- Charlie Munger’s Final Advice For Investors Is About Embracing Value In Unlikely Places: ‘If Something Is Really Cheap, Even Though It’s A Crappy Company, I’m Willing To Consider Buying It’ Yahoo Finance
- Billionaire Charlie Munger wanted his kids to hold onto 3 parenting lessons ‘until their 100th birthdays’ CNBC
- Remembering Charlie Munger | Market Masters With Mohnish Pabrai | N18L | CNBC TV18 CNBC-TV18
- Opinion | The Timeless Investing Wisdom of Charlie Munger, Buffett’s No. 2 The New York Times
- Munger, Kissinger and the American Century Kathimerini English Edition
Tag Archives: Mungers
Rich Dad Poor Dad Author Addresses Charlie Munger’s Anti-Bitcoin Stance, Says Investing Legend Living in … – The Daily Hodl
- Rich Dad Poor Dad Author Addresses Charlie Munger’s Anti-Bitcoin Stance, Says Investing Legend Living in … The Daily Hodl
- Cathie Wood Chimes In On The Tesla Vs. BYD Debate: ‘Charlie Munger And Many On Wall Street Do Not Underst Benzinga
- ‘Rich Dad’ R. Kiyosaki responds to billionaire Charlie Munger’s call for Bitcoin ban Finbold – Finance in Bold
- Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger Calls Cryptocurrency ‘Worthless,’ ‘Antisocial’ – Berkshire Hathaway I Benzinga
- Charlie Munger on AI, Alibaba, Bitcoin and Investing GuruFocus.com
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Here’s what it’s like to live in one of Charlie Munger’s windowless dorms
The answer is at the University of Michigan, where the Munger Graduate Residence Hall houses more than 600 graduate students in 6 to 7 bedroom apartments. And most of those single-occupancy rooms don’t have windows, either.
Public policy graduate student Luiza Macedo didn’t see the sun for a full week when she had to isolate in her room at Munger Residence due to a Covid-19 scare.
“That was probably the low point of my experience here. It was being stuck in my room,” Macedo said. “A lot of people are incredulous that this was even a thing before all these articles came out about UCSB…like, how is this legal? How are they doing this to us?”
Many students use sun lamps or night lights to create an artificial sense of daytime — students told CNN Business said it’s almost impossible to get by without one.
Munger, 97, is Warren Buffett’s right-hand man and an amateur architect. He has no formal education in the field.
He’s a graduate of the University of Michigan and donated the majority of his $110 million gift to fund his vision of the $185 million dorm. In 2013, it was the largest single donation the school had ever received. Michigan promoted the building as a “community of scholars,” where graduate students of different disciplines constantly interact with each other in common areas, where there are windows.
His controversial plans for Munger Hall at UCSB — an 11-story building that would provide almost 4,500 windowless beds for undergraduates — led a consulting architect to quit in October. Munger donated $200 million to UCSB to fund the dorms, with the stipulation that his designs are followed.
“When an ignorant man leaves, I regard it as a plus not a minus,” Munger said about the consulting architect in an interview with CNN Business Friday. “He’s just plain wrong.”
Munger says his designs create positive experiences for students.
“I was (at the University of Michigan) last month, you never saw a happier bunch of students and it has a very similar design,” Munger said. “So all I can say is that I have been doing this for a long time and no building has failed yet.”
Unlike Michigan, the rooms at UCSB would have artificial windows meant to imitate fake portholes on Disney Cruises.
“It was a mistake on my part, not to put these artificial windows into Michigan,” Munger said in an interview with CNN Business Monday.
Macedo doesn’t spend much time in her room, which costs around $1,000 a month. Instead, she studies facing windows on the top floor — but that’s not because she wants to collaborate with anyone.
“Mental health far outweighs the desire for people to collaborate or whatever that goal is,” Macedo said. “I would much rather not have depression than collaborate with my peers.”
Some students have gotten used to living without a window in their room.
“I wasn’t sure how living in a bedroom with no window was was going to work out but for me, at least, it’s really no big deal,” graduate student Sabrina Ivanenco said. “I think that once you exit your bedroom, you have a very beautiful living space.”
In fact the building has a rating of 8.8 out of 10 on veryapt.com. Reviewers praise the building’s amenities, including study rooms and a fitness center. And each room has a queen-sized bed and its own bathroom, with common space that features a large kitchen, living room, dining area and natural light. But plenty of commenters also bemoan about the lack of windows.
Lindsay Stefanski, the assistant director of graduate academic initiatives, said Munger has multiple community-building events in place, such as yoga on the roof, to encourage well being. The hall had partnered with the university’s counseling and psychological department to provide SAD lamps, which stimulate sunlight.
“The feedback has just been phenomenal,” Stefanski said. “Students appreciate those opportunities to get out of their silos and connect with each other in those larger common spaces.”
UCSB said in a statement Friday that the project and design of the building will go forward as planned.
Munger has also designed a dorm at Stanford University and a library with removable walls at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. But he has no plans to bring his dorm designs to other universities.
“No, I won’t do it. I’m ready to die very shortly,” He said. “But I do expect this dorm will be copied four more times on the USCB campus and many more times than that on the other campuses on the UC system and I expect this to spread all over the country. It’s a better mouse trap.”
Louise Batta, a PhD student, disagrees. She wasn’t aware her room wouldn’t have windows — she said there were no pictures on the website, and due to Covid she couldn’t tour in person. Batta said she immediately began getting headaches because of ventilation issues.
“It’s completely thrown off my circadian rhythm. It’s hard to get up in the morning to go out of bed because I never know what time it is,” Batta said. “I know that people joke all the time about how bad the living situation is, but it has truly had a negative impact on my grad school experience.”
Batta is attempting to break her lease.
“I haven’t heard any birds since I came up here because I don’t have a window. I can’t wake up to birds,” Batta said.
There’s a lesson from Charlie Munger’s increased bet on Alibaba
You wouldn’t expect a 97-year-old to necessarily have a lot of patience, but legendary investor Charlie Munger is doing just that with one of his holdings.
Munger’s Daily Journal
DJCO,
+2.17%
nearly doubled its stake in Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group Holding
BABA,
+8.26%
in the third quarter, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing released this week showed. (Holdings in Bank of America
BAC,
-0.27%,
Posco
PKX,
+1.37%,
US Bancorp
USB,
+0.70%
and Wells Fargo
WFC,
-0.23%
were unchanged.)
Munger, also the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
BRK.B,
+0.97%,
now has about 18% of Daily Journal’s portfolio in Alibaba, at a basis of between $180 and $200 per share, says Tom Hayes, chairman and managing member of Great Hill Capital, who has also invested in Alibaba. Alibaba closed Thursday at $156.
Hayes says there are key lessons to be learned from Munger’s investment. “For starters, successful people do what unsuccessful people won’t. He’s willing to take some short-term pain for long-term gain. Not on the basis of wishing or hoping, but on the basis of facts and data,” says Hayes.
Granted, yes, Alibaba has been fined for monopolistic practices, and China has aggressively sought to tame its big businesses. There also are efforts afoot by the Securities and Exchange Commission to delist Chinese companies, though Hayes points out that Alibaba’s auditor is PwC, and he doesn’t believe Chinese listings with big four auditors will be removed.
Alibaba has been growing its top line, and cash flow is forecast to more than double in the next few years. You can now pay less for Alibaba than it was when the company was less than a third of its current size, says Hayes. And it will be tough to find one billion users elsewhere. “And that’s why Buffett and Munger are the best investors around,” Hayes said.
The chart
The spread between the yield on the 10-year Treasury note and the 3-month bill has the highest correlation to gross domestic product growth one year out, of any yield curve indicator. And, at the current spread, the economy will expand at 2.3% next year, a far cry from the 3.8% the Federal Reserve is projecting. “While the yield curve may not be able to give an exact estimate of future economic activity, it sure can give an indication about the general direction of growth. And right now, what the curve is saying is that growth will be way below where the consensus and the Fed expect it to be, thus leaving enough room for disappointment,” said David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Rosenberg Research.
The buzz
The big event of the day is the Canadian jobs report. Nah, just kidding, it’s the U.S. nonfarm payrolls report, which is expected to show a 500,000 increase in jobs and the unemployment rate ticking down to 5.1%. Federal Reserve officials have set a low bar for this report to clear in order to initiate the bond taper program, with Chair Jerome Powell saying it only has to be “reasonably good.”
Strategists at Bank of America point out that 10 of the last 12 payrolls report have sparked risk-on behavior in markets.
U.S. stock futures
ES00,
+0.12%
NQ00,
+0.09%
were a touch higher ahead of the report, while the yield on the 10-year Treasury
TMUBMUSD10Y,
1.585%
edged up to 1.58%.
The Senate voted Thursday night to lift the debt ceiling by $480 billion, moving the legislation to the House, which is expected to do likewise.
Electric-car maker Tesla
TSLA,
+1.39%
announced it was moving its headquarters to Texas from California.
Oshkosh
OSK,
+1.16%
warned that supply-chain and logistics disruptions were hurting its ability to make and ship units, as it lowered guidance for its fiscal fourth quarter.
The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia for their fight for freedom of expression.
Random reads
Walmart’s
WMT,
+1.18%
Sam’s Club is offering bigger turkeys this year. Here’s why.
A six-year-old is Georgia’s youngest certified farmer.
A remote stun gun-style device is being used — to quiet dancing grannies in China.
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