Charlie Munger: The Man Behind Buffett's Best Decisions

Warren Buffett is one of the most studied investors alive.

Charlie Munger's influence on him is not.

Buffett learned investing from Benjamin Graham. The idea was simple: find businesses priced below what their parts are worth. Buy them cheap. Sell when the price recovers. Move on.

It worked. Until it did not.

The problem was scale. Once Buffett started managing serious money, there were not enough cheap businesses to buy. And cheap businesses are usually cheap for a reason - they are dying.

Munger suggested an alternative. Stop looking for discounts. Start looking for quality.

Before Munger: In 1962, Buffett bought Berkshire Hathaway (a failing textile mill) because the price was low. He spent years trying to squeeze value out of a business with no future. He later called it one of his worst decisions.

After Munger: In 1972, Munger pushed him to buy See's Candies for $25 million, which was three times what the books said it was worth. Buffett hesitated. This went against everything Graham had taught him.

But See's had something a textile mill never would. Customers who came back every year. The ability to raise prices without losing anyone. A brand that generated cash without needing much in return.

That cash funded everything that followed. Including Apple.

In 2016, Buffett bought Apple for the same reason, not because it was cheap, but because 1.4 billion people were not going to stop using their iPhones. Loyal customers. Pricing power. A brand that compounds on its own.

At its peak, Apple made up nearly 50% of Berkshire's portfolio.

Then Buffett did something equally instructive. He sold. Between 2023 and 2025, Berkshire cut its Apple position by 75%. Not because the business changed. Because the price did. Apple's valuation had climbed to 33 times forward earnings, which was far above the mid-teens when he first bought in. The margin of safety was gone.

Buy quality at a fair price. Sell when fair becomes expensive.

Over the years, most of us — me included — got swept up in the Buffett mania. Munger stayed in the background

In November 2025, I came across one of his talks published in "Poor Charlie's Almanack". I read it expecting stories about Buffett. I was wrong.

Over the weeks that followed, the more I read, the more I saw my own errors - in how I think, how I judge, and how I make decisions.

The whole book is worth your time (entire book is free to read). But if you are not sure, start with the book's final chapter - a long read. Munger identifies twenty-five ways the human mind reliably fails.

If it does not change how you think, the rest of the book is not for you.

If it does, you already know what to do next.