Kingswell || A little uncommon sense from Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and other legendary thinkers

USA
Joined April 2012
Kevin Carpenter retweeted
From this weeks Berkshire Beat, a must read/subscribe to from @kejca $BRKA $BRKB
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“Berkshire does not nitpick the trading houses’ activity,” he said. “While Berkshire currently owns about 10% of the trading houses, the company indicated it would not make a fuss even if those stakes were raised to 15%. As a shareholder, that makes Berkshire extremely valuable to us.” bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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If you want to become wealthy, learn how to buy and hold great businesses, then learn how to ignore almost everything else. Tune out the trading, the options, the popularity contests, the daily predictions, the endless opinions and the constant temptation to do something including dancing in and out of stocks every time the wind blows. The market has turned investing into entertainment, but entertainment is rarely where serious wealth is built. If you want extraordinary results, you have to become comfortable doing what almost nobody else can do: NOTHING! Find a few exceptional businesses, buy them intelligently, and get really, really good at sitting on your ass for a very long period of time while they compound. The hardest part of compounding isn’t the math, it’s leaving it alone. 🌹
Kevin Carpenter
@kejcaSep 13
Berkshire Hathaway director Chris Davis helped his widowed mother set up a coffee can portfolio — and she ended up outperforming him. "Her portfolio has probably outperformed our fund by 500 basis points a year for almost twenty years. How is that possible? She doesn't own a single company that we [didn't] own. She never put more into a company than we put in. It's that she never sold a share." "Any honest investor will tell you their biggest mistakes were what they sold." (@excessreturnpod || 2026)
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
The Kingswell substack does a terrific job covering all things related to Warren Buffett & Berkshire Hathaway. I'm a very happy paid subscriber & get great value for $75 a year. I highly recommend it. Here's today's post: Warren Buffett: The Money Master open.substack.com/pub/kingsw…
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
Buffett's pivot was more due to scale than anything else, imo. Him and Charlie still 'dumpster dove' in their PAs. @TimIsgro wrote about one of Munger's here: theownersmemo.com/p/tenneco-… @GZuckerman wrote about Munger's coal investments at the end of his life. wsj.com/finance/investing/ch…
Kevin Carpenter
@kejcaAug 20
Charlie Munger on Buffett's evolution as an investor from cigar butts to better businesses. "When he started looking for investment values in great businesses that were temporarily under pressure, it changed everything for the better. Now, we could scale up to the big time."
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
Remember this piece written by Warren Buffett Companies get the shareholders they deserve
Kevin Carpenter
@kejcaAug 9
Warren Buffett: "It's harder to buy back Berkshire shares than, say, [when] Bank of America is buying back their [own] shares." "Apple has been buying back a ton of stock. They were buying [in] stock at the same time we were buying stock, but it was easier for us to buy Apple stock — even though Apple itself was buying a lot of stock — than it is to buy [back] Berkshire." "Berkshire is held by people who really plan to keep it. I think the amount of speculation in Berkshire stock is relatively low compared to most stocks." (CNBC || 2020)
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
This is my favorite quote from Buffett’s recent interview with Becky from @kejca Kingswell
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
I haven't seen this $BRK tidbit picked up on, but buried inside Buffett's annual giving 13D disclosure is something very interesting... sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/… Using WEB's 13.2% economic ownership, it looks to me like the total $BRK share count (using equivalent B-shares outstanding) dropped almost 1% since last Q. That is a notable pick-up in share repurchases & is at a level not seen since 2021. The pandemic was a period when Buffett was buying back shares at an annual pace of 3-5% which was the most aggressive buying in BRK history. It appears the new regime under Abel is going to be perhaps more aggressive with excess capital returning back to shareholders. We'll see - but I'm hopeful and this is a welcome development.
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
History and psychology are more useful than finance, economics, accounting and maths in the investing field.
Kevin Carpenter
@kejcaJul 8
Charlie Munger: "When I saw that psychology was necessary and I didn't have it, I didn't just learn the little tendencies well enough to get A's in psychology — I learned those tendencies well enough to synthesize them with the rest of [my] knowledge." "What prevents the wide use of helpful psychological insight is the fact that psychology [only] gets really useful when you integrate it with all other knowledge. They don't teach that in the psychology department." (Daily Journal AGM || 2021)
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
I wish Schroeder continued giving interviews and talks, she is such a wealth of knowledge. Her Reddit AMA is a great read: reddit.com/r/investing/comme…
Kevin Carpenter
@kejcaJul 7
Alice Schroeder explains Warren Buffett's dice game. "I started looking at these dice and it was apparent to me that no matter how long I looked at them, I would never be able to figure out what the pattern of numbers meant." "So I started thinking about it from the framework that I come from. Being an insurance analyst is basically like being a bookie. That's what Warren and I had in common. Insurance is a business of handicapping odds." "That was the beginning of realizing that writing a book with Warren Buffett cooperating with me was going to be like an extended series of these games where there would be testing going on and I would have to negotiate with him over various things."
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
Kevin’s publication, Kingswell, is such a great publication for timeless lessons from Buffett and Munger and keeping up on Berkshire. Highly recommended follow and subscription.
Kevin Carpenter
@kejcaJun 21
Warren Buffett: "Anything I did, [my father] supported — as long as I was behaving okay. And even when I didn't behave okay, he never gave up [on me]." "I never saw him do anything in his life that he didn't believe in."
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
Just came across this Buffett quote. “Never, ever have clients. You may call them that, but in your mind, they must be partners. Set it up so if they win, you win — in that order. If you do that, you’ll be successful forever.” This is in fact, the way. H/t - @kejca 🫡
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
David Senra
@FoundersPodcastJun 6
Who knew you could do book reports for a living
Kevin Carpenter
@kejcaApr 23
Mohnish Pabrai on @FoundersPodcast. "[David Senra] is a far better reader than I am." "I'm getting insights about a book from the podcast that I never got when I read the book [myself]."
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
Munger suffered many such “terrible blows” himself: a financially devastating divorce that also lost him custody of his children; his son Teddy’s death from Leukemia at age 9 in 1955, and botched surgery that blinded one of Munger’s eyes. But he despised self-pity.
Kevin Carpenter
@kejcaMay 26
Charlie Munger, the Stoic: "Life will have terrible blows in it. Horrible blows. Unfair blows. It doesn't matter. And some people recover and others don't." "There, I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well. Every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something. Your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion."
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
While most investors bet on exciting novel technologies and emerging trends, Buffett has cultivated one of the best investment track records by doing precisely the opposite. He’s “scared” of high industry rate of change, and notoriously sticks to his circle of competence.
Kevin Carpenter
@kejcaMay 20
Warren Buffett: "There are all kinds of things we don't know. So why go around trying to bet on things we don't know when we can bet on the simple things?" "We don't think [change] is an opportunity at all. It scares the hell out of us because we don't know how things are going to change."
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My thoughts on $BRK People overcomplicate $BRK because they try to value every piece perfectly down to the decimal. They debate price to book, intrinsic value formulas, and build giant spreadsheets modeling every subsidiary. Meanwhile I look at it much more simply. $BRK has roughly $400b in cash and around $300b in stocks. That’s about $700b right there between cash and equities alone. So when the company is worth around $1t, you’re basically paying roughly $300b for everything else. That includes the railroad, the energy business, insurance operations, manufacturing, distribution, service businesses, and one of the greatest collections of operating assets ever assembled. And honestly I think people massively underestimate the value of the insurance float. The float is one of the greatest financial assets ever created because $BRK gets access to enormous amounts of capital at extremely attractive economics. Most people do not fully understand how powerful that becomes over decades. That float has quietly fueled one of the greatest compounding machines in financial history. But the part that fascinates me most is the discipline. Almost every CEO on earth would have cracked by now sitting on $400b of cash. Most management teams would feel pressure to force acquisitions just to appear active. $BRK has basically said if we cannot find something intelligent to buy at scale, we are willing to wait. People look at the cash and think it’s dead money, but optionality matters. $BRK effectively owns a giant call option on future chaos. When markets panic and liquidity disappears, $BRK becomes one of the only entities on earth capable of writing enormous checks instantly without relying on financing markets. That is a huge strategic advantage. The other thing people miss is how rare true permanence is in capitalism. Most corporations optimize for optics. CEOs rotate, incentives change, cultures decay, and strategies constantly shift depending on sentiment. $BRK was built differently. It was designed almost like an anti Wall Street structure where long term thinking itself became the competitive advantage. In many ways that culture may end up being Buffett’s greatest creation, even bigger than the stock portfolio itself. A lot of companies talk about long term thinking. $BRK actually structured the organization around it. I also think people misunderstand what $BRK really is. They think it’s just “an insurance company that owns stocks.” But $BRK is basically a giant ecosystem of real world economic activity. Railroads, energy infrastructure, manufacturing, freight movement, insurance, distribution, consumer spending, and financial assets all under one umbrella. In many ways it’s almost like owning a miniature version of the American economy. But unlike an index fund, the capital allocation is centralized under highly disciplined operators. You get diversification without complete chaos along with durability, liquidity, tax efficiency, reinvestment flexibility, and world class balance sheet. And honestly the most underrated asset may simply be trust. If $BRK calls during a crisis, people pick up the phone. If $BRK wants to buy a family owned business, sellers trust the company will preserve the culture and operate responsibly. I also think people are underestimating Greg Abel. Nobody is Warren Buffett and nobody ever will be, but that doesn’t mean $BRK suddenly stops being $BRK. Greg already understands the culture, operational discipline, and capital allocation philosophy better than almost anyone alive. That’s why $BRK almost a forever asset or a savings account on steroids. No, it’s not going to triple overnight and no, it’s not some hyper growth AI stock. But when I look at over $700b between cash and equities, elite operating businesses, insurance float, fortress balance sheet strength, world class reputation, and disciplined reinvestment talent, I have a hard time viewing it as expensive. 🌹
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
Full episode with Chris here bit.ly/4tl8S3X
Kevin Carpenter
@kejcaMay 4
Berkshire Hathaway director Chris Davis: "If I could write the headline for Berkshire five years from now, it would say that Berkshire was a great investment company that became a great operating company."
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
Nice to bump into Ted Weschler, Debbie Bosanek (Warren’s asst) and Marc Hamburg (Berkshire’s multi-decade CFO). Woodstock for Capitalists!
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Kevin Carpenter retweeted
David Senra
@FoundersPodcastApr 24
This is incredible praise: "I'm getting insights about a book from the podcast that I never got when I read the book myself."
Kevin Carpenter
@kejcaApr 23
Mohnish Pabrai on @FoundersPodcast. "[David Senra] is a far better reader than I am." "I'm getting insights about a book from the podcast that I never got when I read the book [myself]."
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