Epic gamers are in a different category
Charlie Munger said this on camera, weeks before he died: "I don't regard Elon Musk as truly rich, because I don't think it's sure that everything he's working on can work."
Then he went further. "I would not invest in Elon Musk myself."
Munger's reasoning wasn't about Tesla's product or Musk's talent. It was about pattern.
"He's used leverage so much that he's doubled down right to the edge of extinction maybe two or three times." Asked how many times Musk had walked that edge without falling in, Munger's answer: "he's done it three times. Maybe he's got six more."
This is coming from a man who spent six decades building Berkshire on the opposite principle. Munger and Buffett deliberately took smaller stakes than they could have afforded, using less leverage than was available, specifically so a bad stretch would never wipe out the people who trusted them.
Munger used the phrase "two hard pile" for things he'd rather not spend time thinking about, things he can't fix himself. He used it earlier in the same conversation for the risk of nuclear war. Elon Musk went in the same pile.
"I never met with him," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't exist."