Charlie Munger's best-documented portfolio, the Daily Journal Corporation's marketable securities, showed four US-listed holdings worth $249.8m in its 13F for 30 September 2026, with Wells Fargo and Bank of America at 88.8% of that value. Munger managed these holdings from the first purchase in 2009 until his death on 28 November 2023.
The company's filings name no successor manager; the board plans to manage and harvest the portfolio to support its software business rather than add new stock ideas. At 30 June 2026 the securities were worth $406.0m, 86.0% of the company's total assets, and were concentrated in six companies.
Key takeaways
- Measure concentration against the whole portfolio. Three banks were 91.6% of the September 2026 13F, but the June 13F covered only 63.2% of all securities; a partial filing is an incomplete risk picture.
- Tax and borrowing constrain the next decision. At June 2026, $266.9m of unrealised gains carried an estimated $68.7m tax liability, while the company still warned about margin calls.
- The investment purpose can change after the manager. The board plans to harvest the holdings for its software business; a household needs its own spending and succession rules rather than a copy of the stock list.
What does Charlie Munger's Daily Journal portfolio hold?
The Daily Journal's portfolio holds Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Alibaba and US Bancorp in its US-listed part, plus two holdings that its 13F does not show. The 13F-HR for 30 September 2026, filed on 2 November 2026, reports a total value of $249.8m across four lines. It is the latest disclosure; the company's 10-K for the year to 30 September 2026 had not been filed by 3 November 2026.
Of reported 13F value, 30 September 2023 then 30 September 2026: Wells Fargo 41.0% and 45.3%; Bank of America 39.7% and 43.6%; Alibaba (ADS) 16.4% and 8.4%; US Bancorp 2.9% and 2.8%. Source: Daily Journal Form 13F-HR information tables for 30 September 2023 and 30 September 2026; chart data (CSV). The September 2023 filing is the last one made before Munger died. A 13F covers US-listed long equities and certain options; it excludes cash, bonds, short positions and most non-US listings.
| Holding | Shares, 30 Sep 2023 | Shares, 30 Sep 2026 | Value, 30 Sep 2026 | % of 13F value |
|---|
| Wells Fargo | 1,591,800 | 1,413,000 | $113.1m | 45.3% |
| Bank of America | 2,300,000 | 2,000,000 | $108.9m | 43.6% |
| Alibaba (ADS) | 300,000 | 195,000 | $21.0m | 8.4% |
| US Bancorp | 140,000 | 119,500 | $6.9m | 2.8% |
All four share counts fell in the quarter to 31 March 2024: Alibaba by 35.0%, US Bancorp by 14.6%, Bank of America by 13.0% and Wells Fargo by 11.2%. They have not changed in any 13F since. Alibaba first appeared at 31 March 2021, with 165,320 ADS; the holding reached 602,060 at 31 December 2021 and was 300,000 by 31 March 2022.
What does the Daily Journal's 13F leave out?
The 13F leaves out about a third of the portfolio. The 10-Q for the quarter to 30 June 2026 values the marketable securities at $406.0m and says they "were concentrated in just six companies". The 13F for the same date reports $256.7m, so $149.3m, or 36.8%, sat in two holdings it does not list (our calculation).
The 10-Q says most of the $266.9m of unrealized gains "were in the common stocks of three U.S. financial institutions and one foreign manufacturer". No manufacturer appears in the 13F, so in our reading that manufacturer is one of the two holdings outside it. The 2023 annual report mentions one investment denominated in Hong Kong dollars. None of the filings we read names either holding, and we do not name them here.
Who manages the Daily Journal portfolio after Munger?
No individual manager is named; the board oversees the portfolio and plans to run it down gradually to support the company's software business. The Daily Journal told Nasdaq in a Form 8-K that Munger, a director and audit committee member, died on 28 November 2023. Its 10-Q for the quarter to 31 March 2024 records that Munger "had managed the Company's marketable securities portfolio since the original purchases were made with the Company's excess cash in 2009 as an alternative to near-zero interest rate investments."
The 2025 annual report sets out the plan in its risk factors:
"Henceforth, the Company expects to manage and harvest its marketable securities portfolio primarily to support the further development of Journal Technologies and its business. The Company does not anticipate initiating new investments in public common stocks unrelated to its core businesses."
The same section calls Munger "The irreplaceable manager of our marketable securities portfolio" and says the board has been working to keep the portfolio well managed. Steven Myhill-Jones signs the filings as chief executive and chairman of the board.
The record since then is one sale and steady debt repayment. In March 2024 the company sold about $40.6m of securities, realising $14.3m of gains, and cut its margin loan from $75.0m at 30 September 2023 to $29.4m. It sold nothing in fiscal 2025 or in the nine months to 30 June 2026, when the loan stood at $20.0m. In October 2026 it bought Revir Technologies, an Austin software company, with cash on hand (8-K, 15 October 2026).
How concentrated was Munger's approach at the Daily Journal?
Very: listed shares made up between 73.9% and 89.9% of the Daily Journal's total assets at every fiscal year end from 2016 to 2025. For a company that also runs software for courts and justice agencies and newspapers, that is an unusual balance sheet, as the company itself notes in its risk factors.
Marketable securities as a share of total assets: September 2016 73.9%; 2017 81.8%; 2018 80.4%; 2019 82.0%; 2020 75.2%; 2021 89.0%; 2022 86.3%; 2023 85.4%; 2024 88.8%; 2025 89.9%; 30 June 2026 86.0%. Source: our calculation from Daily Journal balance sheets in its 10-K filings for fiscal 2016 to 2025 and the 10-Q for 30 June 2026, as tagged in SEC XBRL company facts; chart data (CSV). The Daily Journal's fiscal year ends on 30 September.
The concentration also carried borrowing. In fiscal 2013 the company borrowed $29.5m against its securities to buy two companies, and later borrowed $45.5m more to buy additional securities, taking the margin loan to $75.0m by 30 September 2023, according to the 2023 annual report. That loan was 24.7% of the securities' value at that date and 4.9% at 30 June 2026 (our calculation).
Munger explained the case for concentrating skill in his "Vice Chairman's Thoughts" in Berkshire's 2014 letter:
"Buffett was, in effect, using the winning method of the famous basketball coach, John Wooden, who won most regularly after he had learned to assign virtually all playing time to his seven best players."
He added that "in his case the exercise of skill was concentrated in one person, not seven". On the previous page he listed debt among the Berkshire rules: "Berkshire would have little debt outstanding as it tried to maintain (i) virtually perfect creditworthiness under all conditions and (ii) easy availability of cash and credit for deployment in times presenting unusual opportunities."
His break with Benjamin Graham is part of the same story. In the 2023 letter, Buffett recalls Munger's advice in 1965 to add "wonderful businesses purchased at fair prices" and to "abandon everything you learned from your hero, Ben Graham. It works but only when practiced at small scale." Graham's own rule for cautious investors was a stock-bond split, which our study of Benjamin Graham's defensive investor tests.
What were Munger's links to Li Lu and BYD?
Munger credited Li Lu, founder of Himalaya Capital, with introducing him to BYD, and BYD became a Berkshire investment, not a disclosed Daily Journal one. At the Daily Journal's virtual annual meeting on 15 February 2023, Munger "credited Li Lu, founder of Seattle-based asset manager Himalaya Capital, for introducing him to BYD", as reported by CNBC the same day. CNBC quoted him: "I have never helped do anything at Berkshire [Hathaway] that was as good as BYD and I only did it once."
Berkshire's 2008 letter described BYD as "an amazing Chinese company in which we have a 10% interest". The 2009 letter lists 225,000,000 BYD shares, 9.9% of the company, bought for $232m and worth $1,986m at the end of 2009. The stake sat in Berkshire Hathaway Energy, whose balance sheet showed BYD shares worth $415m at 31 December 2024 and none at 31 March 2025 (10-Q, Note 4).
The Daily Journal's filings do not name BYD. Whether its Hong Kong dollar holding is BYD is not stated in any filing we read.
What is myth and what is record about Munger's portfolio?
Most popular claims about "Munger's portfolio" mix up a company's holdings, Berkshire's holdings and quotations that cannot be traced to a published record.
| Popular claim | What the filings show |
|---|
| The Daily Journal 13F is Munger's portfolio. | It is a company's portfolio, and the 13F showed 63.2% of it at 30 June 2026. Munger's personal holdings were never disclosed in these filings. |
| The Daily Journal is a small Berkshire. | The 2023 annual report states: "The Company is not a smaller version of Berkshire Hathaway Inc." |
| The portfolio is still run Munger's way. | The board plans to manage and harvest it, sold part of it in March 2024 and plans no new unrelated stock investments. |
| Munger held BYD through the Daily Journal. | BYD was a Berkshire Hathaway Energy holding, gone by 31 March 2025; the Daily Journal names no BYD position. |
| Widely shared Daily Journal meeting quotes. | No official transcript is published; we could not verify them and left them out. |
What does concentration mean for crash risk and compounded growth?
A concentrated portfolio can compound fast, but every large fall must be recovered by a larger gain, and a forced sale during the fall makes the loss permanent. Buffett's 2017 letter lists four falls of more than a third in Berkshire's share price between 1973 and 2009.
Falls in Berkshire's share price from high to low: March 1973 to January 1975 -59.1%; October 1987 -37.1%; June 1998 to March 2000 -48.9%; September 2008 to March 2009 -50.7%. Source: Berkshire Hathaway 2017 shareholder letter, PDF page 9; chart data (CSV). Buffett's conclusion beneath the table: "This table offers the strongest argument I can muster against ever using borrowed money to own stocks."
The arithmetic is unforgiving: after the 50.7% fall of 2008-2009, the shares needed to gain 103.0% to get back to their high (our calculation from the 147,000 high and 72,400 low). Our guide to crash recovery maths shows how the required gain rises with the size of the loss.
The Daily Journal shows the same pattern on a small scale. In fiscal 2022 its net loss of $75.6m included $123.4m of unrealised losses on its securities. In the nine months to 30 June 2026 the securities lost $87.0m with no sales, a 17.7% fall from $493.0m to $406.0m (our calculation from the unrounded balance-sheet values).
Its 2025 annual report warns that "we could be subject to margin calls should the value of the investments decrease significantly"; a smaller loan reduces that risk but does not remove it. For Berkshire's own approach to concentration and cash, see our study of Warren Buffett's asset allocation; for another concentrated manager, see Stanley Druckenmiller's portfolio strategy.
What does copio think of this portfolio?
The Daily Journal combines concentration, deferred tax and a corporate spending purpose that a holdings screenshot cannot capture. Three banks were 91.6% of the September 2026 13F, but the June filing covered only 63.2% of the company's securities portfolio. That supports a warning about the disclosed concentration, not a claim to know every offsetting exposure.
The securities fell 17.7% in the nine months to June 2026 despite lower borrowing. Patience and less debt can reduce pressure to sell; neither guarantees a smaller market loss. Copio does not grade this portfolio because its single stocks and unnamed holdings cannot be entered cleanly in the checker.
Three checks for your portfolio
- Measure concentration across the full household. Combine direct shares, fund holdings and employer stock, then calculate the largest company and sector weights as shares of total investments. Include accounts missing from your main brokerage screen. Stress the dominant sector separately from the broad market; three bank names can still depend on the same credit cycle.
- Compare concentration risk with the tax cost of changing it. Record cost basis, unrealised gains and the tax treatment of each account before considering a sale. Compare using new contributions, a staged rebalance and a sale on the same after-tax basis. The Daily Journal's estimated $68.7m deferred tax liability explains a constraint; it does not establish that retaining concentration is always preferable.
- Write a funding and succession plan. List spending needs, loan terms and any collateral thresholds that could force a sale during a fall. Record who can access and manage the accounts if you cannot, and the rules they should follow. The board's decision to harvest Munger's portfolio for a software business shows why the purpose and decision maker belong beside the holdings list.
Our allocation guide compares ways to manage losses across a whole portfolio. Copio provides educational analysis and does not choose securities or place trades for you.
FAQ
What stocks are in Charlie Munger's Daily Journal portfolio?
The Daily Journal Corporation's 13F for 30 September 2026, filed on 2 November 2026, lists four US-listed holdings worth $249.8m: Wells Fargo (45.3% of reported 13F value), Bank of America (43.6%), Alibaba ADS (8.4%) and US Bancorp (2.8%). The company's filings say its marketable securities were concentrated in six companies, so two holdings, worth about $149.3m at 30 June 2026, are not in the 13F.
Who manages the Daily Journal portfolio after Charlie Munger died?
No individual successor is named in the filings we read. Munger, who died on 28 November 2023, had managed the portfolio since the first purchases in 2009. The 2025 annual report says the board has worked to keep the portfolio well managed, expects to manage and harvest it mainly to support the Journal Technologies software business, and does not plan new investments in public stocks unrelated to its core businesses.
Has the Daily Journal sold any of Munger's stocks?
Since Munger's death, once. In March 2024 it sold about $40.6m of securities and used the proceeds to pay down its margin loan; the 13F share counts of all four US holdings fell between December 2023 and March 2024. It sold nothing in fiscal 2025 or in the nine months to 30 June 2026, and the share counts have not changed since. Under Munger it also sold some shares, realising $14.2m of gains in fiscal 2022.
Did Charlie Munger own BYD through the Daily Journal?
The Daily Journal's filings do not name BYD. They mention one holding denominated in Hong Kong dollars (2023) and an unnamed foreign manufacturer. BYD was a Berkshire Hathaway investment: 225 million shares bought in 2008 for $232m. Berkshire Hathaway Energy reported no BYD shares by 31 March 2025. CNBC reported in February 2023 that Munger credited Li Lu of Himalaya Capital with introducing him to BYD.
Is the Daily Journal a small Berkshire Hathaway?
No, according to the company itself. Its 2023 annual report states that it is not a smaller version of Berkshire Hathaway, and that its goal is to build its software business while keeping its traditional newspaper business. Its listed shares, held in six companies, made up 86.0% of total assets at 30 June 2026.
