Letter to Warren Buffett from Charlie Munger on Stepping Down
At yesterday’s Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting, Warren Buffett, as always, took questions from the audience. Toward the end, he announced that he would be stepping down as CEO, passing the baton to Greg Abel. The room responded with an emotional 11-minute standing ovation. It was only his second Q&A session without Charlie Munger, his long-time partner and friend. That moment stirred something in me—I couldn’t stop thinking about what Charlie might have said. Eventually, I poured those thoughts into a letter, weaving in some of the most memorable quotes from both Warren and Charlie.
Below is letter from Charlie to Warren
Dear Warren,
Well, partner, the day has come. You’re stepping down as CEO of the greatest corporate cathedral ever built without selling its soul to the devil. If this were a Shakespeare play, it would be the final act of King Lear—only this time, the kingdom isn’t crumbling, and the king hasn’t lost his marbles.
You always said we were just two guys who got rich slowly. The world called us many things: sages, oracles, even the last capitalists with a conscience. But behind all the mythology, you were simply a man with an internal compass that pointed true north and a mind that could dissect any business model like a surgeon wielding Occam’s razor.
Let’s not pretend you did this alone. But let’s also not kid ourselves—without you, Berkshire wouldn’t be Berkshire. You took a dying textile mill and turned it into a treasure chest of capitalism. You made investing seem almost boring—and in doing so, made it safer, more rational, and more profitable than anyone before.
You touched lives, Warren. Not in the flimsy motivational speaker way. You touched them by example. By giving. By being honest in a world of slippery characters. Whether it was a teenager reading your letters in India, or an 85-year-old grandma in Kansas holding one share for her grandchildren, they saw you as something rare: a rich man who remained decent.
Let’s talk numbers, briefly. You turned $10,000 into billions. You built a fortress of a company without flashy acquisitions or Silicon Valley fairy dust. Just discipline, patience, and common sense. You made capitalism respectable, not just profitable.
But what really set you apart wasn’t how you compounded capital—it was how you compounded character. You had integrity in a room full of people chasing shortcuts. And you did it with humor. I still remember how you said, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” You gave people the truth, even when it stung, and dressed it in wit so it went down easy.
Now, I’ve always said, “Invert, always invert.” So let’s do that. If someone asked how to destroy a company, I’d say: chase trends, trust forecasts, hire consultants, and read nothing. You did the opposite. You read more than a monk, trusted your own brain, avoided forecasts like the plague, and never outsourced your thinking. That’s how you built something lasting.
You taught the world that a moat wasn’t just a medieval idea—it was a business model. And then you built dozens of them. GEICO, Coke, BNSF, See’s Candy—each one a fortress of cash protected by brand, cost structure, or inertia. And you didn’t just talk moats—you lived them. You widened them with scale, deepened them with culture, and reinforced them with time.
Our partnership—well, that’s been the most important deal of my life. We disagreed, sure. You liked Coke more than I liked sugar. But we never had a fight. Not once. Because we both knew what mattered. We liked each other, trusted each other, and most of all—we kept our egos in check. In a business where ego is often the hidden expense on every balance sheet, that was our biggest edge.
You believed in deferred gratification when the world was drunk on immediacy. You said, “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.” And then you proved it, decade after decade. You kept a level head in panics, and reminded people that fear is more contagious than the flu—and twice as destructive.
And now, you’re handing over the reins. The king is abdicating, but he leaves behind a company that’s built to last longer than the pyramids. You trained your successors—not with empty slogans, but by showing up every day and doing the damn work. They’ve seen how you think. They’ve watched you weigh risk, not react to noise. That’s your real legacy: not the fortune, but the thinking process.
Warren, you were the man who could buy 5% of Coca-Cola and sleep at night, because you knew more about human nature than Wall Street did. You once said, “You don’t have to swing at every pitch—just wait for your fat pitch.” That philosophy saved so many people from ruin. You taught the world how to say no—and meant it.
You’re leaving as you lived—on your own terms. And you’re doing it while your brain still works better than half the finance professors in the Ivy League. That’s rare. Most people cling to the chair. You’re walking away, leaving behind the gold standard of corporate leadership.
But let me be clear: just because you’re stepping down as CEO doesn’t mean you’re stepping out of our minds. Your letters will be read a hundred years from now. Your jokes will be quoted in investor meetings long after we’re both dust.
You once said, “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” Well, you’ve built some good chains—honesty, rationality, long-term thinking—and Berkshire is stronger for it.
You’ve made capitalism slightly more intelligent and considerably more moral. And you did it without ever using a spreadsheet. You used a plain mind sharpened by reading, discipline, and Midwest values.
Congratulations, Warren. It’s been one hell of a ride. If there’s a Mount Rushmore of business, your face is carved right at the top. And if there’s a heaven for value investors, I imagine the angels are holding a shareholder meeting right now, waiting for your next one-liner.
With love, admiration, and the occasional scorn you so richly deserved,
Charlie