Towards the end of 2018, you mentioned that you guarantee you could make a 50% annual return if you had to start again with under $1 million. The question is, if tomorrow you woke up in the body of a. Your body. What do you mean? Your body. But that's fine. And your name was now Warren Alakat. And you had some money to invest on a full-time basis. What method or method would you use to achieve that return? Would it involve flipping through 20,000 pages of Moody's manual or similar publications or finding, you know, two-fungsickabats? Or would it be hunting for great companies at a fair price as Mr. Munger would? Or would it be a combination of both with opportunity costs serving as the final arbiter, or which method to use, given that your investing opportunity has now brought in significantly? Thank you, Captain Cap. Good question. I'm glad you came.
The answer would be, in my particular case, it would be going through the 20,000 pages. And since we were talking about railroads, you know, I went through the Moody's Transportation Manual a couple of times. That was 1,500 or 2,000 pages or probably 1,500 pages. And I found all kinds of interesting things when I was 50, or when I was 20 or 21. And I don't imagine there's anybody here that knows about the Green Bay and Western Railroad Company. But there were hundreds and hundreds of railroad companies, and I like to read about every one of them.
我的回答是,就我个人而言,我会浏览那20000页的内容。既然我们在谈论铁路,你知道吗,我浏览过几次穆迪交通手册,那本书有1500到2000页,大概1500页吧。当我五十岁或二十几岁的时候,我发现了各种有趣的东西。我不认为这里有人知道Green Bay and Western Railroad Company,但那时候有成百上千的铁路公司,我喜欢阅读关于每一家公司的资料。
The Green Bay and Western, in those days, everybody had a nickname for railroads. I mean, that was just what Northern Pacific was the nipper. And, you know, the Phoebe Snow was one of them in the East that used to go up the Cornell. And the Green Bay and Western was known as Grab Baggy Didn't Walk and GBNW. And they had a bond that was actually the common stock. And they had a common stock that was actually a bond. And, you know, that could lead to unusual things.
But they wouldn't lead to unusual things that would work for you when many millions of dollars. But if you collected a whole bunch of those, which I set out to do, and actually that's what impressed Charlie when I first met him, because I knew all the details of all these little companies on the West Coast that he thought I would never have heard of. But I knew about the Los Angeles Athletic Club or whatever it might be. And he thought he was the only one to do about that. And that became an instant point of connection.
So to answer your question, I would, I don't know what the equivalent of Moody's manuals or anything would be now. But I would find out everything about everything small. And I would find something with a million dollars you could earn 50% a year. But you have to be in love with the subject. You can't just be in love with the money. You really got to just find it.
I could, you know, essentially, like, you know, people find other things in other fields because they just love looking for the biologists looks for something because they want to find something they, and it's built into, I don't know, the human brain works that much. I don't think anybody understands too well how the human brain works. But there's different people that just find it exciting to expand their knowledge in a given area. We've, you know, I know great British players, I know, great chess players, actually, the spar off came to all-mon metmoses B. I've had the luck of meeting a lot of people that are unbelievably smart in their own arena and do some unbelievably dumb things in other areas.
So all I know is the human brain is complicated. But it does its best when you find out what your brain is really suited for, and then you just pound the hell out from that point, and that's what I would be doing if I had a small amount of money and I wanted to make 50% a year. But I also wanted to just play the game, and you can't do it if you really, if you don't find the game of interest, whether it's bridge or whether, you know, whatever it may be, chess, or the stage finding securities that are undervalued.
But it sounds to me like you're on the right track. I mean, anybody that'll come all the way to the annual meeting has got something in their mind other than bridge or chess. So I'm glad you came and come again next year.