Li Lu On Munger’s Patience To Wait For The Right Opportunity

In his 2019 speech at the Peking University, Li Lu discussed an example of the patience of Charles Munger. Here’s an excerpt from the speech:

The next character is also quite special. This person has to be extremely patient and very decisive. This is a contradiction. When there is no chance, he can not shoot for many, many years, but once the opportunity comes, he suddenly becomes very decisive, and he can make a big bet without hesitation.

Mr. Munger and I have been investment partners for 16 or 7 years. We have dinner together at least once a week. I know a lot about him. Here I can tell a story about his investment.

Mr. Munger subscribes to “Barron’s“, which is a weekly magazine related to the stock market of the Wall Street Journal in the United States. He has read this magazine for nearly forty to fifty years.

Of course, the main purpose is to discover investment opportunities. In the entire forty to fifty years, how many opportunities has he discovered?

One!

There is only one, and this opportunity was only discovered after more than 30 years of watching it. Ten years after that, I never found a second chance.

But this does not affect his continuous reading, I know he still reads every issue. He has extreme patience and can do nothing, but when he really discovered this opportunity, he dared to make all the heavy bets, and this investment has made him a lot of money.

This is a must-have for a good investor, you must have extreme patience. When the opportunity does not come, you just study hard, but when the opportunity comes, you have a strong determination and ability to act.

You can watch the entire presentation here (English Subtitles and Transcript are provided):