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The Intellectual Edge's avatar

I think everyone needs a bit of Charlie Munger right now, thanks for the post! Staying rational is our edge in times like this.

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ATC (Absolute Total Compound)'s avatar

Mental Models distillation:

The foundation mindsets of The Buffett-Munger Profitability Investing Truism:

i。

“Investors should remember their scorecard isn't computed using the Olympic-diving method:

Degree-of-difficulty doesn’t count.

If you're right abt a business whose value is largely dependent on a single key factor that is both easy to understand & enduring, the payoff is the same as if you should correctly analyze an investment alternative characterized by many constantly shifting & complex variables.”

— Warren Buffett

ii。

“The higher return a business can earn on its capital, the more cash it can produce, the more value is created. Over time, it is hard for investors to earn returns that are much higher than the underlying business’ return on invested capital.”

— Warren Buffett

iii。

“Over the long term, it’s hard for a stock to earn a much better return than the business which underlies it earns. If the business earns six percent on capital over forty years and you hold it for that forty years, you’re not going to make much difference than a six percent return – even if you originally buy it at a huge discount. Conversely, if a business earns eighteen percent on capital over twenty or thirty years, even if you pay an expensive looking price, you’ll end up with one hell of a result.”

— Charlie Munger

iv。

The P/E ratio of any company that's fairly priced will equal its growth rate. . . . If the P/E of Coca-Cola is 15, you'd expect the company to be growing at about 15 percent a year, etc. But if the P/E ratio is less than the growth rate, you may have found yourself a bargain. A company, say, with a growth rate of 12 percent a year...and a P/E ratio of 6 is a very attractive prospect. On the other hand, a company with a growth rate of 6 percent a year and a P/E ratio of 12 is an unattractive prospect and headed for a comedown. . . . In general, a P/E ratio that's half the growth rate is very positive, and one that's twice the growth rate is very negative.

// Peter Lynch, One Up on Wall Street

v。

“Over the longest period of time .. your return approximates the business return to capital invested in the business itself over the long term. The two tend to really converge pretty closely.”

— Li Lu

vi。

“In short, companies that achieve a high return on capital are likely to have a special advantage of some kind. That special advantage keeps competitors from destroying the ability to earn above-average profits.”

— Joel Greenblatt

vii。

“It is obvious that a variation of merely a few percentage points has an enormous effect on the success of a compounding (investment) program. It is also obvious that this effect mushrooms as the period lengthens.”

— Warren Buffett

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