How Charlie Munger Outsmarted Everyone as a Kid! | Final Interview with CNBC 2023 【C:C.M 326】

[Transcript]

CHARLIE MUNGER: As a little boy, I carried more money than all the other little boys. When I used to shoot agates in the school yard to make money playing competitive agates.

BECKY QUICK: Marbles?

CHARLIE MUNGER: I mean, sure, you marbles, but agates were the most valuable marble. And I never wanted to lose my good, valuable collection. You know, some guy was more coordinated than I was at shooting marbles. So I would never play for stakes unless I could play better than the other boy.

BECKY QUICK: That's kind of been a habit you've made throughout life. You don't play poker with someone you're going to lose with.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Exactly. I didn't always arrange the circumstances. I just fell into them very quickly. But I got to play with competitors who were dummkopfs. (Laughter)

BECKY QUICK: People who weren't assessing the odds quite the same way?

CHARLIE MUNGER: No, no. They weren't assessing the odds the way it was easy to assess the odds. And you learned and you paid attention when the teacher was teaching you permutations and combinations. Your second year in high school. The minute they taught me those things, I looked at them. And the math teacher who was teaching me was a dummkopfs. And of course, he didn't have any idea how they were important and why. He just taught us one more thing he had to teach to get through the textbook. And I immediately realized that these things were terribly important. It would do wonders for me if I mastered them. But my math teacher didn't know that.

BECKY QUICK: I mean, that's where you get to what, I think, what you call —

CHARLIE MUNGER: Lon Fuller. Yes. He knew that if you really knew economics, you'd be a better decision maker.

BECKY QUICK: And that gets you.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Quite a bit.

BECKY QUICK: Yeah.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. That opens the gate to a lot of interesting territory. The trouble with that territory is that territory is hard. Most of the leading economists are very talented people. It's hard to just get coherent on the subject, much less persuasive. And so it's a very difficult subject. And on the other hand, there are little sub markets where it's easy to figure out how to do well. And a lot of people figure out how to worm their way into those and stay there.

Source: https://youtu.be/H5Oom5Rjp_Y?si=ZEkkZkAN6WyOWcl9

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