Charlie Munger's Daily Journal scored a $132 million gain on stocks in 9 months - and its portfolio has quadrupled in value

• Charlie Munger's Daily Journal made a $132 million gain on stocks in nine months.
• Munger's investments more than quadrupled in value to $350 million on paper.
• Warren Buffett's business partner, 97, bought a stake in Alibaba earlier this year.

Charlie Munger's Daily Journal scored a $132 million gain on stocks in the space of nine months as its handful of bets paid off handsomely.

Daily Journal, a newspaper publisher and legal-software provider, reported its third-quarter earnings this week. They revealed that its stock portfolio, which has a $80 million cost base, soared in value by 60% to $350 million in the nine months to June 30. The company's unrealized gains nearly doubled to $270 million as a result, and it has now more than quadrupled its money on paper.

Munger, 97, is best known as Warren Buffett's right-hand man and the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. However, he's also served as Daily Journal's chairman since 1977, and he manages its portfolio.

The investor's only recent move was buying $40 million of Alibaba stock in the first quarter of this year. That holding was in the red at the end of June, and the stock has tumbled another 16% since then as the Chinese government has toughened its regulation of domestic technology companies.

Daily Journal's robust portfolio gains were a product of its four other positions - Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bancorp, and Posco - surging in value as shares of the trio of banks and the South Korean steelmaker soared.

The publisher reminds investors each quarter that it's "not a smaller version of Berkshire Hathaway," and has ambitions to become a "significant software company." However, its stock portfolio dwarfs its operating businesses in value, and three of the five US stocks it owns are also held by Berkshire.

Daily Journal's revenue rose 5% year-on-year to about $14 million last quarter. Advertising sales soared 69% to $2.2 million as courts ordered businesses to publish legal notices of their trading names. However, consulting fees slumped by one-third to $2.1 million, as payments were held up by delays to the company's systems going live.