Since early 2020 when COVID started, I’ve gone on quite an exploration. In 2020 alone, I read over 25 books, all of which were either sci-fi (like Dune, The Three Body Problem, Snow Crash) or non-fiction. For some reason - maybe because I was unemployed and taking care of a newborn - my mind needed to work out. I had no idea that I would go on such a bender of books, but my brain was just saying “read something, learn something.”

So I ordered a book I’ve wanted to read for quite some time: Poor Charlie’s Almanack, a compendium of speeches by one of the best minds and investors of the 20th century, Charlie Munger.

I’ve been interested in the stock market and investments since I was young. I started investing - and losing money and learning and repeating - when I was 18 years old. I wanted go at it alone and learn myself without the help of books and other investors. Then when I was 19, I interned at a small wealth management team, and I got to sit next to the Chief Investment Officer, a brilliant and humble mind who taught me not only how little I knew, but how little he knew and how much he always strived to learn.

My arrogance and rebelliousness as a twenty-year-old ignored his advice to understand how little I knew. I was going to conquer the world! Yeah. Right...

It wasn't until recently that I whole-heartedly acknowledged how little I know. Spend a moment and really think about this statement: you know close to nothing. Truly. Think about how much there is to know in the world. Think about the number of Wikipedia entries and the endless amounts of books. How many of these would you be able to competently explain to a 5 year old? .01%?

Don’t worry even the majority of the most brilliant people in the world basically know nothing in relative terms. Yeah, he/she is one of the greatest physics minds in the world, but they don’t know shit about anything else.

ANYWAYS, the point I’m making is it was very psychologically freeing to realize how little I knew (and even many things I thought I knew well, I realized I was full of shit). This made me more open to learn and understand other points of view. It’s a win!

Which brings me back to investing and Charlie Munger and Poor Charlie’s Alamanack. If there is one person to learn investing from, I’d bet it’s Charlie Munger. Why? Because of the way he thinks. Because of the way he approaches problems and solves them. Because of his long-term vision. Because many times investing is not even about a company’s finances/numbers, it’s about common sense.

There is no one else like Charlie Munger. He will not only teach you about investing, he will teach you to think. And that, my friends, is an area we can all improve.

Buy the book, rent it, whatever, but please read it! Below are all my notes and quotes from the book to give you a feel what really stood out to me. enjoy!

Notes & Quotes

Multiple Mental Models Approach to Business (estimated to be 100 of them - Click here for list)

His models supply the analytical structure that enables him to reduce the inherent chaos and confusion of a complex problem into a clarified set of fundamentals.
This stitches together the analytical tools, methods, and formulas from such traditional disciplines as history, psychology, mathematics, engineering, biology, physics, chemistry, statistics, economics, and so on.
“if you have just one or two [mental models] that you’re using, the nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you’ll think it does.”
“Just as multiple factors shape almost every system, multiple models from a variety of disciplines, applied with fluency, are needed to understand that system.”
1. Mathematics / Statistics
  1. Compound interest from mathematics
  2. “The Fermat/Pascal system is dramatically consonant with the way the world works.”
  3. “Decision tree theory”
2. Engineering
  1. Redundancy / Backup system model
  2. Breakpoints
  3. Quality Control (like what Deming did in Japan)
3. Finance / Accounting / Economics
  1. Advantages of Scale
4. Physics / Chemistry / Biology
  1. Breakpoint / tipping-moment / autocatalysis models from physics and chemistry
  2. Modern Darwinian synthesis model from biology - work of late 1930s and 1940s of discoveries of geneticists and natural historians to determine how change of genes could account for evolution of biodiversity: The organism acts, and has evolved, to further the interests of its genes.
5. Philosophy
6. Psychology
  1. Cognitive misjudgment models from psychology (I.E. Charlie’s 25 models from Psychology of Human Misjudgment talk)
  2. First principles - Look at every business and try to determine what their main psychological aim is for their business.
    1. Munger talks about a case study in Coke and says “[Coke] is going into the business of creating and maintaining conditioned reflexes. The ‘Coca-Cola’ trade name and trade dress will act as the stimuli, and the purchase and ingestion of our beverage will be the desired response.
    2. “How does one create and maintain conditioned reflexes?...(1) by operant conditioning and (2) by classical conditioning, often called Pavlovian conditioning.”
      1. For operant conditioning - we need only (1) maximize rewards of our beverage’s ingestion and (2) minimize possibilities that desired reflexes created by us will be extinguished through operant conditioning by competing products.
      2. Persuasion
7. Social Proof
8. Milgram experiment - Used authority to manipulate high-grade people into doing things that were clearly and grossly wrong
9. Pavlovian association - if people tell you what you really dont want to hear - what’s unpleasant - there’s an almost automatic reaction of antipathy
10. Consistency principle
11. Operant conditioning
12. Incentive-caused bias - what is good for the professional is good for the client and the wider civilization
The basics foundation of Mental Models are (Starting Page 167):
1. Mathematics
2. Accounting
3. Psychology
4. Science
5. Engineering & Engineering Quality Control
  1. Says Engineering QC is based on math of Pascal & Fermat and also based on what Deming brought to Japan with QC
The Lollapalooza Effect - Forces / factors / models / biases operating in the same direction reinforce and greatly amplify each other in effect
Mental Biases
Checklists
1. An Investing - or really anything IMO - Principles Checklist (Pages 73 - 76) but really a checklist for everything:
  1. Risk
    1. Avoid dealing with people of questionable character
    2. Insist upon proper compensation for risk assumed
  2. Independence
    1. Objectivity and rationality require independence of thought
    2. Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean
  3. Preparation
    1. Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading.
    2. Cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day
    3. Develop fluency in mental models from the major academic disciplines
  4. Intellectual Humility
    1. Acknowledging what you don’t know is the dawning of wisdom
    2. Identify and reconcile disconfirming evidence
    3. Resist false precision, false certainty
    4. Never fool yourself, knowing you’re the easiest to fool
  5. Analytic rigor
    1. Use of scientific method and checklists minimized errors and omissions
    2. Better to remember the obvious than grasp the esoteric
    3. Invert, always invert
  6. Allocation
    1. Remember highest and best use is always measured by opportunity cost.
  7. Patience
    1. Never interrupt compound interest
    2. Never take action for its own sake; avoid frictional costs
    3. Be alert for the arrival of luck
    4. Enjoy the process along with the proceeds, because the process is where you live
  8. Decisiveness
    1. Greedy when others are fearful and vice versa
    2. Opportunity doesn’t come often so seize it when it does
    3. Opportunity meets the prepared mind
  9. Change
    1. Continually challenge and willingly amend your “best loved ideas”
    2. Adapt to nature don’t expect nature to adapt to you
  10. Focus
    1. Reputation and integrity are most valuable assets
Munger Aphorisms (“Mungerisms”)
1. Take a simple idea and take it seriously.
2. Don’t do cocaine. Don’t race trains. And avoid AIDS situations. - 2004
3. I’m right and you’re smart, and sooner or later you’ll see I’m right
4. You don’t want to be like the motion picture executive who had many people at his funeral, but they were just there to make sure he was dead.
5. If you tell people why, they’ll understand it better, they’ll consider it more important and they’ll be more likely to comply.
6. The iron rule of life is that only 20% of the people can be in the top fifth.
7. I asked the guy who sold purple and green fishing lures if the fish take these lures? He responded, ‘Mister, I don’t sell to fish.’
8. Live with change and adapt to it.
9. Heavy ideology is one of the most extreme distorters of human cognition.
10. If you want to ruin civilization, just go to the legislature and pass laws that create systems wherein people can easily cheat.
11. When people get bad news, they hate the messenger.
12. In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter) who didn’t read all the time. None.

Quotes
- Benjamin Franklin:
  1. Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
  2. It’s difficult for an empty sack to stand upright.
  3. When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.
- Cicero:
  1. The best Armour of Old Age is a well spent life preceding it; a Life employed in the pursuit of useful knowledge, in honourable actions and the practice of Virtue; in which he who labours to improve himself from his Youth, will in Age reap the happiest fruits of them; not only because these never leave a man, not even in the extremest Old Age; but because a conscience bearing witness that our life was well-spent, together with the remembrance of past good actions, yields an unspeakable comfort to the soul.
- Einstein:
  1. Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.
  2. Said his successful theories came from “curiosity, concentration, perseverance, and self-criticism.”
- Others
  1. Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” - John Kenneth Galbraith
  2. “What a man wishes, that also he will believe.” - Demosthenes
  3. “The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”
Other Notes
1. Cicero - Thought to be Rome’s greatest writer, orator, lawyer, and statesmen. Murdered by Marc Anthony in 43 B.C. for opposing autocracy.
  1. Cicero’s underlying philosophical view was one of deep and realistic cynicism about human nature, including a distaste for pure mob and demagogues
  2. This cynicism was counterbalanced by his belief it was the duty of citizenry, particularly its most eminent members, to serve the State and its values wisely and vigorously, even if that required a great sacrifice on the part of the servers.
  3. He invented the Latin word “moralis” root of our word moral.
  4. To him, pride in a job well done is vastly constructive as it motivates good conduct in early life because, in remembrance, you make yourself happier when old.
  5. Cicero believed in self-improvement so long as breath lasts.
  6. The only life worth living is dedicated in substantial part to good outcomes one cannot possibly survive to see.
2. On Diversification
  1. In Munger’s view, a portfolio of three companies is plenty of diversification.
3. Darwin
  1. He always gave priority attention to evidence tending to disconfirm whatever theory he had
Themes
- Multidisciplinary Thinking
- Self-Improvement
- History Repeats
- Human Nature

Main Historic Characters Referenced
1. Benjamin Franklin
2. Isaac Newton
3. Charles Darwin
4. Pavlov
5. Planck
6. Adam Smith

Peter Kaufman (Editor of Poor Charlie’s Almanack) - Speech on Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking
1. Why multidisciplinary thinking (“MDT”) is important
  1. Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “To understand is to know what to do.”
  2. St. Lous Cardinals great, Lou Brock, “Show me a man who is afraid of appearing foolish and I’ll show you a man who can be beat every time.”
2. The Three Buckets - A statistician’s best friend is what? A large, relevant sample size. And why? Because a principle derived from a large relevant sample size can’t be wrong can it?
  1. Bucket 1 is 13.7 billion years. Is that a large sample? It’s the largest one in the whole universe. There is no larger sample. Because what is it? It’s the inorganic universe. Physics. Geology. Anything that’s not living goes in my bucket number 1. 13.7 billion years.
  2. Bucket number 2 is 3.5 billion years. It’s biology on the planet Earth. Is that a big sample size? Is it relevant? We’re biological creatures. Let me ask you this, inorganic, bucket number one, is it relevant? We live in it. So bucket number one we live in, 13.7 billion years. Bucket number two is what we’re part of, biology. 3.5 billion years.
  3. Bucket 3 - 20,000 years of recorded human history. That’s the most relevant of all. That’s our story. That’s who we are.
3. Models he discusses
  1. Mirrored reciprocation - based on Newton’s Third Law of Motion (for every action, there will always be an equal and opposite reaction) - Every interaction you have with another human being is merely mirrored reciprocation. Therefore, be a good person!
    1. We test this concept by looking at the three buckets, and it confirms that Newton’s Third Law of Motion has been in effect for 13.7 billion years so same for 3.5 billion years, then he uses the example of grabbing a cat by its tail. It;s not going to like this and try to claw you senseless. Equal and opposite reaction.
  2. Compound Interest
    1. Einstein said, “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.” Einstein also said it’s the greatest mathematical discovery of all time. He said it’s the eighth wonder of the world.
    2. Kaufman defines as: dogged incremental progress over a very long time frame.
      1. You have to be constant, not intermittent.
  3. Win-Win is SO MUCH better than Win-Lose
    1. What happens you insert win-win in any game theory scenario, what do you get? Optimal every time.
    2. What must you necessarily do if you’re interested in achieving win-win frameworks with your important counterparties in life? You must understand the basic axiom of clinical psychologyThe basic axiom of clinical psychology reads, ‘If you could see the world the way I see it, you’d understand why I behave the way I do.’
      1. And I say if you buy the axiom, which you should, you must buy the two corollaries as well because they’re logical extensions. They’re undeniable.
      2. Corollary number one, if that axiom is true and you want to understand the way someone’s behaving, you must see the world as they see it.
      3. Corollary number two, if you want to change a human being’s behavior and you accept that axiom, you must necessarily, to get them to change, change how they see the world.
    3. Win-Win is the secret to leadership. The secret to leadership is to see through the eyes of all six important counterparty groups and make sure that everything you do is structured in such a way to be win-win with them. The six are:
      1. Customers
      2. Suppliers
      3. Employees
      4. Owners
      5. Regulators
      6. Communities you operate in
      7. If you can truly see through the eyes of all six of these counterparty groups and understand their needs, their aspirations, their insecurities, their time horizons. How many blind spots do you have now? Zero. How many mistakes are you going to make? You’re going to make zero. People don’t think this is possible. It’s really easy. To understand is to know what to do.
4. Einstein’s Five Ascending Levels of Cognitive Prowess (from best to worse):
  1. Simple - Why is simple better than genius? Because you can understand it!
  2. Genius
  3. Brilliant
  4. Intelligent
  5. Smart