Munger on Human Misjudgements

Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, often does not get the recognition that his investing partner, Warren Buffett, receives. However, Munger is an investing legend in his own way. I have always admired Munger for his critical and rational thinking and it was a privilege to hear him speak at the 2006 Berkshire shareholder meeting.

Recently, I came across an article on the Reflections on Value Investing blog (I highly recommend this blog to all value investors) which talks about the Man-with-the-hammer syndrome.

The article has a link to Munger's speech titled PSYCHOLOGY OF HUMAN MISJUDGMENT. In the undated speech at Harvard Law School, Munger talks about the extreme irrationality and biases that are prevalent in the world. Click here for a link to the article.

Munger also makes several references to Robert Cialdini and his work on influence and compliance. I recently re-read Cialdini's book Influence - a must read for anybody trying to understand the different techniques compliance professionals use to manipulate our minds!

I found Munger's talk very enlightening and it reinforced my belief that Munger is one of top thinkers of our time.

The Intelligent Investor

Charlie Munger oftens says that all inteligent investing is value investing.

Sham Gad, Managing Partner, Gad Partners Funds, will be talking about value investing in a talk titled "THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR: THE PRACTICAL APPROACH TO INVESTING".

Click here for Sham's blog.

Venue: Chelmsford Public Library, MA (click here for the library's web site)
When: December 13, 2007 at 7 PM

Agenda
–Understand why a value oriented investment operation offers the most sensible and practical approach to managing money.
–The ideas and philosophies developed by Ben Graham in the 1930’s and extended by Warren Buffett today.
–Six characteristics that define an intelligent investment approach.
–A simple value based investment case study.

Please note that this a free seminar and open to the public.

The Billionaire Next Door

"Warren Buffett: The Billionaire Next Door Going Global" premieres on Friday, November 30th on CNBC.

I think this will provide a valuable insight into the mind of the uber-investor. In particular, I'm interested to hear about his latest trips to China and Korea and if offers any investing ideas.

Click here for details on this program.

Trust & Estate Planning Seminar at the Chelmsford Library

We had a great turnout last night with over 100 people attending the seminar!
Dan Caplinger (see his bio) did an excellent job in explaining the intricacies of estate planning.

There were a lot of interesting questions from the audience. Since this is a very complex subject, we are thinking of organizing a follow up session in February or March of next year. Please let me know if you are interested.

If you missed the seminars or if you want to review the topics again, you can check out his presentation here:
http://www.chelmsfordlibrary.org/programs/programs/pdf/dan_caplinger_presentation.pdf

Note that the next seminar will be December, 13 by Sham Gad, "The Intelligent Investor: A Practical Approach to Investing".

I look forward to seeing you then.

Circle of Competence

"Its not competence if you don't know its edge" - Charlie Munger

One of the least talked about subjects in investing is an investor's circle of competence. I believe every investor should have a thorough understanding of his/her area of competence if there is any hope of besting the market.

I can speak from personal experience: when I started investing in 2000, I was bitten by the telecon industry. Looking back, I realize I had no business investing in companies like JDSU, Nortel Network and other dotcom darlings of the day. I had no idea of what these companies did, how did they make money and what their future prospects looked like. I was lucky that I did not invest (read "bet") a lot of money. Nevertheless, it was a lesson worth learning in spite of the hefty tuition bill :)

In one sense, "circle of competence" forces you to "buy what you know" - a concept put forth by investing legend, Peter Lynch. Although it is commonly misunderstood as buying what you are "familiar" with, it goes beyond just familiarity. What Lynch meant was that if you work in the health care industry and see a particular drug or device being prescribed more than the others, you have an advantage over others and could use this to investigate the company behind that product. And after your analysis, if you find an opportunity, go ahead and buy it. This is different from going to the local mall and seeing a line at the GAP store and buying the GAP stock based on this visit. The line could be due to several reasons - a slow cashier, cash register down or something else that has nothing to do with the latest design of khakis at GAP.

With that said, one can and should increase his or her circle of competence. It is amazing to see that Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are still learning and increasing their circle after decades of experience. Not to mention, both of them are over 70 years old!

Berkshire Hathaway's recent purchases in the railroad industry gives us an insight into the minds of these uber-investors. Here is an excerpt from Charlie Munger's talk at the 2007 Wesco shareholder's meeting...

Railroads – now that’s an example of changing our minds. Warren and I have hated railroads our entire life. They’re capital-intensive, heavily unionized, with some make-work rules, heavily regulated, and long competed with a comparative disadvantage vs. the trucking industry, which has a very efficient method of propulsion (diesel engines) and uses free public roads. Railroads have long been a terrible business and have been lousy for investors.

We did finally change our minds and invested. We threw out our paradigms, but did it too late. We should have done it two years ago, but we were too stupid to do it at the most ideal time.

There’s a German saying: Man is too soon old and too late smart. We were too late smart. We finally realized that railroads now have a huge competitive advantage, with double stacked railcars, guided by computers, moving more and more production from China, etc. They have a big advantage over truckers in huge classes of business.

Bill Gates figured this out years before us – he invested in a Canadian railroad and made eight hundred percent. Maybe Gates should manage Berkshire’s money. [Laughter] This is a good example of how hard it is to change one’s mind and change entrenched thinking, but at last we did change.

The world changed and, way too slowly, we recognized this.

Source: Whitney Tilson's Wesco meeting notes

Trusts and Estate Planning

Listen Dan Caplinger (Motley Fool writer and an attorney) talk about Trusts and Estates. I think this is one of most important aspects of financial planning, which most people ignore.

Click here for a short bio of the speaker.

Venue: Chelmsford, MA Public Library
When: November 8, 2007 at 7 PM

Agenda

• Overview: Why Estate Planning Is Important (orderly transfer of assets, addresses family obligations, taxation)
• Common EP Documents (will, trust, power of attorney, living will)
• Description of estate process (probate for wills v. administration of trusts)
• Brief discussion of tax issues for rich estates

See below for more details on this and other educational seminars

http://www.chelmsfordlibrary.org/programs/programs/financial_fitness.html

Note that these presentations are free and open to public. You can get also get directions to the library from the above page.

Please let me know if there are any questions.

Financial Fitness - Intro

Please see the below link for my presentation at the Chelmsford Public Library on personal finance and investing topics. This was recorded by the local TV network for broadcasting to the community. A copy of the presentation is also available at the library.

http://rishisondhi.googlepages.com/Financial_Fitness_Intro_ppt.pdf