1987-10-19 Warren Buffett.What we can learn from Phil Fisher
Refer To：《What we can learn from Phil Fisher 》。
On turning 80 last month the eminent San Francisco investment counselor Philip Fisher was in a valedictory mood. Rarely interviewed, he sat for a long chat with FORBES. He is one of the seminal figures of modern investment thinking—one of the first, if not the first, to develop the thesis that growth stocks have identifiable characteristics that make them different from ordinary stocks.
上个月年满80岁的旧金山知名投资顾问Philip Fisher心情颇为告别式。鲜少接受采访的他，与《FORBES》进行了长时间的对谈。他是现代投资思想的开创性人物之一——即使不是第一个，也是最早提出“成长股具有可识别特征、从而区别于普通股票”这一论题的人之一。
Warren Buffett, perhaps the most successful investor of the present era, calls Fisher a “giant.”
当代或许最成功的投资者Warren Buffett称Fisher为“一位巨人”。
Horse handicappers fall into two major categories: speed and class. The speed dopester wants lots of figures: He pores over the form sheet to determine which horse posted the fastest time in recent races, adjusted for track conditions, weight carried, etc. The class handicapper scorns numbers. “Tell me about bloodlines and the quality of past opposition,” he says.
赛马盘口分析师大致分为两类：速度派与档次派。速度派需要大量数据：他细读赛马表，判断在近期比赛中哪匹马以经由赛道状况、负重等因素校正后的速度最快。档次派则不屑于数字。“告诉我血统与过去对手的质量如何，”他会这么说。
These differing doctrines have their parallel in the investment world—between analysts emphasizing quantitative factors and those who favor a qualitative approach.
这些不同的学派在投资世界中有对应——一类分析师强调定量因素，另一类则偏好定性方法。
The quantitative analyst says, “Let’s buy the cheapest stock as measured by some combination of price/earnings ratio, book value, yield, etc.”
定量派分析师会说：“让我们买用市盈率、账面价值、股息率等组合衡量后最便宜的股票。”
The qualitative analyst says, “Buy the best company, the best management and don’t worry too much about the numbers.”
定性派分析师会说：“买最好的公司、最好的管理层，别过分纠结数字。”
Happily, there’s more than one way to get to financial heaven. Skilled and insightful practitioners of either persuasion will be rewarded. I was lucky to find good men of both persuasions early in my life, and the resulting synthesis of their ideas has been of enormous benefit to me.
可喜的是，通往财务天堂的路径不止一条。两种流派中只要娴熟且具洞见的实践者都会有所收获。我很幸运在早年就结识了这两派的优秀人士，并将其思想加以融会贯通，从而获益匪浅。
I sought out Phil Fisher after reading his Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Paths to Wealth Through Common Stocks in the early 1960s.
在20世纪60年代初读完他所著的《Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits》和《Paths to Wealth Through Common Stocks》之后，我主动拜访了Phil Fisher。
When I met him, I was as impressed by the man as by his ideas. Much like Ben Graham, Fisher was unassuming, generous in spirit and an extraordinary teacher. From him I learned the value of the “scuttlebutt” approach: Go out and talk to competitors, suppliers, customers to find out how an industry or a company really operates. A thorough understanding of the business, obtained by using Phil’s techniques, combined with the quantitative discipline taught by Ben, will enable one to make intelligent investment commitments. I am an eager reader of whatever Phil has to say, and I recommend him to you.
与他会面时，他这个人给我的印象与他的思想同样深刻。与Ben Graham相似，Fisher谦逊低调、胸襟宽广且是一位非凡的导师。我从他那里学到“scuttlebutt（打听）”方法的价值：主动走出去，与竞争对手、供应商、客户交谈，了解一个行业或公司的真实运作。运用Phil的方法对业务进行透彻理解，再结合Ben所教授的量化纪律，就能做出明智的投资承诺。我热切阅读Phil的任何著作与言论，也衷心向你推荐他。
A talk with Philip Fisher
与Philip Fisher的一次对谈
Philip Fisher doesn’t try to impress you with lavish offices. He works out of a nondescript nine-story office building in San Mateo, Calif., a 30-minute drive-when the traffic’s light–south of San Francisco. There’s a small outer office with a desk where his secretary sits, a couple of filing cabinets, a phone, an answering machine and not much else. No computers, no Quotron machines, no elaborate library; just a refined and practiced mind. Fisher apologizes for the messy state his desk is in; he’s been away paying calls on companies in New England for the previous week and has just gotten home. Having just turned 80 this September, Fisher is as vibrant as they come, his intellect keen and his wit as sharp as a tack. He’s still managing money, still learning how to do it better with every new day. If it is possible for Wall Street, even out here in California, to have produced the equivalent of what the Japanese call a national treasure, then Phil Fisher fits the bill admirably.
Philip Fisher并不靠奢华办公室来取悦你。他在加州San Mateo一栋毫不起眼的九层办公楼里工作，从San Francisco往南开车（在车不多的时候）约30分钟即可到达。外间办公室很小，只有秘书坐的一张桌子、几柜文件、一个电话、一台留言机，别无他物。没有电脑，没有Quotron机器，没有庞大的图书馆；只有一颗老练而精密的头脑。Fisher为自己桌面的凌乱致歉；他前一周一直在新英格兰拜访公司，刚刚回到家。今年9月刚满80岁的Fisher依然精力充沛，思维敏锐，机智如针锋。他仍在管理资金，并且每天都在学习如何把这件事做得更好。如果说华尔街——即便在加州这头——能孕育出日本人所谓的“国宝”，那么Phil Fisher可谓当之无愧。
FORBES: What signals are your antennas receiving these days?
FORBES：你最近从天线里接收到的信号是什么？
Fisher: I see new issues of companies that don’t look all that outstanding coming at maybe five and six times sales, and things that look totally prosaic coming at three and four times sales. I think this is always the sign of potential danger. I am not calling doom within the next month. I just don’t know. But it’s a time to be cautious.
Fisher：我看到一些并不那么出色的公司新股发行，定价大概是销售额的五到六倍，而一些看起来完全平庸的东西也要到三到四倍销售额。我认为这始终是潜在危险的信号。我并不是在预言下个月会有什么灾难。我只是不了解。但现在是需要谨慎的时候。
I see a huge overextension of credit in all directions. If the banks of the country were held to the same accounting principles that other companies are held to, and had to write down their inventory, their bank loans, to market, they would be in a simply incredible position.
我看到各个方向上都存在巨大的信贷过度扩张。如果全国的银行必须遵循与其他公司相同的会计原则，按市价将其“存货”、即银行贷款，计提减值，它们将处在一个简直不可思议的境地。
The consumer has a degree of loans outstanding that to me looks abnormally high in relation to his income. People are saying it isn’t high in relation to his assets. What are these? Residential real estate is fundamentally higher than the stock market is.
消费者未偿还贷款相对于其收入的水平在我看来异常之高。人们说相对于其资产并不高。那些资产是什么？住宅房地产从根本上看比股票市场更高。
You have an impasse in the government where nothing is being done. You have this trade-deficit situation, which I think is rampant with potential trouble.
政府陷入僵局，毫无作为。还有这个贸易逆差的局面，我认为其中潜在麻烦丛生。
The policy of the Federal Reserve and of our government is to encourage foreign lending to support the government bond market. I mean, to encourage foreigners to buy into our ownership of American assets is damnable, to put it mildly. It is so shortsighted. Sooner or later a situation is going to come when these foreigners will want their money back. When they do, what can happen to the dollar, to our markets, is frightening.
Federal Reserve和我们政府的政策是鼓励外国放贷来支撑政府债券市场。我的意思是，鼓励外国人买入我们对美国资产的所有权，委婉点说，这是可恶至极。实在太短视。迟早会有那么一天，这些外国人会想要收回他们的资金。到那时，美元以及我们的市场会发生什么，足以令人惊恐。
And yet you hear these monkeys in Washington saying we’ve got to make government bonds attractive so that foreigners will buy more of them.
然而你却听到在Washington的这些“猴子”说，我们必须让政府债券更有吸引力，好让外国人买得更多。
Put all this together with the desperate financial condition of much of the Third World, and currently you have a situation that is not too different from what happened in the late 1920s.
把这一切再与许多第三世界国家糟糕的财政状况放在一起看，我们目前的处境与20世纪20年代末发生的情况并没有太大不同。
In 1929-33 we went through four years of such economic hell that people who went through it have been psychologically scarred ever since. You saw people who were well-fixed lose jobs, people who had been wealthy going through their homes taking out every light bulb except one in each room. I knew a manufacturing executive who went to work as a watchman, and his wife took a job cleaning and cooking.
在1929—1933年的四年里，我们经历了经济地狱般的日子，经历过那段时期的人自此心理上都留下了伤痕。你会看到境况不错的人失去工作，昔日富裕的人在家里把每个房间除了一只之外的所有灯泡都拧下来。我认识一位制造业高管去干了看守的活，他的妻子则去做清洁和做饭的工作。
When will the crash come?
什么时候会崩盘？
I haven’t the faintest idea whether we are in 1927 or 1929. Some awfully bright, able, sound people were scared as hell in 1927. But the thing rolled on for two more years, and that may happen here. I don’t know.
我完全不知道我们现在更像1927年还是1929年。1927年时，一些极其聪明、有能力、判断稳健的人都被吓坏了。但事情又继续滚了两年，这种情形也可能在这里发生。我不清楚。
We have learned how to take dope and stop the pain. That dope is very simple. You run the printing presses or run the credit machine, to have huge, huge expenditures of government money and expansion of credit.
我们已经学会了如何“用药止痛”。这种“药”非常简单。要么开动印钞机，要么启动信贷机器，通过政府巨额开支与信贷扩张来缓解。
Instead of a crash, what will happen is exactly the kind of hyperinflation that you have seen in Argentina and Brazil. I think in two years, one or two years, it will start and then run on for maybe four or five years.
取而代之的，不是崩盘，而是你在Argentina和Brazil见过的那种恶性通货膨胀。我认为再过一两年就会开始，然后可能会持续四五年。
If that’s what’s coming, how does one protect oneself against this hyperinflation?
如果真要发生，那么该如何保护自己免受这种恶性通胀的伤害？
I made as deep a study as I could of what happened after World War I in France, where there was lots of inflation, and in Germany, where there was inflation into infinity. And in both countries the same thing happened. If you bought the very best stocks, according to my definition–not just any stocks–you were still darned uncomfortable during that period of the spiraling inflation. But when the inflation was over, you came out of it with about 80% of the real purchasing power intact.
我尽可能深入研究了一战之后的France（那里有大量通胀）以及Germany（那里通胀无限制地发展）的情况。在这两个国家，都出现了同样的现象：如果你按照我的定义买入“最优秀的股票”——而不是随便什么股票——在通胀螺旋上升的时期你仍会非常难受。但当通胀结束时，你大约能保住80%的实际购买力。
If I can come out of it with 80% of my present assets in real money, and my people can do that, that is fine. Until then I’m keeping a fair amount in Treasury bills.
如果我能以实际购买力计算保住当下资产的80%，而我的投资人也能做到，那就足够了。在那之前，我会把相当一部分资金放在Treasury bills上。
Timing these things is so damnably difficult. I don’t want to be the smart guy with too much cash because I think a big break is coming. Nor do I want, once it comes, to spend too long getting myself ready. When you’re not sure, you hedge. Very roughly, I have between 65% and 68% in the four stocks I really like, between 20% and 25% in cash and equivalents, and the balance in the five stocks that are in the grooming stage.
把握时点实在是难到要命。我不想因为预期大跌而持有过多现金，装作聪明人；也不想在它真的到来时花太久时间做准备。当你不确定，就对冲。大致来说，我把65%到68%的资金放在我真正喜欢的四只股票上，20%到25%放在现金及等价物上，剩余的放在五只仍处于“grooming stage（培养阶段）”的股票上。
You don’t own or buy a large number of issues.
你不会持有或买入大量的股票。
I have four core stocks that are exactly the thing I want. They represent the bulk of my holdings. I have five others in much smaller dollar amounts that are potential candidates to enter this group. But I’m not sure yet. If I were betting today, I’d bet on two and not on the other three.
我有四只“核心股票”，它们正是我想要的，构成了我持仓的主体。我还有另外五只以较小金额持有的股票，它们是进入这一核心组的潜在候选。但我还不确定。如果今天下注，我会押两只，而不是另外三只。
Each decade up to this one–there hasn’t been time to work it out for the Eighties–I have found a very small number of stocks, 14 in all, starting with 2 in the Thirties, that over a period of years made a profit for me of a minimum seven times the funds I put in and a maximum of many thousands of times my investment.
直到这个十年为止——对80年代还没来得及统计——我在每个年代都只找到极少数股票，合计14只，从30年代的2只开始。经过若干年，这些股票至少让我赚到投入资金的7倍，最多达到数千倍。
Now I have gone into about three to four times as many additional securities in which I’ve made more money than I’ve lost. I’ve had losses, in two cases as high as 50%. There also have been a number where I have made or lost 10%. That’s almost the cost of being in business. But there are lots of cases where a stock has gone down moderately, and I’ve bought more, and it’s paid off for me enormously.
此外，我还买过大约多出三到四倍数量的其他证券，在这些上面我的盈利多于亏损。我也有亏损，两起案例高达50%。也有不少只赚或只亏10%的情况——这几乎就是做生意的成本。但也有很多时候，股票适度下跌时我加仓，最终获得了巨大的回报。
These efforts were necessary to weed out the 14 where I have made the real gains. I’ve held those 14 from a minimum of 8 or 9 years to a maximum of 30 years. I don’t want to spend my time trying to earn a lot of little profits. I want very, very big profits that I’m ready to wait for.
要筛选出那14只真正带来巨大收益的股票，这些努力是必要的。我持有这14只股票的时间最短8到9年，最长30年。我不想把时间花在赚取许多小利润上。我要的是非常非常大的利润，并且愿意等待。
What do you look for in a core stock?
在核心股票上你看重什么？
They are all low-cost producers; they are all either world leaders in their fields or can fully measure up to another of my yardsticks, the Japanese competition. They all now have promising new products, and they all have managements of above-average capabilities by a wide margin.
它们都是低成本生产者；要么是各自领域的全球领导者，要么能够完全符合我另一个衡量标准——经得起与日本竞争对手的比拼。它们现在都有很有前景的新产品，并且管理层的能力远高于平均水平。
跟巴菲特的想法一模一样。
You place a lot of emphasis on management, don’t you?
你非常强调管理层，对吗？
Getting to know the management of a company is like getting married. You never really know the girl until you live with her. Until you’ve lived with a management, you don’t really know them to that same degree.
了解一家公司的管理层就像结婚。只有真正与她一起生活过，你才会真正了解这个女孩。同样，只有“与管理层一起过日子”之后，你才会在同等程度上真正了解他们。
Getting back to the kinds of companies you like, the ones that will help get you and your clients through the bustup. . . .
回到你喜欢的公司类型——那些能帮助你和你的客户度过崩盘期的公司……
My own interests essentially are in manufacturing companies that in one way or another–I hate the buzzword “technology’–can expand their markets by taking advantage of the discoveries of natural science.
我本人基本上专注于制造类公司，这些公司能以某种方式——我不喜欢“technology”这个流行词——利用自然科学的发现来拓展其市场。
In other fields, such as retailing and finance, there are excellent opportunities, but I feel this is one where I am more qualified. I think a weakness of many people’s approach to investment is that they try to be jacks of all trades and masters of none.
在其他领域，比如零售和金融，也有非常好的机会，但我觉得在制造这块我更具备胜任力。我认为很多人的投资方法的弱点在于，他们试图样样通、样样松。
Are you looking at other stocks?
你在关注其他股票吗？
I am spending time looking at situations that I’m not eager to buy today. But under the strain of a rapidly falling market, I don’t want to have to act with too much speed on stocks that I’m not more familiar with.
我在花时间研究那些今天并不急于买入的标的。但在市场快速下跌的压力下，我不想在自己还不够熟悉的股票上行动过快。
Can I get you to name your nine stocks?
能请你点名那九只股票吗？
In the case of the five smaller ones, I don’t want to. I will identify two of my four core stocks–Motorola and Raychem. The third is a small-cap where there’s been steady accumulation of shares by other long-range investors besides myself, so the floating supply of shares is abnormally small. A mention in FORBES would make the thing whoosh up. But until the earnings have started to materialize, it would whoosh down again. I don’t want to cause that.
对于其中五只体量较小的，我不想点名。我可以说出四只核心股票中的两只——Motorola和Raychem。第三只是小盘股，除了我之外还有其他长期投资者在持续吸筹，因此流通盘异常地小。一旦被FORBES提及，股价会“唰”地一下冲上去。但在盈利尚未开始兑现前，它又会“唰”地跌回来。我不想造成这种情况。
Number four has an excellent record of making products allied to what it already has, but it’s now doing one so big in relation to the present company that, if this shouldn’t work as well, there could be risk in the shares. And the stock is already up. So again I’ll pass.
第四只是家在既有产品相关领域有着出色纪录的公司，但它现在在做的一个项目相对公司现状来说体量太大，如果效果不佳，股票就可能面临风险。而且股价已经涨上去了。所以这只我也先不点名。
As for Motorola, Wall Street is just beginning to see how good management really is. In the recent semiconductor depression, it was the only major company to earn subnormal but not insignificant profits. Of the others, one just about broke even and three went heavily into the red. That kind of stuff attracts Wall Street, but not the reasons behind it. Wall Street should pay greater attention, for instance, to whether a company has its production under statistical quality control–shortening the production cycle, thereby reducing inventories and cutting costs.
至于Motorola，Wall Street才刚开始看清其管理层到底有多优秀。在最近的半导体衰退期，它是唯一一家仍能获得“低于正常但并非微不足道利润”的主要公司。其他公司中，一家勉强持平，三家深陷亏损。这类结果能吸引Wall Street，但背后的原因却常被忽视。比如，Wall Street应更加关注一家公司是否在生产中实施统计质量控制——这可以缩短生产周期，从而降低库存并削减成本。
Motorola is also way above the average company in planning. One reason its semiconductor business has done so well in time of stress is that it picked the right areas to be in and didn’t have the bulk of its effort in areas that ran into more trouble. Another reason it’s so outstanding is due to the farsightedness and high moral standards of Bob Galvin, its chairman.
在规划层面，Motorola也远超一般公司。其半导体业务能在艰难时期表现出色的一个原因，是它选择了正确的细分领域，并且没有将主要精力投向问题更多的方向。另一个重要原因在于其董事长Bob Galvin的远见卓识与高尚的道德标准。
Now Motorola is not on the bargain counter today, but it will have very pleasing growth.
现在的Motorola并非“清仓价”，但它将会有非常令人满意的增长。
With Raychem you’ve got another situation. [With annual sales of $944 million, Raychem manufactures high-performance plastic products.] Several years back management recognized that its older product lines wouldn’t keep growing the 20% to 25% a year that they had since the company was started. Raychem developed a whole series of new technologies. But it underestimated how long it would take to get prosperity out of them.
Raychem则是另一种情形。[Raychem年销售额为$944 million，生产高性能塑料制品。]几年前，管理层意识到公司早期的产品线不可能像创业以来那样每年继续以20%到25%的速度增长。Raychem开发了一整套新技术，但低估了这些技术转化为盈利所需的时间。
The last couple of years it’s been bringing these into the market. Now people who are interested in growth but who aren’t very sophisticated tend to measure it by how much you spend on R&D. Actually, when bringing on new products, R&D, while important, is less costly than the combination of marketing money, when you’re first introducing those new products, and the high-cost production when you first start to get those new products out but where you haven’t yet come down the learning curve.
过去两年里，公司把这些新技术逐步推向市场。现在，一些关注增长但并不老练的人往往用R&D投入来衡量增长。实际上，在推出新产品时，虽然R&D很重要，但其成本往往低于两项合计：其一是新产品初次上市时的市场投放费用，其二是新产品刚开始量产、但尚未走下学习曲线之前的高成本生产。
有点麻烦，专注于制造业跟写书、教书在一个方向上。
The fact these new products have been bunched together has resulted in several years of flat earnings. For a company that had steadily growing earnings before that, this threw Wall Street, with its short-term outlook, for a loop. Now there is great suspicion. Is it really a growth company? To me, it epitomizes a growth company but sells at a price/earnings ratio that doesn’t fully reflect this.
这些新产品“扎堆”上市，导致公司盈利出现了数年持平。对于此前盈利稳步增长的公司而言，这让以短期视角著称的Wall Street有些不知所措。如今市场充满怀疑：它真的是一家成长型公司吗？在我看来，它正是成长型公司的缩影，但其市盈率并未充分反映这一点。
What else do you look at besides good management?
除了优秀的管理层之外，你还看重什么？
When I have to argue strongly with [clients] to like something, and they say, “Well, all right, if you say so, we’ll do it.’ I’m much more apt to be right than when, as sometimes happens, I say, “Let’s buy 10,000 shares,’ and they say, “Why don’t we buy 50,000?’ That’s usually a warning signal that it’s too late to buy.
当我需要极力说服[clients]去喜欢某个标的，而他们说“好吧，如果你这么说，我们就做”，这种情况下我更容易是对的；反之，有时我说“我们买1万股”，他们却说“为什么不买5万股？”——这通常是个警告信号，说明买入已经太晚了。
Nor will I buy market-favored stocks. I particularly notice it when I attend meetings for technology stocks and see all the people crowding into the room and so on. If there’s standing room only, that’s usually a pretty fair sign it’s not a good time to buy the stock.
我也不会买市场追捧的股票。特别是当我参加科技股的会议，看到人群把会场挤得满满当当。如果只能站着，那通常就足以表明现在并不是买入该股票的好时机。
You sound like a contrarian.
你听起来像是个逆向投资者。
Part of real success is not being a 100% contrarian. When people saw that the automobile was going to obsolete the old streetcar system in the cities, some decided that since nobody would want streetcar stocks, they’d buy them. That is ridiculous. But being able to tell the fallacy in an accepted way of doing things, that’s one of the elements in the investment business of big success.
真正的成功部分在于不要做“100%逆向”。当人们看到汽车将让城市里的老电车系统过时时，有些人就决定：既然没人要电车股，那就去买它们。这是荒谬的。但能识别出一种“被广泛接受的做法”中的谬误，这是投资事业走向巨大成功的要素之一。
What’s the single most important lesson to be learned from your career as an investor?
从你的投资生涯中，最重要的一条教训是什么？
It is just appalling the nerve strain people put themselves under trying to buy something today and sell it tomorrow. It’s a small-win proposition. If you are a truly long-range investor, of which I am practically a vanishing breed, the profits are so tremendously greater. One of my early clients made a remark that, while it is factually correct, is completely unrealistic when he said, “Nobody ever went broke taking a profit.’
令人震惊的是，人们为了今天买、明天卖而给自己施加的神经压力。这只是一种“小赢”的策略。如果你是真正的长期投资者——我差不多属于正在消失的那一类——收益会大得多。我的一位早期客户说过一句在事实层面没错、但完全不现实的话：“从来没有人因为获利了结而破产。”
Well, it is true that you don’t go broke taking a profit, but that assumes you will make a profit on everything you do. It doesn’t allow for the mistakes you’re bound to make in the investment business.
是的，获利了结不会让你破产，但这是假设你做的每一笔投资都会盈利。它没有为你在投资业务中必然会犯的错误留出余地。
Funny thing is, I know plenty of guys who consider themselves to be long-term investors but who are still perfectly happy to trade in and out and back into their favorite stocks.
有趣的是，我认识不少自认为是长期投资者的人，却仍旧乐于在自己最爱的股票上进进出出、反复交易。
Some years ago I was the adviser to a profit-sharing trust for a large commodities dealer. I bought for them–I think the stock has been split 15 times since then–a block of Texas Instruments at $14 a share. When the stock got up to $28, the pressure got so strong (“Well, why don’t we sell half of it, so as to get our bait back?’) I had all I could do to hold them until it got to $35. Then the same argument: “Phil, sell some of it; we can buy it back when it gets down again.’
几年之前，我担任一家大型商品经纪商的利润分享信托的顾问。我替他们买入了一批Texas Instruments，成本$14一股——我想这只股票后来大概拆分了15次。股价涨到$28时，压力变得很大（“我们为什么不卖掉一半，把本钱拿回来？”）。我费尽全力才把他们按住到$35。接着同样的论调又来了：“Phil，卖一部分吧；回头跌下来我们再买回来。”
That is a totally ridiculous argument. Either this is a better investment than another one or a worse one. Getting your bait back is just a question of psychological comfort. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether it is the right move or not.
这完全是荒唐的说法。要么这就是比另一个更好的投资，要么更差。“把本钱拿回来”只是心理安慰的问题，和这步棋是否正确没有任何关系。
But, at any rate, we did that. The stock subsequently went above $250 within two or three years. Then it had a wide open break and fell to the mid-50s. But it didn’t go down to $35.
但不管怎样，我们当时还是那么做了。随后两三年内，这只股票涨到了$250以上。后来出现了大幅下跌，回落到$50多，但也没有跌回$35。
What turned you off the short term?
是什么让你厌弃短线操作的？
Let me go back to the 1930s. The company I really started my business on was FMC Corp., then called Food Machinery. Two-thirds of its business was in selling to fruit and vegetable canners. So I started learning a fair amount about the canning business. Three different times in the Thirties I bought California Packing–that’s the Del Monte line–at a low price, when the outlook for canning looked poor, and sold it at a high price. I also bought, for any client who I could get to buy it, as much Food Machinery stock as they would let me.
让我回到20世纪30年代。我真正以之起家的公司是FMC Corp.，当时叫Food Machinery。它三分之二的业务是向水果和蔬菜罐头商销售设备。因此我开始学到不少关于罐头行业的知识。30年代我有三次在前景黯淡时低价买入California Packing——也就是Del Monte系列——然后高价卖出。同时，只要我能说服的客户，我都会尽可能多地为他们买入Food Machinery的股票。
Then in 1940 or 1941 I reviewed the bidding and found that the effort I had put into the timing of buying and selling California Packing shares considerably exceeded the time I had spent learning about and watching Food Machinery stock. Yet already by 1940 my profits in Food Machinery dwarfed the ins and outs of California Packing.
随后在1940或1941年，我回顾了整个过程，发现我在把握买入卖出California Packing时机上投入的精力，远远超过了我研究和跟踪Food Machinery所花的时间。然而到了1940年，我在Food Machinery上的利润已经把在California Packing上进进出出的收益远远甩在身后。
That episode finally made me decide not to follow the almost accepted policy at the time that you should buy low and sell high and make a profit and bring it in. This just isn’t valid.
这段经历最终让我决定，不再遵循当时几乎被普遍接受的策略——低买高卖、落袋为安。这个做法并不成立。
Warren Buffett once said his investment philosophy was 85% Ben Graham, 15% Phil Fisher. What’s the difference between Grahamism and Fisherism?
Warren Buffett曾说他的投资哲学是85% Ben Graham，15% Phil Fisher。Grahamism与Fisherism之间的区别是什么？
There are two fundamental approaches to investment. There’s the approach Ben Graham pioneered, which is to find something intrinsically so cheap that there is little chance of it having a big decline. He’s got financial safeguards to that. It isn’t going to go down much, and sooner or later value will come into it.
投资有两种基本路径。Ben Graham开创的方法，是去寻找那些内在价值极其便宜、几乎没有大幅下跌可能性的标的。他为此设置了财务层面的安全垫。它不会跌太多，迟早价值会显现。
Then there is my approach, which is to find something so good–if you don’t pay too much for it–that it will have very, very large growth. The advantage is that a bigger percentage of my stocks is apt to perform in a smaller period of time–although it has taken several years for some of these to even start, and you’re bound to make some mistakes at it. [But] when a stock is really unusual, it makes the bulk of its moves in a relatively short period of time.
然后是我的方法，即寻找那些足够优秀的标的——只要你不为它付出过高的价格——它会有非常非常大的成长。其优势在于，我的股票中有更高比例可能在更短的时间内表现出来——尽管其中一些甚至需要几年才会起步，而且你在这条路上难免会犯错。[但是]当一只股票确实非同寻常时，它的大部分涨幅往往在相对较短的时间里完成。
The disadvantage of Ben Graham’s approach, as he preached it, is it is such a good method that practically everybody knows it and has picked up the things that meet his formula.
Ben Graham的方法之弊端（按他所提倡的理解）在于，这是一套太好的方法，以至于几乎所有人都知道，并且已经把符合他公式的标的捡走了。
显然是错的，Ben Graham的核心是一套可以量化的哲学，独立思考+正确思考。
I don’t want to say that mine is the only formula for success. But I think, and I may be conceited about this, that I started my business before the term growth stock was thought of.
我并不想说我的方法是通往成功的唯一公式。但我认为——也许这听起来有点自负——在“growth stock”这个词被提出之前，我就已经用这套方法开始了我的事业。
How many clients do you have?
你现在有多少位客户？
The Grim Reaper has cut into my client list. I’ve actually got only nine at the present time.
Grim Reaper已经把我的客户名单“收割”了一些。现在我实际上只有九位。
I wondered as I turned 80 if some of my clients would begin to worry, well, should we leave our investments with a man whose life expectancy is obviously shorter than it was some years back? I was amazed to find the majority are not at all concerned. The reason is rather basic. The stocks I have put their funds in have certain common characteristics that I referred to earlier. If they’re going to start going downhill, which many companies do sooner or later, that might be a minimum five years off.
当我年满80岁时，我想知道是否有些客户会开始担心：我们是否要把投资交给一个显然比几年前寿命预期更短的人？让我惊讶的是，大多数人一点也不担心。原因相当基础。我为他们选择的股票都具有我先前提到的某些共同特征。如果它们要开始走下坡路——许多公司迟早都会如此——那至少也要五年之后的事。
If I were to pass out of this world tomorrow, my people would have plenty of time before they’d have to worry about these stocks and would still benefit from them as the present momentum carries on.
即便我明天就离开这个世界，我的客户也会有充足的时间才需要为这些股票担忧，并且还能随着当前动能的延续而继续受益。
Doesn’t sound like you’re about to retire.
听起来你并不打算退休。
I could wax for a half-hour on the utter folly of people being forced to retire at the age of 65. I think I have produced better results in the last five years than in any other five-year period. The refinement that comes from contemplating your own mistakes and improving yourself has continued.
关于把人硬性要求在65岁退休这件荒谬至极的事，我可以滔滔不绝讲半小时。我认为我过去五年的业绩比任何其他五年时期都要好。反思自身错误、不断改进而带来的精进一直在持续。
I have seen enough people start to go senile as they get older that if it should happen to me, with my responsibilities, I would cut myself off. But unless that happens, I think it’s ridiculous to stop the work I enjoy.
我见过足够多的人随着年纪增长而开始衰退，如果这事发生在我身上，考虑到我的责任，我会主动收手。但只要没发生，我认为停止我所热爱的工作是可笑的。
For our readers who won’t have the benefit of having you run their money, how about some advice on choosing a portfolio manager?
对于无法享受你亲自管理资产的读者，你能给些挑选资产管理人的建议吗？
The only way that I’ve suggested is get them to give you a transcript of what they actually have done. And if they take losses, and small losses, quickly and let their profits run, give them a gold star. If they take their profits quickly and let their losses run, don’t go near them.
我唯一建议的办法是，让他们提供一份他们实际操作记录的“成绩单”。如果他们对亏损处理迅速、且把亏损控制在较小的程度，同时让盈利头寸尽情奔跑，那就给他们一颗金星。反之，如果他们迅速了结盈利、却任由亏损持续扩大，那就离他们远一点。
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