1999-11-22 Mr. Buffett on the stock market

Refer To：《Mr. Buffett on the stock market》。

The most celebrated of investors says stocks can’t possibly meet the public’s expectations. As for the Internet? He notes how few people got rich from two other transforming industries, auto and aviation.

最著名的投资者说，股票不可能满足公众的期望。至于互联网呢？他指出，在另外两个变革性行业——汽车和航空中，很少有人因此致富。

Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, almost never talks publicly about the general level of stock prices–neither in his famed annual report nor at Berkshire’s thronged annual meetings nor in the rare speeches he gives. But over a few months in 1999, Buffett did step up to that subject, laying out his opinions, in ways both analytical and creative, about the long-term future for stocks. FORTUNE’s Carol Loomis heard the last of those talks, given in September 1999 to a group of Buffett’s friends (of whom she is one), and also watched a videotape of the first speech, given in July at Allen & Co.’s Sun Valley, Idaho, bash for business leaders. From those extemporaneous talks (the first made with the Dow Jones industrial average at 11,194), Loomis distilled the following account of what Buffett said. Buffett reviewed it and weighed in with some clarifications.

伯克希尔·哈撒韦董事长沃伦·巴菲特几乎从不公开谈论股票价格的一般水平——无论是在他那著名的年报中，还是在伯克希尔人山人海的年度会议上，亦或是在他那极为罕见的演讲中。然而，在1999年的几个月里，巴菲特确实就这一主题发表了看法，用既具分析性又富创造性的方式阐述了股票的长期前景。《财富》杂志的卡罗尔·鲁米斯听了他最后一次关于此话题的演讲（该演讲于1999年9月对一群巴菲特的朋友进行——她也是其中之一），同时还观看了他在7月于艾伦公司的爱达荷州太阳谷为商业领袖举办的聚会中所做的首次演讲录像。从这些即兴演讲中（第一场时道琼斯工业平均指数为11,194），鲁米斯整理出了巴菲特所说内容的如下记录，巴菲特随后对其进行了审阅并做出了一些澄清。

Investors in stocks these days are expecting far too much, and I’m going to explain why. That will inevitably set me to talking about the general stock market, a subject I’m usually unwilling to discuss. But I want to make one thing clear going in: Though I will be talking about the level of the market, I will not be predicting its next moves. At Berkshire we focus almost exclusively on the valuations of individual companies, looking only to a very limited extent at the valuation of the overall market. Even then, valuing the market has nothing to do with where it’s going to go next week or next month or next year, a line of thought we never get into. The fact is that markets behave in ways, sometimes for a very long stretch, that are not linked to value. Sooner or later, though, value counts. So what I am going to be saying–assuming it’s correct–will have implications for the long-term results to be realized by American stockholders.

如今的股票投资者期望过高，我将解释其中的原因。这必然会让我谈论整体股市——这是一个我通常不愿涉足的话题。但我想先澄清一件事：虽然我会讨论市场的水平，但我不会预测其下一步走势。在伯克希尔，我们几乎专注于对各个公司的估值，而对整体市场估值则关注极少。即便如此，对市场进行估值与它下周、下月或明年的走势毫无关系——这也是我们从不讨论的问题。事实是，市场的表现方式有时长时间内与其内在价值无关，不过，迟早价值会起决定作用。所以，我接下来所说的内容——假如它正确的话——将对美国股东长期收益产生影响。

Let’s start by defining “investing.” The definition is simple but often forgotten: Investing is laying out money now to get more money back in the future–more money in real terms, after taking inflation into account.

让我们先来定义“投资”。这个定义很简单，但常被遗忘：投资就是现在花钱，以便在未来获得更多回报——在扣除通胀后以实际价值计的更多金钱。

Now, to get some historical perspective, let’s look back at the 34 years before this one–and here we are going to see an almost Biblical kind of symmetry, in the sense of lean years and fat years–to observe what happened in the stock market. Take, to begin with, the first 17 years of the period, from the end of 1964 through 1981. Here’s what took place in that interval:

现在，为了获得一些历史视角，让我们回顾一下本年前的34年——在这里我们将看到一种几乎圣经式的对称，即经济紧缩与繁荣交替的局面——以观察股市中所发生的事情。首先来看这一时期的前17年，从1964年底到1981年。这期间发生了以下情况：

DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE

道琼斯工业平均指数

Dec. 31, 1964: 874.12

Dec. 31, 1981: 875.00

Now I’m known as a long-term investor and a patient guy, but that is not my idea of a big move.

我以长期投资者和耐心著称，但这并不是我所认为的重大变动。

And here’s a major and very opposite fact: During that same 17 years, the GDP of the U.S.–that is, the business being done in this country–almost quintupled, rising by 370%. Or, if we look at another measure, the sales of the FORTUNE 500 (a changing mix of companies, of course) more than sextupled. And yet the Dow went exactly nowhere.

这里还有一个极为重要且截然相反的事实：在同样的17年中，美国的GDP——也就是这个国家的经济活动——几乎增长了五倍，上涨了370%。或者，换个角度看，财富500强企业的销售额（当然，这个组合不断变化）增长了超过六倍，而道琼斯指数却几乎毫无变化。

第1个17年的起点，GDP的增长历史上最快，利率不断上升，CPATAX/GDP有所下降。

To understand why that happened, we need first to look at one of the two important variables that affect investment results: interest rates. These act on financial valuations the way gravity acts on matter: The higher the rate, the greater the downward pull. That’s because the rates of return that investors need from any kind of investment are directly tied to the risk-free rate that they can earn from government securities. So if the government rate rises, the prices of all other investments must adjust downward, to a level that brings their expected rates of return into line. Conversely, if government interest rates fall, the move pushes the prices of all other investments upward. The basic proposition is this: What an investor should pay today for a dollar to be received tomorrow can only be determined by first looking at the risk-free interest rate.

要理解为何会出现这种情况，我们首先需要关注影响投资结果的两个重要变量之一：利率。利率对金融估值的作用就如同重力对物质的作用：利率越高，下行压力越大。这是因为投资者从任何投资中所期望获得的回报率，直接取决于他们从政府证券中能赚到的无风险利率。因此，如果政府利率上升，所有其他投资的价格都必须下调至使其预期回报率一致的水平。相反，如果政府利率下降，这种变化会推动所有其他投资的价格上升。基本命题是：投资者今天为明天能收到的一美元所支付的价格，只能通过首先考察无风险利率来确定。

利率是最重要并且可知（important and knowable）的事实，其次是企业税后利润占GDP的比重。

Consequently, every time the risk-free rate moves by one basis point–by 0.01%–the value of every investment in the country changes. People can see this easily in the case of bonds, whose value is normally affected only by interest rates. In the case of equities or real estate or farms or whatever, other very important variables are almost always at work, and that means the effect of interest rate changes is usually obscured. Nonetheless, the effect–like the invisible pull of gravity–is constantly there.

因此，每当无风险利率变动一个基点——即0.01%——全国每项投资的价值都会发生变化。人们可以很容易地在债券的例子中看到这一点，因为债券的价值通常只受利率影响。而在股票、房地产、农场等领域，其他非常重要的变量几乎总在发挥作用，这使得利率变化的影响通常被掩盖。然而，这种影响——如同看不见的重力拉力——始终存在。

In the 1964-81 period, there was a tremendous increase in the rates on long-term government bonds, which moved from just over 4% at year-end 1964 to more than 15% by late 1981. That rise in rates had a huge depressing effect on the value of all investments, but the one we noticed, of course, was the price of equities. So there–in that tripling of the gravitational pull of interest rates–lies the major explanation of why tremendous growth in the economy was accompanied by a stock market going nowhere.

在1964至1981年期间，长期政府债券的利率大幅上升，从1964年年末的略高于4%上升到1981年末的超过15%。这种利率上升对所有投资的价值产生了巨大抑制作用，而我们注意到的，当然，是股票价格的表现。因此，这种利率重力拉力的三倍增强，是解释经济巨大增长却伴随着股市停滞不前的主要原因。

Then, in the early 1980s, the situation reversed itself. You will remember Paul Volcker coming in as chairman of the Fed and remember also how unpopular he was. But the heroic things he did–his taking a two-by-four to the economy and breaking the back of inflation–caused the interest rate trend to reverse, with some rather spectacular results. Let’s say you put $1 million into the 14% 30-year U.S. bond issued Nov. 16, 1981, and reinvested the coupons. That is, every time you got an interest payment, you used it to buy more of that same bond. At the end of 1998, with long-term governments by then selling at 5%, you would have had $8,181,219 and would have earned an annual return of more than 13%.

随后，在1980年代初，情况发生了逆转。你一定还记得保罗·沃尔克出任美联储主席时的情形，以及他当时的不受欢迎。但他所采取的英勇举措——对经济施以强硬打击，终结了通胀——使得利率走势逆转，取得了相当显著的成果。假设你在1981年11月16日以14%利率投资了100万美元于30年期美国债券，并将每次收到的利息再投资。也就是说，每次收到利息时，你都用它购买了更多相同的债券。到1998年末，当长期政府债券的利率降至5%时，你将拥有8,181,219美元，并获得了超过13%的年回报率。

That 13% annual return is better than stocks have done in a great many 17-year periods in history–in most 17-year periods, in fact. It was a helluva result, and from none other than a stodgy bond.

那13%的年回报率比历史上许多17年期间股票的表现都要好——实际上在大多数17年期间都是如此。这是一个惊人的结果，而且还是来自一只平庸债券的表现。

The power of interest rates had the effect of pushing up equities as well, though other things that we will get to pushed additionally. And so here’s what equities did in that same 17 years: If you’d invested $1 million in the Dow on Nov. 16, 1981, and reinvested all dividends, you’d have had $19,720,112 on Dec. 31, 1998. And your annual return would have been 19%.

利率的力量同样推动了股票价格的上升，尽管还有其他因素也在发挥作用。那么，在同样的17年中，股票的表现如何呢：如果你在1981年11月16日投资100万美元于道琼斯指数，并将所有股息再投资，到1998年12月31日，你将拥有19,720,112美元，你的年回报率将达到19%。

The increase in equity values since 1981 beats anything you can find in history. This increase even surpasses what you would have realized if you’d bought stocks in 1932, at their Depression bottom–on its lowest day, July 8, 1932, the Dow closed at 41.22–and held them for 17 years.

自1981年以来，股票价值的增长超过了历史上任何时期。如果你在大萧条低谷时的1932年买入股票——1932年7月8日，道琼斯指数创下41.22的最低收盘价——并持有17年，这种增长也依然强劲。

The second thing bearing on stock prices during this 17 years was after-tax corporate profits, which this chart [above] displays as a percentage of GDP. In effect, what this chart tells you is what portion of the GDP ended up every year with the shareholders of American business.

这17年间影响股价的第二个因素是税后企业利润，该图表（见上）显示了其占GDP的百分比。实际上，这张图表告诉你，每年美国企业的股东最终从GDP中获得的比例。

The chart, as you will see, starts in 1929. I’m quite fond of 1929, since that’s when it all began for me. My dad was a stock salesman at the time, and after the Crash came, in the fall, he was afraid to call anyone–all those people who’d been burned. So he just stayed home in the afternoons. And there wasn’t television then. Soooo… I was conceived on or about Nov. 30, 1929 (and born nine months later, on Aug. 30, 1930), and I’ve forever had a kind of warm feeling about the Crash.

如你所见，这张图表从1929年开始。我对1929年情有独钟，因为那是我一切的开始。那时我父亲是一名股票推销员，在股灾发生后的秋天，他害怕给任何人打电话——那些曾经受过损失的人。所以他整个下午都呆在家里。当时还没有电视。所以……我大约在1929年11月30日受孕（九个月后，即1930年8月30日出生），我对那场股灾一直怀有一种温暖的情感。

As you can see, corporate profits as a percentage of GDP peaked in 1929, and then they tanked. The left-hand side of the chart, in fact, is filled with aberrations: not only the Depression but also a wartime profits boom–sedated by the excess-profits tax–and another boom after the war. But from 1951 on, the percentage settled down pretty much to a 4% to 6.5% range.

如你所见，企业利润占GDP的比例在1929年达到顶峰，随后急剧下降。事实上，图表左侧充斥着异常数据：不仅有大萧条，还有因超额利润税而平抑的战时利润繁荣，以及战后另一波繁荣。但从1951年起，这一比例基本稳定在4%到6.5%之间。

这个比例在2012年后快速超过10%（见下文的图表），这个时间点也是智能手机崛起的时间，大型科技企业在整个经济中的比重快速提升。

By 1981, though, the trend was headed toward the bottom of that band, and in 1982 profits tumbled to 3.5%. So at that point investors were looking at two strong negatives: Profits were sub-par and interest rates were sky-high.

然而，到1981年，这一趋势正朝着该区间的下限走去，而1982年利润暴跌至3.5%。因此，当时投资者面临两个强烈的不利因素：利润低于平均水平，而利率则高得惊人。

And as is so typical, investors projected out into the future what they were seeing. That’s their unshakable habit: looking into the rear-view mirror instead of through the windshield. What they were observing, looking backward, made them very discouraged about the country. They were projecting high interest rates, they were projecting low profits, and they were therefore valuing the Dow at a level that was the same as 17 years earlier, even though GDP had nearly quintupled.

正如典型情况那样，投资者把他们所看到的情况投射到未来。这是他们不可动摇的习惯：只看后视镜而不是透过挡风玻璃看前方。他们回顾过去所观察到的情况，使他们对国家前景感到非常沮丧。他们预期利率会居高不下，预期利润会低迷，因此把道琼斯的估值定在与17年前相同的水平，尽管当时GDP几乎增长了五倍。

Now, what happened in the 17 years beginning with 1982? One thing that didn’t happen was comparable growth in GDP: In this second 17-year period, GDP less than tripled. But interest rates began their descent, and after the Volcker effect wore off, profits began to climb–not steadily, but nonetheless with real power. You can see the profit trend in the chart, which shows that by the late 1990s, after-tax profits as a percent of GDP were running close to 6%, which is on the upper part of the “normalcy” band. And at the end of 1998, long-term government interest rates had made their way down to that 5%.

那么，从1982年开始的这17年中发生了什么？其中一件没有发生的事是GDP实现同等增长：在这第二个17年期间，GDP的增长不足以使其翻三倍。但利率开始下降，在沃尔克政策效应消退后，利润开始攀升——虽然不是平稳上升，但确实显示出强劲势头。你可以从图表中看到利润的趋势，该图表显示到1990年代末，税后利润占GDP的比例接近6%，处于“常态”区间的上限。而到了1998年底，长期政府利率已降至5%左右。

第2个17年的起点，GDP的增速有所下降，利率的下降更快，CPATAX/GDP有所上升。

These dramatic changes in the two fundamentals that matter most to investors explain much, though not all, of the more than tenfold rise in equity prices–the Dow went from 875 to 9,181– during this 17-year period. What was at work also, of course, was market psychology. Once a bull market gets under way, and once you reach the point where everybody has made money no matter what system he or she followed, a crowd is attracted into the game that is responding not to interest rates and profits but simply to the fact that it seems a mistake to be out of stocks.

这些对投资者最为关键的两个基本面发生的剧变，虽然并不能解释全部原因，但足以说明在这17年期间股价上涨超过十倍的原因——道琼斯指数从875涨到9,181。当然，市场心理也在其中发挥了作用。一旦牛市启动，当每个人无论采用何种投资体系都赚到钱时，就会有大量人涌入市场，他们的反应不再是对利率和利润的关注，而仅仅是因为他们认为不持有股票才是错误的。

In effect, these people superimpose an I-can’t-miss-the-party factor on top of the fundamental factors that drive the market. Like Pavlov’s dog, these “investors” learn that when the bell rings–in this case, the one that opens the New York Stock Exchange at 9:30 a.m.–they get fed. Through this daily reinforcement, they become convinced that there is a God and that He wants them to get rich.

实际上，这些人将“我绝不会错过这场盛会”的因素叠加在推动市场的基本面之上。就像巴甫洛夫的狗一样，这些“投资者”学会了，当铃声响起——在这里指的是每天早上9:30开市的那一刻——他们就能获得回报。通过这种每日的强化，他们确信上帝存在，并且祂希望他们致富。

Today, staring fixedly back at the road they just traveled, most investors have rosy expectations. A Paine Webber and Gallup Organization survey released in July shows that the least experienced investors–those who have invested for less than five years–expect annual returns over the next ten years of 22.6%. Even those who have invested for more than 20 years are expecting 12.9%.

如今，当大多数投资者回顾自己刚刚走过的路时，他们对未来充满了乐观预期。Paine Webber和盖洛普组织在7月发布的一项调查显示，最缺乏经验的投资者——那些投资时间不到五年的人——预计未来十年的年回报率为22.6%。即便是那些投资超过20年的人，也预期回报率为12.9%。

第3个17年的起点，CPATAX/GDP处于相对高位，利率处于均值，巴菲特警告下一个17年不可能再这么增长。

Now, I’d like to argue that we can’t come even remotely close to that 12.9%, and make my case by examining the key value-determining factors. Today, if an investor is to achieve juicy profits in the market over ten years or 17 or 20, one or more of three things must happen. I’ll delay talking about the last of them for a bit, but here are the first two:

现在，我想论证，我们连12.9%的回报率都达不到，并通过考察决定价值的关键因素来说明这一点。如今，如果投资者在未来十年、17年或20年内要在市场上获得丰厚利润，必须有以下三种情况中的一种或多种发生。我先不谈第三点，以下是前两点：

(1) Interest rates must fall further. If government interest rates, now at a level of about 6%, were to fall to 3%, that factor alone would come close to doubling the value of common stocks. Incidentally, if you think interest rates are going to do that–or fall to the 1% that Japan has experienced–you should head for where you can really make a bundle: bond options.

利率必须进一步下降。如果政府利率从目前约6%的水平降至3%，仅这一因素就几乎能使普通股的价值翻倍。顺便提一句，如果你认为利率会那样下降——或者降至日本那种1%的水平——你应该考虑去投资能够赚大钱的地方：债券期权。

2015年美联储的利率是0.13%，接近零。

(2) Corporate profitability in relation to GDP must rise. You know, someone once told me that New York has more lawyers than people. I think that’s the same fellow who thinks profits will become larger than GDP. When you begin to expect the growth of a component factor to forever outpace that of the aggregate, you get into certain mathematical problems. In my opinion, you have to be wildly optimistic to believe that corporate profits as a percent of GDP can, for any sustained period, hold much above 6%. One thing keeping the percentage down will be competition, which is alive and well. In addition, there’s a public-policy point: If corporate investors, in aggregate, are going to eat an ever-growing portion of the American economic pie, some other group will have to settle for a smaller portion. That would justifiably raise political problems–and in my view a major reslicing of the pie just isn’t going to happen.

企业利润占GDP的比例必须上升。你知道，有人曾告诉我，纽约的律师比人口还多。我认为那人也会认为企业利润会超过GDP。当你开始预期某一组成部分的增长永远会超越整体增长时，就会遇到一些数学问题。在我看来，只有极度乐观的人才会相信企业利润占GDP的比例在任何持续时期内能够保持在6%以上。制约这一比例上升的一个因素是竞争，这在现实中始终存在。此外，还有一个公共政策问题：如果企业投资者总体上要瓜分美国经济大蛋糕中越来越大的一部分，那么其他群体就必须分得更少。这必然会引发政治问题——在我看来，对蛋糕进行大幅重新分配是不可能发生的。

2015年，企业利润占GDP的比例是9.71%，并且科技企业的集中度可能还在提升。

So where do some reasonable assumptions lead us? Let’s say that GDP grows at an average 5% a year–3% real growth, which is pretty darn good, plus 2% inflation. If GDP grows at 5%, and you don’t have some help from interest rates, the aggregate value of equities is not going to grow a whole lot more. Yes, you can add on a bit of return from dividends. But with stocks selling where they are today, the importance of dividends to total return is way down from what it used to be. Nor can investors expect to score because companies are busy boosting their per-share earnings by buying in their stock.

那么，根据一些合理的假设，我们会得出什么结论呢？假设GDP年均增长5%——其中包括3%的实际增长（相当不错）加上2%的通胀。如果GDP增长率为5%，而没有利率方面的额外帮助，股票的总价值就不会有太大增长。是的，你可以从股息中获得一些回报。但以当今的股票价格来看，股息在总回报中的重要性远不如从前。投资者也不能指望因为公司忙于通过回购股票来提升每股收益而获利。

巴菲特的前两个预测都是错的，但是2015年的S&P500相比于1999年上涨了55%，跟巴菲特说的一致，主要原因是整体股市的估值回来了。

The offset here is that the companies are just about as busy issuing new stock, both through primary offerings and those ever present stock options.

补充说明的是，公司几乎同时忙于通过首次公开募股和层出不穷的股票期权发行新股。

So I come back to my postulation of 5% growth in GDP and remind you that it is a limiting factor in the returns you’re going to get: You cannot expect to forever realize a 12% annual increase–much less 22%–in the valuation of American business if its profitability is growing only at 5%. The inescapable fact is that the value of an asset, whatever its character, cannot over the long term grow faster than its earnings do.

因此，我回到我关于GDP增长5%的假设，并提醒你，这构成了你所能获得回报的一个限制因素：如果美国企业的盈利仅以5%的速度增长，那么你永远不可能期望其估值每年增加12%——更别说22%了。不可回避的事实是，无论资产性质如何，从长远来看，其价值的增长速度不能超过其收益的增长速度。

Now, maybe you’d like to argue a different case. Fair enough. But give me your assumptions. If you think the American public is going to make 12% a year in stocks, I think you have to say, for example, “Well, that’s because I expect GDP to grow at 10% a year, dividends to add two percentage points to returns, and interest rates to stay at a constant level.” Or you’ve got to rearrange these key variables in some other manner. The Tinker Bell approach–clap if you believe–just won’t cut it.

现在，也许你会想提出不同的观点。那也无妨。但请告诉我你的假设。如果你认为美国公众每年能从股票中获得12%的回报，我认为你必须说明，例如，“那是因为我预期GDP将以每年10%的速度增长，股息将为回报率增加2个百分点，且利率保持不变。”或者你得以其他方式重新安排这些关键变量。那种“相信就拍手”的小精灵式方法是行不通的。

第4个17年（2016-2032年），2024年的基准利率是5.15%，还有多大下降的空间？2016-2024年GDP的复合增速是5.70%，上一个17年（1999-2015年）是4.09%，GDP的增速是在加快的。

Beyond that, you need to remember that future returns are always affected by current valuations and give some thought to what you’re getting for your money in the stock market right now. Here are two 1998 figures for the FORTUNE 500. The companies in this universe account for about 75% of the value of all publicly owned American businesses, so when you look at the 500, you’re really talking about America Inc.

除此之外，你还需要记住，未来的回报总是受当前估值的影响，并且需要考虑你现在在股市中用钱买到了什么。以下是关于财富500强公司1998年的两个数据。这些公司的总市值约占所有公开上市美国企业市值的75%，所以当你看这500强时，实际上你是在谈论美国公司。

估值是第3个重要的因素，最终1999-2015年的平淡行情受这个因素的影响是最大的。

FORTUNE 500

1998 profits: $334,335,000,000

1998年利润：3343.35亿美元

Market value on March 15, 1999: $9,907,233,000,000

1999年3月15日市值：9.90723万亿美元

2024年底S&P500的总市值是49.805万亿美元，净利润是1.78万亿美元，PE=27.98，1999年的情况是9.9/0.3343=29.61，相差的已经不多。

As we focus on those two numbers, we need to be aware that the profits figure has its quirks. Profits in 1998 included one very unusual item–a $16 billion bookkeeping gain that Ford reported from its spinoff of Associates–and profits also included, as they always do in the 500, the earnings of a few mutual companies, such as State Farm, that do not have a market value. Additionally, one major corporate expense, stock-option compensation costs, is not deducted from profits. On the other hand, the profits figure has been reduced in some cases by write-offs that probably didn’t reflect economic reality and could just as well be added back in.

在关注这两个数字时，我们需要意识到利润数字也有其怪癖。1998年的利润中包括一项非常特殊的项目——福特因分拆子公司而报告的160亿美元账面收益——而且正如财富500强中一贯的做法，利润还包括一些没有市场价值的互助公司的收益，如State Farm。此外，一项主要的企业费用——股票期权补偿费用——并未从利润中扣除。另一方面，在某些情况下，利润数字又因计提了可能并不反映经济现实的减值而被降低，这部分也可以加回去。

But leaving aside these qualifications, investors were saying on March 15 this year that they would pay a hefty $10 trillion for the $334 billion in profits.

但撇开这些修正因素不谈，投资者在今年3月15日表示，他们愿意为这3340亿美元的利润支付高达10万亿美元的市值。

Bear in mind–this is a critical fact often ignored–that investors as a whole cannot get anything out of their businesses except what the businesses earn. Sure, you and I can sell each other stocks at higher and higher prices. Let’s say the FORTUNE 500 was just one business and that the people in this room each owned a piece of it. In that case, we could sit here and sell each other pieces at ever-ascending prices. You personally might outsmart the next fellow by buying low and selling high. But no money would leave the game when that happened: You’d simply take out what he put in. Meanwhile, the experience of the group wouldn’t have been affected a whit, because its fate would still be tied to profits.

请记住——这是一个常被忽视的重要事实——投资者整体上只能从他们的企业中获得企业赚取的利润。当然，你我可以以越来越高的价格相互出售股票。假设财富500强只是一家企业，而在座的每个人都拥有其中的一部分。在这种情况下，我们可以坐在这里以不断攀升的价格互相买卖股份。你个人可能会通过低买高卖来比别人更精明。但当这种情况发生时，并没有钱真正流出这个系统：你只不过是取走了他投入的钱。与此同时，整个群体的体验一点也不会受到影响，因为它的命运仍然与利润紧密相连。

The absolute most that the owners of a business, in aggregate, can get out of it in the end–between now and Judgment Day–is what that business earns over time.

企业所有者最终（从现在到末日）能从企业中获得的绝对最大收益，就是企业随着时间累积赚取的利润。

And there’s still another major qualification to be considered. If you and I were trading pieces of our business in this room, we could escape transactional costs because there would be no brokers around to take a bite out of every trade we made. But in the real world investors have a habit of wanting to change chairs, or of at least getting advice as to whether they should, and that costs money–big money. The expenses they bear–I call them frictional costs–are for a wide range of items. There’s the market maker’s spread, and commissions, and sales loads, and 12b-1 fees, and management fees, and custodial fees, and wrap fees, and even subscriptions to financial publications. And don’t brush these expenses off as irrelevancies. If you were evaluating a piece of investment real estate, would you not deduct management costs in figuring your return? Yes, of course–and in exactly the same way, stock market investors who are figuring their returns must face up to the frictional costs they bear.

还有另一个重大修正因素需要考虑。如果你我在这个房间里交易自己企业的股份，我们可以免除交易成本，因为没有经纪人来从每笔交易中抽成。但在现实中，投资者往往希望换手，或至少想获得是否应换手的建议，而这需要花费——而且花费不菲。他们承担的费用——我称之为摩擦成本——涵盖了广泛的项目。有做市商的价差、佣金、销售费用、12b-1费用、管理费、托管费、包装费，甚至是金融出版物的订阅费。别把这些费用当作无关紧要。如果你在评估一处投资性房地产，你会在计算回报时扣除管理费用吧？当然会——同样，股票市场投资者在计算回报时也必须面对他们承担的摩擦成本。

And what do they come to? My estimate is that investors in American stocks pay out well over $100 billion a year–say, $130 billion–to move around on those chairs or to buy advice as to whether they should! Perhaps $100 billion of that relates to the FORTUNE 500. In other words, investors are dissipating almost a third of everything that the FORTUNE 500 is earning for them–that $334 billion in 1998–by handing it over to various types of chair-changing and chair-advisory “helpers.” And when that handoff is completed, the investors who own the 500 are reaping less than a $250 billion return on their $10 trillion investment. In my view, that’s slim pickings.

那么这些费用总共是多少呢？我估计，美国股票投资者每年在换手或获取是否应换手的建议上支付的费用远超1000亿美元——大约1300亿美元——其中可能有1000亿美元与财富500强有关。换句话说，投资者通过将这些费用支付给各种“换手”和“换手咨询”的“帮手”，几乎将财富500强为他们赚取的所有利润——1998年的3340亿美元——消耗了近三分之一。完成这种费用转移后，拥有财富500强股份的投资者，其对10万亿美元投资的回报不足2500亿美元。在我看来，这真是捉襟见肘。

Perhaps by now you’re mentally quarreling with my estimate that $100 billion flows to those “helpers.” How do they charge thee? Let me count the ways. Start with transaction costs, including commissions, the market maker’s take, and the spread on underwritten offerings: With double counting stripped out, there will this year be at least 350 billion shares of stock traded in the U.S., and I would estimate that the transaction cost per share for each side–that is, for both the buyer and the seller–will average 6 cents. That adds up to $42 billion.

也许你现在正对我估计的那1000亿美元流向那些“帮手”的数字心存异议。他们是怎么收费的呢？让我来逐项列举。首先是交易成本，包括佣金、做市商提成和承销发行的差价：剔除重复计算后，今年美国交易的股票至少有3500亿股，我估计每股每边（即买方和卖方各自）的交易成本平均为6美分。总计约为420亿美元。

Move on to the additional costs: hefty charges for little guys who have wrap accounts; management fees for big guys; and, looming very large, a raft of expenses for the holders of domestic equity mutual funds. These funds now have assets of about $3.5 trillion, and you have to conclude that the annual cost of these to their investors–counting management fees, sales loads, 12b-1 fees, general operating costs–runs to at least 1%, or $35 billion.

接下来是其他费用：小投资者拥有的综合账户需支付的高额费用；大机构的管理费；以及非常庞大的国内股票共同基金持有人的费用。这些基金现在的资产约为3.5万亿美元，你不得不得出结论，这些费用（包括管理费、销售费用、12b-1费用、一般运营成本）年费率至少为1%，即350亿美元。

当前49万亿的1%是5000亿美元，总的利润是1.78万亿，其他的交易费用一样不会少，普通投资者要赚到钱的可能性极低。

And none of the damage I’ve so far described counts the commissions and spreads on options and futures, or the costs borne by holders of variable annuities, or the myriad other charges that the “helpers” manage to think up. In short, $100 billion of frictional costs for the owners of the FORTUNE 500–which is 1% of the 500’s market value–looks to me not only highly defensible as an estimate, but quite possibly on the low side.

而我到目前为止描述的损失中，还不包括期权和期货的佣金及价差，也不包括可变年金持有人承担的成本，或“帮手”们想出来的各种其他费用。总之，对于财富500强的所有者来说，1000亿美元的摩擦成本——约占500强市值的1%——在我看来不仅是一个非常合理的估计，而且可能还偏低。

It also looks like a horrendous cost. I heard once about a cartoon in which a news commentator says, “There was no trading on the New York Stock Exchange today. Everyone was happy with what they owned.” Well, if that were really the case, investors would every year keep around $130 billion in their pockets.

这看起来也是一个可怕的成本。我曾听说过一则漫画，其中一位新闻评论员说：“今天纽约证券交易所没有交易，大家都对自己拥有的东西感到满意。”好吧，如果真是这样，投资者每年就能轻松地留住约1300亿美元在自己口袋里。

Let me summarize what I’ve been saying about the stock market: I think it’s very hard to come up with a persuasive case that equities will over the next 17 years perform anything like–anything like–they’ve performed in the past 17. If I had to pick the most probable return, from appreciation and dividends combined, that investors in aggregate–repeat, aggregate–would earn in a world of constant interest rates, 2% inflation, and those ever hurtful frictional costs, it would be 6%. If you strip out the inflation component from this nominal return (which you would need to do however inflation fluctuates), that’s 4% in real terms. And if 4% is wrong, I believe that the percentage is just as likely to be less as more.

让我总结一下我对股市所说的话：我认为很难提出一个令人信服的论点，说明未来17年股票的表现会像过去17年那样——真的像过去那样。如果我要选择一个最可能的回报率（包括资本增值和股息），在一个利率不变、2%通胀和那些不断侵蚀回报的摩擦成本存在的世界里，投资者整体上——再次强调，是整体——能获得6%的回报。如果你将这个名义回报中的通胀部分剥离（无论通胀如何波动，你都需要这样做），那么实际回报率为4%。而如果4%这个数字不准确，我认为这个比例同样更可能更低而不是更高。

出乎巴菲特的意料，从2000年代后段开始，企业利润占GDP的比重明显高于 1950–1990 年代的“4%–6.5%”带；2012–2014 与 2021–2022一度冲到历史高位，近两年回落但仍高于长期均值，并且美联储的利率很长时间内保持低位，以下是从Fred的网站上提取的最近年度的数据，参考：《Corporate Profits After Tax (without IVA and CCAdj)/Gross Domestic Product》，统计标准可能有一些偏差但大致是相同的。

Let me come back to what I said earlier: that there are three things that might allow investors to realize significant profits in the market going forward. The first was that interest rates might fall, and the second was that corporate profits as a percent of GDP might rise dramatically. I get to the third point now: Perhaps you are an optimist who believes that though investors as a whole may slog along, you yourself will be a winner. That thought might be particularly seductive in these early days of the information revolution (which I wholeheartedly believe in). Just pick the obvious winners, your broker will tell you, and ride the wave.

让我回到之前所说的：未来有三件事可能让投资者实现显著利润。第一是利率可能下降，第二是企业利润占GDP的比例可能大幅上升。现在说到第三点：也许你是个乐观主义者，相信尽管整体投资者可能表现平平，但你自己会成为赢家。在信息革命初期（我全心全意相信这一点），这个想法可能尤其具有诱惑力。正如你的经纪人会告诉你的那样，只需挑选那些显而易见的赢家，然后乘风破浪。

Well, I thought it would be instructive to go back and look at a couple of industries that transformed this country much earlier in this century: automobiles and aviation. Take automobiles first: I have here one page, out of 70 in total, of car and truck manufacturers that have operated in this country. At one time, there was a Berkshire car and an Omaha car. Naturally I noticed those. But there was also a telephone book of others.

好吧，我认为回顾一下本世纪早期曾改变这个国家的几个行业——汽车和航空——会很有启发意义。先说汽车：我这里有一页，共70页，列出了在本国运营的汽车和卡车制造商。曾经有过伯克希尔牌汽车和奥马哈牌汽车，当然我注意到了这些。但还有一本电话簿上列出了其他许多品牌。

All told, there appear to have been at least 2,000 car makes, in an industry that had an incredible impact on people’s lives. If you had foreseen in the early days of cars how this industry would develop, you would have said, “Here is the road to riches.” So what did we progress to by the 1990s? After corporate carnage that never let up, we came down to three U.S. car companies–themselves no lollapaloozas for investors. So here is an industry that had an enormous impact on America–and also an enormous impact, though not the anticipated one, on investors.

总的来说，似乎至少有2000个汽车品牌，在这个对人们生活产生巨大影响的行业中。如果你在汽车刚出现的时候就预见到这个行业的发展，你会说，“这就是通往财富之路。”那么到了1990年代，我们又发展到了什么地步？经历了不断的企业洗牌后，我们只剩下了三家美国汽车公司——对投资者来说也并非是什么大收获。所以，这是一个对美国产生了巨大影响——同时对投资者也产生了巨大影响，虽然并非预期中的那种。

Sometimes, incidentally, it’s much easier in these transforming events to figure out the losers. You could have grasped the importance of the auto when it came along but still found it hard to pick companies that would make you money. But there was one obvious decision you could have made back then–it’s better sometimes to turn these things upside down–and that was to short horses. Frankly, I’m disappointed that the Buffett family was not short horses through this entire period. And we really had no excuse: Living in Nebraska, we would have found it super-easy to borrow horses and avoid a “short squeeze.”

顺便提一下，在这些变革性事件中，往往更容易看出失败者。你可能早已意识到汽车的重要性，但依然难以挑选出能赚钱的公司。但那时你可以做出一个显而易见的决定——有时候颠倒看待这些事更好——那就是做空马匹。坦率地说，我对巴菲特家族在整个期间没有做空马匹感到失望。而且我们真的没有任何借口：生活在内布拉斯加的我们，本来就能非常容易地借到马，从而避免“空头挤压”。

U.S. Horse Population

美国马匹数量

1900: 21 million

1900年：2100万匹

1998: 5 million

1998年：500万匹

The other truly transforming business invention of the first quarter of the century, besides the car, was the airplane–another industry whose plainly brilliant future would have caused investors to salivate. So I went back to check out aircraft manufacturers and found that in the 1919-39 period, there were about 300 companies, only a handful still breathing today. Among the planes made then–we must have been the Silicon Valley of that age–were both the Nebraska and the Omaha, two aircraft that even the most loyal Nebraskan no longer relies upon.

本世纪第一季度另一个真正改变商业的发明，除了汽车，就是飞机——另一个其光明未来本应让投资者垂涎三尺的行业。所以我回去查看了飞机制造商，发现1919年至1939年期间大约有300家公司，而如今仅有寥寥几家仍在运作。当时制造的飞机中——我们当时简直可以称之为那个时代的硅谷——就包括内布拉斯加号和奥马哈号，这两种飞机即使是最忠实的内布拉斯加人也已不再依赖。

Move on to failures of airlines. Here’s a list of 129 airlines that in the past 20 years filed for bankruptcy. Continental was smart enough to make that list twice. As of 1992, in fact–though the picture would have improved since then–the money that had been made since the dawn of aviation by all of this country’s airline companies was zero. Absolutely zero.

再来说说航空公司的失败。过去20年中，有129家航空公司申请破产。大陆航空足够聪明，以至于两次出现在这份名单上。事实上，截至1992年——尽管自那时以来情况已有所改善——这个国家所有航空公司自航空业诞生以来所赚的钱总额为零。绝对零收入。

Sizing all this up, I like to think that if I’d been at Kitty Hawk in 1903 when Orville Wright took off, I would have been farsighted enough, and public-spirited enough–I owed this to future capitalists–to shoot him down. I mean, Karl Marx couldn’t have done as much damage to capitalists as Orville did.

综上所述，我喜欢认为，如果我在1903年莱特兄弟中的奥维尔在基蒂霍克起飞时在场，我会足够有远见，也足够有公共精神——我欠未来资本家的这一份责任——去阻止他。我的意思是，卡尔·马克思对资本家的破坏还不如奥维尔所造成的那样大。

I won’t dwell on other glamorous businesses that dramatically changed our lives but concurrently failed to deliver rewards to U.S. investors: the manufacture of radios and televisions, for example. But I will draw a lesson from these businesses: The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage. The products or services that have wide, sustainable moats around them are the ones that deliver rewards to investors.

我不会过多讨论其他那些既极具魅力、极大改变了我们生活但同时又未能为美国投资者带来回报的行业，例如广播和电视制造业。但我会从这些行业中吸取一个教训：投资的关键不在于评估某个行业将如何影响社会，或其将增长多少，而在于确定某个公司是否具有竞争优势，最重要的是这种优势的持久性。那些拥有广阔且可持续护城河的产品或服务，才能为投资者带来回报。

持久性的竞争力是关键。

This talk of 17-year periods makes me think–incongruously, I admit–of 17-year locusts [pictured below]. What could a current brood of these critters, scheduled to take flight in 2016, expect to encounter? I see them entering a world in which the public is less euphoric about stocks than it is now. Naturally, investors will be feeling disappointment–but only because they started out expecting too much.

谈到这17年周期，不禁让我想到——尽管我承认这有些不协调——17年期的蝗虫（下图所示）。预计这些计划在2016年出动的蝗虫后代会遇到什么？我认为它们将进入一个公众对股票热情不如现在的世界。当然，投资者会感到失望——但仅仅是因为他们起初的期望过高。

Grumpy or not, they will have by then grown considerably wealthier, simply because the American business establishment that they own will have been chugging along, increasing its profits by 3% annually in real terms. Best of all, the rewards from this creation of wealth will have flowed through to Americans in general, who will be enjoying a far higher standard of living than they do today. That wouldn’t be a bad world at all–even if it doesn’t measure up to what investors got used to in the 17 years just passed.

不管他们是否抱怨，到那时他们将会变得相当富有，仅仅因为他们所拥有的美国商业机构将持续运行，按实际年增长3%的速度增加利润。最重要的是，这种财富创造带来的回报将惠及所有美国人，他们的生活水平将远高于今天。即便这与过去17年投资者习惯的水平相比有所不足，那也绝非一个糟糕的世界。

A version of this article appears in the Nov. 22, 1999 issue of Fortune.

这篇文章的一个版本刊登在1999年11月22日的《财富》杂志上。

1999-11-22 Mr. Buffett on the stock market

1999-11-22 Mr. Buffett on the stock market

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