Latest / The Dutch Investors / #27 | Buffett and Munger Unscripted | Interview w/ author Alex Morris on investing and timeless lessons

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#27 | Buffett and Munger Unscripted | Interview w/ author Alex Morris on investing and timeless lessons · The Dutch Investors

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to a brand new episode by the Dutch Investors.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host Seem, and today we are talking about the world of investing, wisdom, and two legendary minds, Buffett and Munger.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: And to help us do that, I've got a very special guest with me today, Alex Morris.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: He's the founder of TSOH Investment Research on Substack and the author of the recently launched Buffett and Munger unscripted book.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: In this episode, we'll explore Alex's journey from equity analyst to independent thinker and author, what it's like managing your family's net worth, and of course, we'll take a closer look at what inspired him to write this book.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: I think you will really enjoy our talk.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: So let's not waste any more time and jump straight into the episode.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, Alex, it's uh very nice to meet you.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh say it once uh I'll say it once again.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming on the show.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh I appreciate it a lot.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you for having me.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, as you probably anticipated, I would love to talk about your uh book and hear all the ins and outs.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: Um but before we do, I'd love to get to know you a bit better.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: Um if I've done my background check correctly, you spent a decade as a buy site equities analyst before launching your substack, The Science of Hitting.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Is the name a reference to baseball by any chance?
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Swing if you see a fat pitch.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: There you go, you got it.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, it's pretty creative and it works well.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: I I I get it.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: I I don't want to ask the same questions everyone is asking you already, so I'll try and get creative today.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: But just to start off, um, could you just tell us a little bit about how you got yourself into the world of investing?
1:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, I really well, well, first of all, I'm in my mid-30s now, so when you ask about things that happened when I was uh, you know, 20 or about that age, my memory is not as good as it used to be.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: So I'm doing the best I can.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: I see.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: Um as I rem as I remember it, I was in college and I wasn't totally sure what I wanted to do.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I think when I was younger, and even during college, I started a business with a couple friends.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: I think I had certain interests in business call it.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't, it was kind of more entrepreneurial than anything else.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't really related to, you know, investing or value investing.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, but around that time I stumbled across the Berkshire letters and became, I guess for lack of a better term, like obsessed with everything about kind of Berkshire and investing and thinking about this, you know, connection between business and investing, basically.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: Um so that year was I I believe that was 2007.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: Um and and 12 or 18 months later, a buddy and I, who also he also became kind of obsessed with this stuff.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: We we drove to Omaha from from Florida for the Berkshire meeting.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: Um that was the first time I went, and I think I've I've been back like seven or eight times since then.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: Um it's it's always a really good time, and you know, it's a it's a place to kind of to to relearn a bunch of things that you already know, right?
3:22
SPEAKER_01: But you you they they mean a lot as you kind of um as you grasp them again as things kind of fade away sometimes.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: Um and the the book that really inspired me as a young investor was The Essays of Warren Buffett, the book by Larry Cunningham, which is basically a collection of all the old shareholder letters uh organized by topic.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure we'll get into it, but you know, that that period of my life, call it, you know, 15 years ago now, was you know, obviously informative in terms of leading eventually to Buffett and Monker unscripted.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can I can imagine that the just being at the Berkshire meeting is so much more, yeah, it brings so much more of a feeling to it, right?
4:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can get the information anywhere else, but uh it just adds an extra layer, I uh I can imagine.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and at that time, at that time there was no recording, by the way, either.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: They started that in 2015 or so, I want to say.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: Um so, so back in those days, you I remember Whitney Tilson was someone who did this, a few other people did as well.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: They kind of put out their notes from the meeting, they'd scribble down whatever they could during the Q ⁇ A, but you always, you know, you always got something that wasn't complete, and you kind of wanted to hear Warren and Charlie in their own words, and you could only do that if you went to the meetings.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, it was certainly a different time than than the Berkshire meetings of today.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: We talk about it all all the time.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Since we live in the Netherlands, it's it's it's a real hassle to get there.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: You pay uh thousands of dollars or euros just to get there.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's maybe a sales sales pitch for the book right there.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: For anybody in the Netherlands who's gonna pay thousands of euros to fly, uh, you can get 30 years of meetings for uh a lot less than thousands of euros.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's a nice plug, but uh well, yeah, we'll get to the book uh a little later as well.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: What is it about investing you like so much?
5:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean I go going back to what I was saying in terms of my interest in kind of in in business and you know, obviously the idea of kind of financial freedom and those things, but I I kind of see it as connected to everything, basically.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean, at least in terms of a capitalist society.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, everywhere you go and everything you see, generally speaking, has some component of this idea of you know trying to please customers or meet demand of customers and fending off competitive threats and and then thinking about you know opportunities that may or may not exist in given businesses and how long they might last for, and just all those things.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: I I just think you kind of see it everywhere, and it's just really interesting to kind of think about, like how that actually works and how it changes over time.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: And so my that's really where my fascination and interest with it lies, as opposed to you know, some of the stuff that I kind of view as the more um beginner's mindset of this game, which is oh, okay, this thing's at$22 and I think it's worth$26.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: So it's about like that part of it all, it's obviously relevant.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: Um that's not the part of it that I that I really get excited by.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: I get excited by thinking about how businesses evolve and how the influence of people and incentives plays into that, and that that's part of the part of it that to me is so interesting.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I absolutely agree.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh um some people call it passion.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh my girlfriend would say I'm obsessed, but just the way that uh everything is like interconnected, right?
6:49
SPEAKER_00: Like a web.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: And whenever people say that they don't care, it's like saying you don't care about how the world really works, right?
6:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, the reason businesses do what they do, uh, the what why people do what they do.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's just yeah, it fascinates me.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: So I I completely understand you.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I was at a conversation with someone today about this, or who I went to lunch with, and it was we were just kind of riffing on.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: It's really funny to think about too, and this is obviously common across various industries over time.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: At any point in time, you look and see large companies that have really strong competitive positions for one reason or another, they have really strong financial positions, and kind of inevitably throughout history, over years or decades, those things tend to kind of go away.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's just the interesting interplay between the actual inherent strengths of a business in terms of its position and its financials, but then also the other impact of bureaucracy and people and incentives, and how it's really, really difficult, especially with size, for that second kind of variable to keep pointing in the right direction.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: And that's how you have upstarts that come out of nowhere and kind of kill these companies for lack of it's just a fascinating part of life and in business.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, absolutely.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: Is it true that you manage your family's entire investable net worth?
8:12
SPEAKER_00: How does that work?
8:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my family, like my my wife and I, um, other other people in my family are they they manage their own investments, but yes, everything that I'm in charge of for our our family, yeah, that I run that in the strategy, the portfolio that people see at TSOH Investment Research, that's everything I have.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: I see.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: There's no side there's no side money or anything like that.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: I see, okay.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: So when you invest for people, you you naturally feel like a certain level of responsibility, but I can imagine that this sense of responsibility takes on an extra layer when it comes to family.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Do you feel that it makes you more cautious or has it made you more risk averse, maybe?
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Or do you not notice any difference as an equity analyst?
8:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean the experience I've had in terms of the, especially in terms of the RAA world and managing other people's money.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there you have to, you know, you always have to account for the ability and willingness of the person that you're talking about, their ability and willingness to bear risk.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I'm also younger and you know, kind of the person at the controls.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's not too surprising that more often than not, I feel like my ability and particularly willingness to bear risk is is different than someone who might be, you know, call it 70 years old, which obviously makes sense, right?
9:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, you have to account for that.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's part of it's a really important part of managing money for people who do, or especially in the RAA business.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: Like you have to you you particularly someone from my perspective, you you come into it thinking about security selection and maybe portfolio construction within an equity sleeve, right?
9:53
SPEAKER_01: But but there's so much more to that conversation in terms of structuring things in a way that's gonna work for that client over time.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's a big reason why I think um investment advisors, generally speaking, the good ones at least, which not all of them are good, but the good ones really do add value for clients, even if it's not directly in the way that you know a lot of individual investors think about that question in terms of alpha relative to an index or something.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever like uh bounce back ideas on uh uh back and forth with your wife?
10:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh because years ago I read this book in uh in the Netherlands.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: It's called Blondes Invest Better.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: It's it's about women that actually beat men most of the time, uh, because of obvious reasons, right?
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Psychology, uh less adrenaline driven, or um, I assume she's not really into investing, perhaps, uh, since you run it.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever go back and forth with her just to get her ideas or uh thoughts?
10:50
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: No, I asked her about uh I asked her about a number of ideas.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: I've asked her about Ulta here recently.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: I asked her about, I know Nike did a deal with someone called Skims, I asked her about that because it's certainly outside of what I know about.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: I've asked her about Lululemon and a couple of competitors in that space.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: Um I've asked her for a lot of things.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: She has very strong opinions too, so it's it's I can get answers to my questions.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's sometimes it's a bit anecdotal, but um, yeah, I I tend to do the same sometimes just to get uh just like you said, get a feeling or she doesn't spend too much time talking about PE's or relative valuations, which I personally prefer.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't?
11:30
SPEAKER_00: How boring.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's yes, exactly.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: She doesn't tell you about the relative PE or the peg ratio, which conversations I generally speaking can do without, so it's good.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all right.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: Well I would love to talk more about your book.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's what you're here for, I guess.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh Buffett Amonger Unscripted.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: First of all, uh great name.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: I have the book with me, uh, standing right behind me.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: And I'll be completely honest, when I first saw your pre-order message, I was a bit skeptical.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: I was like, how is he going to make a good readable book from what is it, uh, decades of Berkshire Hathaway meetings?
12:12
SPEAKER_00: But I have to give it to you.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: It's exceptional.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh so for those listening that haven't heard or read it yet, uh, I would highly recommend the book.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: I believe it's available in many places.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: I got mine on Amazon.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: It's basically all the wisdom from Munger and Buffett you'll ever need.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: So uh hats off, Alex.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: I I kind of really looked at the as I thought about what I wanted the output to be as I was working through it, I had two ideas in my head of being addressable and for someone who's newer to kind of the material in terms of a business or investing background, someone from that, you know, period of their evolution, um, being able to pick it up and still find a lot of conversations that spoke to them and could be useful and valuable.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, some of it would be a little bit out of reach for them, but maybe they could get there over time.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: But the other test at the other end of the spectrum, I thought of, you know, the kind of the diehards, the people who have, in a lot of cases, probably listened to many, if not all, of the meetings who who could have looked at a book like this and said, like, basically, why do I need this?
13:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, my goal was for those people, once they've had a chance to flip through it and read it, hopefully more often than not, they walk away going, This is actually a really valuable resource to have, despite having gone to those meetings before.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of been the consistent feedback so far.
13:32
SPEAKER_01: So that, you know, that obviously means a lot to me given that I kind of view myself as as being in that group too.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: So I'm glad I'm glad I could, you know, kind of add value for people in that bucket.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: And also, you know, it means a lot to me too.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: It's to I've looked at I've read a lot about Warren's life, obviously, and there's certain things he's done outside of investing where he's a I think he's an inspiration and idol to me, and philanthropy is one notable example.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I I think kind of like Warren in his younger years, he was a lot more successful at this than I am, but you can become really focused on your own journey and your own capital accumulation phase, and you can kind of push those things to the side.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: And uh this gave me an opportunity to give back giving back half of the net proceeds from the book to Glide, which is a charity that Warren has supported over time.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: So it felt good to be able to do something like that too, which honestly I, you know, up to this point in my life really probably haven't done enough of.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: So it's it it's it's been it's been a win-win-win all around.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm excited that's worked out.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, successful is all relative, right?
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I mean, you're successful in different ways too.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: I believe you mentioned that your book was inspired by Larry Cunningham's The Essays of Warren Buffett.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: What ultimately drove you to write it?
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Did you feel there was something missing in existing literature or you wanted to address, or perhaps anything else?
14:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean it really starts with, as I said before, like the meetings simply were not accessible for a really long time unless you were in the room.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, then they started, as I remember it, they started webcasting them at one point, I believe it was in the mid-2010s, I could have this incorrect.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: But then in 2018, I know this for sure, they they released all the meetings going back to 94, which is great to now have that.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: But obviously, for a lot of people to, you know, go through what ended up being 31 years of meetings and they're, you know, call it five hours a piece.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: Like that's 150 hours of time to dedicate to listening to Warren Charlie talk about business and investing, which um I'm sure some people have done.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: Some of them are probably listening to this podcast, but most people were not going to commit to doing that.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: And I just I just knew from having read transcripts and other things and having listened to some of those meetings that there was a ton of value in there.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: And some of the some of the value in my mind that was present in some of the earlier meetings was going away or has gone away completely in the later meetings as kind of the the nature of the questions has shifted a little bit and it's become more of a it's become less of a shareholder-specific meeting and more of a lot of questions about investing more generally or life and politics, etc., which is fine.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: But I thought there were a lot of gems and things in the earlier meetings that would be really interesting to a certain type of audience.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I I I looked at, you know, the Cunningham book that had been so important to me as a young investor and and and still was at the time, um, and thought maybe I could I could contribute kind of a a version of that for the meeting.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: So uh I got started working on it, probably without considering how much work it was actually gonna be.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: Um eventually submitted a draft to the publisher, which is where I thought my work was done, and I was also incorrect there.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of work, a lot of work left after that point.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, it eventually eventually made it over the finish line.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: So I'm glad I did it.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: Just out of curiosity, uh, what was the white writing process like for you?
17:04
SPEAKER_00: Was it harder or more time consuming than you initially expected?
17:08
SPEAKER_00: And was there any part of the process that you really didn't like or didn't enjoy?
17:13
SPEAKER_01: It was pretty time consuming.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, one of the one of the big things is the way that in particular Warren talks, it required a decent amount of editing at times because he he can cover so much ground in a given answer and can start going down a road and then maybe turn in a different direction.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: Whereas I then as I then took the kind of source material and tried to put it into topics, it wasn't always incredibly clear like where something should fit, or does it need to be chopped up in some way to go into multiple sections?
17:48
SPEAKER_01: Like, so I ran into that a lot, and then obviously over time as I started listening to more and more meetings, there were a lot of questions where sometimes it's like, okay, that's almost verbatim, what was said previously.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: It's obviously it's easy for me to just chop and not include that answer.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: There's other times where like half of it was the same, and I'd have to decide is is this significant enough to contribute its own part of the book?
18:12
SPEAKER_01: And you know, as I'm doing all this, obviously I'm trying to have some consideration for the length as well, which the book still ended up being, you know, almost 500 pages.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: So it was balancing a lot of those things, and you know, also coming to the exercise with a ton of respect for Warren and Charlie and wanting to do the best job that I could to kind of faithfully present what they had said, um, or at least my interpretation of what they had said, and to do so in a way that was also as concise as could be in order to, you know, make it accessible for people.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: So it was kind of always balancing those things, um, getting a system of organization that actually made sense.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, it took a little bit of time to get the ball rolling, but then once I once I had like a good process, and also when I had a deadline from a publisher, that helps too for getting for getting your work done in time, when I had a fire under my butt.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, then I then I really started rolling and uh was able to was able to complete it.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can imagine that being very difficult where something can fit into different buckets, right?
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Psychology, value, investing, incentives, or at the same time, maybe even.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: But uh, this is also what impressed me a lot about the book.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: It was the layout.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: It was entirely different from what I had ever read before.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the book is not your typical start in the front and read all the way to the end.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh the book is written by topic, which is so useful.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: I remember wanting to know more on capital allocation.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh, grabbed your book, looked at the table of content, and that was all the insights I needed about capital allocation.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: I assume this was the idea when you started, right?
19:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was always the idea.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: How I was actually gonna do that is uh that evolved a little bit over time.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, I had a vague sense of like, okay, I'm gonna probably have something on capital allocation.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: I'll probably have something on accounting, but then you start going through it and going, okay, how much is there really a sufficient quantity of stuff here for it to be its own section, or is it part of a bigger section?
20:14
SPEAKER_01: So that that kind of organization of it all took a bit to to really kind of get my arms around.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: And you see it in some of the, you know, some of the sections, like the the first part on on value investing is uh like 70 pages, and then there's other sections, there's other sections in the book on accounting that's you know 15 pages.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: So so there's certain certain topics obviously that have a little bit more meat on the bone than others.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I was trying to organize that in a way that again was like kind of complete, but also structured in a way that would be would be digestible, digest digestible for people as they went through it.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Do you have a favorite part of the book?
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Or uh since it's like organized through by topic, is that a really difficult question?
21:00
SPEAKER_01: It's so hard, it's like kind of feels like my baby at this point.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean the section Yeah, I can imagine the section on Berkshire, and I kind of write this in the introduction.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: I think the section on Berkshire really speaks to me because it's it's it's Warren's version of implementing all of the kind of lessons and insights throughout most of the book, right?
21:22
SPEAKER_01: Where it's where this all comes into practice and where you get away from something that that's a bit more theoretical to the actual application of incentivizing managers, of thinking about capital like it's where it actually occurs and where you can see how Warren's done it himself.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: Warren and Charlie have done it themselves.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: So for me, I think that's a section that really kind of stands out.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the other another really notable one is the section on C's Candy and Coca-Cola and thinking about kind of consumer brands and what is what is emote and how does that widen or shrink over time and You know, it's really relevant for a lot of the companies that I own or that I follow, like Fever Tree or other other names, where it's just really interesting to think about what those or Celsius and energy drinks, monster and energy drinks, like what those businesses actually are, how how the brand grows or shrinks over time.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: Like those are just really interesting discussions.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, Warren, as he kind of says or directly says in the book, like the Coca-Cola investment most likely would never have happened without the Cease Candies investment, informed so much of what they think about the topic and what they learned.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: And I just there's so much of that that's true across everything in investing, this kind of cumulative learning process where everything that happened between the beginning of time and now informs what you do next.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: It's it's sometimes it just blows my mind how one can just explain these difficult concepts in just like baby language, and and Munger and Buffett are perhaps uh the best at it.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: It's just uh incredible.
23:03
SPEAKER_01: No, that's a that's the most I think that's probably the my single biggest takeaway is I mean, as someone who's followed them for a long time, obviously, so I've always kind of known this to some extent, but the breadth of questions that they got asked over the course of more than three decades, and their ability to say something insightful, but also concise, as you say, like basically to explain it in a way that people in the audience can surely understand it.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: It's I'm always amazed by people like that because I mean I I think I have some level of knowledge about like the companies and industries that I follow and about kind of business and investing as well, but it's such a narrower and probably less deep understanding than than them, with such a wide, wide and deep understanding of so many different topics.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: It's just amazing, I mean, it it's a sign of someone who's really, really, really smart, and that's what they are.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which which is fine, right?
24:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, another idol of my is a mine is uh Neil deGrasse Tyson, and he always says um it's okay not to know all the answers, right?
24:10
SPEAKER_00: It's about being curious and just finding out and uh and reading on it and just doing your own research on it.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: So you don't have to know everything, and Buffett and Munger don't know everything, which is fine, right?
24:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if anything, they're a big part of their pitch on how to be successful in in investing in particular is to know what you know really, really well and to not spend excess time or resources trying to understand everything when it's not relevant to the question or if it's unknowable.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: And that is a hugely important part of basically playing this game.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you can understand a number of things that you can count on your hand to the extent you're gonna be a long-term business owner, that would theoretically be sufficient for a lifetime of investments if you were selective enough on the opportunities that you kind of went after.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: So it's it's an interesting part of this game.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: There's some people who play a version of the game that requires holding 50 stocks at any given time and changing out five, 10, or 20 of them every year, which requires a lot of new insights and a lot of decisions.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: And there's other people who own 10 things and they sell maybe one of them or replace one of them a year.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: That requires a lot fewer insights.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it also leads to a lot higher or more significant exposure to those 10 names.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: So there's trades off trade-offs in everything, but um it's it's an interesting part of the game choosing what you're gonna do or try to do.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean it's all relative, but you're not a beginner investor uh compared to Buffett, we all are.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: But um, you have many years of experience and must have a deep passion for investing.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: And correct me if I'm wrong, but going through over 1700 questions and 115, 150 hours even of footage is no easy task for anyone.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Were there any unexpected or perhaps counterintuitive insights you discovered during your research, even with all the experience within the field?
26:08
SPEAKER_01: It's always hard to say because I don't, you know, so much of this I've heard before, or I had like some inkling of what they would say on any given topic.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know how my mind has kind of morphed on on things that might have been surprising or not at one point in time.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think a big one is what they really mean or how they've acted in terms of something like if somebody offered a price for a subsidiary that was two or three times what it worth was worth, we wouldn't sell it.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: Like thinking through that statement and what it means and how people typically think and act.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, particularly in public markets.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, another really notable example is as I said on prior occasion, as I've written about a TSOH investment research, the idea of starting to buy Coca-Cola shares in 88 and 89, buying more again, I believe in 94 was the next year that they bought.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: At a price that was three times higher on average than they paid in 88 and 89, by the way, which is something that value investors, generally speaking, are very uncomfortable doing, paying any amount more than what they had paid previously, let alone three times more, right?
27:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, so buying more in 94, it eventually became a position that was more than 30% of Berkshire's equity portfolio.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: So it was a huge position.
27:24
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like some immaterial position.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: Stock price was very volatile, I mean, in the fullness of time.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: A lot of things happened with the business in the fullness of time.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: And then you look back from today in 2025, they have not bought or sold a single share since 1994.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: And like just thinking about that actually doing that in real life on a position that's very meaningful in terms of the portfolio, and that is so different than how 99.9% of people think you need to play this game or how they do play this game.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: And the person that we're talking about is someone who's quite proficient at the game, has done pretty well at it, someone you should probably learn something from.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: So I just I just think those examples are so extreme that they speak to a certain mindset and a way of thinking about investing.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: That again, like I just think it's really informative for people to grasp what how Warren looks at the world, or at least how he's acted in in a number of very prominent situations.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, his integrity is unbelievable.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: But also, I mean, it it sounds so easy for those that are not really into investing, or even are in very interested in investing.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: It sounds so easy to just hold on, and everybody always screams hold, I I buy and hold forever.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: But when everything one push comes to shelf, right?
28:49
SPEAKER_00: It's so difficult when when the economy drops or the stock market crashes and everybody is in panic.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: It sounds so easy, but it's incredibly hard.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it's uh it's it's very impressive by him.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm very impressed by it as well.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: Well, even more even more so for value investors.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: I think they that that situation is difficult, which they what they struggle with even more in my experience from from being one and watching others is is when things are going really well and the prices go and the valuation is and the multiples going up.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: But again, I'm not even saying the Coca-Cola example, I'm not saying it in terms of like this is how you should necessarily act, or that it that it was or wasn't the right decision.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm simply saying understand it in terms of kind of the underlying thought process.
29:33
SPEAKER_01: And and again, I it's just it's funny to to see to see what Warren has done in some of these very notable situations and how I think it it differs pretty meaningfully from how I think a lot of Buffett Amonger disciples, you know, kind of act in practice.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's it's just interesting to think about why that discrepancy exists and and what lessons are to be learned from there, if any.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: Do you think you would ever do something similar with another famous CEO or investor, perhaps Bezos or Gates unscripted?
30:06
SPEAKER_01: Or um I don't know, it's gonna be a while.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Warren and Charlie Warren and Charlie holding a very special place in my heart, and obviously the source material here was abundant and it it gave me a lot to work with, and it's a topic that I you know also understand pretty well.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: Um so, you know, it was a it was a somewhat unique opportunity.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and and writing a book or compiling a book is also uh it took me years to get this completed.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: Um so I think I'm gonna I think TSOH investment research is gonna be my sole focus for for uh at least the next few years, and then we'll uh we'll see from there whether or not another book is is in the cards.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean you're uh around 30, you said, right?
30:55
SPEAKER_00: So if we estimate every 30 years a new book and you become 90, we have two more books to uh well in the in that case I'm 35, so that's good.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: I bought another uh I bought another 10 years on the second book.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: I got seven 70 years old and 105 years old.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: So you'll you'll be lucky.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: You'll be lucky if you get a second book, it sounds like.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: I see.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's possible.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: You it's going to be Alex Morris unscripted, but who knows, right?
31:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I think I've I've written enough at TSOH Investment Research to maybe compile a book.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's as valuable and useful as uh Buffett and Munger unscripted, but maybe I can give that a shot.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: If you were given just 10 minutes to sit down and talk with Buffett, what would you ask him?
31:37
SPEAKER_01: Uh well, if he'd be willing to break his rule about, you know, at the meetings, generally speaking, not being willing to talk about individual companies.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: Um I would love to ask about things like, I mean, I'm a big I'm I'm a shareholder in in Netflix and Disney, and I've followed the media industry for quite a while now.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: And I I think it was him.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: I think he said it was him, actually, in terms of the paramount investment that they had for a period of time a few years ago.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, I'd love to talk with him about his thought process on something like that, and you know, what what kind of was underlying the decision.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, most of my other questions would be about, again, like more things that are more business related, what he's seen over time's time in terms of in terms of how large companies are kind of managed and um, you know, what he's seen obviously at the subsidiaries of Berkshire and and the companies that he's been on the boards of.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: Um I think he said a lot of these things publicly, I believe, but it's interesting to think about how how those entities um um kind of grow and morph and change over time.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: And um, I think that would probably be something that he obviously has a ton of insights on that'd be interesting to talk about.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to hear him talk about you know his his thoughts about the life that he's lived and you know his his thoughts on work-life balance and you know that that type of idea.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: And um, yeah, again, something I think he'd probably have a lot of interesting things to to say about.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, I'm sure I I'd like to ask him about everything.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can I can imagine, but uh yeah, more questions that he doesn't really answer publicly, right?
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a dip I'll put you on the spot.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: It's a difficult question.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: I I I'd have to think uh a few minutes about it as well, since you only have 10 minutes, right?
33:30
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: You're not only an investor and an author, uh you also have the hardest job in the world being a father, right?
33:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well being being a mom is even more difficult.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: Don't forget that.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: But yes.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, true.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: Number two then.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: I believe you have a son called Jack, if I'm not mistaken.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: I do.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: I do.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: He's uh he's one years old, and he's becoming uh he plays with a hockey stick like 18 hours a day, or hockey stick slash golf club.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: So I think he's gonna he's gotta pick what sport he wants to play.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: I think so too.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: If you had to pass one of Buffett's or Munger's lessons onto your kids, which one uh would it be?
34:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean it I guess it would obviously depend on what we're if we're talking more of an investing or or business or life lens, but I think the one that's probably applicable across all three is is kind of opportunity costs and and and also incentives and thinking about just really understanding how things work, right?
34:30
SPEAKER_01: And also, as part of that, not leaning against things where in particular incentives are are working against you and thinking that you're gonna be able to kind of like fight through that or convince other people to change their mind um when the incentives are telling them not to.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: That is a way to be uh often unsuccessful and to to to be uh perturbed.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of painful to do those things, which I've done at various times throughout my professional career.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's better to understand what's going on and to adjust accordingly.
35:06
SPEAKER_01: That's a smarter way to way to do things, and also to understand uh people's differing perspectives or interests or you know, incentives for your own and and to kind of appreciate that, right?
35:17
SPEAKER_01: To to and that's harder to do when you're um, or it should be harder to do when you're 18 or 22 than it than it should be to do when you're 35, as I am.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: So hopefully you're growing and learning over time how to, you know, how to navigate the world and to have empathy and all those things.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's difficult.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: You have to learn as you go, and uh you you're right, yeah.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Good good life lessons as well.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: Incentives apply to everywhere, right?
35:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most overlooked parts of investing, I would say.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: It's the the the phrase uh Munger always said, right?
35:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh what is it?
35:52
SPEAKER_00: Show me the incentive and I'll show the outcome.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: It applies everywhere, even in your work life, personal life.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love he said um I'm gonna get the numbers wrong, but I think he I think he said I've I've understood the empowers of incentives more than 99% of people in my kind of cohort in life, and I've still underappreciated the power of incentives in terms of what drives people's actions and decisions.
36:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, yes, it's something that's really and again, it gets to the idea of what I was saying before, right?
36:20
SPEAKER_01: In terms of you can play this game on a, I'm gonna look at XYZ stock and see what sector it's in, and here's the relative PE, and this thing is 18% undervalued.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: That's one way to do it, or you can step back and go, okay, like what is what is competition like in just pick a random example, kind of the mature consumer packaged goods industry, and who's actually running, you know, PepsiC and Kellogg, and what are their incentives and where they come from, and what are the company strategies, and how does this all kind of fit together in terms of an organization with thousands of people who um, you know, also have their own incentives and have certain ways of thinking about what their job is.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's just really interesting when you start to think about things through that lens, you know, and you start to put business quality as a starting filter for the investment process as opposed to a kind of price to fair value calculation.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: For me, it makes the game certainly different, and I think it also makes the game for me a bit clearer in terms of what I'm trying to find.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Good points, yeah.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: Your book is your way of honoring, I guess, uh Buffett and Munger's wisdom and just uh their life.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm pretty sure that Munger would have loved your book if he was still around.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's a great way to remember Munger for his jokes, uh, pure honesty and wisdom.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: But also Buffett, of course, known for more of his storytelling, uh, wisdom, of course, but also, like we said, integrity.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: We'll have to really appreciate Buffett even more while he's still here.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to wrap up this show with an open-ended question.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: And if we ever do this again, check in on how things have evolved.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: What are you working towards right now?
38:05
SPEAKER_00: What's what's the bigger goal?
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, whether it's your Substack, your book, investing career, personal life, whatever, where do you see yourself uh heading in the future?
38:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a good question.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: Um in terms of the book, it's you know, continuing to hopefully get in front of the right audience, people who would who would find value in the book.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's pretty pretty challenging to do, generally speaking.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: I've done a bunch of podcasts and things like that, which seems like the most valuable way to do so.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm also going to be at the at the Mark Hell Brunch in Omaha in May signing copies there.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: So for anybody who's in at Berkshire, um, swing by and say hello.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, so the book is, you know, it seems like I'm at the tail end of that project, so it's mostly complete.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, TSOH investment research, I think my objectives are, you know, personally, continue to build the strength of the business over time, right?
38:56
SPEAKER_01: But that's that's really an output.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: The input is continuing to find subscribers who are a good fit for the service, continuing to produce, you know, the highest quality investment research that I'm capable of.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, hopefully having that be apparent in the results, which is all transparently disclosed to subscribers, by the way.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, having that continue to s to just be a snowball that's you know, hopefully rolling downhill, um, and which has been, you know, a great, great learning experience here over the past uh coming up on four years.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then you know, having that fit inside of or as part of, you know, my my life overall in terms of things I obviously want to do with my wife and extended family and my son and all that jazz.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: So um it can be hard at times, especially with when you when you go outside of the the nine to five salary job to something that's kind of your own, where what you what you earn in any given day feels like it's completely up to you.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: That can become a bit overwhelming um and and really time consuming, obviously.
40:01
SPEAKER_01: And there is a part of it where obviously you still want to make sure to commit appropriate time to it, but where you don't want to kind of burn yourself out or become overloaded on what's happening, happening any given day or week.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's kind of a a balancing act that honestly I've had to learn to some extent over the past couple years.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: And I think I'm at a closer to a place now where I can kind of more effectively balance that to again like do the highest quality work I'm capable of of, but without kind of obsessing too much.
40:31
SPEAKER_01: So just continuing down that path, I think, would be good.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: Sounds awesome.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Alex.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: I uh really appreciate it.
40:40
SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: I really think people will enjoy this one.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: If you're still listening, I highly recommend getting the book.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: It's it's filled with valuable information.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: And Alex did a phenomenal, phenomenal job making everything easy to find.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh, plus 50% of profits after taxes will go to one of Buffett's long supported charities called Glide.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: So you're not only getting a great book supporting Alex, you're also helping charity.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: So uh do so, it's incredible.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: Where can uh people find you, Alex?
41:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I just gotta say real quick, I think the last uh the last luncheon that Buffett, you know, he donated the proceeds from the luncheons to Glide.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: I think the last one may have been for a couple million dollars.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: So we gotta sell a lot of books if we're gonna compete with Warren's last donation.
41:29
SPEAKER_01: So if people want to help out, they gotta buy the book.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: We gotta we gotta beat his donation.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: Um absolutely.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: But small things add up.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: We just need to sell uh I think a couple hundred thousand copies if my math's any good.
41:41
SPEAKER_01: We got a ways to go.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, we have millions of investors worldwide.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean it's gotta it's gotta work.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: We should be able to get there.
41:49
SPEAKER_01: We need some time.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, thanks for having me.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: The the best place to find me is at TSOH Investment Research.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh, people can also find me on on Twitter uh at TSOH underscore investing.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, Alex.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: Hope to talk to you again soon, and uh best of luck.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: Have a great day.