To say Charlie Munger is blunt would be an understatement. If Munger does not like something he uses words like poison (see Bitcoin), sewer (see Valeant), among other colorful words. In this sense, Munger is the exact opposite of Buffett – Buffett will give his views but (at least in public) tends to be more diplomatic.
That is why when Munger praised one hedge fund manager at his recent Daily Journal corporation meeting, the words stand out – when Munger praises someone he means it and is not just trying to “be nice”, in fact, Munger told this hedge fund manager to stand up for applause. Additionally, Warren and Charlie tend to both be critical of the active management industry, in general, which makes this even more noteworthy.
For regular readers of the site this name will not be new to them, but he probably just became a lot more famous to the general public. Munger praised Mohnish Pabrai of Pabrai Funds. While some criticized Pabrai over some concentrated investments gone sour like Horsehead Holdings, one cannot argue that his comeback has been anything short of remarkable.
First here is Pabrai in his own words:
It was truly an honor to receive a shout-out by Charlie Munger during the Daily Journal Annual Meeting in Los Angeles on February 14, 2018. Charlie was discussing the fair investment management fee structure of the Buffett Partnerships of the 1950s, which I have enthusiastically cloned for 19 years.
Here is a brief clip from the “Closing Bell” on CNBC that summarized the talk. Kelly Evans mentions Munger’s fee structure comments from 2:40 onwards:
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/02/14/berkshires-charlie-munger-on-wells-fargos-mistake.html?play=1
We thought both regular readers and new ones would be interested in hearing more about Mohnish – we have some information that has not been reported elsewhere and some useful resources on Pabrai so without further to do
Those who want to learn more here is some background on Mohnish – we curated some of our favorite posts about Mohnish with a bias towards more recent ones, check it out below!
- 300+ Book Recommendations From Mohnish Pabrai – Note: if this post is popular we will update the 300 books to around 1k or so.
- Mohnish Pabrai On Hidden Value Home run
- Pabrai Flagship Returns 92 Percent In 2017; 14X Return On Indian Small-Cap
- Mohnish Pabrai @Google Talks On Too Much Stock Research [Transcript]
- Mohnish Pabrai Fund Up 57 Percent So Far
- Pabrai Investment Funds Charges Higher
- Mohnish Pabrai “After Sears files for bankruptcy” it may make sense to buy Seritage again
- Mohnish Pabrai Storms Back Into Profit Up 25% In Q1
- Mohnish Pabrai Up 5.3% In 2016: A Year He’d Rather Forget As AUM Drops Around 20%
- Pabrai Funds Springs Back After Horsehead
- Tesla Is “Blowing Billions” On “Dumb” Ideas: Pabrai
- Mohnish Pabrai and the Horsehead Holdings catastrophe
- Pabrai Funds Crushed, Down 20% In 2015 Thanks To Horsehead
- Watch the Video – Mohnish Pabrai
- Mohnish Pabrai Resource Page
- Pabrai On The Mistake Of Selling Ferrari
- Extensive Company Valuation Checklist
- How Mohnish Pabrai And Charlie Munger Use A Checklist
- All of our Pabrai posts here
