1998-10-12 Warren Buffett.The Berkshire Bunch
Refer To：《The Berkshire Bunch》。
In 1952 a 21-year-old aspiring money manager placed a small ad in an Omaha, Nebraska, newspaper inviting people to attend a class on investing. He figured it would be a way to accustom himself to appearing before audiences. To prepare, he even spent $100 for a Dale Carnegie course on public speaking.
1952年，一位21岁的年轻人、有抱负的资金经理在内布拉斯加州奥马哈的一份报纸上刊登了一则小广告，邀请人们参加一门投资课程。他认为这可以让自己习惯在公众面前讲话。为此，他甚至花了100美元参加了戴尔·卡耐基公共演讲课程。
Five years later Dr. Carol Angle, a young pediatrician, signed up for the class. She had heard somewhere that the instructor was a bright kid, and she wanted to hear what he had to say. Only 20 or so others showed up that day in 1957.
五年后，年轻的儿科医生卡萝尔·安格尔报名参加了这门课程。她从某处听说授课的老师是个聪明的年轻人，想听听他要说什么。1957年那天，只有大约20个人到场。
You will by now have guessed the teacher's name: Buffett. Warren Buffett.
现在你大概已经猜到这位老师的名字了：巴菲特，沃伦·巴菲特。
"Warren had us calculate how money would grow, using a slide rule," Dr. Angle, now 71, recalls. "He brainwashed us to truly believe in our heart of hearts in the miracle of compound interest."
“沃伦让我们用滑尺计算钱是如何增长的，”现年71岁的安格尔医生回忆道。“他彻底洗脑我们，让我们从心底里相信复利的奇迹。”
Persuaded, she and her husband, William, also a doctor, invited 11 other doctors to a dinner to meet young Warren.
在他的说服下，她和同为医生的丈夫威廉邀请了另外11位医生共进晚餐，与年轻的沃伦见面。
Buffett remembers Bill Angle getting up at the end of the dinner and announcing: "I'm putting $10,000 in. The rest of you should, too." They did. Later, Carol Angle increased her ante to $30,000. That was half of the Angles' life savings.
巴菲特记得，比尔·安格尔在晚宴结束时站起来宣布：“我要投1万美元。你们其他人也应该投。”他们照做了。后来，卡萝尔·安格尔将她的投入增加到3万美元。这相当于安格尔夫妇一半的积蓄。
Dr. Angle still practices medicine, as director of clinical toxicology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. But she doesn't work for the money. Her family's holdings in Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway have multiplied into a fortune of $300 million.
安格尔医生如今仍在内布拉斯加大学医学中心担任临床毒理学主任，但她工作并不是为了赚钱。她家所持有的巴菲特旗下伯克希尔·哈撒韦股票已增值至3亿美元的财富。
Carol Angle is a charter member of the Berkshire Bunch, a diverse tribe scattered throughout the land whose early faith in Warren Buffet has led to immense riches.
卡萝尔·安格尔是“伯克希尔帮”的创始成员之一，这是一个遍布全国的多元群体，他们早期对沃伦·巴菲特的信任带来了巨额财富。
In Omaha alone there may be at least 30 families with $100 million or more worth of Berkshire stock, according to George Morgan, a broker at Kirkpatrick Pettis who handles accounts of many Berkshire holders.
仅在奥马哈，就至少有30个家庭的伯克希尔股票市值在1亿美元以上，处理众多伯克希尔股东账户的柯克帕特里克·佩蒂斯公司经纪人乔治·摩根如是说。
Mildred and Donald Othmer died recently, leaving an estate almost entirely in Berkshire Hathaway stock worth close to $800 million.
米尔德里德和唐纳德·奥斯默夫妇最近去世，留下的遗产几乎全部是伯克希尔·哈撒韦股票，总价值接近8亿美元。
Mildred's mother was a friend of Buffett's family. When Mildred married in the 1950s she and her husband each invested $25,000 in a Buffett partnership.
米尔德里德的母亲是巴菲特家族的朋友。上世纪50年代米尔德里德结婚时，她和丈夫各自向巴菲特的合伙企业投资了2.5万美元。
That was before Buffett had accumulated enough money to buy control of a struggling old New England manufacturer of textiles, handkerchiefs and suit linings called Berkshire Hathaway. At the time his first converts signed on, Buffett was running essentially what we would today call a private investment partnership. When he disbanded the partnership in 1969, explaining that bargains were then hard to find, he returned most of the investors' money and their pro rata Berkshire shares. He recommended to some of his investors that they turn their money over to the smallish Wall Street firm Ruane, Cuniff & Co. and its Sequoia Fund -- a recommendation that neither he nor they have reason to regret.
那还是在巴菲特攒够资金、买下一家名为伯克希尔·哈撒韦、主要生产纺织品、手帕和西装内衬、正陷入困境的新英格兰老厂商的控制权之前。当他的第一批追随者加入时，巴菲特本质上运作的是今天所谓的私人投资合伙企业。1969年他解散合伙企业时解释说当时很难找到便宜货，于是将大部分投资者的资金和他们按比例持有的伯克希尔股份退还给他们。他还建议其中一些投资者把资金交给一家规模不大的华尔街公司Ruane, Cuniff & Co.及其红杉基金——这一建议既让他也让他们至今无怨无悔。
For a while, he tried running Berkshire as a textile company, with investments on the side. In the end, he liquidated the business and concentrated entirely on investments. The ebullient stock market of the mid- and late 1960s had turned Buffett off, but things were changing.
有一段时间，他尝试把伯克希尔当作一家纺织公司来经营，同时做些附带投资。最终，他清算了纺织业务，完全专注于投资。20 世纪 60 年代中后期亢奋的股市曾让巴菲特心生厌倦，但形势正在发生变化。
The overpriced markets of the late 1960s collapsed amid recession, oil crises and inflation, and stocks became cheap again. Speaking to FORBES in late 1974, Buffett proclaimed that stocks were irresistible bargains.
20 世纪 60 年代末被高估的市场在衰退、石油危机和通胀的夹击下崩溃，股票再次变得便宜。1974 年末接受《福布斯》采访时，巴菲特宣称股票已是无法抗拒的便宜货。
(Actually, he put it more colorfully. Looking at the stock market, he said, "I feel like an oversexed guy in a harem.")
（实际上，他的说法更生动。谈到股市时，他说：“我感觉自己就像后宫里欲望旺盛的男人。”）
The story of his investment success has been told often, here and elsewhere: his devotion to the rigid analysis of balance sheets and P&L statements advocated by his teacher Benjamin Graham; his partnership with Charles Munger, which influenced Buffett to modify some of his earlier concepts. Suffice it to say that Buffett has done in stocks and companies what shrewd collectors have done in art: recognized quality before the crowd does. Today Berkshire Hathaway has a market capitalization of $73.5 billion and Buffett is an American hero.
他的投资成功故事已被无数次讲述，这里也不例外：他忠实践行导师本杰明·格雷厄姆倡导的资产负债表和损益表的严格分析；与查理·芒格的合作也促使他修正了早期的一些理念。可以说，巴菲特在股票和公司上做到了精明藏家在艺术品上所做的事——在大众发现之前就识别出优质标的。如今，伯克希尔·哈撒韦市值已达 735 亿美元，巴菲特已成为美国英雄。
He is No. 2, behind Bill Gates, on the FORBES list of the 400 richest people in the U.S, with $29 billion in Berkshire Hathaway shares.
在《福布斯》美国 400 富豪榜上，他仅次于比尔·盖茨位居第二，所持伯克希尔·哈撒韦股票价值 290 亿美元。
Munger, the acerbic lawyer and Buffett's partner for 40 years, ranks 153, with $1.2 billion. Buffett's wife, Susan, whom he married in 1952, has $2.3 billion, ranking her 73 on The Forbes 400. Though FORBES could not find them all, we are confident that there are literally scores of Berkshire centimillionaires.
尖刻的律师、与巴菲特合作 40 年的芒格以 12 亿美元位列第 153 名。巴菲特 1952 年迎娶的妻子苏珊拥有 23 亿美元，名列第 73 位。虽然《福布斯》无法把他们全部找出，但我们确信伯克希尔的亿万富翁确实有数十位之多。
The Bunch has a few things in common: By and large they haven't used their new wealth to finance jet-set living. Dr. Angle is perhaps typical. She doesn't fly first class; she wouldn't dream of buying a Mercedes. "There isn't that much to spend money on in Omaha . . . and if you do, you're highly suspect," she laughs.
这个“帮派”有一些共同点：总体上，他们并未用新财富去过奢华的“空中飞人”生活。安格尔医生也许最具代表性。她从不坐头等舱；买奔驰更是想都不敢想。“在奥马哈没什么可花钱的……要是你真这么做，人家会觉得你很可疑。”她笑着说。
They have this, too, in common: a faith in Buffett that transcends bull and bear markets, a dislike for paying unnecessary capital gains taxes that has influenced them to hang on even when the stock sometimes seemed overpriced -- and an understanding that it's smarter to look for a steady 15% or so compounding of your money than to search for hot stocks that could double or treble in a short time. There has never been a shortage of naysayers warning that Berkshire was overpriced. (Only last month the New York Times so proclaimed.)
他们还有另一共同点：对巴菲特的信任超越牛市与熊市；他们讨厌缴纳不必要的资本利得税，这促使他们即便在股票似乎高估时也坚持持有——他们明白，与其追逐短期可能翻倍或翻三倍的热门股，不如让资金以大约 15% 的速度稳健复利增长更明智。一直有人警告伯克希尔被高估。（就在上个月，《纽约时报》还如此宣称。）
At times its price has been volatile; by September the Class A shares were down 27% from their July peak of $84,000 per share. For many of the Berkshire Bunch that meant paper losses running into the hundreds of millions.
其股价有时相当波动；到 9 月，A 类股已从 7 月每股 8.4 万美元的高点下跌 27%。对许多伯克希尔成员而言，这意味着数亿美元的账面损失。
The Berkshire Bunch grew slowly. The first members were friends and family from Omaha. Daniel Monen, 71, the attorney who drew up all of Buffett's partnership papers, borrowed $5,000 from his mother-in-law to invest in 1957."Most lawyers die at their desks," he chuckles. "I could quit when I was 55 because of Warren Buffett."
“伯克希尔帮”壮大得很慢。最初的成员都是奥马哈的朋友和家人。71 岁的丹尼尔·莫能是起草巴菲特所有合伙协议的律师，他在 1957 年向岳母借了 5,000 美元投资。“大多数律师都是在办公桌前倒下的，”他咯咯笑道，“我能在 55 岁就退休，全靠沃伦·巴菲特。”
A wealthy Omaha neighbor, Dorothy Davis, invited Buffett over to her apartment one evening in 1957. "'I've heard you manage money,' she said," Buffett recalls. "She questioned me very closely for two hours about my philosophy of investing. But her husband, Dr. Davis, didn't say a word. He appeared not even to be listening.
1957 年的一个晚上，奥马哈富裕的邻居多萝西·戴维斯邀请巴菲特到她的公寓做客。“‘我听说你理财，’她说，”巴菲特回忆道，“她用两个小时对我的投资理念连珠发问。但她的丈夫戴维斯医生一句话也没说，似乎根本没在听。”
"Suddenly, Dr. Davis announced, 'We're giving you $100,000.'
“突然间，戴维斯医生宣布：‘我们要给你 10 万美元。’
"'How come?' I asked. He said, 'Because you remind me of Charlie Munger.'"
‘为什么？’我问。他说：‘因为你让我想起了查理·芒格。’”
Who? Buffett didn't even know Munger yet.
谁？那时巴菲特还根本不认识芒格。
The meeting boosted Buffett's money under management from $500,000 to $600,000. More important, it planted a seed that sprouted two years later, when Davis introduced Buffett to Munger, a fellow Omaha native who had moved to Los Angeles.
那次晚宴把巴菲特的管理资金从50万美元一下子抬到60万美元。更重要的是，它埋下了一颗日后生根发芽的种子：两年后，戴维斯把巴菲特介绍给同样出生于奥马哈、当时已移居洛杉矶的查理·芒格。
Many of the second wave of the Buffett Bunch were Columbia Business School classmates of Buffett's. There is Fred Stanback, a wealthy native of North Carolina who was later best man at Buffett's wedding. In 1962 he entrusted $125,000 to Buffett.
“伯克希尔帮”第二波成员中，不少是巴菲特在哥伦比亚商学院的同学。其中包括北卡罗来纳富豪弗雷德·斯坦贝克——他后来还做了巴菲特婚礼的伴郎。1962年，他把12.5万美元交给巴菲特打理。
Others joined the Bunch because they recognized in Buffett a fellow admirer of investment guru Ben Graham. These included William Ruane of the Sequoia Fund, David Gottesman of First Manhattan and the late Phil Carrett of the Pioneer Fund.
还有一些人之所以入伙，是因为他们从巴菲特身上看到了对投资大师本·格雷厄姆的同样崇敬。其中就有红杉基金的威廉·鲁安、第一曼哈顿公司的大卫·戈特斯曼，以及先锋基金已故经理菲尔·卡雷特。
"Anyone who came in contact with Warren bought the stock. It was one of the clearest decisions a person could make," says Gottesman. His firm holds over 6,000 shares, worth some $368 million, for its clients.
“凡是接触过沃伦的人都会去买伯克希尔，这是一个人能做出的最明白不过的决定。”戈特斯曼说。仅为客户名义持有的伯克希尔股票，他的公司就超过6,000股，市值约3.68亿美元。
Ruane's Sequoia Fund holds 20,975 shares, 34% of its total portfolio.
鲁安的红杉基金持有20,975股，占其全部资产组合的34%。
Later in the 1960s the big money began to catch on. Laurence Tisch (Forbes 400 rank 80) and Franklin Otis Booth Jr., cousin of the Los Angeles Chandler family, became investors.
到了60年代后期，大资本也开始闻风而动。劳伦斯·蒂施（福布斯400富豪榜第80位）和洛杉矶钱德勒家族的堂兄富兰克林·奥蒂斯·布斯二世都成了股东。
Some members almost stumbled in. In 1962 Buffett started buying shares in Berkshire Hathaway. Its chairman was Malcolm Chace, scion of an old New England family. To Buffett, Berkshire seemed a classic Ben Graham situation, selling as it was at $7.50 a share versus net working capital of $10 a share. Buffett took control in 1965 and gradually liquidated the working assets.
也有成员算得上是“误打误撞”。1962年，巴菲特开始买进伯克希尔·哈撒韦股票。当时的董事长是出身新英格兰望族的马尔科姆·蔡斯。在巴菲特看来，伯克希尔完美符合格雷厄姆的“烟蒂股”模式——每股净营运资金10美元，却只卖7.5美元。1965年，他取得控股权，并逐步处置了公司的营运资产。
The stubborn Malcolm Chace didn't sell to Buffett. His holding, now controlled by his heir Malcolm Chace III, is worth about $850 million.
倔强的马尔科姆·蔡斯本人当年并未把股份卖给巴菲特。如今这笔股份由其继承人马尔科姆·蔡斯三世掌控，市值大约8.5亿美元。
Ernest Williams, former head of Mason & Lee, a Virginia brokerage, read an article by Buffett and, in 1978, began buying as many shares as he could get; today, he and his family own more than 4,000 shares, worth some $250 million.
弗吉尼亚券商 Mason & Lee 的前负责人厄恩斯特·威廉斯在1978年读到巴菲特的一篇文章后，开始能买多少就买多少伯克希尔股票；如今，他和家人共持有4,000多股，市值约2.5亿美元。
Legendary MIT economics professor Paul Samuelson is a big Berkshire shareholder. To his students, Samuelson preached the efficient market theory of investing, which says it's just about impossible to beat the market. In his own investing, however, Samuelson picked a market-beater.
传奇的麻省理工学院经济学教授保罗·萨缪尔森也是伯克希尔的大股东。他在课堂上宣扬有效市场理论，告诉学生几乎没人能战胜市场；可在自己的投资里，他却选中了一个彻底跑赢市场的标的。
Besides its stockholdings and insurance companies, Berkshire shelters a raft of small and medium-size companies that publish newspapers, make shoes and sell candy, jewelry, furniture and encyclopedias. Buffett prefers to buy such businesses for cash, but he can be arm-twisted into parting with Berkshire stock if he wants your company badly enough. William Child, the chief executive of R.C. Willey Home Furnishings, a Salt Lake City, Utah-based furnishing store, is one of those fortunate ones.
除了股票投资和保险公司，伯克希尔旗下还安置了一大批中小企业，业务涵盖报纸出版、制鞋、糖果、珠宝、家具乃至百科全书销售。巴菲特通常更愿意用现金收购此类企业，但如果他实在想要你的公司，也可能勉强拿伯克希尔股票来交换。总部位于犹他州盐湖城的家居零售商 R.C. Willey 的首席执行官威廉·柴尔德就是这群幸运儿之一。
Just before selling out to Buffett, Child got some sage advice from grandsons of Rose Blumkin, the then-99-year-old former owner of Nebraska Furniture Mart in Omaha, who sold out to Berkshire in 1995.
在把公司卖给巴菲特之前，柴尔德曾得到一些至理名言——来自罗斯·布鲁姆金的几个孙子。布鲁姆金是奥马哈“内布拉斯加家具商场”的前老板，当年99岁的她已在1995年把生意卖给了伯克希尔。
“My friends the Blumkins told me they made a very bad mistake selling their company to Buffett for cash. They told me, no matter what, you don’t take cash, and no matter what you do, don’t sell your Berkshire stock. And I didn’t,” says Child.
“布鲁姆金家的人对我说，他们把公司拿现金卖给巴菲特是一个大错。他们告诫我：无论如何别要现金，无论如何都别卖掉手里的伯克希尔股票。我照做了。”柴尔德说。
Child got 8,000 shares in June 1995. The price then was $22,000 a share. Today it is $61,400, giving Child a net worth of almost $500 million.
1995 年 6 月，柴尔德分得 8,000 股，当时股价每股 22,000 美元。今天这一数字是 61,400 美元，他的身家已接近 5 亿美元。
Harold Alfond and his family exchanged their ownership of Dexter Shoe Co. for 25,203 shares of Berkshire in 1995. Alfond never sold a share; the position today is worth $1.5 billion.
哈罗德·阿尔方德一家在 1995 年把德克斯特鞋业卖给伯克希尔，换得 25,203 股伯克希尔股票。阿尔方德一股未卖，如今这笔持仓价值 15 亿美元。
As you might expect, there are a lot of people out there kicking themselves for not keeping the faith.
可以想见，不少人如今悔不当初，因为当年没能坚持信念。
In the 1970s bear market the carnage was terrible. Berkshire fell from $80 in December 1972 to $40 in December 1974. Gloom and doom were everywhere. Year after year people withdrew more money from mutual funds, and a FORBES competitor emblazoned “The Death of Equities” on its cover.
20 世纪 70 年代的熊市极其惨烈。伯克希尔的股价从 1972 年 12 月的 80 美元跌到 1974 年 12 月的 40 美元，悲观情绪弥漫。年复一年，投资者不断从共同基金撤资，甚至有财经杂志在封面上打出“股票之死”的大标题。
All this suited Buffett fine. As he has put it many times, “You pay a steep price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.” Others were buying bonds; he was buying stocks. But some of his followers bought the consensus and sold out.
这些情况正中巴菲特下怀。他多次说过：“在股市里，为了乐观的一致意见你往往要付出惨重代价。”别人买债券，他却趁机买股票。但他的部分追随者选择相信市场共识而清仓离场。
Black day, for them.
对他们而言，那是黯淡的一天。
Along the way, others have bailed out for different reasons. Marshall Weinberg, a Columbia classmate who became a stockbroker at Gruntal & Co., sold some stock to make contributions to various causes. William (Buddy) Fox left Wall Street and cashed in his Berkshire stock to move to Australia. Laurence Tisch sold his position to avoid, he claims, being criticized for being a Buffett investor when both men might be interested in the same stocks.
一路走来，还有人基于各种理由退出。哥大同学马歇尔·温伯格后来在 Gruntal 做经纪人，他卖出部分持股以资助慈善。威廉（“巴迪”）福克斯离开华尔街、套现伯克希尔股票后移居澳大利亚。劳伦斯·蒂施则称自己是怕被人指责与巴菲特“撞股”，于是把仓位清掉。
When Berkshire’s takeover of General Reinsurance in a $22 billion stock swap is accomplished in the fourth quarter, Berkshire will inherit an entirely new group of investors: Seventy percent of Gen Re is held by mutual funds, insurance companies and pension funds. Will they stay with Berkshire? Buffett fully expects a fair number to defect. He says: “The first investors just believed in me. The ones who had faith stayed on; you couldn’t get my Aunt Katie to sell if you came at her with a crowbar. But the people who came in later because they thought the stock was cheap and they were attracted to my record didn’t always stay. It’s a process of natural selection.”
当伯克希尔以 220 亿美元换股完成对通用再保险的收购（预计在第四季度）后，公司将迎来一大批全新的股东——通用再保险 70% 的股份握在共同基金、保险公司和养老金手中。他们会留下吗？巴菲特预料会有相当一部分人退场。他说：“最早的投资者只是单纯相信我。有信念的人一路留了下来；就算你拿撬棍去撬，我的凯蒂姑妈也不会卖。但后来那些因为觉得股价便宜、被我过往成绩吸引而买进的人，并不总能坚持。这是一种自然选择的过程。”
缺少定性的判断。
Buffett can never resist a chance to throw out a quip (though we must say, it wasn’t one of his best): “You might say it’s the survival of the fattest — financially fattest.”
巴菲特总爱来一句俏皮话（虽说这次并非最佳）： “可以说，这就是‘最肥者生存’——财务上最肥。”
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