Charlie Munger Said Berkshire's Billions Came From Getting 'Less Crazy And Less Stupid Than Most People' — And Staying Alive Into Their 90s

Most people spend their lives hoping to get rich before they die. Charlie Munger lived long enough to do it — and credited his success to something far less glamorous than genius.

In his final interview with CNBC's Becky Quick in 2023, the 99-year-old Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman reflected on the "amazing occurrence" of turning a "piddly start" into a multi-hundred-billion-dollar company alongside Warren Buffett, now 94.

When asked what led to their success, Munger didn't reach for buzzwords or bravado. "We got a little less crazy than most people and a little less stupid than most people. And that really helped us," he said. 

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He added that the real secret was simply staying alive long enough to let everything compound: "We were given this much longer time to run than most people… that gave us a long track from our little, piddling start all the way to the 90s."

Munger's trademark style — deadpan, honest, and piercing — was on full display. He admitted he never expected Berkshire to hit $100 million, let alone several hundred billion. 

But what they lacked in flashy moves, they made up for in patience and discipline. "We wised up over time," he said, explaining how they grew more skilled at spotting trouble and staying away from it. "We got into better and better companies. We understood more and more of the bad things that could happen… and we avoided them even more – like when we were old than we did when we were young."

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This was a man who openly dismissed the investing model made famous by Ben Graham — the very one Buffett once studied. Graham believed you could find a few good deals and hold them for a few years. Munger thought that was shortsighted. "I saw immediately that Graham was wrong," he said. "The real money was in the really great companies, which carried you up, and up, and up, and up, and up."

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Munger and Buffett didn't chase hot stocks or rotate in and out of trades. Instead, they built what Quick called "sit on your ass investing" — a method that involved waiting for only the best opportunities. "You wait for the big, fat pitches to come in," she said. "Yeah, that's correct," Munger replied without hesitation.

But that method, Munger warned, is much harder now. "It's so much harder you can't believe it," he said, explaining that as the Ben Graham strategy gained popularity, the low-hanging fruit vanished. "If you just try and float from one undervalued, bad business into another… it just doesn't work well enough for the people that actually foot him the money to be worth bothering with."

What worked for Munger and Buffett wasn't complicated. It was the kind of advice most people ignore because it doesn't sound exciting: think clearly, avoid dumb decisions, and let time work its magic. They didn't try to be brilliant — they just tried not to be stupid. And over the course of nine decades, that was more than enough.

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