Given Berkshire Hathaway’s great success, you’d think that Munger and Buffett had an uncanny ability to predict the future. The opposite is true: A pillar of their success is their ability to admit they cannot predict the future.

Munger has noted that he’s “never been able to predict accurately. I don’t make money predicting accurately. We just tend to get into good businesses and stay there.” Moreover, Munger didn’t place much stock in experts’ predictions either: “People have always had this craving to have someone tell them the future. Long ago, kings would hire people to read sheep guts. There’s always been a market for people who pretend to know the future. Listening to today’s forecasters is just as crazy as when the king hired the guy to look at the sheep guts. It happens over and over and over.” Source for quotes.

I think about Munger’s perspective whenever I’m tempted to click on some investment guru’s prediction about what the stock market will return or the path of interest rates. If Munger and Buffett, two of the greatest investors of all time, don’t think they can predict the future or listen to expert predictions, why should we behave any differently?

Charlie Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett’s business partner, died November 28 — less than a month short of his 100th birthday.

Source: John Jennings Forbes Contributor
I write about investments and issues that affect wealthy families.

Munger cautioned against having an opinion unless you are fully educated on all sides of the issue, which is a specific application of the concept of inversion.

In 2007, Munger gave the commencement speech at the USC School of Law, and in his talk, he warned of “extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one’s mind.” He told the attendees that whenever he “drifts toward preferring one ideology over another” he forces himself to consider the other side by telling himself, “I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it. I think only when I reach that stage am I qualified to speak.”

The underlying concept is that it takes work to have an informed opinion, and ideological thinking is lazy thinking. Instead of looking for facts that support your ideological leanings, having a valid opinion involves the often painful task of researching facts that support the other side.

Charlie Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett’s business partner, died November 28 — less than a month short of his 100th birthday.

Source: John Jennings Forbes Contributor
I write about investments and issues that affect wealthy families.

“Invert, always invert.” – Carl Jacobi, 19th century mathematician

A compelling mental model Munger espoused is inversion, based on Jacobi’s belief that a powerful way to solve math problems is to restate them in inverse form. Munger’s insight is that inversion is robust beyond mathematics; thinking is clarified by considering issues both forward and backward ways.

Most of us think of our goals in a forward direction, as in, “What do I need to do to accomplish my goal?” But it can be powerful to look at it backward by thinking about what we should do to ensure we won’t meet our objective. For example, if you want to lose weight, instead of just thinking about what you need to do to lose weight, it’s also instructive to ask yourself, “What would I do if I didn’t want to lose weight?” Those things might include not exercising, overeating, avoiding fruits and vegetables, and consuming many highly processed foods loaded with sugar. That inverted list can help you decide how to behave to achieve your goals.

Also, as I wrote in “Five Ways to Be a Terrible Investor,” inversion is a mental model that is valuable in shaping good investment behavior.

Charlie Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett’s business partner, died November 28 — less than a month short of his 100th birthday.

Source: John Jennings Forbes Contributor
I write about investments and issues that affect wealthy families.

“When I elongate the relationship that I have had personally with Dennis and Patrick, and when I think about the relationship that these two gentlemen have had with the organisation, against the background of what we were going through at that moment I said to myself (as I said to Dennis in a WhatsApp chat), ‘We always should look at things on a net basis. You don’t judge a relationship by the ups or the downs in the short run, you look at the net positive over the long run.’ So it was with that in mind I reached out to Patrick,” Lee-Chin noted.

“We’ve had disagreements [in the past] but it was more because we were debating. We’ve never had any emotional angst with each other, never!” he posited.

Michael Lee-Chin, chairman of NCB Financial Group

Source: https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/golden-handshake/

For Hylton, the payday was the fulfillment of a promise Lee Chin made to him in 2001 when he was headhunted to run the institution.

“But before joining, he said to me in the foyer [of his offices in Burlington, Ontario] right after the negotiations, ‘You need to join us, because this billionaire will make you rich,’ ” Hylton said with a guffaw, triggering the other men in the interview to laugh as well. Asked if Lee-Chin did make him rich, Hylton with an even broader smile only replied, “Well,” and laughed again.

“I won’t complain, let me put it that way. I won’t complain. I think the settlement is a manifestation of that state of not being disagreeable but coming to a conclusion and coming to a decision which we think is in the interest of all parties, ourselves as individuals, but most importantly the company so that it can focus on its growth, development and trajectory going forward,”

Former CEO of NCB Financial Group Patrick Hylton.

Source: https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/golden-handshake/