Compounding Life

I attended the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting this year, at the meeting you get to hear Warren and Charlie (mostly Warren) answer questions for about 5 hours. The Monday after was the Wesco Financial annual meeting which is all Charlie’s show. I didn’t attend but the Motley Fool has some good notes in this article.

Charlie Munger is a wealth of knowledge and thought. As a lot of people say, he doesn’t talk very much but when he does listen up.

Disclosure: I own shares of WFC and BRK.B at the time of this writing.

I am unabashed fan of Warren Buffett and I really enjoyed watching this video of him speaking to a MBA class at University of Florida.  Its a little over an hour but its time well spent.  

The video is from 2000, but like all of his advice its timeless. One the things mentioned in the talk that really stuck out in my mind is the following in reference to the failure of Long Term Capital:

 

 

To make money they didnt have and didnt need they risked what they did have and what they did need.

 

He goes on to make an example with someone who has 100 million dollars. If this person can earn 10% a year on his 100 million dollars without leverage at almost no risk, or take some risk and leverage his 100 million dollars to make a 20% return this person would be crazy to risk losing their 100 million for an additional 10%. Especially because they already have 100 million bucks, how is the additional 10% going to make their life that much better? It isn’t it. But the downside if they loose is obvious, they no longer have any money.

The google video link above is for the whole 1 hour talk, its also on youtube broken up in smaller chunks.

Other Warren Buffett videos:

Warren Buffett talks Business

Charlie Rose Interview