Forbes Discovered Warren Buffett In 1969, And This Early Interview Introduced The Iconic Investor To A Wide Audience For The First Time.

福布斯于1969年首次发掘沃伦·巴菲特，这次早期采访首次向广大读者介绍了这位标志性投资人。

Warren Buffett has lived in Washington and New York and studied at Columbia University Business School, but he has never stayed in these places very long. He has always returned to his home town, Omaha, Nebr. If he were a doctor or lawyer or ordinary businessman, this might not be surprising. But Buffett is what is usually called a Wall Streeter, a Money Man. For the last 12 years he has been running one of the most spectacular investment portfolios in the country.

沃伦·巴菲特曾在华盛顿和纽约居住，并在哥伦比亚大学商学院求学，但他从未在这些地方久留。他总是回到自己的家乡——内布拉斯加州的奥马哈。如果他是医生、律师或普通商人，这也许并不稀奇。但巴菲特却是一位典型的“华尔街人”，一位“金钱操盘手”。过去12年来，他一直在管理全国最出色的投资组合之一。

Since adjectives like “spectacular” don’t prove much, we’ll tell you exactly how spectacular Warren Buffett has been: $10,000 invested in his Buffett Partnership in 1957 is now worth $260,000. The partnership, recently at $100 million, has grown at an annual compounded rate of 31%. Over that 12-year period it hasn’t had one year in which it lost money. It gained 13% in 1962 and 20% in 1966, years when the Dow average fell 7% and 15%, respectively. It hasn’t lost money this year, either.

由于“出色”这类形容词本身并不具说服力，我们就用数字来说话：1957年若投资1万美元于他的“巴菲特合伙企业”，如今已增长至26万美元。该合伙企业近期规模已达1亿美元，年复合增长率为31%。在这12年里，没有一年亏损。1962年收益13%，1966年收益20%，而同期道琼斯指数分别下跌了7%和15%。今年他也没有亏钱。

“Oh,” you say, “a hot stock man.” Not at all.

你可能会说：“哦，他一定是追热门股的高手。”其实完全不是。

Warren Buffett has accomplished this through consistently following fundamentalist investment principles. A lot of young money men who now are turning in miserable performances began with the same investment ideas in the early Sixties but then forgot them in the Great Chase of the Hot Stock. Buffett, however, stayed with his principles. He doesn’t talk about concept companies or story stocks. He has never traded for a fast turn on an earnings report or bought little unknown companies, as Fred Carr does. He doesn’t hedge (i.e., go short) like A. W. Jones, who devised the hedge fund, Buffett is not a simple person, but he has simple tastes. He buys a stock for simple, basic reasons, not tortuous or sophisticated ones. His stocks, you might say, are sort of like Omaha.

沃伦·巴菲特能取得这些成绩，是因为他始终如一地遵循基本面投资原则。许多在六十年代初开始投资、如今表现惨淡的年轻投资人，当初也是秉持相同理念，但很快在“追逐热门股”的浪潮中迷失了。而巴菲特始终坚守原则。他从不谈“概念股”或“故事股”。他从不为了一个财报而短期交易，也不像Fred Carr那样买入名不见经传的小公司。他不做对冲（即做空），不像对冲基金创始人A.W. Jones那样。巴菲特本人并不简单，但他的品味很简单。他买股票的理由简单而基本，不是那种复杂晦涩的逻辑。你甚至可以说，他买的股票就像奥马哈这座城市那样朴实无华。

His big successes over the years have been in the stocks of ordinary companies: American Express, not Control Data; Cleveland Worsted Mills, not Xerox; Walt Disney, not Kentucky Fried Chicken; Studebaker, not Teledyne. He won’t buy a conglomerate: They don’t make sense to him. Ditto technological companies: “I can’t understand them. They’re not my style.”

多年来，他最成功的投资都是普通公司的股票：例如是美国运通，而不是Control Data；是克利夫兰精纺厂，而不是施乐；是迪士尼，而不是肯德基；是斯图贝克，而不是泰利达因。他不会买多元化企业的股票，因为对他而言这种公司不合逻辑。科技公司同样如此——“我看不懂它们，不是我的风格。”

Buffett tells a story on himself: “William Morris of Control Data is a relative through marriage, and I could have bought it at 16 cents a share [now $150], but I asked: ‘Who needs another computer company?’”

巴菲特讲了一个自己的故事：“Control Data的William Morris是我姻亲的亲戚，我本可以在每股16美分时买入（现在是150美元），但当时我说：‘谁还需要一家电脑公司？’”

Besides having no use for glamour stocks or conglomerates, Warren Buffett scorns what might be called the numerology approach to the stock market—charting, resistance points, trend lines and what have you. He’s a fundamentalist. “I’m 15% Phil Fisher,” he says, “and 85% Benjamin Graham.”

除了对热门股和多元化企业嗤之以鼻之外，沃伦·巴菲特还鄙视所谓的“数字占卜式”股市方法——比如绘图、阻力位、趋势线等等。他是个基本面信徒。“我15%像菲利普·费雪，”他说，“85%像本杰明·格雷厄姆。”

For the benefit of those not familiar with stock market literature we had better explain. Fisher and Graham are two of the great stock market fundamentalists. Fisher is what might be called a real-world fundamentalist. That is, he is primarily interested in a company’s products, its people, its relationships with dealers. Graham, the now retired coauthor of the textbook Security Analysis and the more readable The Intelligent Investor, could be called a statistical fundamentalist. That is, he analyzes the basic underlying statistics, assets, sales, capitalization and their relationship to the market price. Obviously neither method is much help in picking hot new stocks because hot new stocks, by definition, don’t have any fundamentals, statistical or otherwise.

为不熟悉投资文献的读者，我们做些解释。费雪和格雷厄姆是两位基本面投资大师。费雪可以被称为“现实型”基本派，他关注的是公司的产品、管理层和与经销商的关系；而已退休的格雷厄姆则是《证券分析》与更易读的《聪明的投资者》的合著者，他更像是“统计型”基本派，主要分析资产、销售额、市值等基本财务数据及其与市场价格的关系。显然，这两种方法对挑选热门新股没有什么帮助，因为所谓的“热门新股”往往根本没有可供分析的基本面。

Warren Buffett studied under Graham at Columbia, later worked for him at Graham Newman Corp. But let’s start from the beginning.

沃伦·巴菲特曾在哥伦比亚大学师从格雷厄姆，之后还在格雷厄姆-纽曼公司为他工作。但让我们从头说起。

Born in Omaha in 1929, Buffett was taken to Washington in 1942 after his father, now deceased, was elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican. He lived there most of the time until his father retired permanently from politics in 1952. Back home in Nebraska, he studied at the University of Nebraska and pondered the stock market. “I’d been interested in the stock market from the time I was 11, when I marked the board here at Harris Upham where my father was a broker. I ran the gamut, stock tips, the Magee charting stuff, everything. Then I picked up Graham’s Security Analysis. Reading it was like seeing the light.” The light led Warren Buffett back East where he studied under the Master at Columbia Business School. Then back to Omaha and selling securities for two years. In 1954, when he was 25, he started Buffett Partnership, Ltd. with $100,000 and seven limited partners (he is the only general partner). The arrangement, still in effect, provided for Buffett to get 25% of the annual profits after each partner got 6% on his money. In 12 years this arrangement made Buffett a very rich man indeed. (He made us promise not to use a number, but figure out for yourself what would happen to even a small sum compounded for 13 years at 31%!)

巴菲特于1929年出生在奥马哈，1942年随父亲迁往华盛顿，当时他父亲作为共和党人当选为国会议员（现已去世）。直到1952年父亲彻底退出政坛前，他大部分时间都住在华盛顿。回到内布拉斯加后，他在内布拉斯加大学学习，同时沉思股市的奥秘。“我从11岁起就对股市感兴趣，那时我在Harris Upham公司帮忙标记股价，我父亲在那里当经纪人。我涉猎甚广，从股票小道消息到Magee的图表分析，全都试过。直到我读到格雷厄姆的《证券分析》，那种感觉就像是‘看见了光’。”这束光把沃伦·巴菲特引向东部，他在哥伦比亚商学院师从“导师”本杰明·格雷厄姆。此后又回到奥马哈做了两年证券销售。1954年，25岁的他以10万美元资金和7位有限合伙人创立了Buffett Partnership, Ltd.（他是唯一的普通合伙人）。这一制度沿用至今：每位合伙人首先获得6%的收益，之后年度利润的25%归巴菲特所有。12年来，这种安排让巴菲特变得非常富有。（他要求我们不要写具体数字，但你可以自己算算：哪怕是很小的一笔资金，13年里以31%的年复利增长，会变成多少！）

Warren Buffett has applied Graham’s principles quite systematically. Says Graham in The Intelligent Investor: “Investment is most intelligent when it is most business-like”—in other words, not swayed by emotions, hopes, fads. This is Buffett’s most important tenet. “When I buy a stock,” Buffett says, “I think of it in terms of buying a whole company just as if I were buying the store down the street. If I were buying the store, I’d want to know all about it. I mean, look at what Walt Disney was worth on the stock market in the first half of 1966. The price per share was $53, and this didn’t look especially cheap, but on that basis you could buy the whole company for $80 million when Snow White, Swiss Family Robinson and some other cartoons, which had been written off the books, were worth that much. And then you had Disneyland and Walt Disney, a genius, as a partner.”

沃伦·巴菲特始终系统地运用格雷厄姆的投资原则。格雷厄姆在《聪明的投资者》中说：“最聪明的投资是最像做生意的投资。”——换句话说，投资不应被情绪、幻想或潮流所左右。这正是巴菲特最核心的信条。“当我买股票时，”巴菲特说，“我把它当成是在买一整家公司，就好像我在买街对面的一家店。如果我要买那家店，我当然想知道一切细节。比如看看1966年上半年迪士尼在股市上的估值，每股价格是53美元，这看起来并不便宜。但按照这个价格，你可以买下整家公司，总价大概是8000万美元。而它的几部动画电影——《白雪公主》、《海角一乐园》等——虽已在账面上折旧，但本身就值那么多。更别说你还得到迪士尼乐园，以及成为天才华特·迪士尼的合伙人。”

TEACHER GRAHAM: … to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto: Margin of Safety.

导师格雷厄姆：……要将健全投资的秘诀浓缩成三个词，那就是：安全边际（Margin of Safety）。

PUPIL BUFFETT: I try to buy a dollar for 60 cents, and if I think I can get that, then I don’t worry too much about when. A perfect example of this is British Columbia Power. In 1962, when it was being nationalized, everyone knew that the provincial government was going to pay at least X dollars and you could buy it for X minus, say, 5. As it turned out, the government paid a lot more.

学生巴菲特：我努力用60美分去买一个价值1美元的东西，如果我觉得能买到，那我就不太担心什么时候能兑现。最典型的例子就是British Columbia Power。1962年它被国有化时，大家都知道州政府至少会支付X美元，而你却可以以X减去5美元的价格买进。最终政府的收购价远高于市场预期。

GRAHAM: The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks … should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances.

格雷厄姆：一个持有优质股票组合的投资人……不应为市场的大幅下跌而焦虑，也不应因上涨而亢奋。

BUFFETT: Imagine if you owned grocery store and you had a manic-depressive partner who one day would offer to sell you his share of the business for a dollar. Then the next day because the sun was shining or for no reason at all wouldn’t sell for any price. That’s what the market is like and why you can’t buy and sell on its terms. You have to buy and sell when you want to.

巴菲特：想象一下，如果你拥有一家杂货店，而你的合伙人是个情绪极端的人，有一天他愿意以一美元卖掉他那部分股份，第二天却因为阳光明媚或完全没有理由而拒绝卖出——这就是市场的样子。你不能按照市场的情绪买进或卖出，你要在你自己认为合适的时候行动。

Almost any of Warren Buffett’s investments fall into this category, since he buys them when the price is going down and sells when they’re going up. Unlike Phil Fisher but like Ben Graham, Buffett doesn’t talk about evaluating management except in the very basic terms of whether it is trustworthy or not. His American Express investment is a perfect example of how his mind works. Buffett bought American Express after the salad oil scandal but not before doing some fast research on his own, which among other things included talking to the company’s competitors and going over restaurant receipts in an Omaha steak house. All of this convinced Buffett that American Express had an unassailable position in travelers’ checks and was fast developing the same sort of position in credit cards.

几乎所有巴菲特的投资都属于上述类型——在价格下跌时买入，在价格上涨时卖出。他不同于菲利普·费雪，更像本杰明·格雷厄姆，在评估管理层时，他只关心最基本的问题：管理层是否值得信任。他投资美国运通的案例就是他思维方式的完美体现。巴菲特是在“色拉油丑闻”之后买入美国运通股票的——但在那之前，他进行了快速而彻底的调研，包括向竞争对手了解情况，甚至查看了奥马哈一家牛排馆的餐厅账单。所有这一切都让他相信：美国运通在旅行支票领域已处于无可撼动的地位，并且正在信用卡市场中迅速建立类似优势。

“Look,” says Buffett, “the name American Express is one of the greatest franchises in the world. Even with terrible management it was bound to make money. American Express was last in the traveler’s check market and had to compete with the two largest banks in the country. Yet after a short time it had over 80% of the business, and no one has been able to shake this position.”

Not for Warren Buffett are computers or a vast staff and impressive offices. Until recently, even when he was managing $20 million, Warren Buffett was the entire staff of Buffett Partnership, Ltd. Even today the staff consists of four housed in three small rooms in Omaha’s Kiewit Plaza. He gets some of his best ideas thumbing through Moody’s investment manuals, financial and general publications like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and the American Banker, and industry journals when a specific industry interests him. This is the way he bought Western Insurance at $16 when it was earning $16 a share, and National American Insurance at one times earnings in the 1950s. Then in 1962 he found Gurdon Wattles’ American Manufacturing selling at a 40% discount from net worth. “If you went to Wattles of American Manufacturing or Howard Ahmanson of National American Insurance and asked them to be partners, you could never get in at one times earnings,” says Buffett.

沃伦·巴菲特不靠计算机、大团队或豪华办公室行事。直到最近，即便他管理的资金达到了2000万美元，他依然是Buffett Partnership, Ltd.的唯一员工。即使到今天，这家公司的员工也不过四人，挤在奥马哈Kiewit Plaza的三间小屋里。他一些最好的投资灵感，来自于翻阅《穆迪投资手册》、像《华尔街日报》《纽约时报》《美国银行家》这类财经和综合出版物，以及当某个行业引起兴趣时的行业期刊。他正是以这种方式，在西方保险每股收益16美元、股价也是16美元时买入，又在上世纪50年代以“一倍市盈率”买入National American Insurance。1962年，他发现Gurdon Wattles的American Manufacturing以低于净资产40%的价格交易。“如果你直接去找American Manufacturing的Wattles或National American Insurance的Howard Ahmanson做合伙人，你根本不可能以一倍市盈率的价格入股。”巴菲特说道。

When the reading puts him on to something, he’ll do some informal field research. In one case in 1965 Buffett says he spent the better part of a month counting tank cars in a Kansas City railroad yard. He was not, however, considering buying railroad stocks. He was interested in the old Studebaker Corp. because of STP, a highly successful gasoline additive. The company wouldn’t tell him how the product was doing. But he knew that the basic ingredient came from Union Carbide, and he knew how much it took to produce one can of STP. Hence the tank-car counting. When shipments rose, he bought Studebaker stock, which subsequently went from 18 to 30.

当阅读材料引起他关注时，他会进行一些非正式的实地调研。1965年有一次，巴菲特说他花了将近一个月的时间，在堪萨斯城的铁路货场数罐车。不过他并不是要买铁路股。他关注的是老牌公司Studebaker，因为它推出了一款非常成功的汽油添加剂STP。这家公司拒绝透露产品的具体销售情况，但巴菲特知道这种添加剂的原料来自联合碳化物公司，并且知道每罐STP所需的原料量，于是他就通过数罐车来推测出货情况。当运输量上升时，他买入了Studebaker的股票，股价随后从18涨到30。

Warren Buffett is one of those disciplined types who is perfectly willing to sell too soon. As Buffett puts it, he tries to buy $1 worth of stock for 60 cents, and when it goes to $1, he sells it, even if it looks like it is going higher. With that kind of investing, he doesn’t have to worry too much about dips in the market. Nor about “stories” or “concepts”: “If the stock doesn’t work out in the context I picked it for, it probably will in another,” he says. Example: He bought his Disney stock with his eye on basic value, but it first went up when Disney died and has continued to rise because of the leisure boom. Says Buffett: “With value like that I know I’m not going to get stuck with a Kentucky Fried Computer when it goes out of fashion.”

沃伦·巴菲特是那种极具纪律性的人，愿意“卖得太早”。他常说，自己尝试用60美分买一个价值1美元的股票，当它涨到1美元时就卖掉，即使它看起来还会涨。采用这种投资方式，他就不需要太担心市场的短期波动，也不必理会所谓的“故事”或“概念”。他说：“如果我买入的股票没有在我设想的情境中表现出来，那也可能会在别的情境中发挥作用。”例如：他买迪士尼股票是出于基本价值考量，但股价最初上涨却是因为华特·迪士尼去世，随后又因休闲娱乐热潮而持续上涨。巴菲特说：“这种价值的公司让我知道，就算退了潮，我也不会像那些持有‘肯德基牌电脑’的人一样被困在时尚过气的股票里。”

As his fund got bigger and bigger, Warren Buffett began taking bigger and bigger positions, because his basic policy was to hold only nine or ten stocks. At one point, before selling the stock in May 1964, Buffett Partnership owned 5% of American Express. Inevitably, this led him to some control situations. For example, he and his friends own 70% of the stock of Berkshire Hathaway, a New England textile manufacturer that Buffett originally got into because the company had working capital of $11 a share versus a stock price of $7. They also own several small businesses.

随着他的基金规模越来越大，巴菲特开始持有更大的头寸，因为他基本的策略是只持有九到十只股票。曾经在1964年5月卖出前，巴菲特合伙企业持有美国运通5%的股份。这种集中投资不可避免地引发了“控股局面”。例如，他和朋友们拥有新英格兰一家纺织厂——伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司70%的股份。巴菲特最初投资它，是因为这家公司每股拥有11美元的营运资金，而当时股价仅为7美元。他们还拥有几家小型企业。

And So, Good-bye …

于是，说再见了……

Alas, good reader, if all this appeals to you, forget about having Warren Buffett handle your money. From now on he’s not going to be handling anybody’s except his own. After this coming January Buffett is closing up shop and dissolving the partnership. He has no desire to be a Getty or a Rockefeller. Besides, he’s getting stale. “My idea quota used to be like Niagara Falls—I’d have many more than I could use. Now it’s as if someone had dammed up the water and was letting it flow with an eyedropper.” He attributes his problem to a market that no longer lends itself to his kind of analysis, where real values are hard to find. He blames some of it on the Performance Game; so many people are playing it now that, by definition, few will be able to get above-average results. Also, conglomerates and tender offers have picked off many of the bargains. But this may be—and probably is— mere rationalization. The motives behind Warren Buffett’s quitting are probably much simpler. He has made a fortune and is no longer motivated to count boxcars and read statistical manuals. He comes close to the truth when he says: “You shouldn’t be doing at 60 what you did at 20.” He plans putting most of his money into municipal bonds, for income, and he’ll continue to hold companies where he has a controlling interest: Berkshire-Hathaway, the Illinois National Bank in Rockford, Ill. and a small Omaha weekly newspaper. He is interested in public affairs, but he plans to back various projects from offstage. What else? “I don’t believe in making life plans,” is all he will say.

唉，亲爱的读者，如果这些故事让你心动，那就请忘了让沃伦·巴菲特帮你理财的念头吧。从现在起，他只打算打理自己的钱。明年1月起，巴菲特将正式关闭事务所并解散合伙企业。他无意成为下一个盖蒂或洛克菲勒。而且，他自认已“老气横秋”。“我过去的投资想法像尼亚加拉瀑布一样倾泻不止——想法多得用不完。现在就像有人在瀑布上建了大坝，只用滴管放水。”他把自己的困境归咎于市场已经不再适合他的分析方式，真正的价值变得难以发现。他还指责“业绩竞赛”现象：参与者太多，按定义来说，能取得超额收益的人就很少。此外，兼并热潮和收购要约已经“扫清了”很多便宜货。但这些理由或许只是借口。巴菲特退出的真正原因可能更简单——他已经发了大财，也不再有动力去数罐车、读财务手册了。他曾说的一句话几乎道出真相：“你不应该在60岁时还去做你20岁时做的事。”他打算把大部分资金投到市政债券中用于获取收入，同时继续持有自己控股的公司：伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司、伊利诺伊州洛克福德市的国家银行，以及奥马哈一家小型周报。他仍然关心公共事务，但计划幕后支持一些项目。除此之外呢？他只说：“我不相信人生规划。”

Buffett plans to continue living in the rambling old Omaha house, typically suburban, where he has lived since his marriage in 1952; whenever he has needed more space he simply tacked on another room, including an indoor handball court, which keeps him lean. Here the pace isn’t frantic and his three children can have a healthy upbringing. Of course, everybody knows the smart boys gravitate to Wall Street. Only the sluggards stay home.

巴菲特计划继续住在那座位于奥马哈的老宅子里，这是一栋典型的郊区住宅，自1952年他结婚起就一直住在那儿。每当需要更大空间时，他就简单地加盖一间新房，甚至建了一个室内手球场，这让他保持身材。这里的生活节奏不紧不慢，三个孩子也能健康成长。当然啦，大家都知道聪明人都奔向了华尔街，只有“懒人”才会留在家乡。