Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger was an investor and Warren Buffett's partner for half a century, which is the unusual half: the partnership outlasted most companies.

He was born in Omaha on New Year's Day 1924 with five of his ten planets in water and the Sun in Capricorn. Capricorn wants to have actually done the thing, and five planets in water gives that competence something most financiers' charts do not have, which is a very long memory and a tendency to take the long view personally. The Moon, Mars and Saturn group together in Scorpio, the sign that does nothing by halves: feeling, drive and discipline all in the most concentrated water sign there is.

Venus makes an easy angle to Jupiter a third of a degree off exact, the smoothest aspect in the chart, and the oldest shorthand for straightforward good fortune in matters of money and goodwill. Set against it, the Sun faces Pluto across the chart just over a degree away, which is identity against concentrated power, and Mars squares Neptune, which is effort aimed at something that will not hold still. A career spent assessing businesses is a reasonable outlet for both.

Mercury sits hard against Uranus under a degree, which is a mind that arrives at the unconventional position and says it plainly. For a man whose public contribution was mostly a series of very short, very blunt remarks, that is the aspect doing the work.

He died at Santa Barbara on 28 November 2023, at ninety nine, on a full Moon 98% lit, the phase that sees things clearly and usually through other people. Pluto stood conjunct the Mercury he was born with, within one minute of arc, which is as exact as a transit gets, and Saturn made an easy angle to his own Saturn. The planet of power arriving on the planet of plain speech, on the last day of a life spent saying hard things briefly.