REUTERS/Rick Wilking
- Daily Journal revealed a $37 million stake in Alibaba this week.
- Warren Buffett's right-hand man, Charlie Munger, is the newspaper publisher's chairman.
- Alibaba is one of five stocks in Daily Journal's portfolio.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Charlie Munger may be a 97-year-old who has spent decades investing in American corporate giants like Coca-Cola and Costco, but he's also open to backing Chinese technology companies.
Daily Journal – which has counted Munger as its chairman since 1977 – added Alibaba to its stock portfolio last quarter, a regulatory filing revealed this week.
The newspaper publisher and software developer bought 165,000 shares in the Chinese e-commerce group. Its stake was worth $37 million at the end of March, making Alibaba its third-biggest position after Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The holding made up 19% of its $197 million portfolio, which contains only five stocks.
Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner and the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has bet on Chinese companies before. He brought BYD to Buffett's attention, which led to Berkshire plowing about $230 million into the electric-vehicle company in 2008. Its stake is worth over $5 billion today.
The Alibaba position is notable because Munger blasted the company's founder for criticizing the Chinese government during the Daily Journal annual meeting in February.
"Jack Ma was very arrogant to be telling the Chinese government how dumb they were and how stupid their policies were and so forth," Munger said. "Considering their system, that is not what he should have been doing."
The notoriously outspoken Munger also took aim at bitcoin, SPACs, Robinhood, and stock-market speculators during the meeting.