前言

查理·芒格思想的力量

    在美国投资编年史中，查理·芒格是一位众所周知的神秘人物，关于他的传闻总是充满了矛盾。巴菲特曾说：“芒格设计了今天的伯克希尔哈撒韦，这是他最重要的成就。他给我的蓝图很简单，即‘用划算的价格投资一家优秀企业，比以便宜的价格买入一家普通企业的结果要好得多……’就这样，伯克希尔哈撒韦按照芒格的蓝图建立起来了。我的角色是总承包商，而伯克希尔哈撒韦下属公司的首席执行官则是分包商。”

    芒格作为科班出身的气象学家和律师，从未在大学接触过经济学、市场营销学、金融学和会计学，那么他又是如何成为最伟大的商业天才的呢？奥秘就在本书中。

    1924年1月1日，芒格出生于内布拉斯加州的奥马哈市。当时的美国正处于波澜壮阔的发展浪潮之中，无线电和飞机被视为尖端技术，而投资大师伯纳德·巴鲁克（BernardBaruch）则是华尔街之王。当时的每个人都靠投资股市发家致富。芒格的父亲是奥马哈有名的商业咨询顾问，其客户中不乏商界精英。少年芒格阅读了大量的书籍，在没有电视和电子游戏的时代，通过阅读，他发现了一个更广阔的世界。当时，他住在充满田园气息的邓迪地区（Dundee），巴菲特家族也住在这个地区。尽管这两个男孩年龄相差7岁，但他们就读于同一所小学和中学。事实上，芒格曾在巴菲特祖父所经营的杂货店内打过工。那家店就位于邓迪核心区的巴菲特家附近。

    在巴菲特家族的杂货店，芒格接触到了商业世界。他学会了如何盘货、整理货架、取悦客户，认识到准时上班的重要性，培养了与他人的合作意识。当然，他最拿手的还是操作收银机，那里“流淌”着被视为生意命脉的金钱。20世纪30年代，奥马哈生活着来自世界各地的移民：意大利人、希腊人、非洲裔美国人、爱尔兰人、法国人、捷克人、俄国人、中国人。许多移民为联合太平洋铁路公司和当地的肉类加工厂工作。芒格和这些移民家庭的孩子一起就读于公立学校，他不仅欣赏他们的文化，也欣赏他们的商业才能。为了让孩子过上更好的生活，这些移民家庭愿意付出让人难以置信的努力。

    在伯克希尔哈撒韦公司的年会上，芒格经常谈到大萧条时期的恐怖，以此提醒股东，事情到底会糟糕到什么程度。然而，在大萧条时期，奥马哈受到的波及程度其实远逊于美国其他地区。奥马哈既是联合太平洋铁路和伯灵顿铁路这两大铁路的交汇点，又是世界第二大的联邦畜牧围场的所在地。这种区位优势非常适宜发展牲畜业和运输业，于是许多大型肉制品公司汇聚于此，并在南奥马哈建立了加工厂。尽管美国正处于大萧条时期，但是人们总还是要吃饭的。当时，每天有多达两万头猪、羊和牛被运抵奥马哈，这些动物经过屠宰、切割、包装后，再运往美国的其他地区。即使在经济困难时期，牲畜饲养场也创造着大量的工作岗位。

    创办于奥马哈的基威特建筑公司是当今北美地区最大的建筑公司之一。该公司的第一项重大任务是为联邦畜牧围场建造牲畜交易所大厦。彼得·基威特（PeterKiewit）对芒格和巴菲特都产生过很大的影响，伯克希尔哈撒韦的总部如今仍设在基威特广场。芒格从自己的父亲那里了解到奥马哈一些最知名的商人是如何做生意的，他的父亲是希区柯克（Hitchcock）和孔茨（Kountze）两大家族的代表。希区柯克家族拥有奥马哈主要报纸的发行权，而孔茨家族则拥有该市最大的银行。

    高中毕业后，17岁的芒格进入密歇根大学学习数学。在“珍珠港事件”一年后，19岁的芒格从大学辍学，加入了美国空军。军队把他送到加利福尼亚州帕萨迪纳的加州理工学院研究气象学。在那里，他学会了识别积云和卷云，并爱上了南加州阳光明媚的天气。

    巴菲特的家与AK-Sar-Ben赛马场很近，骑自行车几分钟就能到，年轻的巴菲特几乎全身心地投入到了关于可能性和概率的研究中。与此同时，芒格则热衷于与他的战友玩扑克，并从中学习到了重要的投资策略：在事情对自己不利时一定要学会放弃，而一旦运气落在自己的头上，就必须孤注一掷。后来，他经常在投资领域运用这种策略。

    第二次世界大战结束时，芒格还没有获得本科学位，于是他申请转学到自己父亲的母校哈佛大学法学院，但被拒绝了。哈佛大学法学院前任院长是内布拉斯加人，也是芒格家族的朋友，他给学校打了一个电话，随后芒格就被录取了。芒格在法律方面很有天赋，1948年他以优异的成绩毕业。这段经历让他牢记了一点：在上层社会一定要有朋友。

    自哈佛大学法学院毕业后，芒格搬回了洛杉矶，并加入了一家非常著名的法律事务所。通过处理20世纪福克斯公司、莫哈韦沙漠的采矿业以及房地产交易等业务，他学到了很多商业知识。在此期间，他还成了一家国际收割机经销商的主管，这使他第一次了解到，要挽救一家陷入困境的企业是多么困难。这家经销商主要从事批发业务，因此需要大量的资金来支付昂贵的库存成本，而其大部分资金都源于银行贷款。连续遭遇两个季度的市场萧条，库存的持有成本就会毁掉这项生意。然而，如果该公司削减库存以降低成本，就会无货可卖，这意味着客户会去找那些有足够库存的其他经销商。这项生意处境艰难，存在很多问题，也没有简单的解决办法。

    在那段时间里，芒格考虑了很多生意上的事情。他习惯问人们，他们认为最好的生意是什么。他渴望与顶尖律师事务所服务的那些精英客户打成一片。他决定每天花一个小时在办公室里研究自己的房地产项目，就这样，他完成了5个项目。芒格说自己的前100万美元财富完全是辛苦钱。也正是在那个时期，他意识到自己永远不会成为非常富有的执业律师——他得另辟蹊径。

    1959年的夏天，为了处置父亲的遗产，芒格约了两位老朋友在位于奥马哈市中心的奥马哈俱乐部吃午餐。在这家具有木制装潢的私人俱乐部里，商人们直到下午才吃午饭，晚上则喝酒、抽雪茄。这两位朋友决定带着他们自己的一位朋友来，后者当时正在运营一家他们投资的合伙企业。他们认为芒格肯定非常愿意认识这名年轻人——巴菲特。

    据说，两人当时都感觉相见恨晚。巴菲特一开始就单刀直入地抨击投资天才本杰明·格雷厄姆。芒格知道格雷厄姆，于是两人立刻开始探讨企业和股票。谈话变得如此忘情，以至于芒格和巴菲特几乎没有注意到他们的两个朋友是何时离开的。这标志着一段漫长的兄弟情的开始，一种堪称绝配的合作关系的建立。在接下来的几天里，他们彼此见面不多。在某一天共进晚餐后，芒格就自己在加利福尼亚是否也成立一家投资合伙企业一事，询问了巴菲特的意见。巴菲特表示，他没有任何理由给出否定的意见。

    芒格回到加利福尼亚后，他和巴菲特每周都要通几次电话，这种情况持续了好几年。1962年，芒格终于与太平洋海岸证券交易所（Pacific Coast Stock Exchange）的一名交易员，也是他的老牌友，共同建立了一家投资合伙企业。他还成立了一家新的律师事务所，名叫芒格·托尔斯· 希尔斯·伍兹（Munger, Tolles, Hills and Woods）。在接下来的3年时间里，他逐渐放弃了法律事务，开始把全部心思花在投资领域上。

    芒格的投资合伙企业与巴菲特的不同，因为他愿意为了完成某些交易而承担大量的债务。他特别喜欢股票套利。围绕着大不列颠哥伦比亚电力公司（BritishColumbiaPower，简称BCP），芒格就做成了一笔套利交易。当时，加拿大政府计划要接管这家公司，其收购价为每股22美元，而BCP的市价为每股19美元。考虑到这笔交易最终将以每股22美元的价格成交，芒格决定孤注一掷，买入自己所能买到的全部BCP股票，为此他花光了所有的合伙资金、自有资金以及能够借到的资金。这笔交易的最终结果是，BCP以22美元的价格被收购。芒格就像白捡了一大笔财富。

    在20世纪60年代中期，芒格和巴菲特正忙着在粉单市场（PinkSheets）寻找市值比较低的好公司。他们挖掘出了蓝筹印花公司。这家公司是一家出售印花的公司。其他公司会从蓝筹印花公司购买印花并赠送给自己的客户，而这些客户随后会将印花兑换成蓝筹印花公司提供的奖品。我们可以将这种模式想象成一个积分奖励计划的雏形。让芒格最感兴趣的是，因为在印花销售和消费者兑换之间存在很长的时滞，所以蓝筹印花公司可以形成大量的“浮存金”。另外，美国政府当时已对该公司提起了反垄断诉讼，因此蓝筹印花公司的股价正处于很低的位置。作为一名律师，芒格认为，诉讼的结果将有利于蓝筹印花公司，后来事实也确实如此。芒格通过他的合伙企业，巴菲特则通过伯克希尔哈撒韦公司，联手控制了该公司，而芒格成了该公司的董事长。到20世纪70年代末，蓝筹印花公司的“浮存金”已增长至约1亿美元，而芒格和巴菲特可以用这些资金进行投资。

    蓝筹印花公司的商业模式最终还是被淘汰了，多年来其销售额缓慢下降，从1970年的1.26亿美元下降到了1990年的150万美元。不过，在其全盛时期，芒格利用蓝筹印花公司的浮存金收购了喜诗糖果和西科（Wesco）80%的股权，后者是一家拥有储贷资质的金融公司。当时，伯克希尔哈撒韦公司的纺织业务陷入了苦苦挣扎的境地，巴菲特不得不从中撤出资金，用于收购业务蒸蒸日上的国民保险公司（NationalIndemnity），而芒格则调用蓝筹印花公司的浮存金对很多有利可图的业务进行了投资。最终，蓝筹印花公司被合并到了伯克希尔哈撒韦公司。

    1968年，芒格、巴菲特以及经营曼哈顿第一投资公司（FirstManhattan）的大卫·“桑迪”·戈特斯曼（David"Sandy"Gottesman）合作，创办了多元零售公司（DiversifiedRetailingCompany，简称DRC）。DRC以1200万美元收购了巴尔的摩的孔恩百货（HochschildKohn），其中一半的收购资金来自银行贷款。尽管买下孔恩百货的价格很便宜，但由于缺乏竞争优势，它需要持续性地注入新资金来维持自身竞争力。芒格和其他人很快就知道了经营零售服装企业到底有多艰难。珠宝和地毯企业的存货几乎不会贬值，而不同的是，在零售服装行业中，企业的所有库存产品都会随着季节的变化而过时。经过3年的惨淡经营，他们最终又卖掉了孔恩百货。

    在那段时间里，芒格开始发现投资优秀企业的好处。这些企业不需要大量的运营资本，同时能产生大量可以用于扩大原有业务或购买新业务的自由现金。

    1961—1969年，芒格的投资合伙企业的年回报率达到了惊人的37.1%。然而，1973—1974年股市的崩盘拖累了芒格的业绩，当他于1975年清算该基金时，其资产总额为1000万美元。在其存续的14年间，该合伙企业的年回报率为24.3%。有趣的是，在这只基金存续的最后几年里，芒格的投资组合高度集中，仅蓝筹印花公司的股票就占到了该合伙企业总资产的61%。就投资策略而言，芒格从来都不喜欢多元化。

    1972年，芒格的合伙企业决定与投资人里克·盖林（RickGuerin）合作，控股封闭式的信业基金（FundofLetters）。随后，他们就将该基金更名为新美国基金（NewAmericaFund）。当合伙企业清算时，芒格的合伙人开始直接持有新美国基金。这只基金由盖林负责运营，芒格则负责选择投资标的。1977年，新美国基金以250万美元的价格收购了每日新闻集团（DailyJournalCorporation），芒格成了该公司的董事长。每日新闻集团是一家加利福尼亚的出版公司，旗下包括《洛杉矶日报》和《旧金山日报》。当盖林和芒格解散新美国基金时，该基金的持有人得到了每日新闻集团的股票，同时该集团的股票开始在场外交易市场挂牌交易。现在，每日新闻集团的许多股东其实就是40多年前投资芒格的合伙企业的人。

    1979年，芒格成为伯克希尔哈撒韦公司的副董事长。1983年，蓝筹印花公司与伯克希尔哈撒韦公司合并，芒格就任西科公司的董事长。正是通过这两个职位，芒格协助巴菲特在投资和管理领域做出了许多的决策。1984年，伯克希尔哈撒韦公司的净利润为1.48亿美元，每股价格1272美元，而到2016年时，其净利润约240亿美元，每股价格则飙升到了21万美元。

    如今，芒格已年逾九旬，仍担任伯克希尔哈撒韦公司的副董事长。截至2019年时，伯克希尔哈撒韦公司的市值已达4990亿美元。与此同时，他还是每日新闻集团的董事长，其个人财富近18亿美元。

    在总结过去50多年芒格对自己投资风格的影响时，巴菲特说：“芒格教会我不要只像格雷厄姆那样买入‘便宜货’。这就是他对我的真实影响。他用强大的力量让我摆脱了格雷厄姆的理念的限制。这就是芒格思想的力量。”

INTRODUCTION

In the chronicles of American financial history Charlie Munger will be seen as the proverbial enigma wrapped in a paradox—he is both a mystery and a contradiction at the same time. Warren Buffett said, “Charlie’s most important architectural feat was the design of today’s Berkshire. The blueprint he gave me was simple: Forget what you know about buying fair businesses at wonderful prices; instead, buy wonderful businesses at fair prices. . . . Consequently, Berkshire has been built to Charlie’s blueprint. My role has been that of general contractor, with the CEOs of Berkshire’s subsidiaries doing the real work as subcontractors.”

  How is it that Charlie—who trained as a meteorologist and a lawyer and never took a single college course in economics, marketing, finance, or accounting—became one of the greatest business and investing geniuses of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? Therein lies the mystery.

  Charlie was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on January 1, 1924, in the midst of the Roaring Twenties. The radio and airplane were the cutting-edge technologies of the day. The financier Bernard Baruch was the king of Wall Street. And everyone was getting rich investing in stocks. Charlie’s father was one of Omaha’s leading business attorneys, and his roster of clients included many of the state’s business elite. Charlie spent much of his youth reading—the television and video games of his day—and that is where he discovered a larger world than the idyllic, but very parochial, neighborhood of Dundee, where Warren Buffett’s family also lived. The two boys attended the same grade school and high school, though seven years apart in age. In fact, one of Charlie’s first jobs was working for Warren’s grandfather at the Buffett neighborhood grocery store—which is still standing in the heart of old Dundee.

  Charlie was introduced to the world of business at the Buffett grocery store.  He learned about taking inventory, stocking shelves, pleasing customers, the importance of showing up on time for work, how to get along with others while accomplishing a joint task, and, of course, running the cash register, where money, the lifeblood of the business, flowed.

  Omaha in the 1930s had distinct ethnic immigrant neighborhoods: Italian, Greek, African American, Irish, French, Czech, Russian, and even Chinese. Many immigrants worked for the Union Pacific Railroad and meatpacking plants whose operations were centered in Omaha. Charlie went to public school with the children of those immigrants and as a result developed an appreciation not only of their cultures but also of their commercial aptitude and willingness to work unbelievably hard to give their children a better life.

  Charlie often brings up the horrors of the Great Depression at Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings as a reminder of just how bad things can get. But Omaha didn’t suffer like other parts of the United States during the Great Depression, in part because it was the crossroads of two major railroads, the Union Pacific and the Burlington, and also because it was home to the Union Stock Yards, the second largest in the world. With this convergence of livestock and transportation, Omaha attracted the big meatpacking companies, which established processing plants in South Omaha. America may have been in a great depression, but it still had to eat, and as many as twenty thousand pigs, sheep, and cattle arrived in Omaha every day. Those animals needed to be slaughtered, butchered, packed, and shipped to other parts of the country. The stockyard generated lots of economic activity even during hard times.

  The Kiewit construction company, today one of North America’s largest building companies, was founded in Omaha. The company’s first big job was constructing the Livestock Exchange building for the Union Stock Yards. (Peter Kiewit had a huge influence on both Charlie and Warren, and today Berkshire’s home office is in Kiewit Plaza.) Charlie learned about the business dealings of some of Omaha’s most prominent businessmen from his father, who represented both the Hitchcock family, who owned the town’s leading newspaper, and the Kountze family, who owned the largest bank.

  After high school, seventeen-year-old Charlie enrolled in the University of Michigan to study mathematics. He turned nineteen a year after Pearl Harbor, dropped out of college, and joined the US Army Air Corps. The army sent him to Caltech, in Pasadena, California, to study meteorology. There he learned the difference between cumulus and cirrus clouds and fell in love with the sunny Southern California weather.

  While the teenage Warren Buffett was busy learning about odds and probability at the Ak-Sar-Ben horse-racing track—a short bike ride from his Omaha home—Charlie Munger was learning this important investment skill while playing poker with his army buddies. That’s where he learned to fold his hand when the odds were against him and bet heavy when the odds were with him, a strategy he later adapted to investing.

  After the war Charlie, who did not have an undergrad degree, applied to Harvard Law School, his father’s alma mater. He was rejected. After a phone call from Harvard Law’s retired dean, who was a Nebraskan and family friend, he was admitted. Charlie excelled in his law studies and graduated magna cum laude in 1948. He has never forgotten the importance of having friends in high places.

  After law school Charlie moved back to Los Angeles, where he joined a prestigious corporate law firm. He learned a lot about business from handling the affairs of Twentieth Century–Fox, a mining operation in the Mojave Desert, and many real estate deals. During that time he was also the director of an International Harvester dealership, where he first learned how hard it is to fix a struggling business. The dealership was a volume business that required a lot of capital to pay for its costly inventory, most of it financed with a bank loan. A couple of bad seasons, and the carrying costs on the inventory start to destroy the business. But if the company cut its inventory to lower the carrying costs, it wouldn’t have had anything to sell, which meant that customers would seek out a competing dealership that did have inventory. It was a tough business with lots of problems and no easy solutions.

  Charlie thought a lot about business during that time. He made a habit of asking people what was the best business they knew of. He longed to join the rich elite clientele his silk-stocking law firm served. He decided that each day he would devote one hour of his time at the office to work on his own real estate projects, and by doing so he completed five. He has said that the first million dollars he put together was the hardest money he ever earned. It was also during that period that he realized he would never become really rich practicing law; he’d have to find something else.

    In the summer of 1959, while in Omaha to settle his father’s estate, he met two old friends for lunch at the Omaha Club, a wood-paneled, private downtown club where businessmen lunched in the afternoon and drank and smoked cigars in the evening. The two men had decided to bring along a friend of theirs who was running a partnership they had invested in and whom they thought Charlie would enjoy meeting, a young man by the name of Warren Buffett.

  By all accounts it was a case of instant mutual attraction. Warren started by launching into his standard diatribe about the investment genius of Benjamin Graham. Charlie knew about Graham, and immediately the two began to talk about businesses and stocks. The conversation became so intense that Charlie and Warren barely noticed when their two friends got up to leave. That was the beginning of a long and very profitable relationship—a bromance in the making —and over the next couple of days they couldn’t see enough of each other. One night over dinner Charlie asked if Warren thought it would be possible for Charlie to open an investment partnership like Warren’s in California. Warren said he couldn’t see any reason why not.

  After Charlie returned to California, he and Warren talked several times a week on the phone over the next couple of years. And in 1962 Charlie finally started an investment partnership with an old poker buddy who was also a trader on the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. He also started a new law firm, Munger, Tolles, Hills and Woods. Within three years he stopped practicing law to focus on investing full-time.

  Charlie’s investment partnership was different from Warren’s, in that he was willing to take on a lot of debt to do some of his trades. He was particularly fond of stock arbitrage. One arbitrage deal involved British Columbia Power, a company that was being taken over by the Canadian government. The takeover price was $22 a share. BCP was selling for $19 a share. Thinking that the deal would eventually go through at $22 a share, Charlie bought all the shares of BCP he could get his hands on and ended up putting all of the partnership’s money, all of his own money, and all that he could borrow into BCP. The trade worked out—BCP was taken over at $22 a share—and Charlie made out like a bandit.

  In the mid-1960s Charlie and Warren were busy scouring over the Pink Sheets (a pre-Internet daily publication of the prices of OTC stocks printed on pink paper) looking for a bargain price on a good company. One of the companies they found was Blue Chip Stamp. Blue Chip was a trading stamp company; other businesses would buy trading stamps from Blue Chip to give them to their customers, who would then redeem them for prizes that Blue Chip was offering. Think of it as an early form of a rewards program. What made the company interesting to Charlie was that Blue Chip had a pool of money called a “float” that was created by the lag time between its selling the stamps and the customer’s redeeming them. What made Blue Chip’s stock attractively priced was the fact that the US government had filed an antitrust action against the company. Charlie, as a lawyer, thought the lawsuit would be resolved in favor of Blue Chip—which it was. Charlie—through his partnership—and Warren— through Berkshire—eventually took control of the company, and Charlie became its chairman. By the late 1970s the float at Blue Chip had grown to approximately $100 million, money that Charlie and Warren could invest.

  Blue Chip’s business model eventually became obsolete, and its sales slowly declined over the years, from $126 million in sales in 1970 to $1.5 million in 1990. But in its heyday, under Charlie’s direction, Blue Chip used its surplus capital to purchase 100% of See’s Candies and 80% of a finance company called Wesco, which owned a savings and loan. Just as Warren had taken capital out of Berkshire’s failing textile operation to buy a thriving insurance company, National Indemnity, Charlie took the excess capital out of Blue Chip Stamp and invested it in profitable businesses. Eventually Blue Chip Stamp was merged into Berkshire Hathaway.

  In 1968 Charlie teamed up with Warren and David “Sandy” Gottesman, who ran the investment firm First Manhattan, to form Diversified Retailing Company.  DRC acquired the Baltimore-based department store Hochschild Kohn for $12 million. Half of the acquisition was financed with a bank loan. Hochschild Kohn was bought at a bargain price, but it had no competitive advantage and was constantly having to spend precious capital keeping up with the competition.  Charlie and the others quickly learned how hard the retail clothing business really is. Unlike the jewelry or carpet business, where the inventory never depreciates, in retail clothing the entire inventory becomes obsolete with the changing of every season. After three years of dismal results they sold Hochschild Kohn.

  During that time Charlie started seeing the advantages of investing in better businesses that didn’t have big capital requirements and did have lots of free cash that could be reinvested in expanding operations or buying new businesses.

  From 1961 to 1969 Charlie’s investment partnership showed an amazing average annual return of 37.1%. But the crash in 1973–74 hurt him, and when he closed the fund in 1975 it had $10 million in assets and showed an average annual rate of return of 24.3% for the fourteen years it was in operation. What is interesting is that in the final years of the fund Charlie was running a highly concentrated portfolio, the holding in Blue Chip Stamp alone accounting for 61% of the fund’s investments. He has never been a fan of diversification as an investment strategy.

  One of the investment decisions that Charlie’s partnership made in 1972 was to team up with the investor Rick Guerin and take a controlling interest in a closed-end investment fund called Fund of Letters, which they quickly renamed the New America Fund. When the partnership liquidated the partners received shares in the New America Fund, which Guerin ran and for which Charlie picked the investments. In 1977 New America Fund bought the Daily Journal Corporation for $2.5 million, and Charlie became its chairman. The Daily Journal Corporation is a California publishing company that publishes newspapers and magazines, including the Los Angeles Daily Journal and the San Francisco Daily Journal. When Guerin and Charlie dissolved the New America Fund, its shareholders received shares in the Daily Journal Corporation and the company became a publicly traded OTC stock. Many of today’s Daily Journal shareholders have literally been with Charlie since the days of his original investment partnership, more than forty years ago.

  In 1979 Charlie became Berkshire Hathaway’s first vice chairman. In 1983 Blue Chip Stamp merged with Berkshire Hathaway and Charlie took over as chairman of Wesco. It was from those two positions that Charlie would help Warren make the investment and management decisions that would take Berkshire Hathaway from a net income of $148 million and a stock price of $1,272 a share in 1984 to a net income of approximately $24 billion and a stock price of $210,000 a share in 2016.

  Today, at ninety-two, Charlie is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, a company with a market capitalization of $362 billion, as well as the chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, and his personal fortune now exceeds $2 billion.

  Warren, in summing up Charlie’s impact on his investment style over the last fifty-seven years, said, “Charlie shoved me in the direction of not just buying bargains, as Ben Graham had taught me. This was the real impact that he had on me. It took a powerful force to move me on from Graham’s limiting view. It was the power of Charlie’s mind.”