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Luc 3y ago

Great book, I am glad it is now easier to purchase worldwide.

jebraat 3y ago

Love Charlie, love his insights, love listening to the little nuggets he has to say in the shareholder meetings. But holy moly, this book has been a drag for me to read. I actually stopped about half way through. This is 100% on me, of course. I highly recommend reading a sample before buying.

tquinn 3y ago
I've read it a few times. I would recommend reading: Talk One: Harvard School Commencement Speech (aka Prescription for Guaranteed Misery in life) Talk Eleven: The Psychology of Human Misjudgement which is the most important talk in the book. Interestingly enough it doesn't have any illustrations or sidebar notes like the other talks. Then go from there.
- 6stringmerc 3y ago
  So basically a Norm Macdonald perfect joke? It’s reflexive and a tautology - Munger’s best point is actually the point of the existence of the book it is contained within. Turtles all the way down.
- jebraat 3y ago
  Thanks for the recommendations! Will have a look

kaycebasques 3y ago

I have the unwieldy hardcover version [1] published by Walsworth in 2005. It's a great read. It's hard for me to hate a guy who ascribes his success to being fiercely curious about everything. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Poor-Charlies-Almanack-Charles-Expanded/dp/1578645018 https://www.amazon.com/Poor-Charlies-Almanack-Charles-Expand...

gizajob 3y ago
Why, what’s wrong with being like that?

mpalmer 3y ago

Does it cover the prison-like windowless monstrosity of a dorm he designed for UCSB? https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/02/architect-resigns-grotesque-design-university-california-munger-hall/ https://www.dezeen.com/2021/11/02/architect-resigns-grotesqu...

tim333 3y ago
The previous one that got built seems popular. 8.3/10 in reviews here https://www.veryapt.com/ApartmentReview-a7222-munger-graduate-residences-ann-arbor https://www.veryapt.com/ApartmentReview-a7222-munger-graduat...
orzig 3y ago
I don't have a horse in the race, but maybe before jumping to conclusions people should read the reactions of students themselves? They're very easy to find: https://www.independent.com/2022/07/27/mixed-reviews-ucsb-munger-hall-dormzilla-santa-barbara/ https://www.independent.com/2022/07/27/mixed-reviews-ucsb-mu... It's no puff piece, and students aren't uniformly positive, but it's a reminder that there are many trade-offs in life, and some are pretty open to it
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  UCSB is notoriously sparse on housing, so it sounds like a lot of students do prefer the privacy and quiet of Munger's dorm to the more fratty atmosphere of IV. But if options were better...
- foobarqux 3y ago
  The question isn't whether windowless dorms are good or bad, it's whether the students who live in dorms should decide or should it be dictated by the richest people in the world. The common retort is that it's the rich people's money so that they should be able to impose whatever living conditions they want on the deprived.

boh 3y ago

Charlie isn't as effective of a philosopher as Warren(Charlie). When Warren cites Charlie he tends to filter out the more impulsive or outdated ideas. No filter Charlie tends to get cringey at some point.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

epolanski 3y ago

One of the most brilliant pieces of wisdom I got from Munger comes from his early years when he was a flight operator at some navy or air force base. At the beginning he felt the job to be difficult and stressful, he had to know how to assist planes fly safely and it wasn't always clear what had the highest priority. So he inversed the problem: what could he do to make the planes crash? It was easier to do his job by focusing on the things he could do wrong and just avoid those. It's a powerful framework I use consistently in my life. I really like Munger. I also love how unfiltered he is.

blueridge 3y ago
Yeah, I like this and I think the same way. Except it's not popular at work, where everything has to be polite and pleasant and delivered gently. I'm constantly thinking about what could go wrong, poking holes in plans, trying to minimize bad outcomes. People don't like this. But in general this is how I've always learned. And some of my best teachers and mentors over the years have been laser focused on what not to do. This really resonates with me, though I find most people aren't built this way. It comes across as a "negative" mindset.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  A better way to frame this for colleagues might be: if we want this project to fail, what would we do?
- taneq 3y ago
  This kind of adversarial design work is great if you can get the right people involved. The problems I’ve seen when you get the wrong people, though, are: 1) Often it’s much easier to point out potential issues than it is to properly address them. It can end up as a Gish gallop of low effort criticisms which must be countered on the spot or the initial idea is deemed entirely wrong. 2) If roles aren’t rotated regularly, some people settle into the “problem finder” role and start to prioritise finding problems over the success of the overall project, and now you have a saboteur on the team.
- tasty_freeze 3y ago

EdwardCoffin 3y ago

I read this book fairly carefully a number of years ago, found a lot of good stuff worth taking notes on. I'm glad to see it becoming more easily available. Stripe is also good. I have their printing of Hamming's The Art of Doing Science and Engineering and am quite happy with the quality of the printing and binding. In a discussion thread [1] on this same book, on this same website back in 2016 I was able to find a citation that the book does not give, for a book Munger did not specify, only described, when I quoted the bit from the book [2] someone was able to come up with what was almost certainly the book Munger had in mind [3]. Reproducing the essential bits of that thread to save the click throughs: In section 17, Stress-Influence Tendency (p21-22), he mentions some final work by Pavlov, but doesn't provide a citation. I spent some time trying to find it when I first read this years ago, but was unable to. I'm wondering whether it's even reliable: I'd think that work by Pavlov could be found with him as an author, rather than in a "popular paperback" written by an un-named psychiatrist. If anyone knows what book he must have been talking about, or can point to the particular papers by Pavlov, I'd like to know. [1] ""...popular paperback, written by some Rockefeller-financed psychiatrist, when I was trying to figure out.."" Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing - How Evangelists, Psychiatrists, Politicians, and Medicine Men Can Change Your Beliefs and Behavior - William Sargant [4] "In 1938 Sargant was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship" says author's wiki. I think this book fits the bill." [2] It does indeed seem to be the book. Thanks. The author seems to be controversial. The Wikipedia entry on him [1] says things like "his reliance on dogma rather than clinical evidence have confirmed his reputation as a controversial figure whose work is seldom cited in modern psychiatric texts.", and others "described him as 'autocratic, a danger, a disaster' and spoke about 'the damage he did'". [3] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159242 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159503 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159809 [4] https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Mind-Brainwashing-Evangelists-Psychiatrists/dp/1883536065 https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Mind-Brainwashing-Evangelists-...