A Quote by Charlie Munger
Size will hurt returns. Look at Berkshire Hathaway - the last five things Warren has done have generated returns that are splendid by historical standards, but now give him $100 billion in assets and measure outcomes across all of it, it doesn't look so good. We can only buy big positions, and the only time we can get big positions is during a horrible period of decline or stasis. That really doesn't happen very often.
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I don't have the five positions anymore. It may be as simple as three positions now, where you're either a ball-handler, a wing or a big.
Participant (Productions) is the only production company in town that has a double bottom line: social good plus financial returns. It's too early to tell how our returns are going to look - though all signs are promising - but social good is what we're really after.
By setting up Berkshire Hathaway, Warren has done everything very rationally.
There are no hopeless positions; there are only inferior positions that can be saved. There are no drawn positions; there are only equal ones in which you can play for a win. But at the same time, don't forget that there is no such thing as a won position in which it is impossible to lose.
Now a movie with 30 million returns would be something very incredible and the producer can only get 10 to 15 million. This is only 100 thousands US dollars. This is not enough!
Mitt Romney was treated very unfairly. Mitt Romney didn't want to give his tax returns, because people don't understand returns that are complicated, and complex. And he didn't give it. He fought it, fought it, fought it, all the way into September. A month before the election, he gave his tax returns. And they picked out two items that were absolutely perfect. He did nothing wrong. And his returns are very much smaller than my returns.
When Berkshire Hathaway laid out three billion dollars for GE today, we didn't spend it, we invested it. When the Federal government buys the mortgages, they're not spending it, they're investing it. Now, they're investing it in distress type assets but they're buying them at distress prices if they buy them at market. It's the kind of stuff I love to do. I just don't have 700 million. Maybe we could go in it together.
I'm not a big person, so every time they were adding these big guys to the cast, I said to my trainer, 'We're screwed, dude.' I'm only five foot five, and I'm going to look so little.
It's hard to find ideas that aren't picked over and harder to get real returns and differentiate yourself. We are entering a new environment. The days of big returns are gone.
Wesco had a market capitalization of $40 million when we bought it [in the early 1970s]. It's $2 billion now. It's been a long slog to a perfectly respectable outcome - not as good as Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft, but there's always someone in life who's done better.
If you want to understand what's going to happen, you can't look in the rearview mirror into the United States' history, because that's done now. You have to look out at the rest of the world and look at the history of the rest of the world, and what you'll see is demonstrations and counter-demonstrations are going to become the norm. We'll have a big march, then they'll have a big march, we'll have a big rally and they'll have a big rally. That will be one of the features. Again, a pro-regime and pro-opposition media system, that will become a feature.
You may have heard that Donald Trum has long refused to release his tax returns, the way every other nominee for president has done for decades. You can look at 40 years of my tax returns. I think we need a law that says, if you become the nominee of the major parties, you have to release your tax returns.
The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Saviour. ... But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own... He returned to His own time, not owing to the application of any historical ingenuity, but by the same inevitable necessity by which the liberated pendulum returns to its original position.
In equities, you price the risk. As far as debt is concerned, if the markets get more sophisticated where, for the levels of risks that you take, you get the debt returns, we will certainly look at it. It's back to a philosophy of risk-adjusted returns.
One of the things I've probably absorbed when I was in business school - and didn't know I was learning it - was about life cycles, that things begin, and they peak, and then they decline. So whether you look at life cycles of fashion, or you look at life cycles of things that people buy, designs, everything is in a life cycle. Getting out of the apparel businesses and into beauty and lingerie, those were very big bets, but they were very deliberately thought about and tested over time.
[What if my advisor talks only about returns, not risk?] ... It's his job to take risk into account by telling you the range of possible outcomes you face. If he won't, go get a new planner, someone who will get real.
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