Charlie Munger still loves this, hates that, and sees "crazy" stock prices

Speaking remotely to an Australian financial conference, Charlie Munger predicted Costco could rival Amazon in e-commerce, and said cryptocurrencies "should never have been invented." He also thinks the stock market is "even crazier" than the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.

VIEW IN BROWSER | SUBSCRIBE FRI, DEC 03, 2021 WARREN BUFFETT WATCH Munger still loves this, hates that, and sees 'crazy' stock prices Charlie Munger, one of Costco's biggest fans (video evidence below) and a director since 1997, thinks the members-only big-box retailer could pose a future threat to Amazon's dominance of e-commerce.   Speaking remotely to Australia's Sohn conference today, Munger predicted that "Amazon may have more to fear from Costco in terms of retailing than the reverse. Costco will eventually be a huge internet player. People trust it and they have enormous purchasing power."     The Australian Business Review also reports that Munger hasn't softened his intense dislike of cryptocurrencies.   They "should never have been invented," and the people promoting them are "not thinking about the customer, they are just thinking about themselves."   He praised China for banning crypto and said the U.S. should do the same. "I want to make money by selling people things that are good for them, not things that are bad for them."   Munger also sees some insanity in soaring stock prices.    "Some of the valuations we saw in the dotcom boom were higher. But overall, I consider this as being even crazier than the dotcom boom which blew up in 2000."   He said that with many companies trading at or above 35 times earnings, "It is hard to get results which could be called normal results in investing." BUFFETT AROUND THE INTERNET Some links may require a subscription The Telegraph (UK) on MSN: Questor: yes, it's heretical – but now is the time to sell Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Reuters on Yahoo Finance: Brazil's (Berkshire-backed) Nubank slashes IPO valuation target to about $40 bln Bloomberg on Yahoo Finance: (Berkshire-backed) Paytm in Focus Again as Analysts Query CEO on Path to Profit Barron's: How Apple's Rally Is a Boon to Berkshire Hathaway [Subscription] BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH         BERKSHIRE'S TOP U.S. STOCK HOLDINGS - Dec. 3, 2021     Berkshire's top holdings of disclosed publicly-traded U.S. stocks by market value, based on today's closing prices.   Holdings are as of September 30, 2021 as reported in Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filing on November 15, 2021, except for Apple, Bank of America, and U.S. Bancorp, which also include shares held as of September 30, 2021 as disclosed in New England Asset Management's 13F filing on August 16, 2021.   In addition to U.S. stocks, shares held as of December 31, 2020 of China's BYD, as listed in Buffett's 2020 letter to shareholders, are included. The price of those shares in U.S. trading is used to approximate the current market value of the position. The value of the stake as a percentage of the company's market value is fixed at what was listed as of December 31, 2020 in the letter.   The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.   QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)   If you aren't already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here.     -- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch   Unsubscribe Manage Newsletters Terms of Service   Digital Products Feedback Privacy Policy   © 2021 CNBC LLC. All rights reserved. A property of NBCUniversal. 900 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632 Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes and Market Data and Analysis. Data also provided by THOMSON REUTERS