Charlie Munger Daily Journal Annual Meeting 2022 Full Video, Full Transcript, and Highlights

Charlie Munger is now 98 years old and still answering questions at the 2022 Daily Journal Annual Shareholder Meeting. Yahoo Finance livestreamed the event again, and you can view the full two-hour recording on YouTube (embedded below, starts at 24:47). You’ll miss out on his snarky tone, but you may prefer to read the entire transcript, kindly provided in PDF form via @DividendGrowth and via Junto Investments.

You don’t have to agree with everything he says, but some of it is just refreshing in that it’s not the same stuff you hear elsewhere. He has a clear opinion. I’ve included a few of my personal highlights below.

One philosophy that I appreciate (but don’t necessarily follow) is to simply stay completely clear of bad things that can destroy either your financial stability or your general happiness. If you don’t own crypto, you can still live a rich and happy life.

• Avoid treating the stock market like a casino.
• Avoid speculating in cryptocurrencies.
• Avoid doing something because you see someone else get rich doing it.
• Avoid anything so addictive to you that you give up everything else. For some, it could be alcohol. Others, it could be video games.
• Avoid “pretentious expenditure”.

On the best way to invest:

Well, it may be that you have to choose the least bad of your options. That frequently happens in human decision making. The Mungers have Berkshire stock, Costco stock, Chinese stocks through Li Lu, a little bit of Daily Journal stock, and a bunch of apartment houses. Do I think that’s perfect? No. Do I think it’s okay? Yes. I think the great lesson from the Mungers is that you don’t need all this damn diversification. You’re lucky if you got four good assets. If you’re trying to do better than average, you’re lucky if you have four things to buy. To ask for 20 is really asking for egg in your beer. Very few people have enough brains to get 20 good investments.

On making macro-economic predictions and dealing with the boom and bust cycle:

I figure that I want to swim as well as I can against the tides. I’m not trying to predict the tides.

If you’re gonna invest in stocks for the long term, or real estate, of course there are going to be periods when there’s a lot of agony and other periods when there’s a boom. I think you just have to learn to live through them.

Should we go to cash and wait for better opportunities in the future?

In my whole adult life, I’ve never hoarded cash, waiting for better conditions. I’ve just invested in the best thing I could find. I don’t think I’m going to change now. The Daily Journal has used up its cash.

On living a happy life:

You want to have reasonable expectations and take life’s results good and bad as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism. There’ll never be any shortage of good people in the world. All you got to do is seek them out and get as many of them as possible into your life. Keep the rest the hell out.

Past years:

• 2021 Daily Journal Shareholder meeting notes
• 2020 Daily Journal Shareholder meeting notes
• 2019 Daily Journal Shareholder meeting notes