YouSaid · the spoken record

Li Lu

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2024-09-06
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2024-09-06
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  1. “And so he starts. Think of yourself as an owner. This is something he tells us over and over again. And he asks very simple questions, what is the market cap? And he goes, come on, it's simple. Come on. I thought you guys did all your homework. Did anybody do homework? Not one hand. Raise your hand if you did homework. One hand goes up, and I think that guy even gets to the next question wrong. So we have to question if he even did his goddamn hill mark. And he says, how the hell are you going to make it in this business?”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Opportunity comes, you can tell you can smell it. He's assuming you did the work necessary, right? You can smell it. How can you really develop that smell? The only way to do that is just reading page after page after page. And then he's asked again. He was asked what percent of your fund did you put in Timberlin? He said, a shitload of money. So then we get to the part, this is when they start analyzing, keep in mind, he just went through how he analyzed Timberlin, right? So he's like, okay, we're going to pull out value line. We're going to analyze some of these businesses together. This is when they start analyzing together, and this is when he absolutely lights them up”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “And then after the increase in value, which is, I think, the end of, I think this is happening in the year 2000, he says the room was just absolutely filled. And then he says, So that's when I know I have to sell. So I sold everything. Think about that. The stock goes up 700% or whatever it is. And then the meetings are packed. And then he's summarizing exactly his thinking. In this thinking, it's coming out of Lilu's mouth. These are Buffin and Monger's ideas. You just have to sit on your ass. You don't have to do a damn thing. That's the good thing about buying a really good business. The business will take care of itself. The opportunities like that don't come very often. So when it comes, you have to seize it. When opportunity comes, you have to jump on it. And that's what I did. He continues a few paragraphs later.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “and I find one of these boards that the sun is on is run by a friend of mine, so I give myself invited on to the board I join the board along with the sun, and we become very close friends. And then I really know what's going on in that family. It turns out to be one of the most admiring families I've ever met. They are wonderful. And they also happen to be brilliant businessmen. This is incredible. This is also related when I got to this part. Think about Charlie Munger would talk about the dangers of multitasking for decades. And this is a perfect example of this because this is why multitasking is so dangerous. You don't have time to go to the extremes and the value is found in the extremes. So in addition to this, he goes to all the different stores. He talks to all the stored managers and he does the work for us. He summarizes this for us. Think about how much effort you put in to get the damn thing right. And so now he realizes he has a margin of safety. He understands. He has a very in-depth, thorough understanding of the business from A to Z, and he makes his.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Few weeks there. So let's use that example again. There's a hundred people may be interested in this potential investment in Timberlin. How many people out of the hundred are doing what Lilu did? Now it's not even two or three. It is one. And Lilu doesn't stop there. He says, the fellow actually, I think this is the founder of Timberlin. He says, this fellow actually only graduated high school. He's a relatively simple guy, but he's a nice, decent guy. It turns out he has a son who actually went to business school. Now, I'm going to have a hard time not laughing at this. It's inspiring to me. He's just like, I want to be the best in the world at what I'm doing. I want to give full effort always everywhere. And it's like, I wouldn't even think to do this. Listen to what he does. So turns out the Timberland founder, right? He has a son. His son actually went to business school. His son was actually my age at the time. So I go and find out all the boards that the father and the sons sit on.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Is wonderful. And so the people that didn't do the work, right? How many people, let's say there's 100 people that knew about the lawsuits, that's going to scare a bunch of people away. How many of those 100 people actually read the every single word and every single document like Lilu? I don't know one, two maybe. And so this is beneficial for people like Lilu because these lawsuits served a purpose. They scared the superficial people away. And so now Lee's starting to get a little bit more comfortable with them. He's like, okay, well, that's nice. Like, we still have to find out, are they actually good managers? How do we know that they're decent people? And this is where he goes back to. He's like, I view this job as an investigative journalist. Most people who have built businesses have also have a big personality. Yes, they do. And they have a history they can go and audit. They've left a trail of evidence of what kind of person they are and what they've done, how they deal with different situations. And so this is, I mentioned this last week. He goes to their community. He goes to their church and he says, you go visit everyone. You spend a”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Most of humanity is incapable of doing so. So this continues, and like I have a big smile on my face as this continues to go on, because just the effort that this guy is going to do, remember, when he pulls the trigger, he's not like dabbling around. You know, there's a great line where it says, Walt Disney seldom dabbled. Everyone who knew Disney remarked on his intensity when something intrigued him, he focused himself entirely on it as if it was the only thing that mattered. That's the same description for Lilu too. Okay, so at this point, he's like, all right, I found, oh, there's all these laws. It's cool. I'm going to print out every single case and read it front to back. And what he realizes, like, oh, this is fantastic. You see the owner of the business, right? It's kind of like getting pissed off. There's like this fight between him and some other investors. And Lilu says, you get a sense of his personality by reading those documents because you can vividly see his defense. And so as the owner is like, I'm not going to talk to the street anymore. I'm not going to give you any guidance. I don't need a damn dollar from anybody else. This business.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “He's talking about effort. There is so many times. So, obviously, as you know, like I underline things as I'm reading them and I jot down to myself, like, what comes to mind? Sometimes they're past ideas, sometimes there's stuff I have to search on. Sometimes it's like, oh, this is an idea related to something else he said multiple times if you were able to see this little handmade book that I made, you're going to see the word effort in cap law in all capitals and a big giant ass circle because that's what he's talking about. He's talking about effort just like Munger and Buffett talk a lot about human nature and human psychology. So does Lilu. Remember what he said? You know, common sense is the least common commodity. You know what else is a least common commodity? Effort and hard work over a sustained period of time.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “You do not have a curious mind, you're not going to do this. I am just so curious. I want to know what's happening. This doesn't add up. And so you have to dig into every single thing and you have to read everything as I did.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “More, more. Any other reason? Well, the ownership structure, what's the ownership structure? Well, it's family owned. They own about 40% of it and they control 98% of the vote. And so Lilu says immediately that turns a bunch of people off. And he brings up the point. He's like, you really should think of yourself as an investigative journalist. And he says, you've got to have a very active, very curious mind, a mind that wouldn't be satisfied with any bogus answers. Otherwise, you can't be in this business. So he's like, okay, we have the Asian financial crisis. We have the fact that there's no analyst covering Timberlin. What else could be the reason why he feels there's an opportunity here? Why are they stock getting absolute battered? Turns out there's a whole bunch of lawsuits. So what do you do next? You already know. We're going to pause right here. What do you think Lilu is going to do next? He says you'll download every single piece of the document for every single one of the court cases. Every single case, and you read them,”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Could buy the entire business at this price, then I probably want to own it, meaning buy the stock. And so he senses there might be an opportunity with Timberlin. Timberlin's got a brand name, a good brand name, but the stock is just getting completely killed. At the time, there was the Asian financial crisis and all the shoemakers that were like they were depressed. The prices were depressed because they thought their sales in Asia are just going to fall off a cliff. And he mentions this is also happening to Nike and Reebach at the time. And so he goes and tries to find analyst report on Timberlin what's going on with Timberlin. He says it turned out there's no analyst report. Nobody was even covering this. And that didn't make sense to him because he said the company's doing about a billion dollars a year in sales. It's a big brand. Why is nobody covering this? And so he walks people through this. He's like, well, it's always been really profitable and therefore they didn't have need their need for the financial market is very limited. Any other reason he's constantly going like you'll answer one thing and he'll go, okay, more.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Go to Columbia. He hears Buffett speak, and then he realized wait, there's a book that does this in depth analysis on all the stocks. Okay, yeah, I'm going to read every single page multiple times. Wait till we see the analysis that he does for Timberlin. This guy is going to devour entire shelves. So he pulls this up. He shows the value line sheet on Timberland. And he's like, listen, you don't really care where it traded before. The first thing I look at is valuation and if the valuation doesn't fit, I don't even really want to go beyond that. So he is walking through the class on how he starts understanding a business. And he makes the point. If you've done this work, if you have this encyclopedic-based analogy, if you've read every single page, then what happens is it speeds up your learning process later on. So you can pull up a page. He says, listen, if you're skilled, it shouldn't really take you more than the second to find it. And then the next thing you want to do is, or next thing he does, he says, I always think of myself as a business owner. And he thinks, if I...”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Page doing so is just enormously helpful. And if you really think about the idea behind the idea, like what is he trying to tell the students? He's like, how bad do you want it? That right there, the amount of people are going to read cover to cover this giant book. It's in the video. It looks like you can work out with the thing. How many people are willing to do that? Right there is going to eliminate like 95 greater 95 of people. It's going to eliminate most of the people who are sitting in this Columbia. These are MBA students and they're not even doing it. And this is why studying the early lives of these entrepreneurs, investors that you and I are studying is so important because this guy had, I don't know if I mentioned it on the podcast, but it's in the book last week. He had 500 books in his dorm room. This guy grows up in unbelievable poverty in the communist country, no opportunity at all. What do you think that kind of person is going to do when they get to America?”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “This opportunity presented to me. And so the first thing that he tells the students is like, listen, I no longer talk about what we own. In other words, bad boys move in silence. But I can pick a couple examples of something that I owned in the past, and he's using this as an illustration, or I guess an example of how he thought about how he thinks about investing. And so during this, he's holding this giant book. So it's the value line investment survey, which is a stock analysis tracks approximately 1,700 or something like publicly traded stocks. It's a giant book. And he's trying to walk the students through on how to analyze businesses that are in this book. And so again, Lee Liu, just like Churchill, just like most of the people you and I study, they devour entire shelves. So he's like, I got hooked on value line. And I would read the entire thing from beginning to end. He says, that's really the best kind of education. If you want to have an encyclopedic knowledge base, you have to go through page after page after page.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “50 years, the entire 50 years in a Red Baron magazine. I found one actionable insight that I could actually make an investment in. That insight gave him 80 million. And then he took that 80 million, gave it to Li Lu, and Lilu turned that into 400 or 500 million. And so I think that's a great illustration for what Lilu, the point that Lilu is trying to make here is like, you're going to do all this reading, all this learning, all this research. And over your lifetime, you're going to have a handful of insights. And, you know, if you act on those insights, you're going to be fabulously fabulously wealthy. And so he's going to start walking the students through how he found and how he thought about this investment in Timberlin, which I think went, I think he returned like 600, 700%, maybe even more. And so he's doing this research. He's like, okay, you have to find out. The opportunity that you're given. Is the business a good business? Is there a margin of safety? Is the management somebody that I can trust? And why is...”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Figure out about how everything wor And so you have to be naturally interested and curious. He matches that intense curiosity with the fact that he reads everything. There's a line in a young Churchill's biography that I read that talked about the difference between, I think he was like 26 when he was in parliament. He said the difference between Churchill at that time and his competitors or I guess his fellow lawmakers was they would contend to read like the day's newspapers where it said there's a line in the book where it says Churchill devoured entire shelves That's how I think about Lilu devouring entire shelves. So he's like, of course you have to have this natural intense curiosity. He says this will help you. You're obviously reading everything. He says it will help you because then occasionally you will find a few insights. All of your studies would really just give you a handful of tremendous opportunities. And so when he talks about all this reading, all this thinking, all this research, we'll only produce a handful of opportunities. And obviously when you find these opportunities, you want to bet really.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Buffett says, I would say that if Charlie and I have any advantages, it's not because we're so smart. It is because we're rational and we very seldom let extraneous factors interfere with our own thoughts. We don't let other people's opinions interfere. And so we go back to Li Lu. He says, this is common sense. But of course, common sense is the least common commodity. That is a great line. Common sense is the least common commodity. Most people don't think that way. And so he's like, you have to ask yourself, how do you want to spend your time? And for Li Lu, he's like, I want to spend most of my time or your time truly being an academic researcher instead of being a so-called professional investor. Most of the time, the job really is to be a researcher, to be a journalist. And then he describes the traits that you have to have if you want to go down this path. He's really describing himself here. You have to have insatiable curiosity. You have to have an insatiable curiosity to really try to figure out.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “You know, if you want to be an evaluator, you want to be like Lilu, if you want to be like Charlie Munger, if you want to be like Warren Buffett, that means that somehow you're probably genetically mutated. You are very comfortable being in a minority, which is not natural to human beings. Most of us survive because we stick with the group. And if you're likely Lou and Buffin Amongger, you would naturally adopt the attitude that you're right, not because other people agree with you, but because your reasoning and your evidence showed you that you're right. When I got to this part, I searched this because I was like, I know Buffett said something about other people's opinions over and over again. And that's what I was thinking about when I got to this paragraph. So in that book that I mentioned earlier, which I feel is the best book that I've ever read on Buffett and Amongger, which is all I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there written by Peter Bevin. Buffett says two things about this. First quote from Buffett. We don't read other people's opinions. We want to think. We want to get the facts and then think. And then later on, the second thing he says.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Detail in another interview later. But this is where he realized he's like, I'm not part of this 95%. And so it says, Julian invited me to share office with him and invited a whole bunch of other fund managers that he also invested in to share ideas. And that's when I sort of got a much better understanding of how the 95% of other people operated. And so most of them were trading all the time. They were shorting stocks. And Lila was like, I don't like this isn't, I don't like this. Leelu is much more like Munger and Buffett where he wants to sit in a room, read, think. He compares his job to an investigative journalist. But he's like, this doesn't match me. And so after describing this period of time where he's like, I don't like this version of the business, he gives excellent advice again that I think too many people miss. Especially people that don't read biographies miss. So my first point I want to leave you with is really to understand who you are because you will be tested. You are going to really have to ask yourself. You're going to have to face yourself whether you're a value investor or you're not. And he says if you want to be like.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Opportunities is, and that is where the challenge is. And that is what I first learned when I listened to Buffett. That is one of the things that stuck in my mind because I really know, I really knew by then what kind of person I was. Your biggest challenge is really to understand whether you're that 5% of people or you're like the 95% of the majority. And I think this is overlooked and really excellent advice because this is key to enjoying the game. His whole point is like all the values in the long term. If you're building a business that's not authentic to you, if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to last decades. And that's where all the money is. And in many cases, and in Lee Lu's case, it takes an experiment. You have to know what you don't like to do. So he's like, listen, I always knew I was going to run my own fund. That he knew. But he didn't know how he was going to run the fund. And so one of his early backers was Julian Robertson, who was the founder of Tiger Management. And so he tells Lilu, he's like, hey, come into the office. Come, work out of here with all these other trainers. Lilu is going to talk about this in more detail.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Investing career. It can be summarized by number one studied, buffet, and munger. Number two, did that. So he tells the students, like, I'm listening to Buffett. Turns out this Buffet guy is pretty smart, kind of knows what he's doing. I should just do that. And so then he hits on the advice that he has, which I think is the most important. I think is the main, one of the main themes that you and I talk about, why we read biographies and not business books, is because general business advice is useless. It has to be tailored to who you are. It has to be authentic to you. And so he's saying you're interested in investing. Well, guess what? 95% of the stark market is made for traders, 5% is going to think maybe 5% or even less are going to think like Le Lou, like Buffett, like Munger. So you have to figure out, does this make sense to you? Because if you're not, if it doesn't fit, if you're not authentic to, if it doesn't fit your temperament, you're going to fail. And so he says, if you're thinking like us, you are really not the majority. You are actually a very, very, very small minority. And the stock market is not created for you. And that's really where you're.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Owner of the business, you don't trade all the time. And so that line, if you're owner of the business, you don't trade all the time. This is something that Lilu is going to repeat throughout the lectures, that it's really Munger's idea of sit on your ass investing, which Munger says, sit on your ass investing. You're paying less to brokers. You're listening to less nonsense. And if it works, the tax system gives you an extra one, two, or three percentage points per year. This important investment philosophy assumes that one is better off buying a business with exceptional business economics working in its favor and holding it for many years than engaging in a lot of buying and selling, trying to anticipate market trends, constantly buying and selling means constantly being taxed. So that's something that Munger will repeat. That is something that Li Liu will repeat as well. And so Liliu is telling the students, hey, turns out this buffet, guys, you know, I'm going to read this to you real quick. I was texting a friend of mine as I was doing research for this podcast, and I said, I'm working on another Lilu episode, but this one is about his remarkable...”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Possibly experience to a billionaire. He moves to America. No money, doesn't know the language, no connections. And so right away, you also see the similarities in the thinking between Li Liu and Charlie Munger. You know, he says, bad things, if you live long enough, bad things are sure to happen to you. Self-pity has no utility. Get up, dust yourself off, and keep going. And so we go back to this young Li Liu sitting in this lecture from Warren Buffett trying to figure out what the hell am I going to do with my life? I was horribly worried about how do I ever make a living in this country and I really didn't grow up with a capitalist culture either. What Buffett said about investing really was just so different from my perception of the stock market. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, well, gee, this may be something that I can do. And so one of the first things that he learned from Buffett was that you should really see yourself as more of an owner of a business and therefore tie your fortune to the outcome of that business. Your fortune will rise up and down with the nature of the business. And if you're”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “And his whole point was that the fact that he attended a lecture by Warren Buffett when he was a student at Columbia, when Leela was a student, changed his entire life. He says this class in many ways is really what made my career. At the time, I wasn't even a student at the business school. And I was accidentally brought into a lecture. And in the middle of that speech, listening to Warren, a light bulb kind of just went off. And I figure that I can do something in this business. At the time, I was pretty desperate. I had recently escaped from China. I didn't know anybody. I had no connections whatsoever and I didn't have any money. I was horribly worried about how do I ever make a living in this country and I really didn't grow up with a capitalist culture either. I think this is why last week's episode is so important, why it's one that I'm going to re-listen anytime that I feel like self-pity kind of creeping in. We have no excuses. Li Lu went from one of the most horrific childhood you could possibly”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Where he's discussing his investment career. And when I'm done, I'm going to put this in a binder, three ring binder, and put it up on my bookshelf. This is something when I went to Charlie Mugger's house and actually got to see his library. This is something when I realized it's like, oh, I'm still a biography amateur because Charlie would make his own biographies. There's this very hard-to-find interview that John D. Rockefeller gave towards the end of his life. It's like, I think 1,700 pages. I think the transcript is 1,700 pages long. It's the William O. Inglis interviews that he did with Rockefeller. And on Charlie's bookshelf, you see that he had printed out the transcript and then put it into multiple three ring binders. So I'm going to put my own version of Lilu's autobiography when I'm done in a three-ring binder on my bookshelf. And so the first part of this homemade book is going to be obviously the forward that Lilu wrote for the Chinese version of Porsche Zomanak. The next thing is Lilu's Columbia Business School lecture in 2006.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Other people. Charlie very much appreciates Confucius. I sometimes think that if Confucius was reborn in America today, Charlie would probably be the best incarnation. If Confucius returned two thousand years later to the commercialized China, his teaching will probably be have your heart in the right place, cultivate your moral character, fortify your family, acquire wealth, and help the world. That was an excerpt from the Forward that Li Lu wrote for the Chinese version of poor Charlie's almanac, The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger, and it is an excerpt from the book that I made myself. As you and I covered last week, there's only one book on Li Liu. It was written by Lilu, and it only covers his early life and his escape from China. With that version of Li Lu that was writing in that book could never have predicted was what the next few decades”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “But if you think about it, if Munger and Buffett weren't so unique, how could they have built Berkshire's performance over 50 years into one that is unprecedented in the history of investing and one that has yet to be replicated? Over the years that have known Charlie, I often forget that he's an American. He is closer to being the traditional literati, which is the scholar-officials of imperial China. Charlie is the best example of a businessman with a literati soul. He is extremely successful in business, however, in the deep, intimate interactions I've had with Charlie, I found Charlie to be essentially a moral philosopher and a scholar. He reads widely, is knowledgeable over a broad range of topics, is truly concerned about his own moral cultivation, and is ultimately concerned about society. Charlie's value system from the inside out promotes self cultivation and self-development to become the saints who help.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Don't waste time either. He will take out the newspaper and read. One year, Charlie and I were attending an out-of-state meeting after the event I unexpectedly met Charlie at the airport terminal. His plane had already departed, but Charlie was not in a hurry. He took out a book and sat down to read while he waited for the next plane. As long as I have a book in my hand, I don't feel like I'm wasting time, Charlie said. He always carries a book on him. As long as he has that book, he'll have no complaint. Charlie spent his lifetime studying the causes of human failures, so he has a profound understanding of the weaknesses of human nature. Because of this, he believes people must be strict and demanding on themselves, continuously improving their discipline in life in order to overcome the innate weaknesses of human nature. This way of life to Charlie is a moral requirement. He is such a unique person.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “I arrived on time only to find Charlie sitting there, finished with the day's newspapers. While it was only a few short minutes away from seven thirty, I felt bad letting an elderly man I respected wait for me. For our second date I arrived about fifteen minutes early and still found Charlie sitting there reading the newspaper. For our third meeting, this is one of my favorite stories of Hilaris. For our third meeting, I arrived half an hour earlier and Charlie was still reading the newspaper, as if he had been waiting there all year round and had never left the seat. For our fourth meeting I arrived an hour early and began to sit there waiting at six thirty AM. And at six forty five AM Charlie leisurely walked in with a pile of newspapers and sat down, not even looking up, completely unaware of my existence. Afterward, I came to understand that Charlie will always be early for meetings.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Are no exceptions. Buffett said Benjamin Graham taught me only to buy cheap stocks. Charlie allowed me to change my thinking. That's the real impact Charlie's had on me. I needed a powerful force to walk out of the limitations imposed by Graham's theories. Charlie's ideas were the source of that power. He expanded my horizons. That is the end of Buffett's quote. This is Lee Lu talking about this. I've also had this profound experience. Charlie pointed out the blind spots in my thinking. He is not just a partner. He's a role model in my life. Not only did I learn from him the principles of value investing, but also learned from him how to live life. He made me understand that a person's success is not accidental. Timing and opportunities are of course important, but the inherent qualities of people are even more important. Charlie likes to meet people for breakfast, usually starting at seven thirty AM. I remember the first time I had breakfast with Charlie.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “You don't know. The true insights a person can get in life is very limited. Correct decision making must necessarily be confined to your circle of competence. A beautiful lady once insisted that Charlie use one word to sum up the source of his success. Charlie said it was being rational. Charlie can see through to the essence of things. Buffett calls this characteristic of Charlie the two-minute effect. He said Charlie can in the shortest time possible unravel the nature of a complex business and understand it better than anyone else can. The process of Burshire's investment in BYD is an example. I remember in 2003 when I first discussed BYD with Charlie, despite having never met the founder, never visiting BYD's factory and being relatively unfamiliar with the Chinese market and culture, his questions and comments about BYD remains to this day the most pertinent questions a BYD investor needs to ask. Everyone has blind spots and even the brightest people”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Research methods. He has a strong thirst for knowledge. And now rereading this again. These are all traits that Lilu has imitated and adopted. So let's read that again. Charlie's mind is original and creative, never subject to any restrictions. Shackles or dogmas. He has the curiosity of children and possesses the qualities of top-notch scientists and their scientific research methods. He has a strong thirst for knowledge. To him, with the right approach, any problem can be understood through self-study. building innovations on the foundations led by those who came earlier. Charlie advocates studying all the truly important theories in all disciplines and building on the foundations of the so-called worldly wisdom as a tool for studying the important issues in business. Charlie's way of thinking is based on being honest about knowledge. He believes that in this complex and changing world, there will always be limitations to human cognition and understanding. You must have the correct understanding of knowing what you know and what you know.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there. Buffett and Munger a study in simplicity and uncommon common sense. Let's go back to this. His way of thinking is I want to know where I'm going to die, so I will never go there. That's episode 286. Charlie constantly collects and researches the notable failures in each and every type of people, business, government, and academia and arranges the causes of failure into a decision-making checklist for making the right decisions. Because of this, he has avoided major mistakes in his decision making in his life and in his career. The importance of this on the performance of Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway over the past 50 years cannot be emphasized enough. Charlie's mind is original and creative, never subject to any restrictions, shackles, or dogmas. He has the curiosity of children and possesses the qualities of top notch scientists and their scientific”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Have known Charlie and was fortunate to be able to intimately understand him, I am also deeply convinced of that. Even from all the biographies of people from all the ages I have yet to see anyone similar to him. Charlie is such a unique man. His uniqueness is in his thinking and also in his personality. When Charlie thinks about things, he starts by inverting. To understand how to be happy in life, Charlie will study how to make life miserable, to examine how a business becomes big and strong, Charlie first studies how businesses decline and die. Most people care more about how to succeed in the stock market. Charlie is most concerned about why most have failed in the stock market. His way of thinking is I want to know where I'm going to die so I will never go there. That is actually my favorite book, I don't know, 10, 15 books on Warren Buff and Charlie Munger. My favorite one is on episode 286. It's called.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “And he commented on each of them. I also asked for his advice on the problems that I was encountering. He told me that the problems I've encountered were practically all the problems of Wall Street. The problem is with the way that Wall Street thinks. Even though Berkshire Hathaway has been such a success, there isn't any company on Wall Street that truly imitates it. If I continue on this path, my worries will never be eliminated. But if I was willing to give up this path right then to take a path different from Wall Street, he was willing to invest. With Charlie's help, I completely reorganized the company I founded. The structure was changed into that of the early investment partnerships of Buffett and Munger. Investors who stayed made long term investment guarantees and we no longer accepted new investors. I then entered another golden period in my investment career. In the next twelve years the capital grew more than twenty times. Buffett said despite the countless people he has met in his life he has never encountered anyone else like Charlie. And in the years”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “20 years ago, as a young student coming to the United States, I couldn't have imagined having a career in investing and would have never thought that I'd be fortunate enough to meet Charlie Munger. In 2004, Munger became my investment partner and has since become my lifelong mentor and friend, an opportunity I would have never dared to dream about. Charlie and I first met at a mutual friend's house while I was working on investments in LA after graduating from college. The first impression he gave me was distant. He often appeared to be absent-minded to the presence of his conversation partners and was instead very focused on his own topics. But this old man spoke succinctly, his words full of wisdom for you to mull over. Seven years later at a Thanksgiving gathering in two thousand three, we had a long heart-to-heart conversation. I introduced every single company I have invested in, are researched, or am interested in charge.”

    2024-09-06 · Founders · #363 Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source