TIP812: Mohnish Pabrai on Berkshire & Letting Winners Run

Summary

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The Investor's Podcast – TIP812: Mohnish Pabrai on Berkshire & Letting Winners Run

Date: May 3, 2026
Host: Stig Brodersen
Guest: Mohnish Pabrai

Episode Overview

In this annual Berkshire Weekend episode, Stig Brodersen welcomes renowned value investor Mohnish Pabrai to share his latest thoughts on Berkshire Hathaway’s future under Greg Abel, compensation philosophy at the company, letting investment winners compound, the role of concentration versus diversification, lessons from emerging markets, and reflections on friendship with fellow investor Guy Spier. Through anecdotes, memorable quotes, and deep industry insights, Pabrai gives practical, often humorous advice for investors — emphasizing the power of patience, humility, and relationships.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Berkshire Hathaway’s New Era with Greg Abel

Timestamps: 01:54 – 06:42

• Transition to Greg Abel: Greg Abel has led Berkshire’s operating businesses since 2018 and is described as more hands-on than Buffett, who preferred “to delegate almost to the point of abdication.”
• Comparison of Approaches:
  • Buffett: Deeply involved with a few businesses acquired early (e.g., See’s Candy), giving him intimate knowledge.
  • Abel: Responsible for 80+ businesses, can’t know them as deeply; thus, he relies on a capable team and a more active oversight role.
• Munger on Abel:

  “Charlie Munger said that Greg is better than Warren in some important ways and he never went further to describe what those were but I, I, I thought about what he might have meant.” – Mohnish Pabrai (02:26)

• Lessons for Investors: Even Buffett’s direct-acquisition track record is only a 3-4% hit rate, mirroring the public market stat that about 4% of stocks deliver all market returns.
• On Humility in Investing:

  “It’s humbling for all of us as investors to know that most of the time when we act, the odds are stacked against us.” – Mohnish Pabrai (06:10)

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2. Compensation at Berkshire Hathaway

Timestamps: 08:15 – 11:40

• Greg Abel’s $25 Million Salary: Pabrai argues Abel and Ajit Jain are “seriously underpaid,” especially relative to their value creation and Fortune 10 CEO peers.
• Alignment with Shareholders:
  • Both Abel and Jain receive the same compensation to avoid envy.
  • Ajit invests nearly all his net worth into Berkshire stock; Abel is “plenty diversified,” but voluntarily buys Berkshire shares with after-tax compensation.
  • Both are with Berkshire not for a paycheck, but purpose.
• Notable Quote:

  “If Berkshire paid [Ajit] something like 30 billion or something, then it might be appropriate... He’s responsible singlehandedly for creating more than 100 billion, maybe 150 billion in value.” – Mohnish Pabrai (08:55)
  “Greg is seriously underpaid. Ajit is seriously underpaid also.” – Mohnish Pabrai (10:32)

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3. Berkshire vs. S&P 500 – The Long View

Timestamps: 11:40 – 13:27

• Ten Years vs. a Century: For a 10-yr window, either is a strong pick; over 50-100 years, S&P’s self-renewing structure might win as Berkshire’s original DNA fades.
• Pabrai’s Approach: For ultra-long-term investing, split allocation among S&P 500, Berkshire, and a couple broad international indices (especially with Asian/Chinese exposure).
• Portfolio Construction Advice:

  “If you go to such a long period, I would switch from a single holding to maybe around four. ... Spread it between four indices like that and Berkshire being one of them.” – Mohnish Pabrai (12:50)

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4. Delegation, Admin, and Life Design

Timestamps: 13:27 – 17:20

• Delegation to Abdication: Pabrai unapologetically delegates all administrative tasks he dislikes. For performance reviews:

  “I try not to get involved in things that I don’t like. ... I really don’t want to spend my time on reviews. I mean, I hate reviews. I don’t like to think about, you know, compensation changes. And I have no problem with the change, I just don’t want to spend brain cells on.” – Mohnish Pabrai (15:32)

• Life Lessons: Structure your life to maximize time on what you love; delegate or remove the rest.
• Advice for Entrepreneurs:

  “Think about what does Stig love to do? … Who else can do what Stig doesn’t love to do, and then just go with that?” (16:45)

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5. Democratizing Access: The Pabrai Wagons ETF

Timestamps: 17:07 – 19:01

• Purpose: Lowering the barriers to benefit more people than his high-minimum private funds could serve.
• Feedback from the Public:

  “It’s all about the man in the arena... It is not the critic who counts.” – Mohnish Pabrai, quoting Teddy Roosevelt (19:01)

• Living by the Inner Scorecard: Ignore critics and persevere.

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6. Investing in Emerging Markets

Timestamps: 26:14 – 31:40

• Example: Turkey
  • Invested for the “exceptional businesses at cigar butt prices,” not for country exposure.
  • Macro concerns (politics, leaders) are overemphasized; quality of management and business trumps all.
  • On risk: Diversification caps any single incidence (“if you have less than 20% of your net worth with me, you have nothing to be concerned about”).
• Concentration vs. Diversification: Entrepreneurs often have 90%+ in one business. Investors can size accordingly for their risk tolerance.

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7. Letting Winners Run – The Frontline (and Met Coal) Lesson

Timestamps: 36:11 – 58:40

• Frontline “Error of Omission”: Pabrai doubled his money, sold, but the stock went on to be a 200-bagger.
  • Anecdote: Visiting Frontline’s Oslo HQ decades later, Pabrai muses on what could’ve been, saying,

    “God wanted you to see this Mohnish. He didn’t want you to die just knowing that was a 200x.” (37:18–42:03)

• Evolving Framework:

  “One of the lessons that took me many decades to learn is not to sell a good company or great company when it’s fairly priced or even overpriced. ... Only when it gets egregiously overpriced ... you can consider exiting the business.” (54:26)

• Portfolio Construction:
  • Letting all highly compelling holdings run, acknowledging that true outliers — the “4%” — drive all returns.
  • Even a small 2% allocation to an extreme winner like Walmart can beat the S&P if held for decades, regardless of what happens to the other 98%.
• Position Sizing:

  “If you’ve got a spectacular winner, it’s going to take care of itself ... as long as you don’t trim, as long as you don’t desecrate the temple, we’re all fine." (59:28)

• On Coal Investments: Finds value where others avoid (e.g., coal is a “four-letter word”), following opportunity not consensus.

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8. Darwin, Adaptation, and the “Survival of the Fittest”

Timestamps: 60:41 – 64:17

• Fitness in Investing: The best companies, like Microsoft and Walmart, persistently adapt and reinvent — that’s true “fitness.”
• Darwinian Portfolio Management: Favor businesses capable of change and resilience, with sound capital structure and no undue leverage.

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9. The Power of Friendship: Guy Spier

Timestamps: 64:17 – 71:00

• Reflection on Friendship: Deep personal connection, mutual understanding beyond shared profession.
  • Anecdote: “I see you” — from Avatar — representing genuine mutual recognition and support.
  • Indian train journey story:

    “…In that 17-hour journey, Guy must have rung that bell like 30 times, okay? … He’s FaceTiming his wife, Lori. He’s in an orgasmic state, okay?... he’s telling his wife Lori… all these things.” (64:39–70:53)

• What Makes the Connection: They “see” each other on a profound human level, supporting and understanding in a way that few others do.

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Notable Quotes

• Letting Winners Run:

  “The true great compounders are few and far between… when it ends up in your portfolio… your job is not to be trigger happy.” – Mohnish Pabrai (54:50)

• Investor Humility:

  “Most of the time when we act, the odds are stacked against us.” – Mohnish Pabrai (06:10)

• On Criticism:

  “If they can criticize Gandhi, then, you know, who am I?” – Mohnish Pabrai (19:01)

• On Friendship:

  “I see you. … He gets me in a way almost no one gets me. And I get him in a way almost nobody gets him.” – Mohnish Pabrai (64:39)

• On Staying Relaxed:

  “We don’t need to go all in with a big conviction. The winners are going to get there … just be relaxed and patient and they’ll be fine.” – Mohnish Pabrai (59:28)

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Important Timestamps

• Berkshire under Greg Abel: 01:54 – 06:42
• CEO Compensation Philosophy: 08:15 – 11:40
• Long-term Index Investing: 11:40 – 13:27
• Delegating Life Admin: 13:27 – 17:20
• Opening Funds to All (ETF): 17:07 – 19:01
• Emerging Markets Investing: 26:14 – 31:40
• Concentration, Errors of Omission (Frontline/Met Coal): 36:11 – 58:40
• Darwin & Investing: 60:41 – 64:17
• Friendship & Life Lessons (Guy Spier): 64:17 – end

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Memorable Moments

• Frontline HQ Visit: Pabrai’s humorous, philosophical reflection on missed opportunities (37:18–42:03).
• The Tea Train with Guy Spier: A joyful story of friendship and the power of small gestures (64:39–70:53).
• Letting Winners Run: Pabrai’s conviction to hold onto big winners even if it breaks with old value orthodoxy.
• Inner vs. Outer Scorecard: Emphasizing living by your own standards, not society’s critics (19:01).

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a masterclass in value investing — not just in framework, but in humility, patience, and the joys of personal connection. Mohnish Pabrai’s stories highlight that while finding and holding winners is paramount, structuring your life around your strengths, living by your own principles, and cherishing deep friendships are the true compounders both in investing and in life.

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Transcript

[Podcast Announcer]

You're listening to tip.

[Stig Brodersen]

On today's episode, I'm joined by Monish Pabrai for our annual conversation published over the Berkshire Hailway weekend. We talk about what Berkshire might look like under Greg abel and why $25 million in annual compensation is a bargain for shareholders. Later in the episode, we discuss the biggest mistake investors make, selling the winners too early. MONEY shares a story about his frontline investment he sold that later ran up 200x and what that taught him about patience and compounding. We also touched on concentration, the S&P 500 versus Berkshire over the next decade and the next century. And then we end with my favorite part of the conversation. Manus tells us this beautiful story about his friendship with Guy Spier.

[Podcast Announcer]

Since 2014, with more than 200 million downloads, we have interviewed the world's best investors, studied deeply the principles of value investing and uncovered many compelling investment opportunities. We focus on understanding businesses and intrinsic value, investing accordingly and sharing everything we learn with you. This show is not investment advice. It's intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. All opinions expressed by hosts and guests are solely their own and they may have investments in the securities discussed. Now for your host, Stig Broderson,

[Stig Brodersen]

You're listening to the Investors Podcast. I'm your host Dick Brodersen and today I'm here with no other than money's Parai money's. Welcome to our annual banter here that will be published over the Berkshire weekend.

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Stig, I always look forward to this. It's like the pre game tailgate party. So always a pleasure to be here with you.

[Stig Brodersen]

Wonderful. And so Manja, since this is the Berkshire weekend, I wanted to ask you a few questions about the company. Now Greg Abel has arguably been running the operating businesses since 2018 whenever he became the vice chairman of non insurance operations. And I think it's safe to say that Greg is more hands on, whereas Buffett was inclined to, I think he said delegate almost to the point of abdication. So which CEO approach would you prefer if you were a Berkshire shareholder?

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Well, you know, Charlie Munger said that Greg is better than Warren in some important ways and he never went further to describe what those but I, I, I thought about what he might have meant. And so Greg is in Des Moines, Iowa and he has a team, maybe more now, but he has a team of about 30 people who are between him and the businesses. So he has put in a lot of very smart people to help him basically look at these companies. And Warren for Warren was easier because he bought these businesses. One At a time, right? And he got to know them one at a time. So like for example, when he bought See's Candy, there were very few operating subsidiaries and Warren spent an inordinate amount of time on seas, inordinate amount of time on Coke and on Buffalo News and so on. Now Greg doesn't have that luxury because when he comes in, there's like 80 plus businesses plus Mormon Group has hundreds of businesses inside that. So he's never going to be able to know the businesses as well as Warren does. And the second thing is Warren's Persona was not to get involved. Right. And so the Berkshire companies for decades have been under managed. It can be an advantage to leave these managers alone, but it also has a lot of disadvantages. So I think Greg got a nice middle ground in the sense that he's not overbearing in your face, et cetera. But at the same time, if he clearly sees that a manager is not delivering, not the right person, etc. He is going to act on that. And so I think we are going to be seeing kind of tighter operations. Most of the acquisitions Warren did, did not work well for Berkshire. Okay, let that sink in, Stig, because you know, we're talking about God here. Okay. So, I mean, I, I would have some conversations with Charlie and I would tell him, you know, Charlie, I hate retail. You know, I wrote a chapter in my first book about how much I hate retail. And he says to me, well, all the subsequent furniture companies we bought after Nebraska Furniture Mart and all the subsequent jewelers we bought after Borscheim's are so useless. I'm with you, Mohnish. And I think if Charlie had his way, Berkshire would have had much smaller retail footprint than they ended up with. And Warren himself has said, I think it was a 22 or 23 letter where he said that 12 ideas over 58 years or something have led to the creation of Berkshire. And Warren has made more than, I would guess somewhere between 300 to 400 investments or buying companies in those almost six decades. And it's a 3 or 4% hit rate. And so that's the beautiful thing about this business. Now the interesting thing about 4% is that if we go back for the last 90 years in the US stock market, about 4% of the businesses have delivered all the returns in the market. The other 96% have barely matched bonds or inflation. They haven't done much. So the funny thing is what's happened in the, in the bigger, bigger market and what's happened inside Berkshire have been very similar in terms of the percentages. Of course, in the case of Berkshire, the home runs have been so big that they've trounced the market. But it's humbling for all of us as investors to know that most of the time when we act, the odds are stacked against us.

[Stig Brodersen]

It's interesting, Manis, that you mentioned that Bessemban started, we had him on the show and talked to him about it and then he made this comment, and I hope you'll forgive me for saying this because I actually think it came across in a really nice way. But he said something and I'm going to boost the quote. And he said something along the lines of, I've been speaking with a lot of stock investors and they want to make money out of my study. And I'm not really sure what to do about that. I was like, have you met stock investors? Of course they're looking at your research like, how do I make money? And he was just more like, that's such an interesting finding. Let me see if I can get funding for another research project. And I was like, yes, welcome to the world of finance. You know, another question here, you were very kind here going into before we hit record. You were like, you have a tough job. You have to come up with questions no one has asked before. But the good thing here is that now with the transition to Greg, that part is going to be new because we haven't had this transition before with Berkshire. But I can't help but ask you about the $25 million annual compensation now. And I think together with a lot of other Berkshire shareholders, I was curious about what Buffett would come up with as this is how a CEO should be compensated. And so it's all base. And then I don't know if Buffett has nudged Abel or probably not, but he takes his entire conversation after tax and then buy Berkshire in the open market. If you are on the board, if you are God, how would you incentivize Greg Abel to align him most with shareholders?

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Well, for the last several years, both Greg and Ajit have been vice chairman and they both every year gotten exactly the same amount of compensation down to the last dollar. And I think the reason Warren and Charlie did that is to avoid envy and avoid anything. I mean, even though these two guys are very high quality individuals, they didn't want to go go anywhere near the envy kicking in or whatever else. And so Greg has been paid 20 odd million for several years. And Warren has said about Ajit that many times when he's paid him, he felt he left out a zero. Ajit is responsible single handedly for creating more than 100 billion, maybe 150 billion in value for Berkshire shareholders. So we can never compensate him enough. I mean, in the sense that if Berkshire paid him something like 30, 30 billion or something, then it might be appropriate. Okay, but they haven't paid anywhere near that. And I think one time there was some hue and cry about Jamie Dimon's compensation. And I think Jamie was making like 25 or 30 million. And Warren said, anytime Jamie wants to come to Berkshire, I'm happy to double it. Okay. He was telling people that you think Jamie is overpaid at 30 million. Well, I'm willing to give him 60 million base salary tomorrow without even defining what he'd be doing for us. Okay. So Greg is seriously underpaid. Ajit is seriously underpaid also. You have to understand, Greg had a significant stake in Berkshire Hathaway Energy and that got sold to Berkshire. So Greg's net worth, I think is somewhere between 700 million and a billion somewhere in that range. So between us girls, not much of his net worth is in Berkshire. If I look at Ajit, for example, Ajit has been taking his salary after expenses, whatever else, and just buying Berkshire stock. And he's been doing it for decades. So I would say that I don't know what Ajish Network is, but I would guess that maybe 80% or more of his investment, maybe even 90% of more of his investments would be in Berkshire Hathaway. So Greg is plenty diversified. I think he came up with putting the money into Berkshire stock on his own because I think he felt it's appropriate thing to do. He's not at Berkshire for a paycheck. Greg is very smart. He doesn't need to work another day in his life. And any number of people will pay him multiples of that to work for them.

[Stig Brodersen]

Yeah, I like that you say that, Manish. And it's important for a number like that not to stand alone. It's very difficult to be like, it's 25 million a lot. And if you do compare it to what other Fortune 10 CEOs are making, well, we can go on the rabbit hole in terms of what I'm just

[Mohnish Pabrai]

saying, look at Sundar's compensation. Look at Satya's compensation. I mean, look at, look at those hired guns in those companies. And you know, I mean, Sundar is like more than 500 million, I think, and might be underpaid.

[Stig Brodersen]

So Manish, you know, I've been watching your videos for a very long time, as you know, and starting your work for a long time. And you used to say to people, unless they wanted to invest and do the hard work themselves, that they could buy the S&P 500 or an index or whatever. And I've heard you recently talk more about not to give people a hot stock tip, but you talk more about perhaps with the valuation of the S&P 500. Look at Berkshire, for example. Again, not as a hot stock tip, but more as in, hey, it's super diversified, it's well managed, it's a reasonable valuation, so on and so forth. But I wanted to tweak a bit of a question here because let's say over the next 10 years, I think most people in the value investing community would be like, yeah, sure, Berkshire or the S&P 500. What if we said over the next 50 or 100 years, meaning the fingerprints of Buffett and Monger would slowly fade away, of Greg Abel for that matter. And then The S&P 500 has this built in mechanism where it recycles out the bad companies and includes some good companies. So if I put you on the spot today, I know it's purely theoretical for grandkids, they had to hold it for 50 or 100 years. Should they be holding SP 500 or Berkshire?

[Mohnish Pabrai]

I think when you go to such a long period, I would switch from a single holding to maybe around four. So I would say you could do the s and P1 4th, you could do Berkshire 1 4th. And I, I would like to get some good broad international index, you know, which has more exposure to Asia and China and others like that. So I would just make it more like four, spread it between four indices like that and Berkshire being one of them.

[Stig Brodersen]

Okay, that makes sense. Manish, we previously here on the show talked about how you like to play single player games. And one example is that you didn't want to run Trans Tech because you felt you were herding cats. And I was speaking with your team here before interview and they asked me to include a disclaimer about me being an investor in PowerPoints, which is, you're perfectly fine. I'll be happy to include all the disclaimers I need to. But one of the reasons why I started my own company was because I didn't want to deal with all the politics and bureaucracy of being in the corporate world. And then the irony of life is that you build your own company, you build your team, and then all of a sudden you get this entangled in the same admin stuff that you tried to escape. And I can't figure out if it's similar to being a retailer. And then you had to accept that there's just a small amount of shrinkage, it's just the cost of doing business. But then I was thinking, ask Manus, because he already thought about this. How much of your life can you structure around not having any admin stuff? And how much can you truly delegate to a team? Yeah.

[Mohnish Pabrai]

So I try to keep it front and center that Mohnish is not going to do well if he's lost in a team. So thankfully, I have few very gifted people in the company and I have delegated to the point of abdication to them. You know, just to tell you how much I just don't care for the stuff is we. We use a software package to do our reviews for our, for our, our people. It's a. And it does a 360 review. So it sends information to, you know, peers, superiors, subordinates, everything. And then, you know, all of that gets pulled together and then we can, you know, it gives us a kind of combined report of what the person thinks and what all these people above or below him think as well. Right. And they send it to me as well to fill out for at least the people who are directly reporting to me. And I've never filled it out and. Because that's just not monish, you know, so whenever I go there, I tell them, you know, I'm sorry, I just can't go here. And here's my three sentences about what's going on with this person. Warm regards. Okay? And that's it. So I try not to get involved in things that I don't like. Right. And I mean, I'm probably not being fair to those individuals because they would probably appreciate more granularity with me about what is going on, but it's just not me, you know, and so I really don't want to spend my time on reviews. I mean, I hate reviews. I don't like to think about, you know, compensation changes. And I have no problem with the change. I just don't want to spend brain cells on. And so thankfully, I've been able to keep our team without going deep into that area, which I would just not like to do.

[Stig Brodersen]

You live a good life, my friend.

[Mohnish Pabrai]

I think in your case, like I said, because you have more things than when you started, I think you can set things up in a way that can work better for you. So you have to think about what does Stig love to do? What does Stig not love to do? And who else can do what Stingk doesn't love to do, and then just go with that?

[Stig Brodersen]

Well said. So if we continue in this framework of choosing, let's call the simplicity over complexity, could you talk to us about why you set up the Pabrai Wagons ETF and how that adds to your daily happiness?

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Yeah, so our minimums in Pabrai funds are very high. You know, it's funds are over a billion dollars. And, you know, so it's. It's multiple millions. And so it's just a very small sliver of folks that it would appeal to, and it's very concentrated and so on. And I always felt like we had so many people interested in wanting to invest, et cetera, and really had no way to serve them. And I don't like to be elitist about it. So I really like the ETF because it allows us to work with Joe Public and also work with Joe Public around the world, which is great. So that was one of the big motivations.

[Stig Brodersen]

Man, you're such a good person, Manish. I spoke with a friend here the other day. He's executive of a public company, and every time there was something going on, there's always someone with five shares screaming at him about how unhappy they are. And after I sort of have gone through the motions with him, I was like, that's why you work in private companies. That's why you don't want that exposure. And so that was why. I don't think that reflects well on me. I think it reflects really well on you that you're saying you could sort of have this gated walled garden, but you don't want to just deal with that. You also want to open up to the public. Perhaps it's because you have a thicker skin than me, but I would imagine you get a lot more feedback just by numbers, because now you open up to a lot more people. Or does that not face you, or does that feedback just not get to you? Whenever people are happy about whatever people are happy about.

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Well, one of the mental models that is very front and center for me is that I run into people who criticize Gandhi, who criticize Buffett, who criticize all kinds of people who are, from my perspective, great or phenomenal. So if they can criticize Gandhi, then, you know, who am I? Like Buffett says we can choose to live our life with the inner scorecard or an outer scorecard. And it's really important to live by an Inner scorecard. So you are not going to silence the critics. And the critics will say all kinds of things, and they may be fair or unfair or whatever, but I love Teddy Roosevelt's quote about the man in the arena, you know, which. It is not the critic who counts. And I have that quote right here on my wall. I'm just going to read you a couple of parts of it, right? Some credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who airs, who comes up short again and again. That's very important. Who comes up short again and again. He's human, okay? He's not perfect. He's not always able to prevail because there is no effort without error or shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumphs of high achievement? And who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Okay? So I just think that, to me, it's all about the man in the arena, you know? And the man in the arena is not perfect. He comes up short. He's bloodied and scarred and whatever, but he keeps persevering, ignores the critics, right? And so I think that's our job, is we don't need to be in a walled garden. We can be in the open. I mean, Buffett's been. Munger and Buffett have been in an open field with all kinds of people saying all kinds of things about him. I mean, people criticize Warren all the time. So I think, yeah, the outer scorecard, inner scorecard, those are great models to have.

[Stig Brodersen]

Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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[Stig Brodersen]

All right, back to the show. I love that you say that. One of the things I've been thinking a lot about with this whole Buffett and Munger framework is this idea of it's really difficult to solve hard problems. So one of the best ways is just to completely to avoid them. But then at the same time there are also things you want to take on. It's sort of like you always want to make sure that you keep your promises. And one way to do that is not to make any promises. But it's also a poor life if you don't make promises to people that you really care for. But then you also have the struggle. But the struggle is where the meat is. That's still the good part. It's wonderful. If I can go back to this sounds very operational after this is a wonderful quote that you just listed up and here I am. But I know you invest in a lot of emerging countries. This is one of the many wonderful reasons why I like to invest with you. But do you ever have any issues withdrawing money from those countries?

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Well, our investments really very heavily are in one country outside the U.S. which is Turkey. I was drawn to Turkey because it was screening cheap. But we didn't invest in these businesses because we wanted Turkish exposure. We invested in these businesses because they were exceptional businesses available at cigar butt prices. And I think one thing to keep in mind is that for most businesses, almost all businesses, the micro is going to trump the macro. So how well we do with our Turkish businesses is probably 95% dependent on what the managers of those businesses do and what is the nature of the markets they are serving. It's really things inside and around the business. Very little has to do with the macro. So anytime I bring up some Turkish business to someone, they'll say what about Erdogan, Right. And quite frankly that the focus on going after the leadership of a company country as being your number one factor you're concerned about is very myopic. I mean, the important thing is what is the quality of these managers? What is the quality of the business? What is the size of the market, how well, are they executing? I think those are much more important questions because usually, I mean, the companies we've invested in, there is no real advantage the leader of Turkey is going to get by trying to go in and mess with those companies. He's got other fish to fry. So it's always important to focus around and inside the business.

[Stig Brodersen]

Okay, that makes sense. I'm always trying to figure out some of that long tail risk. And one story that stuck with me, I used to play a lot of poker back in the day and there was one story that always sits with me and I think it's applicable to investing. And so for a guy who's been banned in Vegas, I thought you would, they thought you would appreciate the story. But so it's about in poker. So in poker you can have the so called nuts. So that's the best hand. And so, you know, you can say that in life nothing is 0 or 100%, but then you can be like, hey, but in poker if you have the nuts, you have the best hand, so what is your risk? And then there was this Dol Bronson, this old poker legend who said, well, whenever you played in Texas back in the day, even if you had the nuts, someone will pull out a gun and then he would just take your money. So even 100% is not 100%, just so you know. So the reason why I mentioned that that was sort of like where it came from. I was thinking, I understand the thesis or like to think so in Turkey. And I was like, is there like a long.

[Mohnish Pabrai]

I told my investors, and you've probably read this where I said, look, if you are invested in any of the Pabrai funds and they're very concentrated, in some cases one stock is more than half the fund. And I said that if you have less than 20% of your net worth with me, you have nothing to be concerned about. Okay? And if you have more than 20% of your net worth with me, you can trim the position. In fact, I recommend you trim it, right? So if someone has 1/5 of their assets with Fabri funds, and when you look through those 1/5, probably no more than 10, 12% of their net worth is in one particular company. That's plenty of diversification. I mean, let's put it this way. Walmart went public In I think 1970 or 72, I think maybe 72, they went public. So it's been what, 28 and 26. So like, you know, 54 years since they've been public. The heirs of Sam Walton own More than what they owned in terms of percentage of Walmart that they own today versus when it IPO, because Walmart has bought back shares. 46% of the company is owned by family members 56 years after the IPO. And they are not diversified. Pabrai funds is diversified. Okay, The Walton family is not diversified. But the Walton family would be far worse off if they had listened to the helpers. You know, you don't need to listen to the helpers. The helpers are just helping themselves. So the reality is that most entrepreneurs and most people who have become billionaires have, through that journey, had 90, 95, 99% of their net worth in a single stock. And they don't lose sleep over it. So we somehow accept that some couple running a Chinese restaurant has 90% of everything in the restaurant. They don't. They're just busy working. It's not even liquid. They don't lose sleep over it. And here we have a portfolio that we can buy and sell every day, and we want to own one of everything. I mean, that just makes no sense.

[Stig Brodersen]

No, I think it's a good point. And there was this expression, the cup is already full, which basically means that people already have an idea of how the world is. And so actually I was having a conversation with Guy about this some time ago, and we talked about you and your portfolio, and he talked about how concentrated you were. Not in a bad way, but he was just like, he just does it a different way, as I'm sure you know. And my rebuttal to that was that was because guys thinking someone would put all his wealth into, let's say, paparazzi funds, which is probably, if you are not an investor, you probably want Mohnish to be fully invested in Pipri funds. If you're an investor in Berkshire Holloway, you want Buffett to be fully invested in Berkshire Holloway. But. But you can size accordingly. If you feel it's Too much, put 10% in or 3% of your net worth or whatever in popular I funds, and then you are diversified. And I think a lot of people are missing that whenever they're looking, oh, look at the concentration here. Yes, but what is your true exposure of that? And it probably comes from this feeling of control where we feel like if things are going well, we feel like it's okay. Oh, Minus is just doing his thing. But if things, if we get something back and say, oh, that doesn't look as. It's different. If you run your own restaurant, you can just feel, I can just do this differently. But I can't control what's going on in Turkey or whatever.

[Mohnish Pabrai]

I was reading one of the investment letters of investment manager who shall go nameless. And they were very early to invest in Constellation software. Mark Leonard, unbelievably good manager, built a great business, etc. And Constellation has compounded at 30 plus percent, 35% since they went public, whatever. And these guys were invested early, et cetera. Anytime the Constellation position got to 10% or more in this fund, they trim it. And in my opinion that a great fund manager should after 20 or 30 years end up with 95% in one stock. Because what Warren has told us with the 4% rule, that's like a law of physics, is it is very difficult to find companies like Constellation. Constellation is a very rare company, just like the company I have in Turkey. Reysas is a very rare company. And so when you find yourself in the happy position of owning it, owning a small portion of it, and the guy is compounding and he's doing his thing and you know Mark Leonard, he's now has cancer, he stepped away, he's the chairman, did not take a base salary, no bonus, no base salary. And he flew commercial, okay? Then he said that I'm too old for commercial, I need to fly business. So what he told the company is I'm going to be flying business but I'm going to be paying personally. So the company used to pay for his coach travel, now the company pays nothing and he travels business. I mean, look at the ethics of the manager, okay? And the other thing is, so when I look at a business like Constellation, I actually see a business like Constellation as far less risky than a business like Walmart. I think Constellation is a more resilient business than Walmart because it is 1,000 businesses in one. I mean Walmart is also many businesses in one, but not 1,000. It may be by the time you get to the sixth or seventh business of Walmart, the rest may be very small. So Walmart is an exceptional company as well. But just if you look at resilience, I would bet con for me Constellation is more resilient. So you know, when we are managers, investment managers running a portfolio and these people who have invested in Constellation, they're listening to every conference call, they're reading every annual letter, they know that company cold and they know how good that company is. And to me it is desecration of the temple. When you sit there and say it's not going to go over 10%, the temple just got desecrated Manish, I want

[Stig Brodersen]

to take the opportunity to talk about one of your older investments. It's actually, it's the frontline investment back from the fall of 2002. And you might be thinking that's such a ridiculous question. Is that really because Stake really wants to come up with brand new questions. Is that why we're talking about something I have 24 years ago? No, that's actually not why. I think, to be fair, one of the reasons is that I think that there's some similarity to the whole Metcal thesis. But anyways, one of the things that asset managers love to talk about is their errors whenever they, if I put you on here a bit on the spot monies where they say, oh, I sold out too early, I only made 55% on frontline, I could have made 100x on that. And so sometimes asset managers like to talk about their emissions. But I think I wanted to talk about it and I sort of like, I'm a bit sneaky about it. So please forgive me for this. But beyond the lesson of exiting too early with a wonderful business case here, what key insights or principles did you take away from the frontline investment that have influenced how you approach similar opportunities today?

[Mohnish Pabrai]

So, as you know, with the Frontline story, and just to give you, give your listener the Cliff Notes version of it, is that I bought a stock with basically no downside. Very quickly I doubled my money and patted myself on the back and exited. And then I saw it go up, you know, 200x after that or more right now in the fall of 2008. You know, God loves Mohnish a lot. And the proof of that is that in the fall of 2008, I was going to make a trip to San Jose, California. And I was saying, oh, you know, I'm in San Jose, have some time. Who can I meet? And I see that Michael Burry lives in San Jose, California. And I don't know Michael Burry very well, but I sent him a email and said, michael, you know, this is Monish. You may or may not know me, but I would love to meet you in your office if you have some time. And he says, come on over. Okay? And so it's like September 2008 or something. So I go to Michael Burry's office, which you saw in the big short. You know, they showed his office, his office looks like that, all these papers all over and all that. And as soon as I go into his office, he launches into cdss, okay? And he's going, picking up all these Things like literally, he didn't even say hi, Mohnish, welcome, whatever. He just goes straight into cds. And God who loves me so much, brought me to the epicenter of CDSs, okay? There's no human on the planet who could have explained CDSs to me. And the whole housing market, implosion, etc. Which was going to happen in the future better than Michael Burry. And it's going so far above my head so fast and so poor God, he thought Mohnish is a capable guy and he said if I just send him to Mecca and show him the sermon, everything will be obvious to him. But of course, God did not understand how dumb I am. Okay, now, so, you know, this whole Frontline thing happened and you know, I got a double and went up to 100x. Last year I happened to have a trip to Norway. I'd never been to Norway in my life, okay? And I'm at this conference for offshore drillers, whatever, in Norway. That's why I went, right? And they say that we have a field trip which is not on the schedule. If you guys want to go on the field trip, the field trip is to the headquarters of Frontline, okay? So I said, you know, God has a sense of humor, okay? I said I'm going to go on this field trip because I know that's why he brought me to Norway. Not for the offshore drillers. He wants to rub my nose in. He wants to rub my nose in my mistakes. So I go to the headquarters of Frontline and we go in, we go into. And you know, it was an out of body experience. So when I go into the headquarter of the Frontline, it's very high end Persian rugs. It's very ornate, extremely ornate, old school mahogany interiors and all that. But they have a lot of art all over the place and they have a lot of ships, you know, replicas of ships and those. Replicas of ships, you know, they're like, you know, 4ft, 5ft. There's a VLCC, here's another. These are the very large crude carriers which went up 200x, right? I'm walking around and seeing that I owned 2% of all of this and Frederickson, you know, did all of that. And then I, then I go. There's like a, there's a door that opens and you can. It's right on the harbor. I mean it's the most beautiful building right on the harbor. All these boats and everything. Such a nice officer. God wanted you to see this Mohnish. He didn't want you to die just knowing that was a 200x whatever. All those VLCC everything got paid by a tiny rounding error of the returns on that investment. And so I like the way God has a sense of humor with me. You know, I knew the Frontline trip was not to hey, I'm going to make you some money. It was like, hey, I took you to the altar, you decided not to get married. And I want to show you what could have been if you had gotten married.

[Stig Brodersen]

I love it.

[Mohnish Pabrai]

So you wanted to know. I'm sorry, the similarity between Frontline and. What were you saying?

[Stig Brodersen]

The Metcoal thesis.

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Yeah, so actually the Metcol thesis is more similar to a company called Ipsco than it is to Frontline. And you may recall that Ipsco was a Canadian steel maker. And this was a beautiful math game. It's like playing blackjack in Vegas. Okay. What a blessed life. So I wake up one morning, I look at Ipsco, and Ipsco is a Canadian company with a $40 stock price. They have $15 a share in cash on their balance sheet, no debt. And they have publicly announced that for the next two years they're going to produce $15 a share of cash flow each of the next two years. So if you just hold the stock for two years, you have $45 in cash. Stock is currently at 40. Plant, equipment, inventory, everything free. Okay, what's not to like about that? And then of course, the issue was that in year three, it's a cyclical business, they make tubular steel. Cash flows could be negative, they could go below zero. But I said, you know, why entertain such morose thoughts? Okay, let's just hold the stock for two years and see what happens. I want to see Mr. Market price this thing at 40 bucks when there's $45 of cash on the balance sheet. So I put 10% of the funds in EBSCO. One year goes by and the company announces the third year is also going to be $15 a share. So now we are at $60 on the balance sheet and the stock price by now has moved to about $90, which is a little bit more reasonable than the stupid $40 we're sitting at now. When it's sitting at $90, I'm thinking mohnish, we have long term gains, we have a double. Well done and we need to be out of here. Okay? And while I'm going through these thoughts, I wake up one day and I see the stock is at 155 a share. It jumped from 90 to 155 because some Swedish company came in and offered 160 a share. Now, Mark Twain says that truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense. Why that Swedish company didn't make an offer of 50 bucks when it was 40 bucks a share is something I will never understand. Okay? But they did offer the 160. And one femtosecond after I read that, I exited my position. Okay? And I've always had great nostalgia about IPSCO. And then on Twitter, where about 260,000 of my close friends hang out, one of my close friends on Twitter posts, hey, Mohnish, this Console Energy position by David Einhorn looks like your IPSCO bet. And I read that and say, oh, God, he still loves me so much because now through Twitter and through X, he gives me what he's thinking. So anytime someone says something like ipsco, I'm going to look at it. Such a beautiful experience, no downside. So I look at Console Energy and the guy is right. It looks very similar to ipsco. They are forward selling. They've got kind of visibility in the future. It's not as clean as ipsco. IPSCO was just, you know, with a bow on it. It was just picture perfect. Like you couldn't do this was not as clean as that. But it was very favorable risk reward because of what the stock price was, what the cash flows were coming in and so on. And so I said, hallelujah, IPS goes back and we don't need to think much. We already have that framework in the head. So I went in and bought Console and I started studying the coal business. And then I find that on the Met Coal side, Console was thermal coal. They're very good company, but on the Met Coal side, it's even more favorable. And so I switched the bet from Console to Alpha and Warrior. And then, you know, one month before Charlie Munger passed away, I had never, in all the years I was friends with Charlie Munger, ever requested that he meet me. I always met him when he wanted to meet, you know, so he would say, mohnish, come for dinner. I'd come. I'd never ask for anything. I just. He's too busy. But that year in 23, for the first time, I was feeling that I need to meet Charlie, right? So I reached out to his assistant and said, you know, I'd really like to connect with Charlie. She said, oh, here's some dates and weekends, whatever. What do you want to do? So I picked a Saturday and I flew from Austin to meet Charlie it turned out that exactly four weeks after that, he passed away. Okay. And so we had our last, what was to be our last meal together in October 2023. And when I'm talking to Charlie, Console Energy comes up and Charlie says that he's invested in Console. And this was in May of 2023. And I told Charlie we both bought the same stock, a coal company, within two weeks of each other without ever having spoken to each other about it. So I said, how strange is that? So he says, mohnish, it was bound to happen. I'm glad, glad Charlie felt like that, like, bound to happen. Why are you saying that? But then I told Charlie in October, I said, Charlie, you know, I was orgasmic about Console. But then I ran into Alpha, Alpha Metallurgical Resources, and it was even better than Console. So I said, I'm going to send you a write up on Alpha and I think you should switch, you should switch from Console to Alpha. So I sent him the write up and six days before he passed away, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, he was still buying Alpha stock. What I love about Charlie is he's 99.9 years old and it's irrelevant what his life expectancy is. He's still excited to make bets. And so he, he was buying Alpha literally till he passed away. And so, I mean, I think these are, these are just, you know, great bets because no one wants to be in coal. It's a four lettered word and people don't want to even spend time thinking about it. And that's all okay with me. No problem.

[Stig Brodersen]

Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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[Mohnish Pabrai]

Vampire.

[Stig Brodersen]

All right, back to the show. I'm going to make an ambitious bridge here, Manjes, because people think that they're getting an investing show whenever they listen to you. But you also give good marriage advice. And one of the things that you, for example, have told me is that remember that the mistress is not always better than the wife. I just think the one line itself is just like, why did I ask? But anyways, it was one of the things you said to me. So I'm going to send one back to you that you should not go back to your ex girlfriend unless it's for the right reasons and not for the wrong reasons. And the reason why I came to think of that, and I know it's a bit of a stretch here, but I was looking at Frontline, I was looking at the Metcol and I had this idea of this supply opportunity whenever the demand goes parabolic and the supply can't go online and then what happens? And so on and so forth. And then it dawned to me, whenever someone like Manish would double his money but lose out on a 200 bagger, is there something lingering where we all know that we shouldn't be making the money back the way that we lost it or whatever metaphorical way you want to put that. But how do you protect your own bias against saying I should have had a 200 bag of refund line and now I see the same thing and this thesis or whatever. And so now I want to make that bet because now I learned the framework. So you're making those bets for the right reasons. How do you protect against yourself and sort of like only take the good from your past experiences and not the bad?

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Well, I think that's a wonderful question and it's a very important question. So one of the lessons that took me many decades to learn is not to sell a good company or great company when it's fairly priced or even overpriced. I was always trying to sell things at 90% of fair value. And that was a very bad framework to have because we don't know what actual fair value is for a great business only when it gets egregiously overpriced, like there's no way you can justify it is when you can consider exiting the business because of the 4% rule that what Warren has shown us or the stock market has shown us is that the true great compounders are few and far between. They are going to end up in your portfolio and your job when it ends up in your portfolio is not to be trigger happy. And so the reality of investing is that this is a very forgiving business. So let's say, for example, there's some controversy whether Walmart was part of the nifty 50 or not in 1970s. Let's take the case, it was part of the Nifty 50. It was 2% allocation to Walmart out of 50 stocks. And let's say the other 49 stocks went to zero. So we made $100,000 bet in 1970 or whatever or 1972 and 98,000 of that has gone to zero. All the companies that were there, which some of them were very good companies like McDonald's and Coke and all of that, let's say they all went to zero and you only had the 2% that you invested in Walmart. If you carried that till today, you blew out the S and P. So you blew out the S and P with 98% error rate, holding on to just one business because that one business outperformed the S and P by so much that it outperformed significantly. So there's a very strong asymmetry here where the winners can be true, truly spectacular winners. So it's not so much that if you hold on to five companies that it may have been better to sell three of them. You don't need to be optimized. You own all five and that allows you to own the one or two that just go spectacular. So the important thing is that not to get cute. So for example, if you look at our Wagons Fund, right, we have the Constellation businesses in there, you know, the Mark Leonard Constellation businesses. They have a good future. Okay? I have no crystal ball that tells me what those companies look like 10 or 20 years from now. But I want to let them run. I want to let them run. We have the coal companies. I also don't know what those look like 10, 20 years from now. We want to let those run too. It looks favorable. We want to let them run. So we have some Turkish bets in there too, you know, like Reysas, etc. We want to let them run. And I think that when you put enough of these things, which have great characteristics, the world is a messy place. Things will come from left field. We don't know what happens to these different companies at what point. But it's almost inconceivable that all of them fall apart, that Constellation falls apart and the cold bets fall apart and Turkey falls apart. And you know, our Offshore drillers fall apart, everything falls apart. You know, that's just, in fact, I just can't see that. I, I can see that maybe one or two of them might have some issues, but I don't see it across the board. So we don't need to be, you know, right to the fourth decimal. We also don't need to know which one of these is going to be the one. They're all there. Let them all run, let them go do their thing. We just watch in the sidelines, see what happens and that's it.

[Stig Brodersen]

So whenever you're saying that, you're mentioning Walmart and saying there are 50 stocks and you need to hold on and it's a 2% position and I think I'm probably the only one of your investors in PowerPoint funds who wants you to be more concentrated because I have this bias where I feel the highest conviction ideas and that's what you're doing. Personally, I only have five stocks, probably because I don't understand a lot of things and so I have a bias towards concentration. But then to your point, if you have 50 stocks and then just 2% allocation, you just hold on for 50 years and then it beats the S&P 500 if the 49 others go to zero. How do you think about position sizing? Are you thinking differently about the 10 by 10 framework, for example, in public funds and that we talked about in the past, or how should we square the circle?

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Well, the ETF laws and rules require plenty of diversification, much more diversification than I would naturally. That's my natural bent. So we are not going to have large positions there, which is fine. And in Pabrai funds, we've never wanted to put more than 10% into anything, so that's also fine. And so basically, I think at the end of the day, if you've got a spectacular winner, it's going to take care of itself. Even with a small position size, as long as you don't trim, as long as you don't desecrate the temple, we're all fine. And so we don't need to go all in with a big conviction. The winners are going to get there. Even no matter what they wear. They start out, they'll get there. So just be relaxed and patient and they'll be fine. In fact, that's exactly what happens in index investing. We don't get to see what's happening with the sausage factory, how the sausage is made with the index. But effectively what's happening in the index is that it Keeps the winners for a very long time. And those few 4 or 5% of companies are driving the whole end result.

[Stig Brodersen]

I'm looking all these mental models and trying to figure out how to go back to first principles. And you're typically in trouble whenever you're listening to someone who's talking about first principles because they seem to go in all kinds of directions whenever you do. But I was trying to think about Darwin and what he taught us about survival, adaptation. And I wanted to give you that framework. And please feel free to question the premise in the first place. But have you learned anything from Darwin about how to avoid ruin and compound capital in investing?

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Well, there's a wonderful book written by a great investor called Polak Prasad called what I Learned from Darwin About Investing. And it's one of the best investment books I ever read. I think it's a wonderful book and in fact I learned a lot from Pullak. And Pulak is a interesting guy. He lives in Singapore and he runs a fund. It's I think about 5 billion or so. I don't think they're taking new capital in. He's posted his entire portfolio on their homepage and basically there's no movement in that portfolio. If they buy a company, they're married to the company. They might do five years of research before they buy a company, but once they buy the company, they're pretty much all in forever. It's a very wonderful framework where they think of themselves as owners of these businesses. And these are businesses with truly exceptional corporate governance, very well run businesses. They can be very basic businesses, but they're really well run. So I think Darwin says that the species that survive are not the strongest or the biggest, but he says the ones that are the fittest, it's survival of the fittest. And I think that applies to investments big time. So if we look at a company like, let's say you look at a company like Microsoft, I mean the evolution that business has gone through over the last six decades or whatever they've been around is unbelievable. I mean they've continuously reinvented themselves and each time they've reinvented, I mean they were. Microsoft was threatened with extinction so many times and if they had not zigzagged, they would have gone extinct like everyone else did. And so that's an example of a business that's a very fit business. Even though it was a big business, what was important was the fitness of the business. And when we look at business like Walmart for example, that's also a very fit business because they've been so fanatical about delivering value to their customers and efficiency and taking cost out of the system and all of that. That they've taken out everyone and built their footprint. So, yes, we want to have the fittest businesses. And one of the definitions of fitness is lack of leverage. So when you look at these businesses, you want to see management teams that have the ability to seek that and you have a capital structure that allows you the freedom to zigzag. And so I think, yeah, there's a lot of things that you can learn from Darwin that you can apply in the corporate world, which would be helpful.

[Stig Brodersen]

Well, let's jump from Darwin and then to our friend Guy, especially in. I think Guy would appreciate that we make that jump, but especially in this tricky situation. But I wanted to round off the episode by asking you, Manish, what's the most important thing that you learn from Guy? Both whenever it comes to investing, but also about living a good life.

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Yeah. Well, first of all, Guy's situation is very unfortunate. Very sad, actually. I was so heartbroken. Probably still heartbroken. Guy and I are very different people. And I would have never predicted that someone like him would be my best friend. I mean, just we are so different in how we think about things, you know? And I recently wrote a letter to Guy, old fashioned letter. And I told him that I've often wondered, why do we have a connection? Why do I feel such a strong connection with you? Why do you feel such a strong connection with you? And I told him that I concluded that it was because he sees me. You remember the Avatar movie? I see you. You don't remember. Stig, you have to go back and listen. See the movie again. Okay? You got too much going on. Watch the movie. So in the movie there's a. There's a point. And they bring it up several points where they make the comment, I see you and I see you is very deep. And what, what I was trying to. What I felt with Guy, I still feel is he gets me in a way almost no one gets me. And I get him in a way almost nobody gets him. So I told him, guy, I think the reason we have this connection is because you see me and I see you. And I remember that one time Guy and I were going to take an overnight train in India from Mumbai to Delhi. The train leaves at around 4pm from Mumbai and it gets into Delhi around 10 o' clock in the morning. It's an overnight train and it's a beautiful train. It's The Rajdhani. It's a very nice train. And he. And I had a two person private compartment. And I told him, guy, I want to just tell you something. Just when the. When the journey was about to start. I said, you see that? There's that button there? That's a bell. And I said, when you press that bell, the butler is going to show up. And the butler will do whatever you want, okay? But I said that I want you, the first time you press that bell to drown the butler in cash, okay? I said, the first time you press the bell, don't ask him for anything. Just hand over. And I said, drowning in cash in India, $25 is enough, okay? He's almost going to have a cardiac at that point. So I said, just ring the bell. So he rings the bell, the butler shows up, Guy gives him the 25. And I'm going to take a little detour for a second before I can continue the story. Another friend of mine who used to be an engineer installing cellular networks in Africa, he used to work for AT&T, so they'd go to different African countries and he was in charge. So he said that one time he went to Ghana, okay? And they always put him up in the best hotel, Accra, right on the ocean. Beautiful hotel, right? So he says that, you know, the porter carrying my luggage to my villa, I gave him a $1 tip. And the guy looked at the dollar and he said, he gave me a full military salute, okay? And he said, no one has ever given me that type of salute or that type of respect ever in my life. So he said. I gave him another dollar and said, can you please do it again? He said I was giving away a lot of dollars because of the salute. And he said it was awesome. So anyway, coming back to. Coming back to Guy. And so the guy shows up, gives him the $25. He's like, he's almost died. It's like almost half his month's salary or something. And he said, yes, sir, what can I do for you? So Guy says, nothing right now, please. This was just. We just wanted to say that we're so happy to have you, et cetera. And the guy couldn't believe. He couldn't believe that we had called him. Thank you. And I said, now, Guy, feel free to ring that bell as often as you want, okay? And he's going to drop everyone else and be here, okay? Now, Guy loves to have tea, right? And I said, don't you want some tea, Guy? He says, yeah. So in that you know, 17 hour journey. Guy must have rung that bell, like 30 times, okay? Like, there was tea coming every 45 minutes. And then, you know, he's. He's FaceTiming his wife, Lori. He's in an orgasmic state. Okay? He's an orgasmic state in a third world country with a train, whatever. And he's telling his wife Lori, that in the compartment, we don't have to go to a dining car. In the compartment, they bring me my tea, they bring me biscuits to bring me this, bring me that. And then I tell them it's slightly cold, they bring me a new one. This, that, whatever. And then he says, for dinner, white tablecloth, everything in our suite, in our thing, he's continuously FaceTiming his wife, telling her this, that whatever else is going on. And I told Guy, guy, I see. If you were traveling with anyone else, they would not be able to understand what's really going to get you excited. And so that was just a wonderful experience. And I felt many times when I'm doing something, he'll make some comment and I'll say what? He's looking straight into me. He knows exactly what I need. You know, it was just so beautiful, wonderful.

[Stig Brodersen]

I see you

[Mohnish Pabrai]

watch the movie again.

[Stig Brodersen]

You said Avatar, didn't you?

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Avatar.

[Stig Brodersen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go out and watch Avatar. Let that be the final words for this episode. Manish, thank you. Thank you so much for your service to the value investing community. And how poetic that you say all these wonderful things about Guy. I'm sure he would say the same thing about you. And we published this over the Berkshire weekend. Any concluding remarks here before I let you go?

[Mohnish Pabrai]

Well, you know, Stig, I always enjoy our conversations and you always impress me so much because every time I'm thinking, Stig is going to have such a hard time. You know, he's asked me everything already. He's poor. Guy has to watch so many hours of videos and all that and. But. But you outdo yourself each time. It's so much fun. Thank you so much.

[Stig Brodersen]

Oh, thank you so much for saying so.

[Mohnish Pabrai]

All right, we'll see you soon.

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