Book review: Poor Charlie’s Almanack

THERE is no shortage of advice to improve our diets. There is an “expert” for every taste: from doctors and dieticians to members of the US Congress (who in 2011 defined pizza as a vegetable) and social media influencers. Food companies add their own voices. The cornucopia of competing guidance overwhelms, but common sense and wisdom from our elders can guide us to the best choices.

There is no shortage of guidance to improve our investment returns, either. The late Charlie Munger – long-time vice-chair of Berkshire Hathaway – offers his own recipe for investment success, and it is very much like the dietary common sense that informed mealtimes a few decades ago.

In Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T Munger, Munger dishes out folksy wisdom about values and valuation accumulated over almost a century. His examples are punctuated with memorable phrases, such as the utility of “a one-legged man in an a**-kicking contest” and a man who owns only a hammer and to whom every problem looks like a nail.