Charlie Munger Tribute: Wit & Wisdom Unveiled -Exclusive Conversation With Market Experts | MOFSL

and then the investment genius is just the icing on the cake so clearly a many splendored man and uh therefore my thanks to mtil oswal and to ramdev Agarwal every year they do produce a gem of an idea in their wealth creation study but to defer to the investing genius and say that we'll rather learn lessons from him this year uh rather than a panel on their uh work is an excellent idea an amazing one and thank you for that well as was just announced we are the co- moderators but I think that is a delusion that has been sold to Mr dman as far as I'm concerned he is a fellow he is a panelist and I'll be directing as many questions uh to Mr danani as to Mr bachara to Manish bab and R aaral but you know just a word on the panelists Mr dman I'll defer to you I I think you know their murm much better than I do so please go ahead thank you L thank you ram for inviting me you know one of manga's Heroes was a guy called Benjamin Franklin and he used to quote he said well done is better than well said and manga not only spoke well did well but lived well an extraordinary life and Charlie was of course known for his multidisciplinary mind manga's life straddled two centuries and his insights from the study of psychology economics physics biology history and as you said even architecture are astounding when asked the secret of his success he said I'm rational so here to discuss his wi wisdom and life's work I'm joined by a panel devoted to understanding him uh of course munish joins us all the way from the state somewhere hi Mish thank you for joining us so much uh great to be here yeah I'm joined by sanjo bachara a lot of people call him a professor some people call him Guru but I call him up Mumbai Kar and then I'm joined of course by our very own Ram Agarwal whom I'd like to call up batka Buffet bhatka Buffett so thank you all for joining us uh as yeah the vice chairman chairman CH we'll take care of that um but thank you before we start uh I just want to see how much all these MERS I got a small Rapid Fire for them so let's see uh how they pleas go ahead so I'm going to ask you some questions and you can raise your hands and uh I would assume my fellow panelists and my son here knows all the answers but let's see how good the crowd is on mangar okay in sometime the 80 Buffett bought mangar uh when Buffett bought his first corporate jet mangar uh called him and they named the jet what your choices are Burkshire one please raise your hand those are things was called burshire one okay the indefensible who who call it the indefensible okay a few hands and the third one capitalist tool well the correct answer isens indefensible because Monger thought that the purchase was indefensible and to monger's honor he used to travel even in his late '90s by economy with the book correct sanjoy according to Charlie Monger one investment that he still regrets is the choices are a a Fanny May raise your hands B Eastman Kodak C Alibaba yeah again I mean this is not a very fluent audience but it it's Alibaba actually the last interview said he regretted buying Alibaba the most okay here's one uh Buffett and Monger bought Seas candies in the 1970s for paying $25 million one of the most iconic trades that they did out there and Buffett as Monger have often waxed about how much cash Seas candy is generated how much cash do you think Seas candy has generated over the next 50 years for them is it a 25 million is it B 100 million is it c 2 billion is it D 25 billion he's right of course M he knows everything it's it's I called him a professor for good measure you know so it is of course 2 billion plus that was generated from a single $25 million investment and what Muffet and manger have taught us and generations of investors is that a business that throws out cash and doesn't require capex is worth its weight in gold and they always give this example of seas candies of how much it does uh mangar was in one afar of his life l a real estate developer yeah he also did Real Estate and uh the key to him according to mangar to generating more money from Real Estate was what a bigger square footages of homes two larger kitchens in the homes or three Lush Landscaping how many of you feel it was the first one bigger square footage would generate more Revenue how many was B bigger kitchens Arjun you're wrong and how about Lush Landscaping he used to say lush Landscaping will give you three times the return of that had another one on this which is phenomenal I think we had another interesting thought on this and I'm sure Manish would speak about it at some point you know a few years before he passed he made I think the University of Southern California if I'm not wrong an offer that he would grant them 100 million to make dories correct but there was one condition he said the dories can can not have Windows and so people were stunned they said what kind of guy is this and his logic was very fascinating he said if you don't have Windows people will come out of their rooms to meet each other so there'll be much better social bonding and he learned that from basically the cruise ships you know when people you know mingle and single out there great u a company that manger admired the most all right in his life and I just share a joke with you because it be kind of fun to hear this joke so buffer and manger are going on a plane somewhere and it's hijacked and uh the hijacker says okay One Last Wish what do you want so manga says well I want to give my presentation on Costco one more time and speak about the virtues of the retail business that Costco does and they asked Buffett what is your last wish so he says shoot me first so Buffett was clearly the most biggest admirer I was going to say apple Coke Washington Post but I give him the answer it was Costco there's a famous talk Monger gave uh um in the 1980s where he projected by 2034 what would be the K's market cap what should be Koch's market cap he said taking back 150 years and using only the mental models that he was famous for he projected the market cap of Koch in your opinion what would it be would it be a $2 trillion raise your hands if you think it's $2 trillion B $200 billion C the company would be bankrupt by 2034 come on you got to get one of those answers guys 2 trillion uh too hard to determine okay he's L is absolutely right no wonder she's the economics editor also $2 trillion he actually projected out $2 trillion and he said there were 8 billion people 4 billion servings 8 billion servings a day multiply that make 4 cents a serving it comes to $15 billion profit right sanjoy that gives a multiple of 20 becomes a $2 trillion company okay under Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger Burkshire hatway has roughly returned to its shareholders what returns is it a 10 bagger raise your hands if you think it's a 10 bagger a 100 bagger 100 bagger guys hockey sck no th000 bagger 10 10 L I'm disappointed in you 10 bagger for burshire hatway we won't be talking about them it's been a 20,000 bagger 2 million percentage return for bushire during their life in fact someone calculated that if Bookshare stock fell 95% or I think 99% from the prices today they will still beat the S&P that's how lucrative it has been okay final thing in his last days can add to that is one of Ram's favorite them this is one of Ram's favorite themes and in a sense a lot of Mr manga's life is exemplified and best understood in terms of the power of compounding so I think if you ask people and you just told them the absolute number of times that had multiplied I think be interesting to ask them at what percent it compounded over that period of time from 1974 when he first acquired burshire complete control till today give them three choices ask them okay the first answer is 16% the next one is 20 .5% and the last one is 26% yeah this is more common everyone seems to know this 20.5 they figured what the answer was too precise so it should be correct okay what was Manga this is the last question uh before I turn it over back to L in his last years of his life manger used to enjoy watching a situation comedy a comedy series on television which one did you watch was it the friends was it the the crown or sanj was a Seinfeld not 100% sure about this I think it was the crown okay how many people say the crown well I'm glad I got the professor on at least one point it's actually the sign FR that's what he said to Becky Qui that enjoys watching the sign great L thank you at least we are glad he watched comedies there's something I can say have common with him all right well actually we have people here who have you know Mish pabra and San bachar who have actually met and spoken to him and uh Mr danani and R maximum is Ram okay though M started the lunch idea with Mr Buffett I think the number of times who doesn't live in the United States I should put a qualification among the people who don't live in the United States the guy who's met him the most is s Mr V are you yeah sorry okay no the question really is to you what was your uh reaction when you first met him and what are the LIF lessons that you drew from the times you personally met him I think I was very impressed by the fact that he spoke so little I thought that was the Hallmark of true wisdom you know Buffett kept on chirping all the time and once in a while he'd ask Charlie to say something Charlie would say nothing to add which I thought was a sign of a guy who was really secure so he never used to sort of use use even one unnecessary word in communicating the second thing that I loved about him and in a sense it was an inspiration for me was this desire to try to learn constantly and to improve yourself constantly and to read as he said many people thought he was you know a book with two legs sticking out so I'm I'm nowhere there uh but uh I think that idea is inspirational that you should try to constantly learn and improve yourself every day a wee bit even and one of the best ways of doing that is by reading so these are the two things that I took away absolutely I mean I think the lesson that every day when you go to bed you have learned a little more than what it was what you were when you got up in the morning is I think a great lesson something you can remind yourself but uh third thing sorry and you know he was an inv third fourth fifth his no no the third thing which I it really resonates with me personally is he was an investment genius he was an intellectual Colossus apart from his I mean independently I'd say if he hadn't been an investor he would still have been supremely gifted in doing whatever he did but the thing and he said this in one of his quotable quotes I forget the exact quote but he said the one of the best things you can do in your life is to help other people to get to know more and to do better which I thought was truly truly remarkable in fact it reflects the character of the man if there's one thing about Mr manga that people often don't take note of is that he was such an outstanding human being in terms of his character it is truly rare to find people who have such incredible character blunt fght honest and and giving and giving that's right money and mind that's right absolutely yeah that's the stunning quality Manish pabra you are in that fortunate position as the last person to have in this I mean in many people I know to have actually had lunch with him uh tell us about that day was there something outstanding some anecdote that that still keeps coming to you well the what was my last uh dinner what was I didn't know it would be my last dinner with with Charlie was exactly 1 month uh before he passed away and uh uh we had a we had nice friendship uh very unlikely I still don't fully understand he wanted to be friends but uh that went on for like more than 14 years and uh in the 14 years you know uh I used to uh play bridge with him quite a bit and probably meet him four five six times a year at his home for dinner and so on and uh I had never really uh imposed on Charlie right so I would just be in uh reactive mode in the sense that uh he would say you know come over for dinner and I'd say okay but I never like asked him you know can we meet or whatever and uh the only time I did that was for that last meeting I felt somehow that uh I wanted to uh see him so I reached out and I said you know uh can we meet he said yeah you know so on a Saturday I went to LA and uh it was just me and him so it was just a oneon-one uh wonderful evening and uh you know the the thing is that uh Charlie was uh clearly uh dealing with a number of health issues you know he said you know I've that quote to me was there's a lot wrong with me and uh uh I I had uh brought him some stuff to read and uh his his assistant actually told me that uh listen don't give him anything to read below 24 fo uh Pond size uh so basically he was almost bind uh but never complained you know uh so so actually the stuff I gave him to read I you know 24 font is really large and so uh it was it was printed in a really large fond but basically I I I asked him you know Charlie you know you lost so many things you know golf went away Bridge went away going to the office went away driving went away so many things went away right so I said what bothers you you know what bothers you about uh the way you are and he really wasn't uh you know never a complainer right so he only said he said the only thing I wish uh were better were my eyes right my my he had one one eye that he was not blind in and reading was really important to him so even when reading was almost gone uh not a complainer right and so basically uh the key thing what Charlie was to Soldier WR right you know so his whole Mantra was to uh to uh to just uh just keep going uh we uh you know every almost every time I met him at least 2030 minutes would go talking about Costco you know that was Costco was his uh besides bursh was his love in life and uh all kinds of different things would come up about Costco he would almost always be in a Costco flannel shirt which you can buy for like $10 and uh just uh I I'd say the the biggest lesson uh I learned from Charlie is not so much what he said it's observing him um observing him with the way he's interacting with his kids his grandkids his uh sons and daughter-in-laws and and so on like once once a week I think every Friday he'd have a zoom call with all his grandkids whoever could make it they would join the call and uh just uh a very warm person very different from the Persona we used to see in the book have meeting is a very warm caring person okay he's almost coming alive the way you say but uh just occurred to me what would be the Costco of our times if you have to pick I mean seems you I must insist you must remember about company rames chairs Avenue supermarkets in India I mean if you're looking for the Indian equivalent of Costco though I must say there are some important differences between Costco and Avenue supermars which I'm sure again between monish and rames they'd be the better people to speak about it I can nothing to add you can't escape from this what's your Costco I you know I think that would require a much Superior IQ uh that you know I'm just asking you to think on your feet obviously if you thought through you will have different answers but no you you know I think Costco is a unique model and I think I remember Monger quoting once and he was actually in love with Amazon too he thought Jeff Bezos did a great job but he actually said in print somewhere that Amazon should feel your Costco and not the other way around so that tells you a little bit about how much he love that company R did you want to try this question yeah and and uh without any confusion it is the Avenue superm I me closest to that as a company I'm saying the business model you know yeah in the same sector Mish PAB yeah you know uh I I uh discussed this a bit with uh RK danani and uh I think a lot of the inspiration of dmart uh dmart is really uh very heavily influenced by Walmart and cost I think it's a combination of those two that uh a lot of the model um came from and those are those are both amazing uh amazing businesses and we've seen U you know obviously tremendous execution uh at Dart uh uh and and actually in fact one of the areas which uh where Costco and Walmart differ a lot is in uh paying up for great real estate and uh Costco always wanted to put their stores closer to where uh you know they were affluent population centers and so on and uh Walmart was always looking for the cheapest uh store thinking that people will drive to whever they need to go to get to them and I think deart took a lot of that Playbook from Costco uh so uh it's actually very very wonderful to see uh some of the the the spirit of Costco uh in uh in Mumbai and India and doing so well okay well uh actually I thought somebody might even say zamato but that discussion for another day uh ramdev you know there are many lessons we've got from or we hear from uh Charlie Monga uh companies with a big moot companies which fools can run what's your best lesson which you have lived I would say two of them one that Buffett's biggest mistake is corrected in fact he changed Buffet he bought the his biggest mistake was buying bu hatway because he was student of Graham where you needed to buy cheapest possible stock net net they call it so that's what once he met uh I think after buying the stock he met Charlie and Charlie changed his mind and he said buy wonderful business at reasonable price rather than uh fair business at a very low price which is a so that change actually brought him to buying uh what is that uh blue Chi stamps and then in there they bought uh Seas candy then they bought Coke and everything all the frch he learned from them first time I learned that return on Equity is more important the franchise value is very important so the quality culture came because of him because he see initially he Buffett was a brand Equity I mean like we call every we give all the credit to Buffett but Buffett himself has gone and said that it is architected baksha has itself is architected by m they have executed the plan so that's what is the biggest learning second one is about the compounding he said uh I learned about compounding in 91 but really what he said which meant actually a lot even today is that it's it's actually uh heart and soul of understanding compounding is to First understand and second is what it takes to engender it which is patience yes so no no patience and what the size of effort say like you grow at 25% in 10th year you have to go from 8 to 10 in in 20 years you have to go from say if you have to go to 1,000 you have to go from you have to go from 1,500 to or 1,600 to 2,000 so sorry uh you have to go from 800 to uh 800,000 so your effort in that year is 200 times or 2,000 times of students effort so when he has done 20,000 times you imagine at 15 or 20% what is his last few years effort Last Mile effort yeah so what it takes to engender that so business model the size opport opportunity the management depth you know you have to really think through what is going to happen not in next one or two 3 4 years can this business actually compound at 25% or 20% after 20 years 30 years so there are very few business models which offer that opportunity so I mean these two things stuck with me big time what about you Mr dman um we've all learned you've spoken in a previous uh you know we study about circle of competence is that a big lesson that you do way you are competent yeah yeah of course it's extremely important according to Buffett not only you should know your circle of competence you should know the edge of it you know so famously they didn't buy Microsoft despite being pil with Bill Gates but the thing that uh astonished me when I learned about this about manga is is Illustrated in terms of a story he said he was the chairman of Daily Journal which had like a $10 million balance and for 40 years he read the financial paper Barons and did nothing and then one day he found a stock in there which he thought was a no-brainer so he went and bought the equity and the debt of that company for for name sake it was called Teno and he put $10 million into it all of it in once we put so he waited 20 years before he got that opportunity when he got it he put all he didn't buy 10,000 shares or 20,000 shares he put all of it in there he took that $10 million it went up to $80 million or something in that neighborhood he sold that stock he gave it to his his prodig called Liu who turned it to 400 million so here he took $10 million and made to $400 million just through waiting for the right investment opportunity that mediocre opportunities are not I unfortunately do that you bet on mediocre opportunities you feel missing the bus but as sanjo said that intellectual confidence in yourself to wait for the right opportunity strike and then back up the truck when to buy it these are almost Immortal lessons well actually if you can develop that point uh uh Mr B did not was it Buffett or Manga who said that you should do only 20 trading punches in your life buffet buffet I mean that mean only 20 uh buys that means waiting for opportunity of one a year or one in two years if you live a very long life is that what that kind of patience I think that's part of the problem in India we're looking for a multibagger every day it's a serious problem with the evolution of Indian equity markets everyone spends most of their waking hours trying to find a new multibagger I find this absolutely amazing and contradictory it's simply not possible because it belies the faith in compounding no one sets out to buy a multibagger I don't know why people don't get this when you sit down to look at a business the lesson you learn learn from Charlie is that you focus on the business and how well you understand it and the point Ramesh made I think Mish made is that if you understand it really well you can actually run it the level of your understanding of a business is demonstrated by your ability to actually physically Hands-On run that business you know the ability to buy 100% of a company as opposed to small fractions of it demonstrates that confidence if you couldn't run it you wouldn't buy 100% of it yeah and also Al to add another point to the story he made $400 million from those two trades that in effect when he died was almost 25% of his net worth so he wor $2 and5 billion and $400 million came from that astonishing St yeah okay and for a guy who was very bullish on America and this is I think a reflection again of our open-mindedness of his open-mindedness and his willing to constantly keep on adding to his Treasure Trove of you know investing acuma I think and Mish would be the perfect guy to speak about this he he was greatly I don't know influence is the right word but he was very greatly sort of impressed by Lou Lee oh or Lee I don't know how you pronounce his name he might have met Mish met I'm sure he has might he might have also given some money to him absolutely I don't know about that but I'm sure Mish knows him very well but the thing is you know Buffett and manga both said that why do you need to invest outside America you need to you know American companies invest in other countries so why do we need to go and make so they I think Lou Lee persuaded them for the first time and it's a reflection of their open-mindedness their willingness to listen their willingness to recognize the huge differences that exist and he embraced that wholeheartedly Fair Point Fair Point well actually Manish you're this it not because you're not jumping in into the conversation uh it's between us so I invite you to jump into add to any of the points made by Ram Mr dman and Mr bachara but my separate question to you is exactly this I mean inspired by what Mr bachara said he was a China bull seemed to have been an India bear did that come up in your conversations with him did he ever regret it oh yeah it came up uh many many times and uh uh yeah so I'll just quickly Share three things that I think uh some of your viewers and people in the audience might find interesting is uh one of the biggest takeaways I got from uh actually Charlie and to some extent from war is that uh Charlie never looked back so every time I would meet him I would bring up you know uh you know I said look Charlie you know the body of work and the things you've done the things you did for Burkshire the things you've done for you know Huntington Library all these different things you've done and he would just brush it off you know he he wasn't interested in talking about that and what he would always have all his energy focused on was the problem at hand so he never looked back I I learned a lot of lessons from that a lot of us you know we may have gone to good schools we have worked at great places we built a business whatever and we look back and say oh you know this is good and that is good Charlie never did that he basically so I I would meet him and one time he was struggling with the succession at Daily Journal he needed to find a CEO and uh the entire evening he was just you know uh talking about that so all his energy uh was focused on the problem at hand um he uh he got wind that there was a very large uh piece of real estate in central California uh near the uh University of California Santa barara uh called doen Ranch and dhini ranch is uh about 1 18800 Acres it has about close to 2 miles of ocean from FR uh Central California it is worth uh in the billions it's a several billion the family wanted to sell it and uh Charlie got wind of it and in about 3 days he got a deal done where he convinced the family to sell Doan Ranch to him for $73 million okay something that was worth probably nor north of five or 7 billion or 10 billion couldn't even put a price on it it's this uh amazing real estate and he basically told the family listen you sell it to me for 73 million one day after I buy it I will donate it to the University of California Santa Barbara it's if you take a tram uh from that uh 1800 acres to the UCSB campus it's a 8 Minute tra ride so all these campuses you know Harvard and MIT and UC Berkeley UCLA Etc they have severe real estate problems uh they are very landlocked they can't grow lot of housing issues um basically what what he did was uh so the family he convinced the family um he gave it to UCSB um the 1800 acres is good for about 4 or 500 years of growth for UCSB and the way he convinced the family was he said look in California the coastal commission and all these bodies you will spend 100 years and they will not let you build anything on it but if you give it if you give it to the university the university will be able to build on it nobody will object to the university building and the family uh got so this whole deal took place in 3 days right and I met Charlie I said Charlie of all the things you've done this is huge this is massive right yeah brushed it off brushed it off like no interest talking about it never ever you know most people don't even know about it and because it was for him his perspective was done there's no point talking about it let's move to the next problem and uh so I think that that uh kind of approach of looking forward and not looking back uh was tremendous um I think very early when I when I met him the first time I met him was in 2009 and I think in uh second meeting or something he told me that um he introduced me to lelu and he said uh I want both of you to promise me something you know we both met him together he said uh I need both of you to meet it uh once a month for lunch No Agenda just meet for lunch right so I told Charlie I said Charlie if Liu wants to waste time with me I don't have a problem okay and uh so we used to lelu and I used to meet I mean he he now moved to Seattle and I'm in Austin so our monthly lunches have G the by the way but we still you know at least two three times a year we get together um those uh lunches used to take place at dang which is one of my favorite restaurants in California and it was just wonderful and I I had a lot of discussions with Charlie about lelu so I I asked him I said Charlie look you meet this Chinese guy you know cold you don't know this guy and a few weeks after you meet him you give him all this money to marriage right so I said where does that come from like I said how how are you able to figure out that he's extraordinary and you know his answer was Bish there's nothing to figure out look at the track PR you know he said I just looked so when lelu came to the United States you know he was a wanted man in China they wanted to actually imprison him for life he was one of the leaders of tinan square uh he did three simultaneous degrees at Colombia uh you know undergraduate degree MBA and a law degree finished all three in three years uh nearly at the top of his class came to the US with no English and finished he was on student loans for his entire education and and the float on the student loans you know so like for example he to pay you know $20,000 or something intuition they would give him give it to him at the beginning of the year and he used to invest the money before it actually needed to be paid when he finished at Colombia he had more than a million dollars and and uh and of course in addition to that he had you know finished his degree and such so Charlie said it was just a a no-brainer and I had uh uh a lot of wonderful U uh insights and learnings from Char so that's the other the other thing uh the India view if you please always he always went for the no-brainers right so uh Charlie was someone who was very patient and almost every time probably last few years every time I meet him he'd moan and grown saying oh we can't find anything to buy Bush Show's cast is building up this and that and I say you know Charlie you guys always complain about this you know and then in four or five years some big elephant will show up and you guys will take care of it so I know that you keep moaning and groaning and keep looking at things but uh but it'll it'll work out but I think some of these things where you know you don't look back uh never wanted to take credit for anything was not bothered about any credit or any accolate to him uh most recent interview I think with Jason's wife Jason zwi told him uh what would you like on your gravestone in eight words or less and you know he said I tried to be useful okay that's five words okay I tried to be useful uh so and he didn't even hesitate for 2 seconds and and then he also asked him you know who are you most grateful to in life Charlie who are you most grateful to he said um the first husband of my second wife okay and uh and and he said that I I only needed to be slightly better than that guy and I had the you know uh un unlimited love of this amazing woman because she contrasted me with him so he said that I'm eternally grateful to that guy you know and again you know this uh very very quick great mind and so many times I'd bring up you know we have a foundation in the uction I have all these folk in the road issues he'd never been to India I'm while I'm mumbling and fumbling what I'm trying to ask he's already answered answer the question and and after he answer the question then I'm thinking why didn't I think of that it's so obvious you know so everything would appear obvious after he said it oh absolutely but any word on India any conversations yeah I think I think his his uh concern on India was was the bureaucracy so you know uh chle used to say you know uh democracy is the worst system except for all the others uh so we we see that contrast between China and India you know China wants to build a, m road or th000 M railroad it'll just be built you know whatever is on the in the path will be just taken out in India we have du process you know we have a lot of special interest groups and all these things and uh those those projects will take forever you we struggle with things in India right and so he recognized that uh at the same time he recognized that India was a place just like China where they were natural entrepreneurs but his he's in balancing between you know what were the positives and what were the negatives he saw some of the negatives with the British bureaucracy that had been left behind and and all of that so his perspective was well he only wants no brainers India was India even I think requires a lot of brain power so when I look at India like even if you look at mial's study there are exceptional businesses in exceptional managers but they are exceptional investors too and so it's not easy to find a 100 bagger in India that's far from easy okay okay well the other question that occurred to me uh Mr B did he ever discuss macros or was he all in stocks no no macro at all I don't think I think Buffett echoed this at some point he said the only thing you need to really think about and Mr manga supported this was you need to know the direction of interest rates which is driven by inflation he said but apart from that once in a while you know if I figured that if I know what's going on with interest rates he didn't seem to think that it mattered very much he was really focused on the heart and soul of what he owned I I also want to just make a quick comment for I think our audience and in a sense I think subconsciously I don't know when Mish started but this is how he might have been influenced personally by manga this daksha Foundation it is truly exceptional and I would urge everyone to take a look at it the kind of work it's doing and its agenda it's very un indan and it's to my mind ironic that an Indian sitting in the US is doing it here so congratulations Mish and I think everyone should take a look at it I'll add to that it's God's work what he's doing he except they take people from the absolute margins of society and turn them into I and I am graduates I mean it's exceptional work that I think a a round of applause is called for I hope the message has hit over there's one more thing it's run exceptionally well there are few businesses which are run as well as the dakna foundation that's very good to hear sir very good to hear uh know one of one of the one of the interesting things is that there are two people on the on the stage there L and ramdev who've been to uh the Charles tonger Hall that daksha has in uh Bangalore I encourage all of you to to go there I would just say this that if there wasn't a waren Buffett or a Charlie manger there wouldn't be a duction you know I mean I did not grow up in India with a very strong ethos or any ethos actually for that matter on giving back you know the focus would be take care of your family take care of your you know loved ones and uh that was the end of that you know and maybe a few people around you and uh it was really when I uh studied Warren and Charlie that it uh it dawned on me that there was a um a greater sense of you know purpose that one could attach and and actually both of them uh were very uh useful both of them read uh every D annual report cover to cover um uh last time I went to see uh Charlie the last two DNA annual reports were on his table uh so and and uh so many times uh he would ask me a lot of questions about different things about D what Daka was doing and even even Warren would ask me questions about that so they um they they had tremendous influence they Contin to have a tremendous influence on D been wonderful I I remember that Mish introduced me to so many of their uh staff and he knew that families and how many of them had you know tied it tied it over to Great Heights it was it was a pleasure the post interview getting to know dsha and the sub staff was an you know a really satisfying experience glorious experience let me just Dawn my journalist cap for one second before I hand it over to you uh to ask the more difficult questions U Mr bachara do you think that uh India is in a good spot now you know the way uh uh Mr Ram presented it do you think know demographic Trends even tax to GDP is increasing year after year uh do you think there's something big that's that we are on or are we over marketing ourselves to ourselves you put it very well that's wonderfully put that last that last phrase is a wonderful illustration of how you can put something really tricky in a nice way uh and you've done what a lot of people do to me you put me in the spot on the spot um I must say this I think you know this is an incredible country it has amazing capabilities across a very wide spectrum of activity entrepreneurial capabilities and a huge bunch of things but I think the the the two and if you look at Charlie and try to ask yourself how would Charlie have looked at India I think that that's really the lens you should bring to bear on this I think one of the things Charlie would have done is he wouldn't have been so uncritical about the things that aren't so great we tend to wish away all that we don't like so we have a little bit of this selective retention bias uh as an economist surely you're much better qualified than I am but very few countries which run a combined gross fiscal deficit close to double digits will find that they can sustainably maintain that yeah there isy growth on steroids it's not easy to do it and uh so that's one thing that sometimes I worry about I think certainly all that you spoke about the de the demography the but it needs to be savings I mean we're getting an explosion of savings and Financial ization but I think all of this needs to be harnessed in a way that is productive so the demography doesn't count for very much if you don't focus on Healthcare and education no if if it was left with Charlie manga he would have rather than invest in steel plants invested in education primary schools I think that's where Charlie would have gone in India he'd have focused on primary schools and Primary Health Centers because to really be productive you need to be in good health and well educated it's not enough to say that the 15 to 64 population in India is something fantastic and very different and the number of you know dependents that each person serves is much lower than in China there's a graying effect in Japan that's all true but at the end how do you make it happen he had a wonderful word for this though I don't think he used it in the context of India he he should love this word I heard it the first time when I went there with Rand it's called the laloa effect so if Good Things Come Together multiple good things come together then you have a force multiplier that is just truly truly exceptional it just knocks the hell out of things and I think the difference is if you look back at America and go back 50 70 100 years I think they did a lot of the building blocks they got the building blocks right and the building blocks led to laapoa effects in the US and I hope it happens in India absolutely okay over to you R thanks mon since we have you all the way from Austin I'll ask you this question I'm going to read a m quote and then I want you to give me the color on it as you see fit and I hope you recognize the quote M once said he's a manager that all investors CEOs would be CEOs and MBA students should study who was he talking about well I think I think uh would be Jim Sagal uh and Costco Mrs B possibly not quite it was Henry Singleton of tadine who you know he admired so much uh for his thing capital for his Capital allocation and his brood rationality just to inform your audience uh mangar said that Singleton would play Chess at the grandmas level blindfolded he was that good a capital you he started the concept of buying back shares elsewhere um if you know the story would you at towards his death bed Singleton wanted to sell tadine to Burkshire hatway and the transaction could not be consumated why is that well so Singleton I mean he was he was amazing he from 1965 to 1970 he bought 170 companies uh typically about 10 times earnings for these companies but he US Stock his stock was trading at 40 to 70 times trailing earnings and so you know he was using expensive paper to buy put assets then from uh 70 uh 74 72 to 84 bought back 90% of shares at single digit multiples right and then at the end of that 80 84 period when he had bought back 90% Charlie knew him he went to Charlie and said okay now you know T is a good company they also had an insurance business and he said you know these assets are wonderful Charlie and you know burshire would be a great home and he wanted to sell it to burshire and Burkshire was very interested in buying it but Henry wanted uh Berkshire stock I mean he was a very smart guy you know this guy was uh you know off the chart and uh Warren and Char were very interested in doing the deal but they said we want to pay cash and so Henry didn't want to do it that way because you know then there's a tax implication everything and and of course in 84 stock was $400 a share which is now 550,000 you know so uh it would have been a a huge home run so that that deal never took place but just tells you the amazing mind of Henry

Channel: CNBC-TV18

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Keywords: raamdeo agrawal, ramesh damani, charlie munger, charlie munger interview, charlie munger daily journal, charlie munger tribute, charlie munger dead, charlie munger investing, charlie munger advice, charlie munger wisdom, charlie munger portfolio, charlie munger berkshire hathaway, charlie munger cnbc, charlie munger talk, charlie munger last interview, charlie munger best interview, charlie munger famous speech, munger charlie, charlie munger quotes, cnbc tv18, nifty

Id: moD0_eQkdeg

Length: 48min 44sec (2924 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 14 2023