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Charlie Munger, 99, passed away on Tuesday.
The legendary investor led Berkshire Hathaway for many years, acting as right-hand man to Warren Buffett.
According to his relatives, he passed away quietly in a California hospital early on Tuesday.
At the age of 99, Charlie Munger, the legendary investor who co-led Berkshire Hathaway as vice chairman with Warren Buffett, passed away on Tuesday.
According to Berkshire Hathaway, Munger passed away quietly on Tuesday morning at a hospital in California, as reported to the firm by his family.
In a statement on the press release, Buffett stated that “without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom, and participation, Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status.”
Munger accumulated an estimated net worth of $2.3 billion, worked for years as Buffett’s right-hand man at the company, and chaired Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 to 2011.
Like Buffett, Munger gained a reputation for his keen sense of humor and life lessons learned from business and investing, which helped Berkshire to consistently achieve success for many years.
Munger stated during a 2007 business meeting, “We recognized early on that very smart people do very dumb things, and we wanted to know why and who, so we could avoid them.”
He expressed a similar opinion in 2009 when he discussed how Berkshire’s investment choices were influenced by his business philosophy. He advised investing in a company that “any fool can run,” because eventually someone will. It’s not much of a business if it can’t tolerate a little poor management. Even if we are resilient, mismanagement is not what we are searching for.”
Munger was well-known for challenging overhyped investment fads, such as artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies. Speaking this year at Zoomtopia, the Berkshire executive restated his belief that cryptocurrency was worthless and that the rise in AI investing was probably overblown.
As recently as this month, the regular analyst on financial trends and the stock market disclosed his preference for Big Tech companies like Apple and Alphabet. Munger said that investors who did not own those stocks ran the risk of falling behind.
“What everybody has learned is that everybody needs some significant participation in the 12 companies that do better than everybody else,” Munger stated in the podcast Acquired. “You need two or three of them, at least.”
Munger was born on January 1, 1924, in Omaha, which was also Buffett’s hometown.
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