Charlie Munger on Three Considerations that Average Investors can Use for Better Returns

Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway's Vice-Chairman and partner of Warren Buffett

In a lunch that investor Mohnish Pabrai of Pabrai Funds had with Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway’s Vice-Chairman and partner of Warren Buffett, Charlie explained that an investment operation that focuses on three attributes would do exceedingly well.

  1. Carefully look at what the other great investors have done. Charlie endorses mirroring the investments of the most successful investors by learning from the 13Fs they might file. Look at what other great minds are doing.
  2. Look at the cannibals. Look thoroughly at the businesses that are buying back huge amounts of their stock. These businesses are eating themselves away, so Charlie describes them as the cannibals.
  3. Carefully study spinoffs. Joel Greenblatt of Gotham Capital has a whole book on spinoffs: “You Can Be a Stock Market Genius Too.” Overall the book discusses investment opportunities presented by circumstances that are usually not considered by the average investor: spin-offs, mergers, risk arbitrage, restructurings, rights offerings, bankruptcies, liquidations, and asset sales.

Charlie Munger believes that if an investor did just three things, the end results would be vastly better than the returns of an average investor.

Read this Motley Fool article on more of what Mohnish Pabrai learned from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.

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