Professor Glen Arnold

Investors should expect to make many mistakes – expect this, accept this, and still function: Charlie Munger on the subject: “It’s natural to have decisions in each individual life that don’t work very well. We live in a world of sin, sorrow, and misdecision. That’s what human beings get to cope with in their days […]

Charlie Munger had some ripe words to say about cryptocurrency when he addressed a meeting as director of Daily Journal recently (Charlie is Warren Buffett’s business partner and made his billions by choosing his investment carefully over a six decade stretch – and he is still making money and giving good advice aged 99). Here […]

There are a few behavioural traits exhibited by great investors which are good to adopt. Keep learning and adapting “You have to keep learning if you want to become a great investor. When the world changes, you must change.” (Charlie Munger) How do you expect to be able to adapt appropriately if you do not […]

The billionaire investor Charlie Munger has been selecting shares for over 70 years. Generously, he is willing to share what he has learned in that time. I’ll focus today on some of his rules for running a portfolio. They come from a recent interview. “You don’t need to own a lot of things in order […]

Charlie Munger, at 99, and still a director of Berkshire Hathaway, spoke at the AGM of another company he dominates, Daily Journal, about how people fool themselves into believing what they wish to be true. This is especially the case for those offering financial services such as fund management: “If I had to name one […]

As you’ve observed, twice in the last three years I have been scared by the prospects for the companies in my portfolio. First, in the period leading up to Covid lockdowns in early spring 2020 when I sold off a number of companies vulnerable to what I thought might be a deep recession, moving 40% […]

I have lost count of the number of times I’ve observed a company with a pile of cash doing nothing more than earning a pittance with it stuffed in a bank account or two. Many managers do not seem to recognise that their job is to examine all the uses of capital within the business, and ask […]

One of the golden rules of investing, as opposed to speculation, is to spend significant time really understanding what you are buying.  You should not be basing decisions on a “tip” on the assumption that the person who gave you the tip “seems to know what they are talking about”. You must do the required investigations […]

Charles Darwin said that it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.  So it is with investors: we need above all to have a mind-set that allows us to look at how the world really is, how it works, where it is […]

It’s vital that we value investors continue to develop our rationality muscles. This requires both good habits and a willingness to regularly review our thinking. Charlie Munger advises “continually challenge and willingly amend your “best-loved ideas””. An important input to that process is to identify and reconcile disconfirming evidence.  If you are approaching a “conclusion” […]