When Charlie Munger passed away in late November, he had many fans and over the years because Berkshire Hathaway was extremely successful, everyone wanted to know what they did so well.

One person who knew both was Tony Keller and he wrote an opinion about Charlie.

To be a successful investment manager you need to know accounting – how to read an income statement and balance sheet. But above all, you need to understand people.

You have to accurately with the genius and the folly, the potential and limits, of humans and their works. You have to see them – and their companies they are running, the schemes they are pitching, the dreams they are dreaming in a true light. You have to see through the marketing moonshine and sincerely held beliefs.

And most important person you must understand is you.

Knowing your limits, including the constrained circle of your own competence was the foundational investment practice underlying 6 decades of success at Berkshire Hathaway.

Both Charlie and Warren read a lot, they are gluttons for learning.

The second was the recognition that even though they were very smart, it was limited. The list of sectors that they declined to invest in was very long. Until recently they did not invest in online businesses. Not because the business was not good, it was because Charlie and Warren were willing to admit to their own uncertainty about how to value these companies long term prospects. They did not follow the crowd, they were on the sidelines for years.

Declining to invest is what Berkshire mostly did. On most days (or weeks or months), Berkshire did not buy or sell anything. It watched and waited and waited for a rare winning hand.

Both gentleman says the real success in investing comes to only a handful of decisions over the course of decades. Great opportunities – the right job, the right spouse, the right investment- arrive only rarely. To seize one of those infrequent great opportunities, you need to self discipline to avoid gorging on the all you eat smorgasbord of poor opportunities.

Berkshire decentralized the running of the companies it owns. Berkshire put in trusted executives with almost total autonomy and aimed the people stayed there for life.

On the investment side, Berkshire did the opposite, decisions about its investment portfolio were radically centralized in the Buffett-Munger duo. Recently a couple of younger portfolio managers were added, but when you have a friendship and two pilots working together for so long, it will take a while to adjust.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, one thing you can learn from Charlie and Warren is not to day trade. Pick your investments over time, and as they do well, you do not have to do anything every day the market is open. Let the market help your success. Read, discuss with someone, and think about something before jumping in. The dividends help you keep from trading, just looking for alternatives, if needed.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.