The crown jewels

The Daily Journal Meetings

For years, the real Munger event wasn’t Berkshire’s — it was the Daily Journal’s. Chairing a small Los Angeles publisher, he would sit alone and take questions for two and a half hours, unscripted and unsparing, into his late nineties. This is the closest thing to a Munger master class on the record.

9 recordings

2023 Daily Journal Daily Journal Annual Meeting 2023 Munger's last Daily Journal meeting as host — almost two and a half hours, at 99, on BYD and Tesla, calling Alibaba 'one of the worst mistakes I ever made,' the retailer he most admires (Costco), banking, China, and another broadside at bitcoin. 2022 Daily Journal Daily Journal Annual Meeting 2022 Munger's last meeting as Daily Journal chairman, virtual again via Yahoo Finance, hosted by Becky Quick. At 98 he talks succession (he and Gerry Salzman both needed replacing, and he says so plainly), warns that the Fed's easy money was storing up inflation trouble, and — asked why so many people are unhappy in a rich society — gives a characteristically dry answer about envy and unrealistic expectations. 2021 Daily Journal Daily Journal Annual Meeting 2021 The first virtual Daily Journal meeting, streamed by Yahoo Finance during the meme-stock mania. Munger at 97 is unsparing: Robinhood is running a gambling parlor dressed up as investing, SPACs are a sign of an overheated market, and bitcoin is 'disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.' A blunt diagnosis of a bubble, delivered while it was inflating. 2020 Daily Journal Daily Journal Annual Meeting 2020 Munger at 96, weeks before COVID upended the markets. Roughly two hours of Q&A in which he tosses crypto onto his 'too hard pile,' makes the case that admitting you're wrong is a competitive advantage, and explains why being right less often costs less than being stubborn — the Munger fortune, he says, partly came from liquidating things he'd bought for bad reasons. 2019 Daily Journal Daily Journal Annual Meeting 2019 Munger at 95, the year CNBC streamed the full two-hour Q&A. A wide-ranging session: why he was comfortable owning Chinese equities when most American investors weren't, how he reads banks and what makes one safe to own, and the recurring sermon that the big money is made in the waiting, not the trading. 2018 Daily Journal Daily Journal Annual Meeting 2018 Munger at 94, about two hours of solo Q&A. He opens with the Daily Journal's two businesses — shrinking legal publishing and growing (but slow-selling) court software — then ranges across his mental-models approach, the just-announced Berkshire–JPMorgan–Amazon health venture, and why he stays patient when there's nothing to do. 2017 Daily Journal Daily Journal Annual Meeting 2017 The first Daily Journal meeting CNBC filmed — Munger at 93, running roughly two hours of solo Q&A. He walks through the company's pivot from declining legal publishing into court software, uses Valeant as a case study in how bad incentives wreck a business, and lays out his theory of executive compensation: if you already own a big stake, don't try to grab all the money too. 2017 Daily Journal Fireside Chat After the 2017 Daily Journal Meeting After the formal 2017 meeting ended, Munger stayed and took questions for nearly two more hours in a loose, informal setting. With no corporate agenda left to cover, the talk drifts toward how he reads, how he decides, and how to stay out of trouble — a rare unhurried look at Munger off-script. 2016 Daily Journal Daily Journal Annual Meeting 2016 The last Daily Journal meeting before CNBC began filming — so it survives as audio and transcript, not video. Munger at 92 runs nearly two hours, covering the Daily Journal's bet on court software (he singles out the Los Angeles courts contract as a milestone), why IBM's predicament mirrors the company's own, and a favorite story about an oil-royalty bid that paid out for fifty years.