2010-11-07 The Forging of a Skeptic - From Accountant to Buffett’s Voice on Wall St.
Miguel: Hi Alice. I’d like to start by thanking you for taking the time to talk with me.
米格尔：嗨，爱丽丝。首先，我想感谢你抽出时间与我交谈。
Alice: Miguel, thanks for inviting me to do the interview. This is the first time I’ve ever talked to anyone at length about Warren Buffett, The Snowball, why I wrote the book, and the lessons learned.
爱丽丝: 米格尔，谢谢你邀请我来进行这次采访。这是我第一次与人深入讨论沃伦·巴菲特、雪球、我为什么写这本书以及所学到的经验教训。
Miguel: Start by explaining what was special about your experience with The Snowball.
米格尔：首先解释一下你与《雪球》的经历有什么特别之处。
Alice: When we discussed doing this interview, a theme that emerged was the hidden world of people like Warren Buffett, people who are in the top tenth of one percent of society in terms of fame, money, and connections, and how little most of us know of that world and its hierarchy and norms. Instinctively, you know that Snookie doesn’t go to parties with Bob Iger and Willow Bay (Disney CEO and his wife, a television host), but the more granular distinctions aren’t self-evident. For example, how valuable a form of social currency strong political connections in Washington can be, not because of their actual importance, but because they bring you reliably fresh and impressive-sounding conversational material to use at dinner parties.
爱丽丝： 当我们讨论进行这次采访时，一个浮现出来的主题是像沃伦·巴菲特这样的人所隐藏的世界，这些人在社会上名声、财富和人脉方面位于前千分之一，而我们大多数人对这个世界及其等级和规范知之甚少。你本能地知道斯努基不会和鲍勃·艾格（迪士尼首席执行官）及他的妻子威洛·贝（电视主持人）一起参加派对，但更细微的区别并不显而易见。例如，华盛顿强大的政治关系作为一种社交货币是多么有价值，并不是因为它们的实际重要性，而是因为它们能为你在晚宴上提供可靠的新鲜且听起来令人印象深刻的谈资。
Even once inside a person’s world, getting to know their life history and psyche takes years, and that’s even more true of an important public figure because they’re so self-protective. Warren is so remote that his inner world has been accessible only to a tiny handful of people over the course of his lifetime, even though so many people are acquainted with him and consider him a friend. That makes it all the more unusual that he made himself world accessible to me and wanted me to write about him.
即使进入一个人的世界，了解他们的生活历史和心理也需要多年时间，对于一个重要的公众人物来说，这一点尤为真实，因为他们非常自我保护。沃伦是如此遥远，以至于在他的一生中，只有极少数人能够接触到他的内心世界，尽管有很多人认识他并视他为朋友。这使得他愿意向我敞开内心，并希望我写关于他的事情显得更加不寻常。
He spent a huge amount, I’ve estimated 2,000 hours, of concentrated time with me, and through this direct experience I gleaned impressions of him. These could be compared to his own self-perception, to the impressions of hundreds of other people whom I interviewed, and to the documented history of his life as contained in his papers and letters and photographs from more than 70 years of collected material.
他花费了大量时间，我估计有 2,000小时的集中时间与我在一起，通过这种直接的体验，我对他有了印象。这些印象可以与他自己的自我认知、我采访的数百个其他人的印象，以及他 70 多年收集的材料中包含的文件、信件和照片的记录历史进行比较。超过 70 年的收集材料。
Nobody who has ever known him has had this 360 degree perspective. There are people who know more facts about him, but nobody else has a well-synthesized a view. I probably know him better than anyone, in this objective sense.
没有人能像我这样全面了解他。虽然有些人知道关于他的更多事实，但没有其他人能有如此综合的看法。从这个客观的角度来看，我可能比任何人都更了解他。
Miguel: Let’s talk about your background. Give us a quick tour of your career from working as an auditor, regulator, insurance analyst, to working on the street and meeting Warren Buffett.
米格尔：让我们谈谈你的背景。给我们快速介绍一下你的职业生涯，从审计师、监管者、保险分析师，到在华尔街工作并与沃伦·巴菲特见面。
Alice: I came to Wall Street as my third career. I started as an auditor working at Ernst & Whinney, the predecessor to Ernst & Young, in Houston, where I became a CPA. I then went to the firm’s national office in Cleveland, then to NYC. In total I was with E&Y for 11 years, auditing all sorts of companies, from defense contractors to banks. At headquarters, I had a variety of roles in the area of professional ethics, accounting standard-setting, and regulation. When Ernst & Young merged, I was assigned to the merger transition team for about a year and half.
爱丽丝：我来到华尔街是我的第三份职业。我最初在休斯顿的安达信（Ernst & Whinney，安永的前身）担任审计师，并成为注册会计师。然后我去了公司的全国办公室，在克利夫兰，然后到纽约市。总的来说，我在安永工作了 11 年，审计各种公司，从国防承包商到银行。在总部，我在专业伦理、会计标准制定和监管领域担任了多种角色。当安永合并时，我被分配到合并过渡团队，工作了大约一年半。
After I moved to New York to resume work as an auditor it didn’t take long to figure out that this was not what I wanted to be doing. I loved analysis, I’m very curious, and I wanted to understand the big picture and write about it for others. At the time my former boss and mentor, Denny Beresford, was Chairman of the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board, the standard-setter for U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). He knew I was considering leaving Ernst & Young and suggested that I come work for the FASB. I took that job thinking that it would be intellectually challenging, analytical, and involve plenty of speaking and writing.
在我搬到纽约恢复审计工作后，我很快就意识到这并不是我想做的事情。我热爱分析，我非常好奇，我想理解大局并为他人撰写相关内容。那时，我的前老板和导师丹尼·贝雷斯福德是美国财务会计准则委员会（FASB）的主席，该委员会是美国公认会计原则的标准制定者。他知道我在考虑离开安永，建议我来 FASB 工作。我接受了这个职位，认为这将是一个智力挑战，具有分析性，并涉及大量的演讲和写作。
At the FASB,I was assigned, essentially by being next in line as the most recent arrival there, to a dreaded project, which was to oversee the issuance of some of the most important new accounting regulations for U.S. insurers in 20 or so years.
在 FASB，我被分配到一个令人畏惧的项目，基本上是因为我是最近到达那里的人，负责监督发布大约 20 年来美国保险公司一些最重要的新会计法规。
Nobody on the staff wanted to work on these. The insurance industry had been fighting ferociously for more than a decade to keep them from getting passed, and with a lot of success. Insurance accounting is so arcane that insurers can usually fend off regulators and law enforcement people without too much trouble by throwing up a cloud of impenetrable jargon. People at the FASB enjoy mastering narrow subjects, but they don’t want to make a career out of any one thing, and this project was like quicksand that had nearly swallowed a couple of people.
没有员工想要参与这些工作。保险行业在过去十多年里一直在激烈斗争，以阻止这些法案的通过，并且取得了很大的成功。保险会计非常晦涩，以至于保险公司通常可以通过抛出一堆难以理解的行话，轻松地抵御监管者和执法人员的干预。FASB 的员工喜欢掌握狭窄的主题，但他们不想在任何一件事情上做一辈子，这个项目就像流沙，几乎吞噬了几个人。
There’s a saying on Wall Street that you either have the insurance gene or you don’t. It’s an interesting industry for investors because it requires a lot of probabilistic thinking. If you look at the landscape of investing you’ll see that many distinguished investors have an affinity for insurance, chief among them, of course, Warren Buffett. I got assigned to this project by chance, but I fell in love with the industry within a couple of weeks.
华尔街有句俗话，要么你有保险基因，要么你没有。对于投资者来说，这是一个有趣的行业，因为它需要大量的概率思维。如果你看看投资的格局，你会发现许多杰出的投资者对保险有着特别的偏好，其中最著名的当然是沃伦·巴菲特。我偶然被分配到这个项目，但在几周内我就爱上了这个行业。
The main topic was SFAS 113, Accounting and Reporting for Reinsurance of Short-Duration and Long-Duration Contracts; I also went on to complete EITF 93-6, Accounting for Multiple-Year Retrospectively Rated Contracts; and, EITF 93-14, Accounting for Multiple-Year Retrospectively Rated Insurance Contracts by Insurance Enterprises and Other Enterprises.
主要主题是 SFAS 113，短期和长期合同的再保险会计与报告；我还完成了 EITF 93-6，多年度追溯评级合同的会计处理；以及 EITF 93-14，保险企业和其他企业的多年度追溯评级保险合同的会计处理。
监管的细致程度和系统思维有关。
Their titles are a mouthful, but essentially they all eliminate deceptive accounting practices in which reinsurance contracts were created specifically not to indemnify risk, but to shuffle or smooth earnings around from one accounting period to another – or artificially inflate an insurance company’s reported capital reserve one way or another.
它们的标题很长，但本质上它们都消除了欺骗性的会计做法，即再保险合同的创建并不是为了赔偿风险，而是为了将收益从一个会计期间转移或平滑到另一个期间——或者以某种方式人为地夸大保险公司报告的资本储备。
If these rules passed, some companies and segments of the reinsurance industry would be losing their most profitable products, at least on a risk-adjusted basis. Conceptually, these deals were a very effective form of leveraging capital at very low, and even no, risk. They were very similar to the type of securitizations that got Enron in trouble. Not surprisingly, Wall Street also was starting to dabble in the business.
如果这些规则通过，一些公司和再保险行业的部分领域将失去它们最有利可图的产品，至少在风险调整的基础上。概念上，这些交易是一种以非常低甚至没有风险的方式有效利用资本的形式。它们与导致安然公司陷入麻烦的证券化类型非常相似。毫不奇怪，华尔街也开始涉足这一业务。
I was determined to get it done. This project had languished long enough, and I didn’t want to make a career out of writing these rules. As part of this process, I oversaw several public hearings that you could fairly call contentious. We got the whole thing finished in eighteen months. Denny Beresford, my research director Tim Lucas, and one board member in particular, Jim Leisenring, were courageous in helping me fight off a wave of industry obfuscation and denial.
我下定决心要完成这项工作。这个项目拖延了太久，我不想把写这些规则当成我的职业。在这个过程中，我主持了几次可以说是有争议的公开听证会。我们在十八个月内完成了整个项目。我的研究主任蒂姆·卢卡斯、丹尼·贝雷斯福德，以及一位特别的董事会成员吉姆·莱森林，在帮助我抵御一波行业混淆和否认方面表现得非常勇敢。
Toward the end, as the outome became clear, some in the insurance industry flipped and started recruiting me. Their ostensible goal was to enlist my expertise, but really they wanted to me help them find ways around the rules I had just written. That wasn’t very appealing. Meanwhile, I recall someone at the FASB observing, “You’re great at interpreting complex ideas for a hostile audience,” and Karen Rubsam, who later became CFO of Zurich Re, suggested I consider becoming an analyst.
接近尾声时，随着结果变得明朗，保险行业的一些人开始转变立场，开始招募我。他们表面上的目标是利用我的专业知识，但实际上他们想让我帮助他们找到规避我刚刚制定的规则的方法。这并不是很吸引人。与此同时，我记得 FASB 的一位人士观察到：“你很擅长为敌对的听众解读复杂的想法。”而后来成为苏黎世再保险首席财务官的凯伦·鲁布萨姆建议我考虑成为一名分析师。
Having fallen in love with the industry, I went to Wall Street to cover insurance companies, and ended up at a small boutique investment bank that is now known as Dowling Partners. They were a maverick firm that took delight in tipping over sacred cows. They were also technically sophisticated and wanted someone with an accounting background.
我爱上了这个行业，于是我去了华尔街，负责保险公司的报道，最后来到了一个现在被称为道林合伙人的小型精品投资银行。他们是一家特立独行的公司，喜欢推翻传统的观念。他们在技术上也很成熟，想要一个有会计背景的人。
V.J. Dowling, who ran the firm, was and is brilliant. He viewed the industry as a vast minefield of deceit that could be navigated by sleuthing and in-depth analysis. He was incredibly competitive. His attitude was you must be first to reveal market-moving information – or it’s worthless. It was a great foundation to start with.
V.J. 道林经营着这家公司，他非常聪明。他将这个行业视为一个充满欺骗的巨大雷区，可以通过侦查和深入分析来穿越。他竞争意识极强。他的态度是，必须首先揭示能够影响市场的信息——否则就毫无价值。这是一个很好的起点。
Eventually, Dowling relocated from Boston to Hartford, CT. That became a logistical catalyst for my move to a New York securities firm. I joined Oppenheimer in 1994 and it became one of the highlights of my career. I was fortunate to make partner and managing director quickly – and made the Institutional Investor All-America Research Team within two years. Oppie was a vibrant place to work that brought out the best in me. I had some brilliant colleagues, including Steve Eisman (FrontPoint partners, as described in Michael Lewis’ The Big Short) and Meredith Whitney, back when she was a wide-eyed research assistant who worked for Steve.
最终，道林从波士顿搬到了哈特福德，康涅狄格州。这成为我搬到纽约一家证券公司的物流催化剂。我在 1994 年加入了奥本海默，这成为我职业生涯的亮点之一。我很幸运迅速成为合伙人和董事总经理，并在两年内进入了Institutional Investor全美研究团队。奥本海默是一个充满活力的工作场所，激发了我最好的表现。我有一些出色的同事，包括史蒂夫·艾斯曼（FrontPoint 合伙人，如迈克尔·刘易斯的The Big Short中所描述）和梅雷迪思·惠特尼，那时她还是一位充满好奇的研究助理，为史蒂夫工作。
Miguel: I apologize for interrupting, but you mentioned some amazing situations and people. I find it interesting how certain settings can forge traits. In this case you, Meredith Whitney, and Steve Eisman all shared office space. Were there any characteristics that your coworkers that led them to future greatness?
米格尔：我为打断您而感到抱歉，但您提到了许多令人惊叹的情况和人物。我发现某些环境如何能够塑造特质是很有趣的。在这种情况下，您、梅雷迪思·惠特尼和史蒂夫·艾斯曼都共享办公空间。您的同事们是否有任何特征使他们走向未来的伟大？
Alice: “Greatness” is a flattering term. What I will say is that Meredith, Steve, and I tend to be among the skeptics. Oppenheimer attracted and supported skeptics.
爱丽丝： “伟大”是一个恭维的词。我想说的是，梅雷迪思、史蒂夫和我往往是怀疑者中的一员。奥本海默吸引并支持了怀疑者。
Miguel: What fostered this skepticism?
米格尔：是什么促成了这种怀疑？
Alice: Oppenheimer did not do much banking. It was a 2nd, if not 3rd tier firm on league tables. The only way clients would pay attention to Oppie analysts was if we added real insight and made a lot of noise about it. One way to do this was by following small caps. Another way was by being contrarian and accurate – the person who did not buy baloney dealt out by management. Unlike many firms, Oppenheimer supported you if you did that.
爱丽丝：奥本海默并没有做太多的银行业务。这是一家在排名表上属于第二或第三层级的公司。客户关注奥本海默分析师的唯一方式是我们提供真正的见解并对此大肆宣传。做到这一点的一种方法是关注小盘股。另一种方法是采取逆向思维并保持准确——不买管理层所提供的废话。与许多公司不同，奥本海默会支持你这样做。
Miguel: This reminds me of James Grant indicating a great way to make a name is to follow unpopular paths and recommend shorts.
米格尔：这让我想起詹姆斯·格兰特提到的一个好方法，那就是走不受欢迎的道路并推荐做空。
Alice: In a normal market, it is tough to be the naysayer, but the past few years have been a heyday for shortsellers. With so much hedged money, there’s also far more demand for diverse opinions today. In general, though, the human race is biased towards the positive. You have to be optimistic to go through life.
爱丽丝： 在一个正常的市场中，做反对者是很困难的，但过去几年对做空者来说是一个黄金时代。由于有这么多对冲资金，今天对多样化观点的需求也大大增加。然而，总的来说，人类倾向于积极的一面。你必须保持乐观才能度过生活。
There’s also some interesting research that shows that people who speak out critically are viewed as smarter than those who give only uncritical applause, even though they are less liked. In the long run, the price of popularity is paid in respect.
还有一些有趣的研究表明，批判性发言的人被认为比那些只给予无条件赞美的人更聪明，尽管他们不太受欢迎。从长远来看，受欢迎的代价是以尊重为代价的。
Miguel: Two things I wanted to go back to; first your experience as a regulator and how this taught you how games are played; and second, you mention the importance of being skeptical. Is this an inborn trait or can analysts, investors, and others develop this trait (if so how)?
米格尔：我想回到两件事；首先是你作为监管者的经验，以及这如何让你了解游戏是如何进行的；其次，你提到保持怀疑的重要性。这是一种与生俱来的特质，还是分析师、投资者和其他人可以培养这种特质（如果可以的话，怎么做）？
Alice: We may have a natural bent one way or another, but it is very strongly shaped by experience. As just one small example, when I worked on the E&Y transition team, it was fascinating to see first-hand the amount of friction, wasted time, and lost energy that inevitably occurs in a merger integration. And this was quite a successful merger. So you can imagine how skeptical the experience made me of projected “acquisition synergies” in deals I later covered or took part in on Wall Street.
爱丽丝：我们可能天生倾向于某种方式，但这在很大程度上受到经验的影响。举一个小例子，当我在安永的过渡团队工作时，亲眼看到合并整合中不可避免地发生的摩擦、浪费时间和失去的精力是非常有趣的。而这是一桩相当成功的合并。所以你可以想象，这段经历让我对我后来在华尔街所涉及或参与的交易中所预测的“收购协同效应”感到多么怀疑。
My experience in regulation was also immensely useful in this respect. It exposed me to dozens of people lobbying for an outcome. This is a side of human behavior that we see much less often as an analyst or investor. Try as they might, people aren’t putting their best foot forward when they’re lobbying you; they’re putting their greedy foot forward. Also – and I have never said this before in an interview — being in the presence of a blonde has an interesting effect on some people. It can get tedious to be underestimated, but has its advantages. Certainly, it raises one’s skepticism.
我在监管方面的经验在这方面也非常有用。它让我接触到了数十个为某个结果游说的人。这是作为分析师或投资者时我们很少看到的人类行为的一面。尽管他们尽力而为，但人们在游说你时并没有展现出最好的自己；他们展现的是贪婪的一面。此外——我在采访中从未说过这一点——与金发女郎在一起对某些人有一种有趣的影响。被低估可能会让人感到乏味，但也有其优势。当然，这会提高一个人的怀疑态度。
Miguel: So on to the question about skepticism. Being underestimated resulted in developing a different perspective. How can we make sure that we have a healthy amount of skepticism? In other words, how do you recommend developing skills for detecting charm versus substance?
米格尔：关于怀疑主义的问题。被低估导致了不同的视角。我们如何确保拥有适度的怀疑？换句话说，你建议如何培养识别魅力与实质的技能？
Alice: I think it’s one of the hardest things in the world to do. I’ve definitely made my share of mistakes that taught me a few things, and there’s always more to learn.
爱丽丝： 我认为这是世界上最难的事情之一。我肯定犯过不少错误，这些错误教会了我一些东西，而且总有更多的东西可以学习。
You have to separate charm, meaning impression management skills, from the substance of what a person actually accomplishes. The personality, friendliness, and impressiveness of the person can be positively or negatively correlated with the results they are producing. Psychopaths and con artists are notoriously good at manipulating impressions.
你必须将魅力（即印象管理技能）与一个人实际完成的事情的实质分开。一个人的个性、友好程度和给人的印象可能与他们所产生的结果正相关或负相关。心理变态者和骗子在操控印象方面 notoriously 擅长。
Paul Babiak’s book, Snakes in Suits, is a terrific primer on how to recognize a psychopath in a business context. With practice, you don’t have to do business with someone directly to evaluate whether they’re trustworthy.
保罗·巴比亚克的书，S西装中的蛇，是一本出色的入门书，教你如何在商业环境中识别心理变态者。通过练习，你不必直接与某人做生意就能评估他们是否值得信赖。
Working as an auditor was helpful. Auditors have their faults, and obviously were implicated in a lot of accounting failures in the past decade. Still, as an auditor, you are trained to look for discrepancies and assume they may be important. You aren’t supposed to ignore little aberrations, however seemingly minor, just because someone has a reasonable-sounding explanation to rationalize them away. In financial markets, companies use this psychological vulnerability against investors all the time.
作为审计员的工作是有帮助的。审计员也有他们的缺陷，显然在过去十年中涉及了许多会计失败。尽管如此，作为审计员，你被训练去寻找差异，并假设这些差异可能很重要。你不应该因为有人有合理的解释来合理化这些差异，就忽视那些看似微不足道的小偏差。在金融市场上，公司经常利用这种心理脆弱性来对抗投资者。
People who are psychologically and financially invested in a stock work very hard to resolve any newly arisen cognitive dissonance in favor of their vested interests. Cialdini speaks of the Commitment and Consistency principal and psychologists speak of confirmation bias. The auditing profession is built on the foundation of fighting that bias; small discrepancies must never be dismissed; they must be investigated. Whether in journalism, writing, or finance, that’s an invaluable lesson.
在心理和财务上对股票有投资的人会非常努力地解决任何新出现的认知失调，以支持他们的既得利益。Cialdini 谈到了承诺与一致性原则，心理学家则谈到了确认偏误。审计行业建立在对抗这种偏见的基础上；小的差异绝不能被忽视；它们必须被调查。无论是在新闻、写作还是金融领域，这都是一个宝贵的教训。
There’s another thing. Many exceptionally good business people are charismatic –- but not charming. Charisma is the ability to attract people to you and to convince them you are exceptional, even if you aren’t likable. The Gordon Gekkos of the world.
还有一件事。许多非常优秀的商人具有魅力——但并不迷人。魅力是吸引人们靠近你并说服他们你是卓越的能力，即使你并不可爱。这就是世界上的戈登·盖柯。
Charisma can interfere with your ability to override what Cialdini calls the “click whirr” reaction, your evolutionary response to persuasive stimuli. You can trick yourself into believing you’re objective about someone you don’t find particularly charming when in fact you’re falling for their charisma. Predatory people on Wall Street and business often base their careers on the “click whirr” reaction.
魅力可能会干扰你超越 Cialdini 所称的“点击嗡嗡”反应的能力，这是一种你对说服性刺激的进化反应。当你实际上被某人的魅力所吸引时，你可能会欺骗自己相信你对一个你并不特别欣赏的人是客观的。华尔街和商业中的掠夺性人物往往将他们的职业建立在“点击嗡嗡”反应之上。
My own rule of thumb: watch what they do, not what they say. If someone’s behavior deviates from what they are telling you, always go with the behavior. This means sometimes you’ve got to override your gut, which like all instincts is driven by evolutionary biology. I’m a strong believer in listening to intuition, but only after it’s checked against reality. “Blink” is not a smart way to invest.
我自己的经验法则是：观察他们的行为，而不是他们所说的话。如果某人的行为与他们告诉你的内容不一致，始终以行为为准。这意味着有时你必须超越你的直觉，而直觉和所有本能一样，是由进化生物学驱动的。我坚信要倾听直觉，但前提是要与现实进行核对。“眨眼”并不是一种聪明的投资方式。
An example is American International Group (AIG). Like many analysts, I recommended that stock for a long time, too long, even though it in many ways was a tremendous black box, primarily justified on the basis of it employing the smartest people in the industry in which it competed. I ended up being one of the first people to downgrade AIG when I was at Morgan Stanley (MS), and my observations were extremely basic. Historically, AIG had announced the date on which they would release earnings on a certain schedule every quarter. It had never varied.
一个例子是美国国际集团（AIG）。像许多分析师一样，我长期推荐这只股票，时间太长，尽管在许多方面它都是一个巨大的黑箱，主要是基于它雇佣了行业中最聪明的人。我最终成为在摩根士丹利（MS）时第一个下调 AIG 评级的人之一，我的观察非常基础。历史上，AIG 曾宣布他们将在每个季度的某个时间表上发布收益的日期。这从未改变。
Early in 2003, at the end of a bad insurance cycle when a lot of similar companies had taken reserve charges, the day arrived and AIG didn’t announce their earnings release date. That was out of pattern, and I thought it had to mean something bad was brewing. We suspected this had to do with pressures from the economy that were affecting their business, so that’s what we said in the downgrade. Next thing you know, AIG reported a $2.8 billion reserve charge. If business had been better and they’d had a tailwind, they might never have taken this charge. They probably would have bled it into earnings and covered it up. And Eliot Spitzer forced Hank Greenberg out over this charge. That was the beginning of the landslide for AIG.
2003 年初，在一个糟糕的保险周期结束时，许多类似公司都进行了准备金计提，AIG 却没有宣布他们的财报发布日期。这与以往的模式不符，我认为这一定意味着有什么坏事在酝酿。我们怀疑这与经济压力有关，影响了他们的业务，因此我们在降级时提到了这一点。接下来，AIG 报告了 28 亿美元的准备金计提。如果业务状况更好，他们有顺风的话，可能根本不会进行这项计提。他们可能会将其隐匿在收益中。埃利奥特·斯皮策因此迫使汉克·格林伯格辞职。这是 AIG 滑坡的开始。
Miguel: You talk about Cialdini and mention the importance of looking for congruence. Are there any material besides Cialdini’s Influence which you find useful in becoming a better auditor?
米格尔：你提到了Cialdini，并提到寻找一致性的重要性。除了Cialdini的《影响力》之外，还有哪些材料能帮助提升成为更好的审计员的能力吗？
Alice: Yes, I will give away some of my secrets. People would do well to study investigative journalism. Read something like Den of Thieves or A Civil Action and try to reverse engineer how it was reported.
爱丽丝： 是的，我会分享一些我的秘密。人们最好学习调查性新闻。阅读一些像《盗贼窝》或《民事诉讼》的书，尝试逆向工程它是如何报道的。
Here are three other great books on conversing with people, understanding their real motives, and just generally understanding how the human mind works.
这里有另外三本关于与人交谈、理解他们真实动机以及一般理解人类思维运作的优秀书籍。
The Craft of Interviewing by John Brady.
面试的技巧 由约翰·布雷迪撰写。
The Zen of Listening by Rebecca Shafir.
倾听的禅 由丽贝卡·沙菲尔撰写。
The Moral Animal by Robert Wright.
道德动物 由罗伯特·赖特。
A Behind The Scenes Look At Wall St & Morgan Stanley
华尔街和摩根士丹利的幕后揭秘
Miguel: Can you comment (without stepping on anyone’s toes) on the experience of being an analyst at Morgan Stanley? Take us behind the scenes of coming up with an idea, monitoring a company, and issuing a rating.
米格尔：你能否评论一下在摩根士丹利担任分析师的经历（不冒犯任何人）？带我们了解一下提出想法、监控公司和发布评级的幕后过程。
Alice: Oh, I’ll comment freely. When I left, I did not sign a separation agreement. It would have required me to get written permission to speak or write about Morgan Stanley and would have subjected me to liability if I said anything that they, by their unspecified definition, considered criticism. I would have been paid much more for agreeing to this, but I didn’t want to be muzzled.
爱丽丝：哦，我会畅所欲言的。当我离开时，我没有签署离职协议。该协议要求我必须获得书面许可才能谈论或撰写关于摩根士丹利的内容，并且如果我说了任何他们按照未明确的定义认为是批评的话，我将承担责任。如果我同意签署协议，我会得到更多的报酬，但我不想被封口。
So what is it like to be an analyst…When I started at Oppie it was very free form. Analysts used their judgment. Over time, as I moved through the different firms, especially Morgan Stanley, more and more requirements arose. There were things you had to write every time you published on a company. The financial models became standardized. Like any other business, the more you standardize something, the more you stamp out creativity.
作为一名分析师是什么样的体验……当我在 Oppie 开始工作时，一切都很自由。分析师们依靠自己的判断。随着时间的推移，尤其是在摩根士丹利工作时，越来越多的要求出现了。每次发布关于公司的信息时，有些内容是必须写的。财务模型变得标准化。就像其他任何行业一样，越是标准化，就越会抹杀创造力。
This was more than just compliance. Through this process, big firms like Morgan Stanley were also trying to brand themselves. The firm wanted to be the brand, and discouraged its analysts from doing distinctive enough work to result in them becoming a brand themselves.
这不仅仅是合规。通过这个过程，摩根士丹利等大公司也在努力塑造自己的品牌。该公司希望成为品牌，并不鼓励其分析师做出足够独特的工作，以至于他们自己成为品牌。
You may wonder why analysts at banks hedge themselves so much – on the one hand this, on the other hand that. Partly it can be lack of courage. But someone is always trying to lawsuit-proof your opinion. Decisive statements are lawyered into “may, can, could, might, potentially, appears” instead of “is, does, should, will,” much less “look out below.”
你可能会想，为什么银行的分析师会如此对冲——一方面这样，另一方面那样。部分原因可能是缺乏勇气。但总有人试图让你的观点免受诉讼。果断的陈述被律师改成“可能、可以、能够、或许、潜在、似乎”，而不是“是、做、应该、将”，更不用说“当心下面”。
The time pressures that work against quality research are also well-known. You write up a lot of inconsequential things, especially what I call “elevator notes” (this quarter “X was up and Y was down”). Instead of writing original or probing views, you are really incentivized to spend as much time as possible marketing.
与高质量研究相对的时间压力也是众所周知的。你写了很多无关紧要的东西，尤其是我所称的“电梯笔记”（这个季度“X 上涨了，Y 下跌了”）。你实际上被激励去花尽可能多的时间进行营销，而不是写原创或深入的观点。
Also, if you adhere to consensus, it does protect your career. There’s an old saying that no one ever got fired for buying from IBM. Nobody ever got fired for making a wrong estimate that was within sell-side consensus.
此外，如果你遵循共识，这确实可以保护你的职业生涯。有句老话说，没人因为购买了IBM而被解雇。也没有人因为做出了在卖方共识范围内的错误估计而被解雇。
Whereas, if you break from consensus, you really can’t afford to be wrong very often. That phenomenon really drives the sell side. It can be overt, such as when we were judged on how “commercial” our work was. This is a veiled threat, because, of course, our work has to be marketable in order for us to have a job. The firms essentially want two things that are incompatible.
然而，如果你偏离共识，你真的不能经常犯错。这种现象确实推动了卖方。这可能是明显的，比如当我们被评判我们的工作有多“商业化”时。这是一个隐晦的威胁，因为当然，我们的工作必须具有市场性，以便我们能有工作。这些公司基本上想要两样不兼容的东西。
They really do want you to do nonconsensus work that’s attention-getting enough to be of interest to clients, but it also has to be right to be commercial, or you are punished. The fear of punishment nearly always beats the desire for reward, so this creates constant pressure to pull in your elbows.
他们确实希望你做一些非共识的工作，这些工作足够引人注目，以引起客户的兴趣，但它也必须是正确的才能商业化，否则你会受到惩罚。惩罚的恐惧几乎总是压倒对奖励的渴望，因此这造成了不断的压力，让你收敛自己的行为。
Finally, of course, there’s the well-known banking conflict of interest. My team had its encounters, especially over AON, at the time a disaster of a stock. Once, we were told “Pat Ryan [then CEO of Aon] is reading your reports, and he’s not happy,” as if our job was to make Pat Ryan happy. Aon was so beaten down that it always looked cheap.
最后，当然还有众所周知的银行利益冲突。我的团队遇到了这种情况，尤其是在当时一只灾难般的股票 AON 上。曾经有人告诉我们：“帕特·瑞安（当时的 Aon 首席执行官）正在阅读你们的报告，他不高兴，”仿佛我们的工作就是让帕特·瑞安高兴。Aon 被打压得如此严重，以至于总是显得便宜。
It repeatedly head-faked investors. Management would claim victory on a turnaround, then it would blow up again. Our refusal to recommended Aon no matter how cheap it got frequently put us in opposition to Gary Parr, the banker, who was a fierce advocate for his client. The day Gary left Morgan Stanley, we literally gathered in the hallway and celebrated.
它反复欺骗投资者。管理层会声称成功扭转局面，然后又会崩溃。我们拒绝推荐 Aon，无论它变得多便宜，这常常使我们与银行家 Gary Parr 对立，他是客户的坚定支持者。Gary 离开摩根士丹利的那天，我们真的在走廊里聚集庆祝。
With that said, ultimately Morgan Stanley backed me up. It backed me up on many occasions. My research director, Mike Blumstein, was very supportive. A number of bankers were supportive. On one memorable occasion, Joe Perella intervened directly with a banker after I talked to him about a proposed GE deal. He killed the deal, which probably saved us a huge lawsuit.
最终，摩根士丹利支持了我。在许多场合上都支持我。我的研究主任迈克·布隆斯坦非常支持我。一些银行家也给予了支持。在一个难忘的时刻，乔·佩雷拉在我与他谈论一项拟议的通用电气交易后，直接与一位银行家进行了干预。他终止了这笔交易，这可能为我们避免了一场巨额诉讼。
From what I understand, pressure still exists. For one thing, if there’s a layoff, analysts who are needed and liked by bankers are protected. The 20% of the department that is getting fired will be chosen from the rest. You can do the math on that.
根据我的理解，压力仍然存在。一方面，如果有裁员，受到银行家欢迎和需要的分析师将受到保护。被解雇的部门 20%将从其他人中选择。你可以自己算一下。
Miguel: You jumped in front of my next question. I didn’t realize the pressure you faced on the sell side. Are there any firms that you recommend as staying true to their research and escaping the perils of groupthink?
米格尔：你抢先回答了我下一个问题。我没有意识到你在卖方面临的压力。有没有什么公司你推荐它们忠于自己的研究，并避免群体思维的陷阱？
Alice: Boutique investment banks and broker-dealers by definition are better if you are looking for stockpicking advice. In effect, they’re performing a different service than a large bank. They don’t send their analysts on constant marketing trips to discuss their sectors and the banking work is distributed among more people. They’re more heavily staffed for research in general, and usually commit all their resources to a one or two industries. They follow small caps.The risk you have with boutiques is their dependence on access to managements and industry sources. They’re like journalists who follow a beat –- they live and die by their sources.
爱丽丝: 按定义，精品投资银行和经纪交易商在寻找股票选择建议时更具优势。实际上，他们提供的服务与大型银行不同。他们不会让分析师频繁进行市场营销旅行来讨论他们的行业，银行业务的工作分配给更多的人。他们在研究方面的人员配置更为充足，通常将所有资源投入到一两个行业。他们关注小型股。与精品银行相关的风险在于他们对管理层和行业来源的依赖。他们就像跟踪特定领域的记者——他们的生存与否取决于他们的消息来源。
In terms of groupthink, first, it’s part of human nature. There’s a lot of research that shows this, such as the famous Milgram experiment. Let’s translate this to a stock. If a company is obviously broken but no one else is saying that, then an analyst who thinks so will begin to question his or her judgment when the market continues to disagree. Another way to put this is to say that bystander apathy is powerful on Wall Street. Bystander apathy is the famous psychological propensity of people to ignore disasters happening right in front of them when they’re in a crowd, if no one has made the first move. Analysts think, “Who am I to try to rescue investors from impending disaster. I’m no smarter than these other 18 people covering this company.”
关于群体思维，首先，这是人性的一部分。有很多研究表明了这一点，比如著名的米尔格拉姆实验。让我们将这一点应用到股票上。如果一家公司明显出了问题，但其他人都没有指出这一点，那么当市场持续持不同意见时，认为公司有问题的分析师就会开始怀疑自己的判断。换句话说，可以说旁观者冷漠在华尔街也很强大。旁观者冷漠是指人们在处于人群中时，即使灾难就在眼前发生，也倾向于忽视它，尤其当没有人采取第一个行动时。分析师会想：“我凭什么去拯救投资者免受即将到来的灾难？我并不比其他18个跟踪这家公司的分析师更聪明。”
You have to have enough of an ego to believe you’re smarter, and, this will sound corny, but it helps enormously if you have crusader streak. Crusaders will suffer all kinds of slings and arrows in the name of whatever they believe is justice. That’s how you become a Steve Eisman.
你必须有足够的自我意识来相信自己更聪明，这听起来可能有些老套，但如果你有一种斗士的精神，这会有很大帮助。斗士们会为了他们认为的正义而忍受各种攻击和伤害。这就是你如何成为史蒂夫·艾斯曼的方式。
People who gravitate to short-selling also innately have this personality. It’s kind of interesting that some of them now have almost cult-like followers. In recent years, we’ve been living in a time when being a crusader and being negative is handsomely rewarded and respected. A decade ago, that certainly wasn’t true. Someday the pendulum will swing back.
倾向于做空的人天生就有这种性格。有趣的是，他们中的一些人现在几乎有了类似于邪教的追随者。近年来，我们生活在一个做斗士和持消极态度的人受到丰厚奖励和尊重的时代。十年前，这显然不是事实。总有一天，钟摆会回摆。
Miguel: How did this pressure play into the shortsighted nature of company guidance and quarterly estimates?
米格尔：这种压力是如何影响公司指导和季度估计的短视性质的？
Alice: You know, I don’t see that being linked to the time pressure of sell-side analyst work as much as the fundamentally short-term nature of investors’ quickened expectations. If you’re a hedge fund manager who’s being judged, not just quarterly but monthly, weekly, and even daily, then every minute matters. The brokerage firms all have at most 1 year rating systems. And, often you are judged in shorter increments than that for your stock picking.
爱丽丝：你知道，我认为这与卖方分析师工作的时间压力关系不大，而更多的是与投资者快速变化的短期期望的根本性质有关。如果你是一名对冲基金经理，不仅要按季度、甚至按月、按周，甚至按天接受评判，那么每一分钟都很重要。经纪公司最多只有 1 年的评级系统。而且，通常你在选股方面的评判时间比这还要短。
The rating systems are a major criticism I have of Wall Street research. When the firms began to judge analysts for things other than their banking skills and client popularity, they migrated to stock-picking. Now, there’s a big difference between stock-picking –that is, continuously making predictions about exactly which companies in a particular group will do the best over the next few months — and investing, which is a profession in which it pays to realize most of the time you don’t have a good answer to that question.
评级系统是我对华尔街研究的主要批评。当这些公司开始根据分析师的其他能力而非他们的银行技能和客户受欢迎程度来评判分析师时，他们转向了选股。现在，选股——即不断预测在特定组中哪些公司在接下来的几个月里表现最佳——与投资之间有很大区别，投资是一种职业，通常意识到自己并没有一个好的答案是有益的。
One of the several reasons I left the Street is that I was tired of being a short-term market prognosticator. Almost by definition, that’s a silly thing to do.
我离开华尔街的几个原因之一是我厌倦了做短期市场预测者。几乎从定义上来说，这是一件愚蠢的事情。
Miguel: From what you tell me, what I hear is that they (short-sighted analysts) are not thinking like owners.
米格尔: 根据你告诉我的，我听到的是他们（短-视的分析师）并没有像拥有者那样思考。
Alice: They don’t have the luxury of thinking like owners. Neither the buy side or sell side, with the exception of a handful of value managers, the majority of whom continue to manage relatively smaller funds by Wall Street standards.
爱丽丝： 他们没有像拥有者那样思考的奢侈。买方和卖方都没有，除了少数价值管理者，大多数人继续按华尔街标准管理相对较小的基金。
Miguel: So let’s bring Warren Buffett into the picture. You’re an analyst covering insurance companies. When is the first time you come across Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)? Do you still remember the day you released the Paine Webber report?
米格尔：那么让我们把沃伦·巴菲特引入这个话题。你是一名分析师，负责保险公司的研究。你第一次接触到伯克希尔·哈撒韦（BRK.A）是什么时候？你还记得你发布佩恩·韦伯报告的那一天吗？
Alice: Oh yes. I came across Buffett when Berkshire bought the second part of GEICO, which was a major event. It never occurred to me to begin following it until several years later, when Buffett announced his bid for General Re. At that point, a number of my clients asked me to follow Berkshire Hathaway. They were going to own the stock and they wanted research coverage.
爱丽丝: 哦，是的。我是在伯克希尔收购 GEICO 的第二部分时遇到巴菲特的，那是一个重大事件。直到几年后，巴菲特宣布收购 General Re，我才想到要开始关注他。那时，我的一些客户让我关注伯克希尔哈撒韦。他们打算持有这只股票，并希望获得研究覆盖。
These clients knew I liked complex difficult things to analyze. That I was interested in doing things that were different even if there was no obvious commensurate reward for the extra effort. The sell-side had limited interested in following Berkshire, to say the least. The stock didn’t trade. At the time, Warren essentially didn’t pay bankers and frequently expressed a negative attitude toward the Street.
这些客户知道我喜欢分析复杂困难的事物。我对做一些不同的事情感兴趣，即使额外的努力没有明显的相应回报。卖方对跟踪伯克希尔的兴趣有限，至少可以这么说。那只股票没有交易。当时，沃伦基本上不支付银行家的费用，并且经常对华尔街表现出消极态度。
So, I went to my research director at PaineWebber and made a case that our retail brokers would appreciate this coverage because their clients were interested in Berkshire and Warren Buffett. Being able to call and talk about Berkshire was a service for retail clients that did not involve asking for a transaction. It was something their financial advisors appreciated being able to offer. To its credit, PaineWebber gave me a thumbs up.
所以，我去找了 PaineWebber 的研究主管，提出我们的零售经纪人会欣赏这种覆盖，因为他们的客户对伯克希尔和沃伦·巴菲特感兴趣。能够打电话并谈论伯克希尔是为零售客户提供的一项服务，而不涉及请求交易。这是他们的财务顾问很乐意提供的服务。值得一提的是，PaineWebber 给了我一个赞同的反馈。
Miguel: What was the next step? Did your director just say ‘go for it’? What was it like discovering Berkshire Hathaway?
米格尔：下一步是什么？你的领导只是说“去做吧”？发现伯克希尔哈撒韦是什么感觉？
Alice: Warren always said he revealed everything investors needed to know from his financial statements, but that was not the perspective of many analysts. I find it interesting that Buffett has criticized Wall Street for being over-dependent on private information from management. When I started taking Berkshire’s public disclosures and merging them with my earnings model on General Re, I quickly learned what so many people already knew, which is that investors had been struggling for years trying to value Berkshire.
爱丽丝：沃伦总是说他在财务报表中揭示了投资者所需了解的一切，但许多分析师并不这样看。我觉得有趣的是，巴菲特批评华尔街过于依赖管理层的私人信息。当我开始将伯克希尔的公开披露与我对通用再保险的盈利模型合并时，我很快意识到许多人早已知道的事实，那就是投资者多年来一直在努力评估伯克希尔的价值。
I ultimately based my valuation on three things: insurance, the group of other little businesses, and the publicly traded investment portfolio. I just started putting it together. There really was not a lot of information to do a detailed valuation and frankly there is still a lot of ambiguity. But I assumed that anything would be value-added to investors versus what they had, and that turned out to be right.
我最终的估值基于三件事：保险、其他小企业的组合以及公开交易的投资组合。我刚开始将这些信息整理在一起。实际上，没有很多信息可以进行详细的估值，坦率地说，仍然存在很多不确定性。但我假设任何东西对投资者来说都是增值的，相较于他们所拥有的，这证明是正确的。
As an aside, at the time and continuing to this day, it’s not uncommon for money managers who are vocal champions of Berkshire’s attractiveness as an investment in public to take me aside in private and wring their hands over the problem of how you value Berkshire stock, and whether it is over- or under- or fairly valued.
顺便提一下，直到现在，公开表达对伯克希尔作为投资吸引力的资金经理们，私下里常常会把我拉到一边，忧心忡忡地讨论如何评估伯克希尔股票，以及它是被高估、低估还是公允估值的问题。
People get stuck in this position because they trust Warren philosophically, and they believe the empirical track record, yet, for lack of information, they’re prevented from living up to the professional standards of analysis that that they apply to their other investments and that Warren applies to his own investments. As security analysts, this makes them uncomfortable.
人们陷入这种境地是因为他们在哲学上信任沃伦，并相信他的经验记录，但由于缺乏信息，他们无法达到对其他投资所应用的专业分析标准，以及沃伦对自己投资所应用的标准。作为证券分析师，这让他们感到不安。
Warren has always had the attitude that investors should trust him enough to let him operate in privacy. People were fine with that for a long time, and were rewarded for their trust. As he’s gotten older, they’re less fine with it, which is reasonable.
沃伦一直以来的态度是，投资者应该足够信任他，让他在私密中运作。人们对此感到满意很长一段时间，并因此得到了回报。随着他年龄的增长，人们对此的满意度降低，这也是合理的。
很奇怪的评价。
Meeting The Oracle of Omaha
会见奥马哈的神谕
Miguel: At what point (and I don’t know if this happened or not) do you say there is more to this guy (Warren) than meets the eye? Did you just write the (BRK Initiating Coverage) report and never expect things to progress (into a book deal)?
米格尔：在什么情况下（我不知道这是否发生过）你会说这个家伙（沃伦）比表面看起来更复杂？你只是写了（BRK 启动覆盖）报告，没想到事情会进展（成书籍交易）吗？
Alice: You can tell he’s not ordinary by reading anything he’s ever written. I knew right away he was a legend. It was also apparent at our first meeting how different he was. I took a list of 60-some-odd questions that should have filled several hours of conversation. We sat on his Gulfstream flying to Omaha and he sliced through those questions in about 45 minutes in between mouthfuls of potato chips. I had to improvise, which was terrifying at the time. It was my first encounter with what conversing with him was like.
爱丽丝： 你可以通过阅读他写的任何东西来判断他并不普通。我立刻就知道他是个传奇。在我们第一次见面时，他的不同之处也显而易见。我带了一份 60 多个问题的清单，本该填满几个小时的对话。我们坐在他的湾流飞机上飞往奥马哈，他在吃薯片的间隙大约用 45 分钟就解决了那些问题。我不得不即兴发挥，那时真是令人恐惧。这是我第一次体验与他交谈的感觉。
But, to go back to exactly how I met him: Shortly after I started working on the report, clients who wanted to meet Buffett asked me to get a meeting with him. The ostensible reason was that they were going to be voting on the General Re merger and their fiduciary obligations as fund managers required them to meet with the management of any company whose stock they owned. Truthfully, I’m not sure how eager they would have been to fly to Omaha to meet anyone but Warren Buffett.
但是，回到我如何遇见他的事情：在我开始撰写报告不久后，想要见巴菲特的客户让我安排与他的会议。表面上的理由是，他们将对通用再保险的合并进行投票，作为基金经理，他们的信托义务要求他们与任何他们持有股票的公司的管理层会面。老实说，我不确定他们有多渴望飞往奥马哈去见除了沃伦·巴菲特以外的任何人。
So I wrote him a letter saying that shareholders representing 13% of General Re’s stock wanted to meet with him and we were all willing to fly to Omaha if he would give us an hour of his time.
所以我给他写了一封信，表示代表 13%通用再保险股票的股东希望与他会面，我们都愿意飞往奥马哈，只要他能给我们一个小时的时间。
I thought it was a long-shot. But Warren called me within a couple of days on the phone. That was my first encounter, and, as are many people who don’t know him at first, I was shocked that he answered his own phone and dialed his own outbound calls. I thought it was a prank until after the first sentence or two when I was sure from the voice that it was him. Then my knees were shaking.
我以为这是一线希望。但沃伦在几天内就给我打了电话。这是我第一次见到他，和许多一开始不认识他的人一样，我很震惊他竟然自己接电话，还自己拨打外线电话。我以为这是个恶作剧，直到前一两句我听出是他的声音。然后我的腿开始发抖。
He said, “Come on out.” So we went. In the end, he gave us about two hours. The conversation would seem surreal to a lot of people because we literally spent almost two hours talking about insurance. It really is the insurance gene thing. And, I was with exceptional investors like Jody Jonsson from Capital Group and Chris Davis. Warren enjoyed it because he loves to talk about insurance.
他说：“出来吧。”于是我们就去了。最后，他给了我们大约两个小时。对很多人来说，这段对话似乎很超现实，因为我们几乎花了两个小时在谈论保险。确实是保险基因的事情。我和像资本集团的乔迪·琼森和克里斯·戴维斯这样的杰出投资者在一起。沃伦很享受，因为他喜欢谈论保险。
Three weeks later, I was in my office, never expecting to hear from Warren or talk to him again. My phone rang. It was him. Hearing his voice, with no secretary placing the call, was again shocking. He got straight to the point.
三周后，我在办公室里，没想到会再听到沃伦的消息或和他交谈。我的电话响了。是他。听到他的声音，没有秘书拨打电话，令人震惊。他直截了当地说。
He said (and I’m paraphrasing),
他说（我在转述），
I never have had any contact with the Street, but Berkshire is now very complicated. Someone needs to teach investors how it works. This means I have to choose between the lesser of 2 evils. Either I give one person an advantage over their peers. Or, I have to be bothered all the time by analysts. I don’t want a gaggle of analysts calling me all the time, so I am choosing to give one person an advantage. Would you do me a favor and be that person?
我从未与华尔街有过任何接触，但伯克希尔现在非常复杂。有人需要教投资者它是如何运作的。这意味着我必须在两个恶劣选择中选择其一。要么我让一个人比其他人更有优势，要么我必须一直被分析师打扰。我不想让一群分析师一直给我打电话，所以我选择给一个人一个优势。你能帮我一个忙，成为那个人吗？
With hindsight, this elegant way of reasoning and drawing me in was so classically Warren. It made a strong impression on me at the time. When you ask how I knew he was different, it was from episodes like this. And, perhaps as he wanted, I felt that he chose me. I had shown the initiative to cover the stock and had brought people to Omaha, and he really likes it when people come to Omaha. It matters to him more than people realize. So I said, “Of course, I would be thrilled to,” and that was the beginning.
回想起来，这种优雅的推理方式和吸引我的方式是如此经典的沃伦。当时给我留下了深刻的印象。当你问我怎么知道他与众不同时，就是像这样的经历。而且，也许正如他所希望的，我感觉他选择了我。我表现出了主动性去关注这只股票，并且带人来奥马哈，他真的很喜欢人们来奥马哈。这对他来说比人们意识到的更重要。所以我说：“当然，我会很高兴的，”这就是开始。
By the way, there has sometimes been a misunderstanding that he asked me to cover the stock. There is no way he has ever asked anyone to cover the stock. It’s unthinkable. He rarely asks anyone outright for anything. He wanted to talk to me because I was already going to do it.
顺便说一下，有时候人们误解了，以为是他让我去跟踪这只股票。事实上，他从未要求任何人跟踪任何股票。这是不可想象的。他很少直接要求任何人做任何事情。他之所以想和我谈话，是因为我本来就打算这么做。
So, after that, I would fly to Omaha and interview him once or twice a year, and talk with him by phone periodically. My first interview was that conversation on a NetJets plane in 1998, flying to Omaha with him and Susie.
所以，在那之后，我每年会飞往奥马哈采访他一到两次，并定期通过电话与他交谈。我的第一次采访是在 1998 年与他和苏西一起乘坐 NetJets 飞机飞往奥马哈的那次对话。
Susie sat in the back of the plane and read magazines the whole time. She was obviously irritated at him. This side of Susie came out very, very rarely, but if she saw Warren showing off in front of a woman, that could trigger it. And Susie dealt with it fabulously, very gracefully, letting him know in multiple nonverbal ways that he was irritating her. Susie was an unusual person whose emotional intelligence was off the charts.
苏西坐在飞机的后面，整时间都在看杂志。她显然对他感到恼火。苏西的这一面非常非常少见，但如果她看到沃伦在女人面前炫耀，那可能会引发她的反应。苏西处理得非常出色，非常优雅，以多种非语言的方式让他知道她对他感到恼火。苏西是一个情商极高的不同寻常的人。
Miguel: What was it like being the world expert on Berkshire Hathaway?
米格尔：成为伯克希尔哈撒韦的世界专家是什么感觉？
Alice: I thought that it would be interesting to our retail brokers and to a limited number of institutional investors. I knew that a lot of people on Wall Street were indifferent to Warren Buffett and some even disliked him for one reason or another.
爱丽丝： 我认为这对我们的零售经纪人和少数机构投资者会很有趣。我知道华尔街上很多人对沃伦·巴菲特漠不关心，甚至因为某种原因不喜欢他。
What I didn’t expect was that the new role would become huge, but it did, because, until that time, Warren had been so inaccessible. The New York Times ran a front page business section story “The Oracle of Omaha Taps a Medium on Wall Street.” For a while I had 3 people answering the phones. I can’t tell you how many phone calls just never got returned; it was like a wildfire. Thankfully, it calmed down after a few weeks.
我没想到这个新角色会变得如此重要，但它确实如此，因为在那之前，沃伦一直是如此难以接近。《纽约时报》在头版商业版块上刊登了一篇名为“奥马哈的神谕者在华尔街寻求媒介”的报道。那段时间我有 3 个人接电话。我无法告诉你有多少电话根本没有得到回复；就像野火一样。幸运的是，几周后情况平静下来。
Berkshire was a very interesting stock to follow, especially as you began to really understand it and its most important elements. Shortly after I began my new role, Warren made a series of acquisitions in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. There was, as there still is, a fascination with the minutiae of these companies. But it seemed to me that the most important part of what he did resembled a factory-like process. What interested me was the factory.
伯克希尔是一只非常有趣的股票，尤其是当你开始真正理解它及其最重要的元素时。在我开始新角色不久后，沃伦在 1990 年代末和 2000 年代初进行了一系列收购。人们对这些公司的细节依然充满着迷。但在我看来，他所做的最重要的部分更像是一个工厂式的过程。让我感兴趣的是这个工厂。
Miguel: When does the Snowball come into the picture?
米格尔：雪球什么时候出现？
Alice: In 2003 I had been following Berkshire for 5 years. I had been an analyst for 10 years, and the job was getting a lot less fun during the Spitzer era. I was thinking about starting a boutique research firm. I was talking within Morgan Stanley about moving into management. I was also contemplating doing something completely different.
爱丽丝：在 2003 年，我已经关注伯克希尔 5 年了。我做分析师已经 10 年，斯皮策时代让这份工作变得越来越无趣。我在考虑创办一家精品研究公司。我在摩根士丹利内部讨论转向管理职位的事。我也在考虑做一些完全不同的事情。
There were two threads that merged. One was that an author contacted me with an idea for a book about Buffett. I didn’t love this author’s particular idea, but it got me thinking more about the subject of what books should be written about him. There were so many books trying to describe how Buffett invests, but there was nothing, really, that combined his management and business philosophy with a fairly comprehensive account of his own biographical information. There was no “biography of ideas.” I wasn’t really thinking about writing a book; I called him and told him about this book suggestion and said I thought he should write it.
有两个线索交汇在一起。一个是有位作者联系我，提出了一个关于巴菲特的书籍构想。我并不特别喜欢这个作者的想法，但这让我开始更多地思考关于他应该写哪些书的问题。有很多书试图描述巴菲特是如何投资的，但实际上没有一本书将他的管理和商业哲学与他自己的传记信息相结合。没有“思想传记”。我并没有真正考虑写一本书；我给他打了电话，告诉他这个书的建议，并说我认为他应该写这本书。
Warren replied that he liked the idea but that he would never write a book, and asked me who else I thought could do it. I said Carol Loomis, and he said Carol is not going to do it. He asked me again, “Who else do you think could do it?”
沃伦回复说他喜欢这个主意，但他永远不会写书，并问我还认为谁能做到。我说卡罗尔·卢米斯，他说卡罗尔不会去做。他又问我：“你还认为谁能做到？”
Then comes the second thread, but only retrospect did it make sense. Warren, ever since 9/11, had periodically mentioned that he liked the way I wrote and thought I should quit my job and write a book. I realize now that this started right after the death of Katherine Graham. Warren viewed Personal History as a seminal episode because it defined her in the public’s mind.
然后是第二个线索，但只有回顾时才有意义。自从 911 事件以来，沃伦时不时提到他喜欢我写作的方式，并认为我应该辞职去写一本书。我现在意识到，这一切始于凯瑟琳·格雷厄姆的去世。沃伦认为个人历史是一个重要的事件，因为它在公众心中定义了她。
When Kay died it brought him to the conclusion that the subject has to get on with it if such a book is to be written. But I found this out from conversations with him later. He never mentioned Personal History to me at the time. So I would say, “But Warren, what should I write about?” at which point he would say, “oh, you’ll think of something.” I assumed he meant something about insurance or Wall Street. Unsurprisingly, nothing compelling came to mind, so I wasn’t going to quit my job to write a book.
当凯去世时，这使他得出结论，如果要写这样的书，主题必须继续前进。但我后来从与他的对话中发现了这一点。那时他从未提到过个人历史。所以我会说：“但是沃伦，我应该写些什么？”这时他会说：“哦，你会想到一些东西的。”我以为他是指保险或华尔街的事情。不出所料，我脑海中没有想到任何引人注目的东西，所以我不打算辞职去写书。
Now, when he put me on the spot in this conversation, it was clear that, absent him or Carol, nobody would write this book that I had conceived of but me, and that’s what he was saying. Once I understood the offer, I knew The Snowball was worth doing. The magnitude of writing a book like that was overwhelming, though. It still didn’t occur to me to shelve my other plans right then and there to write a book like this. I said something to Warren about how maybe I could do it in 10 years or so when I retired.
现在，当他在这次谈话中让我感到为难时，很明显，如果没有他或卡罗尔，没人会写我构思的这本书，只有我会写，这就是他所说的。一旦我理解了这个提议，我知道The Snowball是值得去做的。然而，写这样一本书的规模是压倒性的。尽管如此，我当时并没有想到要立即搁置其他计划去写这样一本书。我对沃伦说，也许我可以在大约 10 年后退休时再去做。
I wasn’t worried about the timing because, just as with my report on Berkshire, it never occurred to me that I would have any direct help from him. That may sound odd, because a lot of people would have seen the advantage of getting his cooperation and would’ve asked for it.
我并不担心时机，因为就像我对伯克希尔的报告一样，我从未想到我会得到他的直接帮助。这听起来可能很奇怪，因为很多人会看到获得他合作的好处，并会请求合作。
But one of the criteria of getting along with Warren, of him seeking out a relationship with you, is that you don’t have expectations. People who ask him for things, even small things, do not get to stick around long. Over and over, I’ve seen that only a person who genuinely has no expectations gets offered things by him. At the time I had no inkling of this, so I wasn’t expecting it when Warren instantly said, “Well, I’ll cooperate with you if you write the book. I’ll do interviews with you; I’ll give you my files, etc.”
但与沃伦相处的一个标准是，他寻求与你建立关系时，你不能有期望。那些向他索要东西的人，即使是小事，也不会长久留在他身边。我一次又一次地看到，只有那些真正没有期望的人才会得到他的提议。当时我对此毫无头绪，所以当沃伦立刻说：“好吧，如果你写这本书，我会配合你。我会和你做采访；我会把我的文件给你，等等。”时，我并没有期待。
That changed everything. It meant I would have to start right away. (At the time he was 73.)
这改变了一切。这意味着我必须立即开始。（那时他 73 岁。）
It was an incredible offer, but even so I had to think about it. It was a big risk. I had never done anything like this before, and I could fail. I was giving up my career. Financially, though this still surprises some people to hear, I would be giving up a job on Wall Street that was far more lucrative and financially stable than even the best of book contracts.
这是一个令人难以置信的提议，但即便如此我还是必须考虑一下。这是一个很大的风险。我从未做过这样的事情，我可能会失败。我正在放弃我的职业。尽管这仍然让一些人感到惊讶，从经济上讲，我将放弃一份在华尔街的工作，这份工作比最好的书籍合同更有利可图和财务稳定。
But, most frighteningly, it was a huge responsibility, and it was an irrevocable one. I was being entrusted to produce the book that would define Buffett and would always bear the responsibility for interpreting the knowledge I was given.
但最令人恐惧的是，这是一项巨大的责任，而且是不可逆转的。我被委托去制作一本将定义巴菲特的书，并将永远承担解释我所获得知识的责任。
Yet I was really excited about to spend all this time learning from him. (I later realized that the kind of attention I received was something even some of his close business partners, family, and friends were rarely given.) I felt that the world needed this book, and it could be a great gift to do this for people. I like challenges. I would learn new skills: writing narrative, interviewing, and structuring the story. No one else ever had or ever would have this opportunity. How could you turn it down? So I called him back two days later and said, let’s go. In June, 2003, I flew out there and we started.
然而，我真的很兴奋能花这么多时间向他学习。（我后来意识到，我所得到的关注是连他的一些亲密商业伙伴、家人和朋友都很少得到的。）我觉得这个世界需要这本书，这对人们来说可能是一个很好的礼物。我喜欢挑战。我会学习新技能：叙事写作、采访和构建故事。没有其他人曾经有过或将会有这样的机会。你怎么能拒绝呢？所以我在两天后给他打了电话，说，走吧。2003 年 6 月，我飞到那里，我们开始了。
Miguel: So you decide to write the book, what’s next? Did you quit your job? How did you juggle multiple responsibilities?
米格尔：所以你决定写这本书，接下来是什么？你辞职了吗？你是如何平衡多重责任的？
Alice: Originally I thought I could do this on a part-time basis and at least stay with Morgan Stanley and write occasionally as a strategist if I gave up my stock responsibilities. That was naive. I ended up becoming what’s called an Advisory Director, which is somewhat like going limited at Goldman (GS). I had some minor responsibilities at Morgan Stanley while writing the book, but spent close to full time writing.
爱丽丝：最初我以为我可以兼职做这个，至少可以留在摩根士丹利，偶尔作为策略师写作，如果我放弃我的股票职责的话。这太天真了。我最终成为了所谓的顾问董事，这有点像在高盛(GS)的有限合伙人。在写书期间，我在摩根士丹利有一些小责任，但几乎全职在写作。
Miguel: At that point, what was the message of the book? How were you going to tell Warren’s story?
米格尔：在那时，这本书传达了什么信息？你打算如何讲述沃伦的故事？
Alice: Initially, it was still this notion of the biography of ideas. Warren kept referencing Iacocca’s biography and Kay Graham’s. He loved Iacocca’s book and, in fact, started shoveling biographical material at me immediately. There were a lot of stories he had been saving for “the” book. Some of the material was very personal and revealing, including the mental illness in his family and his shoplifting as a child. Sources who had never spoken to anyone came forward because this was “the” book. Warren said he wanted to reconcile his public and private selves. It was the right thing to do, revealing the source (and wellspring) that forged Buffett.
爱丽丝：最初，还是这个关于“思想传记”的概念。沃伦一直提到艾柯卡的传记和凯·格雷厄姆的传记。他非常喜欢艾柯卡的书，事实上，一开始就不断给我提供传记材料。他为“那本书”保存了很多故事。其中有很多内容非常个人化和揭示性的，包括他家族中的精神疾病以及他小时候的偷窃行为。一些从未对任何人讲过的人出来与我交流，因为这是“那本书”。沃伦说他想要调和他公共和私人自我的关系。这是他认为正确的事情，揭示了形成巴菲特的根源和源泉。
He was very clear from the very beginning that he did not want any editorial involvement. That it was my book. He did not want to have any control and he wanted me to write whatever was best in my judgment. He explicitly said, as I wrote in the first few pages of The Snowball, “Use the less flattering version’’ if his version differed from anyone else’s.
他从一开始就非常明确地表示，他不想参与任何编辑工作。这是我的书。他不想有任何控制权，他希望我根据自己的判断写出最好的内容。他明确说过，正如我在TheSnowball的前几页中所写的，“如果他的版本与其他人的不同，就使用不那么美化的版本。”
Warren wanted a successful book that would be credible enough to sell well. In a sense, he also didn’t trust himself to write it. I have an interesting interview recorded of him insisting that I will do a better job of the book than he would. He also knew if he got involved, a publisher might market the book as if he were the co-author or as if it were ghost-written, and he wanted the boundary very clear that it was not his book.
沃伦想要一本成功的书，足够可信以便畅销。从某种意义上说，他也不相信自己能写好这本书。我有一段有趣的采访录音，他坚持认为我会比他写得更好。他也知道如果他参与其中，出版商可能会将这本书宣传成他是合著者，或者像是由他代笔的，他希望界限非常明确，这不是他的书。
Miguel: As you are writing the book, does anyone stop you along the way? Was there any fear involved in the process?
米格尔：在你写书的过程中，有人会打断你吗？这个过程有没有让你感到害怕？
Alice: There was constant fear from the first moment to the last. All different kinds of fear. Writing is all about fear.
爱丽丝：从头到尾都有持续的恐惧。各种不同类型的恐惧。写作就是关于恐惧的。
Miguel: What do you mean by that?
米格尔：你这是什么意思？
Alice: Every word that you put on paper is an expression of your window on the world, of your abilities. It’s going to be judged and often judged harshly. In this case, it was a book that would be potentially historic. I was worried from the first day to the last as to whether I could live up to the responsibility I had been given. I was afraid of all kinds of other things. I was afraid of failure. I had to learn to write narrative and I was afraid of failing at that. I had to learn to interview like a journalist, which is a very difficult skill.
爱丽丝：你写在纸上的每一个字都是你看待世界的窗口和你能力的表现。这将被评判，往往会受到严厉的评判。在这种情况下，这本书可能会具有历史意义。从第一天到最后一天，我都在担心自己是否能承担起我所肩负的责任。我害怕各种各样的事情。我害怕失败。我必须学会写叙事，而我害怕在这方面失败。我还必须像记者一样学习采访，这是一项非常困难的技能。
There is another set of fears that go along with writing. You as an author have to confront yourself on the page. This doesn’t happen when you’re writing technical material, but when you venture away from that to draw judgments about people, all kinds of existential and psychological considerations emerge.
还有一系列与写作相关的恐惧。作为作者，你必须在纸上面对自己。当你写技术材料时，这种情况并不会发生，但当你从中走出来，对人进行评判时，各种存在主义和心理方面的考虑就会浮现出来。
The dynamic between the author and the subject is fraught with complication in every writing relationship. When the person on the other side of the table is Warren Buffett, there’s another kind of fear. I learned and observed very early in the project things that had happened to journalists who reported on him in a manner that bothered him. It’s an understatement to say that Warren is sensitive to criticism.
作者与主题之间的动态在每一种写作关系中都充满了复杂性。当桌子另一边的人是沃伦·巴菲特时，又会产生另一种恐惧。我在项目早期就了解到并观察到了一些事情，那些以让他不快的方式报道他的记者遭遇了不好的结果。说沃伦对批评很敏感是轻描淡写。
When we started, I had no idea what he was really like, whereas he know himself and his life story. A couple of people called me as soon as the book was announced and said things along the lines of “I know him really well and I didn’t think it could be done,” and “I couldn’t do it, but maybe you can pull it off.”
当我们开始时，我对他真实的样子一无所知，而他却了解自己和他的生活故事。几个人在书籍宣布后立刻给我打电话，表示“我非常了解他，我没想到这能做到”，还有“我做不到，但也许你能成功”。
Once I was far enough into the project to understood what they meant, it was too late to back out. I wasn’t particularly happy about being in this position. The path of least resistance would have been to write a Valentine book, but I just couldn’t do it. Instead I convinced myself that he would be supportive of a truthful book. I told him, and my agent told him, any number of times, that there were parts of the book he wasn’t going to like, and he seemed fine with that and kept cooperating. It’s pretty clear that, to get the book done, we were both engaged in some magical thinking.
一旦我深入到项目中，理解了他们的意思，就已经太晚了，无法退出。我对处于这种境地并不特别开心。最简单的选择是写一本情人节书籍，但我就是无法做到。相反，我说服自己，他会支持一本真实的书。我告诉他，我的经纪人也告诉他，无数次地说书中有些部分他可能不会喜欢，但他似乎对此没问题，并继续合作。很明显，为了完成这本书，我们都参与了一些魔幻思维。
Miguel: I had no idea how many things you went through both career-wise and then in writing this book. I don’t think most people appreciate how different you are from a traditional Wall Streeter (or even author).
米格尔：我完全不知道你在职业生涯中经历了多少事情，以及在写这本书时经历了多少。我认为大多数人并不理解你与传统华尔街人士（甚至作者）有多么不同。
Alice: I’ve had some unusual experiences in my life that helped my judgment here. One example is from my career, during the E&Y merger. I was one of the two people responsible for “independence” — that is, rules that prevent auditors from having conflicts of interest with clients, such as investing in client stocks and having relatives employed by clients.
爱丽丝：我在生活中经历了一些不寻常的事情，这些经历帮助了我的判断。一个例子来自我的职业生涯，在安永合并期间。我是负责“独立性”的两个人之一——也就是说，防止审计师与客户之间产生利益冲突的规则，例如投资客户的股票和有亲属在客户公司工作。
The Ernst rules went beyond the minimum AICPA requirements, and we chose to continue that. I was involved in making decisions and giving people the news that they had to make awful choices. Their options were to quit their job or to sell a major investment in an illiquid limited partnership at a big loss, for example. Or to quit their job as a partner in Atlanta unless their sister, the CFO of some publicly-held client in Seattle, was willing to resign.
恩斯特规则超出了最低的 AICPA 要求，我们选择继续遵循这一规则。我参与了决策，并告诉人们他们必须做出糟糕的选择。例如，他们的选择是辞去工作，或者以巨大的损失出售一个流动性差的有限合伙企业的主要投资。或者，除非他们的姐姐，即在西雅图某家上市公司的首席财务官，愿意辞职，否则他们必须辞去亚特兰大合伙人的职位。
These experiences taught me vivid lessons. Conflicts-of-interest-in-appearance and and conflicts-of-interest-in-fact are two very different things. Inherently, conflicts-of-interest policies can only address appearances. And virtually 100% of the time, well-intended, ethical people are blind to conflicts when they’re faced with giving up some personal thing that they highly value.
这些经历给我上了生动的一课。表面上的利益冲突和实际上的利益冲突是两回事。从本质上讲，利益冲突政策只能解决表面问题。而几乎 100%的情况下，善意的、道德的人在面临放弃一些他们非常重视的个人事物时，对利益冲突视而不见。
This happens to be one of Charlie Munger’s oldest points, though the implications I draw are slightly different than his.
这恰好是查理·芒格最早的观点之一，尽管我得出的含义与他的略有不同。
Rules are necessary because people are inherently human, not inherently evil. We can easily be way too black-and-white in our judgments of people who commit things that are labeled improprieties in hindsight. Nobody is all good or all bad. Well, almost nobody is all bad.
规则是必要的，因为人性本善，而非本恶。我们在对那些事后被标记为不当行为的人进行判断时，往往会过于非黑即白。没有人是完全善良或完全邪恶的。好吧，几乎没有人是完全邪恶的。
My experiences made me firmer about applying principles, while at the same time, softer toward the people involved. For example, a relationship with Warren Buffett is extremely valuable. I don’t judge people for protecting it, I just feel freer for having been disentangled.
我的经历让我在应用原则上更加坚定，同时对相关人员更加温和。例如，与沃伦·巴菲特的关系极其宝贵。我不会因为人们保护这种关系而评判他们，我只是因为已经摆脱而感到更加自由。
Backtracking a bit, another advantage of starting as an auditor before Wall Street was that I had to spend a lot of time thinking, “Is this a good business or not? Is this company going to succeed or not? Is this a good industry or not?” I audited some truly awful companies. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be in these businesses. So, it came very naturally when I encountered Warren’s focus on the qualities of a good business.
回溯一下，作为审计师开始我的职业生涯在华尔街之前的另一个好处是，我不得不花很多时间思考：“这是一家好公司吗？这家公司会成功吗？这是一个好行业吗？”我审计过一些非常糟糕的公司。我无法理解为什么有人会想要进入这些行业。因此，当我遇到沃伦对好企业品质的关注时，这一切显得非常自然。
Miguel: It’s funny and I hope one day you can meet my boss. But you can tell him anything in the world (about an investment) but he always circles back to two questions
米格尔：这很有趣，我希望有一天你能见到我的老板。但你可以告诉他世界上任何事情（关于投资），但他总是回到两个问题上
Is it a good company, and
这是一家好公司吗，
Is it cheap? 便宜吗？
Alice: Sure.
爱丽丝：当然。
Miguel: I think that I am a little bit like you in that I love thinking about things. But I also find it very easy to get lost in details while forgetting to ask, “Is this something I even want to own in the first place?”
米格尔：我觉得我有点像你，因为我喜欢思考事情。但我也发现自己很容易迷失在细节中，而忘记问：“这真的是我想拥有的东西吗？”
Alice: One trap is not probing deep enough to really answer whether a particular investment opportunity is a good business. It’s easy to make a facile judgment about that based on a summary description of a business. The sheer breadth of different business and investment opportunities in a modern capital market creates an overflow of information that leads many investors to have short attention spans in thinking about companies comparatively.
爱丽丝：一个陷阱是没有深入探讨，无法真正回答某个特定投资机会是否是一个好生意。根据对一个企业的概述描述，很容易做出肤浅的判断。现代资本市场中不同商业和投资机会的广泛性产生了信息的过载，导致许多投资者在比较公司时思维短暂。
Curiosity is an inherent kind of arbitrage that no amount of computer technology can overcome. Warren makes it sound so simple to know what is and is not a truly good business – and great business do resonate very clearly when you understand why they are great and especially when they’ve been identified as successful investments by an investor like Warren Buffett and proven so with hindsight – but like many things in investing, Buffett makes it sound easier than it is. When it comes to appreciating something that is special about a business that others do not, I’ve learned that the devil really is in the details.
好奇心是一种固有的套利，任何计算机技术都无法克服。沃伦让人觉得了解什么是真正好的生意是如此简单——而伟大的生意在你理解它们为何伟大时确实会非常清晰，尤其是当它们被像沃伦·巴菲特这样的投资者认定为成功投资并在事后得到证明时——但就像投资中的许多事情一样，巴菲特让这听起来比实际更简单。当涉及到欣赏某个生意中其他人所没有的特别之处时，我学到的是真正的关键在于细节。
Will The Real Warren Buffett Please Stand Up
真正的沃伦·巴菲特请站出来
Miguel: Alice, tell me about the process of getting to know Warren Buffett.
米格尔：爱丽丝，告诉我了解沃伦·巴菲特的过程。
Alice: I would ask him questions, and he was able to pull elaborate modules out of his memory bank. He has thought about so many things over the years that there are polished nuggets prepared to respond to almost any question. At times, it was hard to get him to give spontaneous answers –- or to give on-point answers to questions he hadn’t been asked before.
爱丽丝：我会问他问题，他能够从记忆库中提取出复杂的模块。多年来，他思考了很多事情，以至于有许多经过打磨的金句准备好回答几乎任何问题。有时，很难让他给出自发的回答——或者对他之前没有被问过的问题给出切中要点的回答。
As you get to know someone over time by spending days on end with them sitting in their office watching them, you begin to see the real person. I got to know him and understand his mind in business and investing by writing The Snowball. I saw him interacting with his family, his friends, managers, his office staff, and of course, myself. I saw him in all kinds of moods.
随着你花费大量时间与某人相处，坐在他们的办公室里观察他们，你开始看到真实的那个人。我通过写作The Snowball来了解他，理解他在商业和投资方面的思维。我看到他与家人、朋友、经理、办公室员工，当然还有我自己互动。我看到他处于各种情绪中。
It was eye-opening to watch Warren dealing with celebrities. He’s expert at it, yet occasionally some weird thing happens. There was one funny episode, for example, when he invited Sophia Loren to the shareholder meeting as a celebrity guest. He was surprised, and a little insulted, when she wanted to be paid to attend. I mean, in his mind, who wouldn’t want to attend his shareholder meeting? So throughout all of these interactions I saw the different aspects of his personality emerge.
看到沃伦与名人打交道的方式，真是让人大开眼界。他对此非常在行，但偶尔也会发生一些奇怪的事情。例如，有一次有趣的插曲是，他邀请索菲亚·罗兰作为嘉宾出席股东大会。让他感到惊讶和有点受辱的是，她希望能得到出场费。在他的心目中，谁不想来参加他的股东大会呢？通过所有这些互动，我看到了他性格的不同方面展现出来。
Miguel: Could you shed some light on Buffett’s daily life? What is his daily routine? Maybe you could comment on his interactions with the management teams.
米格尔：你能谈谈巴菲特的日常生活吗？他的日常作息是怎样的？也许你可以评论一下他与管理团队的互动。
Alice: Sure. He comes in the morning and his routine is to switch on CNBC with the sound muted and start reading while glancing at the crawl from time to time. The wooden shutters on the windows are always closed. You get no sense that a world exists outside, which is what he wants, no distractions. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t need sunlight.
爱丽丝：当然。他早上来，习惯是打开 CNBC，声音静音，然后开始阅读，偶尔瞥一眼滚动字幕。窗户上的木百叶窗总是关着。你完全感受不到外面有一个世界，这正是他想要的，没有干扰。就我所知，他不需要阳光。
He is already pretty well versed on the news by the time he gets in, through the Internet and television. But he still prefers newspapers. He reads the WSJ, NYT, Financial Times, Washington Post, the Omaha World-Herald. He reads some offbeat things like the NY Observer. He reads all sorts of trade press relating to the different businesses that Berkshire runs. American Banker, Oil & Gas Journal, A.M. Best, Furniture Today. There are stacks of reports from the different BRK subsidiary companies on his desk. Throughout his day he grazes through the reading pile.
他在上班时已经通过互联网和电视对新闻相当熟悉。但他仍然更喜欢报纸。他阅读华尔街日报，纽约时报，金融时报，华盛顿邮报，奥马哈世界先驱报。他还阅读一些冷门的东西，比如纽约观察家。他阅读与伯克希尔经营的不同业务相关的各种行业刊物。《美国银行家》，《石油与天然气杂志》，《A.M. Best》，《今日家具》。他桌上堆满了来自不同伯克希尔子公司的报告。在他的一天中，他会随意翻阅这些阅读材料。
Meanwhile he talks on the phone. He doesn’t make a lot of outgoing calls; people call him. That’s his day … most of the time.
与此同时，他在打电话。他不打很多外拨电话；人们给他打电话。这就是他的日常……大部分时间。
People do come to visit him and he’ll sit and spend an hour with someone or have lunch or dinner. A lot of days he doesn’t have anything on his schedule. His interaction with managers is minimal. Some of them call him regularly, but he’s not kidding when he says that others, he speaks to maybe a couple of times a year, or they communicate in writing.
人们确实会来拜访他，他会坐下来和某人聊一个小时，或者一起吃午餐或晚餐。很多天他日程上没有任何安排。他与经理的互动很少。有些人定期给他打电话，但他说有些人一年也许只交流几次，或者通过书面方式沟通，这并不是开玩笑。
He responds if they call him. He almost never calls them. If they call him he’ll be very agreeable and talk but he keeps the conversation quite short. When they do call, he acts as a sounding board. The one thing he controls is capital decisions. But anything else, it’s pretty much up to them.
他会回应他们的电话，但几乎从不主动打电话给他们。如果他们打电话给他，他会非常乐意交谈，但他会把对话控制得很短。当他们打电话时，他充当一个倾听者。他唯一能控制的是资本决策。但其他任何事情，基本上都由他们决定。
He is a very good listener who gives excellent advice, and he’s also pretty firm about not giving unasked advice. The managers vary in their desire (for asking for advice). The ones that do ask use words like “invaluable” to describe his advice.
他是一个非常好的倾听者，给出优秀的建议，而且他在不主动给建议方面也相当坚定。经理们在寻求建议的意愿上各不相同。那些确实寻求建议的人用“无价”这样的词来形容他的建议。
Within headquarters he has low interaction with his staff other than with Debbie and the other secretaries. He talks to Marc Hamburg (the CFO) regularly, although not necessarily daily. He talks with his the bond trader. These conversations are very brief. You’ll notice this is a running theme… while he does have long conversations, it’s only with a few friends and only on occasions of his choosing.
在总部，他与员工的互动很少，除了与黛比和其他秘书之外。他定期与马克·汉堡（首席财务官）交谈，尽管不一定是每天。他与债券交易员交谈。这些对话非常简短。你会注意到这是一个反复出现的主题……虽然他确实有长时间的对话，但仅限于少数朋友，并且仅在他选择的场合。
In the office, he knows everyone’s name and occasionally walks down the hall and says hello to people. He is the furthest thing from a walk-around manager, though. He stays in his office (he is at one end of the hall) and everyone else sticks to their end.
在办公室里，他知道每个人的名字，偶尔会走到走廊上和人打招呼。然而，他与走动式管理者相去甚远。他待在自己的办公室里（他在走廊的一端），其他人则呆在他们的那一端。
Miguel: Obviously he is a voracious reader and gets through things pretty quickly. How much time is spent on new ideas besides following the subsidiaries and general business press?
米格尔：显然他是一个贪婪的读者，阅读速度相当快。除了关注子公司和一般商业新闻外，花在新想法上的时间有多少？
Alice: You mean investment ideas?
爱丽丝： 你是说投资想法吗？
Miguel: Sure, whether it’s a new investment idea or not. He talks about enjoying books…I’m curious where he finds the time to do those kinds of activities (in addition to investing).
米格尔：当然，无论这是否是一个新的投资想法。他谈到享受书籍……我很好奇他在哪里找到时间进行这些活动（除了投资之外）。
Alice: Yes, he’s mostly updating himself. Books and entertainment would be at home.
爱丽丝：是的，他主要是在更新自己。书籍和娱乐会在家里。
Miguel: Is there anything that surprised you about his daily routine or communications?
米格尔：关于他的日常生活或沟通，有什么让你感到惊讶的地方吗？
Alice: While I was an analyst, he would always say, “Call me anytime,” but I rarely did. I had this false notion that he was busy all day and it would be an imposition to call him. Later I learned some of his closest friends feel the same way, and meanwhile Warren is sitting there in Omaha wishing more people would call him.
爱丽丝： 当我还是分析师的时候，他总是说：“随时给我打电话，”但我很少这样做。我曾有这种错误的观念，认为他整天都很忙，打电话给他会是一种打扰。后来我了解到他的一些亲密朋友也有同样的感觉，而与此同时，沃伦坐在奥马哈，希望更多的人能给他打电话。
Only certain people, though, that should be stressed. Essentially, only people who he is certain have no expectations of talking to him get to talk to him.
只有某些人，这一点需要强调。基本上，只有那些他确信没有期望与他交谈的人才能与他交谈。
You know his saying about potential acquisitions, “If the phone don’t ring, you’ll know it’s me.” That’s not coming out of a vacuum. If you want to connect with Warren Buffett, do it in writing.
你知道他关于潜在收购的说法：“如果电话不响，你就知道是我。”这不是凭空而来的。如果你想与沃伦·巴菲特联系，就写信给他。
Something to keep in mind is that Warren is extremely precise and literal in what he writes and says. You can tell this from reading his writings closely, but it was even more interesting to watch him create them in real time. It’s unwise to read more into his words than is there. It’s equally unwise to assume that everything you might want to know has been said.
需要记住的是，沃伦在他所写和所说的内容上非常精确和字面。仔细阅读他的著作可以看出这一点，但更有趣的是实时观察他创作的过程。过度解读他的话是不明智的。同样，假设你想知道的一切都已经说过也是不明智的。
One thing I found surprising initially, but with hindsight not, is that Warren relies on those people who do call him as his window on the world. He needs eyes and ears. You know, if you’re Warren Buffett, you can’t walk into a Dairy Queen to check things out. People are always putting on a show for him. He appreciates candid information and seeks it out.
我最初感到惊讶的一件事，但事后看来并不意外，是沃伦依赖那些给他打电话的人作为他了解世界的窗口。他需要眼睛和耳朵。你知道，如果你是沃伦·巴菲特，你无法走进一家冰淇淋店去查看情况。人们总是为他表演。他欣赏坦诚的信息，并主动寻求。
Through this vast network of connections that he’s built, he’s created a sort of database of information about business and the economy that’s probably irreplaceable.
通过他建立的这个庞大的人际网络，他创建了一种关于商业和经济的信息数据库，这个数据库可能是不可替代的。
Miguel: Is he the type to call a “buddy” at a large corporation?
米格尔：他是那种在大公司里称呼“伙伴”的人吗？
Alice: I don’t want to say he never makes outgoing calls. But, more often than not, people call him.
爱丽丝：我不想说他从不打外拨电话。但通常情况下，人们都是给他打电话。
Miguel: So jumping back to the book how did it progress (as you got to know him more intimately). Was there a change in focus over the first couple of years? What were the changes in how you wanted to organize his life?
米格尔：那么回到书上，随着你对他的更深入了解，进展如何？在最初的几年里，重点有变化吗？你想要组织他生活的方式有什么变化？
One of the very interesting things about Buffett is the dichotomy between his character and experiences. By that I mean he was 30 years old and a millionaire and very confident in a business sense—and at the same time he seems to be the shy nice guy (who can barely ask a girl on a date). So maybe you can comment on the young Buffett and how the book progresses from there.
巴菲特非常有趣的一点是他的性格和经历之间的二元性。我的意思是，他在 30 岁时已经是百万富翁，并且在商业上非常自信——同时他似乎又是一个害羞的好人（几乎无法邀请女孩约会）。所以也许你可以评论一下年轻的巴菲特，以及这本书是如何从那里发展的。
Alice: As he gave me more biographical information, I discovered more sources to interview, many suggested by him. So, as I got to know him better, I tended to reorganize and restructure the book to mesh with his personality and my advancing knowledge of him. You have to understand that I did most of the writing in the last 2 years. I was doing mostly research the first 2 years.
爱丽丝：随着他给我提供更多的传记信息，我发现了更多可以采访的来源，许多是他建议的。因此，随着我对他的了解加深，我倾向于重新组织和重构这本书，以与他的个性和我对他的逐步了解相结合。你必须明白，我在过去的两年里做了大部分的写作。在头两年里，我主要是在做研究。
There was a critical path that very much influenced the process, of course. He was obviously the scarcest resource. So I interviewed him as much as I could and as quickly as I could for a year and half.
当然，有一条关键路径对这个过程产生了很大的影响。他显然是最稀缺的资源。因此，我尽可能快地对他进行了为期一年半的采访。
The second-scarcest resource was access to his files — so I went to that right away simultaneously while interviewing him.
第二稀缺的资源是访问他的文件——所以我在采访他的同时立即去处理这个。
The third was people in his life who were very elderly. In a sense I used the actuarial tables for guidance on when to interview people. I started with people over age 95, 90…and I worked my way down – but I still missed some people.
第三个是他生活中非常年长的人。从某种意义上说，我使用了精算表来指导何时采访人。我从 95 岁以上的人开始，90 岁……然后逐渐往下走——但我仍然错过了一些人。
It was too bad because there were people who were already deceased or in dementia, and I didn’t get to talk to them and missed getting to know them. One of the joys of this book was getting to know so many amazing people, and especially, spending time with wise elderly people. But I managed to get most of the key sources, and I felt it was appropriate to focus on them first, because, today, many of them are no longer around or aren’t in a position, physically, to provide the kind of insight into Warren Buffet that they so generously did when I was writing the book.
真可惜，因为有些人已经去世或患有痴呆，我没有机会与他们交谈，错过了了解他们的机会。这本书的乐趣之一就是认识了许多了不起的人，尤其是与智慧的老年人共度时光。但我设法找到了大多数关键的资料来源，我觉得首先关注他们是合适的，因为今天，他们中的许多人已经不在了，或者身体状况不允许他们像我写书时那样慷慨地提供关于沃伦·巴菲特的见解。
I was still doing bits of research until right before the book was published, which is standard in journalism. As the emphasis switches from initial digging to fine-tuning, it goes from 80-20 research versus writing to 20-80. It’s not unlike researching a stock, really.
我在书出版前一直在做一些研究，这在新闻界是很常见的。随着重点从最初的挖掘转向微调，研究与写作的比例从 80-20 变为 20-80。这实际上与研究股票并没有太大区别。
Miguel: Please comment on the highlights of Buffet’s life through the view of his closest friends, family, etc. That is, the people you interviewed. Are there any milestones that people don’t know about or overlook in his character development?
米格尔：请通过他最亲近的朋友、家人等的视角评论巴菲特生活中的亮点。也就是说，您采访的人。是否有一些人们不知道或忽视的里程碑，关于他的性格发展？
Alice: This was some of the “new news” in The Snowball. For example, his relationship with his parents and the role of mental illness in his family shaped his character and his whole career.
爱丽丝： 这是《雪球》中的一些“新消息”。例如，他与父母的关系以及精神疾病在他家庭中的作用塑造了他的性格和整个职业生涯。
He’s cautious and non-confrontational. He’s wary of extremes in all forms. He’s insistently reluctant to criticize anyone and hypersensitive to criticism himself. He needs to be liked and needs approval, but paradoxically is not a people-pleaser. He’s demanding of himself and has very high standards. He’s very oriented toward security … hyper-aware of risk.
他谨慎且不喜欢对抗。他对各种极端事物都很警惕。他坚持不愿批评任何人，对批评自己则非常敏感。他需要被喜欢和获得认可，但矛盾的是，他并不是一个迎合他人的人。他对自己要求严格，标准非常高。他非常注重安全……对风险高度敏感。
He’s got a keenly honed sense of justice, but isn’t one to fight for it in an overt way; he can be timid when called upon for moral courage. He’s uncommonly clever at finding pragmatic, indirect solutions to problems, usually multiple problems taken care of by one solution. You can take those traits and look at his career and find strands of them everywhere.
他有着敏锐的正义感，但并不喜欢以明显的方式为此而战；在需要道德勇气时，他可能会显得胆怯。他在寻找务实的间接解决方案方面非常聪明，通常一个解决方案可以解决多个问题。你可以将这些特质与他的职业生涯结合起来，发现它们在各处都有体现。
His relationships with women provide the most important window on his character. Susie had a very strong impact on his business career because she enabled him socially to overcome his shyness and get around in the business world. He has credited Dale Carnegie, but to fully understand the magnitude of her influence you have to carefully read the formative events in his life that involved her, something I went through in some detail in The Snowball. Warren’s relationship with Susie is as clear a window into who he is, his traits and temperament, as any other.
他与女性的关系为了解他的性格提供了最重要的窗口。苏西对他的商业生涯产生了非常强大的影响，因为她使他在社交上克服了羞怯，能够在商业世界中游刃有余。他曾提到戴尔·卡耐基，但要完全理解她影响的巨大程度，你必须仔细阅读他生活中与她相关的形成性事件，这一点我在The Snowball中详细讨论过。沃伦与苏西的关系是了解他是谁、他的特质和气质的一个清晰窗口。
His hard work in the social area to overcome his natural awkwardness is what enabled him to get past the front door with Katherine Graham. If you look back on his career and think of all the things that happened to him that wouldn’t have had Kay Graham not entered his life, it’s immense.
他在社交领域的努力工作克服了他天生的笨拙，使他能够与凯瑟琳·格雷厄姆走进前门。如果回顾他的职业生涯，想想如果没有凯·格雷厄姆进入他的生活，他所经历的所有事情，那是巨大的。
You can never know what the other path would have been, because he is obviously brilliant, and other good things would have happened. But his Washington connections, media connections, all of these different things led to many of his investments, and his pleasures in life, and they originated from Katherine Graham. Given his strategic way of thinking, it’s not surprising that he arranged to get exposure to her.
你永远无法知道另一条道路会是什么样，因为他显然很聪明，其他好的事情也会发生。但他的华盛顿人脉、媒体关系，以及这些不同的因素导致了他许多投资和生活中的乐趣，而这些都源于凯瑟琳·格雷厄姆。考虑到他战略性的思维方式，他安排接触她并不令人惊讶。
Even the GEICO investment was influenced by Katherine Graham. She introduced him to Jack Byrne. He made his decision to invest in GEICO partly because he thought Jack Byrne was the right person to be the CEO.
即使是 GEICO 的投资也受到凯瑟琳·格雷厄姆的影响。她把他介绍给杰克·伯恩。他决定投资 GEICO，部分原因是他认为杰克·伯恩是担任首席执行官的合适人选。
Miguel: Earlier I asked you from the point of view of an analyst but now I would like to as you as an author, did you get an “Aha!” feeling that Warren wasn’t a typical human being? When did that hit you and how did it hit you?
米格尔：之前我从分析师的角度问过你，但现在我想以作者的身份问你，你有没有感到“啊哈！”的感觉，沃伦并不是一个典型的人类？你是什么时候意识到的，是什么让你有这种感觉的？
Alice: That was obvious when I met him as an analyst in the first 5 minutes into the conversation. When he opens his mouth it just comes through. His way of articulating ideas is very original. He is a great synthesizer and especially strong at pattern recognition. He’s also able to follow what I would call it decision trees and figure out probabilities in his head at an astonishing pace.
爱丽丝：当我在谈话的前五分钟作为分析师见到他时，这一点显而易见。他一开口就能表现出来。他表达想法的方式非常独特。他是一个出色的综合者，尤其擅长模式识别。他还能够跟随我所称的决策树，并以惊人的速度在脑海中计算出概率。
So when you are in a conversation with him, he has worked out many of the directions in which the conversation can go, the likelihood of each, and how he wants to manage his end of it. He’s reading you emotionally too. You recognize that right away in a conversation with him. You realize he’s many moves ahead of you on the chess board. It is eerie, but also fascinating.
所以当你和他交谈时，他已经考虑了对话可能发展的许多方向、每个方向的可能性，以及他想如何掌控自己的部分。 他在情感上也在解读你。 你在与他交谈时立刻就能意识到这一点。 你意识到他在棋盘上比你领先了很多步。 这让人感到毛骨悚然，但也很迷人。
You also can see how unusual he is because he’s a great teacher. If you ask him questions he loves to convey the things he’s learned.
你也可以看到他有多么不同寻常，因为他是一位出色的老师。如果你问他问题，他喜欢传达他所学到的东西。
Miguel: What makes him such a wonderful teacher?
米格尔：是什么让他成为如此出色的老师？
Alice: Well, first, it is that he enjoys teaching and, second, that he has worked hard at learning communication skills and specifically learning to communicate as a teacher. So he knows how to order material, how to tell stories, he knows how people process information. It’s also, I think, a valuable insight that teaching is one of his preferred modes of talking to people much of the time. You could almost call it his default mode. And that the value, influence, and trust he built by being such a memorable teacher of investing, business, and life in his public communications was, from a relatively early period, a very important ingredient for his tangible business success. This began as early as high school, but was crucial to running the Buffett partnerships and later Berkshire Hathaway. I think this point is actually still quite underappreciated among even his most obsessive followers.
爱丽丝：首先，他喜欢教学，其次，他努力学习沟通技巧，特别是作为教师进行沟通的技巧。因此，他知道如何组织材料，如何讲故事，他知道人们如何处理信息。我认为，教学是他与人交谈的主要方式之一，这也是一个有价值的见解。你几乎可以称之为他的默认模式。而他通过成为一个令人难忘的投资、商业和生活的教师，在公共沟通中建立的价值、影响力和信任，从相对早期开始，就是他可见商业成功的重要成分。这一切早在高中时期就开始了，但对经营巴菲特合伙企业以及后来的伯克希尔·哈撒韦至关重要。我认为这一点在他最狂热的追随者中仍然被低估。
Miguel: Give us advice to becoming better communicators.
米格尔：给我们一些建议，让我们成为更好的沟通者。
Alice: Well…this is not anything profound. But you see that he uses very short parables, stories, and analogies. He chooses key words that resonate with people —that will stick in their heads, like Aesop’s fables, and fairytale imagery. He’s good at conjuring up pictures in people’s minds that trigger archetypal thinking. It enables him to very quickly make a point … without having to expend a lot of verbiage.
爱丽丝： 嗯……这并没有什么深刻的意义。但你会看到他使用非常简短的寓言、故事和类比。他选择与人们产生共鸣的关键词——那些会留在他们脑海中的词，就像伊索寓言和童话的意象。他擅长在人的脑海中 conjuring 出图像，激发原型思维。这使他能够非常快速地表达观点……而不需要花费大量的冗词。
He’s also conscientious about weaving humor into his material. He’s naturally witty, but he’s aware that humor is enjoyable and disarming if you’re trying to teach something.
他在将幽默融入他的材料时也很有责任心。他天生风趣，但他知道幽默在教授某些东西时是令人愉快和消除防备的。
Miguel: What is your favorite part of the book?
米格尔：你最喜欢这本书的哪个部分？
Alice: Okay, well I won’t say favorite because that is similar to picking your favorite child. There are parts of the book that I love for all kinds of different reasons. There is one intellectually challenging and interesting part to me thatI think is intriguing and has been paid less attention.
爱丽丝： 好吧，我不想说最喜欢，因为这就像选择你最喜欢的孩子。书中有我出于各种不同原因而喜爱的部分。有一个对我来说既具有智力挑战又有趣的部分，我认为它很吸引人，但却受到的关注较少。
I was able to put together how he created BRK out of Blue Chip and Diversified. I was also able to put together how he created his partnership. That was nearly all new information.
我能够整理出他是如何从蓝筹印花和多元零售中创建 BRK 的。我也能够整理出他是如何建立他的合伙关系的。这几乎都是全新的信息。
I found it fascinating to see brick by brick how he did this. It deserved study because it ran to the question of what is a great business. These are the businesses that he created for himself.
我发现看到他是如何一砖一瓦地做到这一点非常吸引人。这值得研究，因为它涉及到什么是伟大的商业。这些就是他为自己创造的企业。
Miguel: This section is portrayed along with a diagram of Berkshire and the subsidiaries…
米格尔：这一部分与伯克希尔及其子公司的图表一起呈现……
Alice: Yes, although the story begins at the point in which he closes the partnership, and it ends with the Buffalo News, which runs through multiple chapters. The creation of the partnership is primarily in the chapter called Hidden Splendor. But there are bits of it before that chapter.
爱丽丝： 是的，尽管故事从他结束合伙关系的那一刻开始，并以《布法罗新闻》结束，这个故事贯穿多个章节。合伙关系的创建主要在名为《隐藏的辉煌》的章节中。但在那个章节之前也有一些片段。
Miguel: I see. I want to return to your interviews with Buffett’s inner circle. As you are interviewing these people what are the similarities in what they reveal about Warren?
米格尔：我明白了。我想回到你对巴菲特内圈的采访。你在采访这些人时，他们对沃伦的揭示有什么相似之处？
Alice: Yes, in fact, it was so repetitive that I could tell that some of these people had been interviewed so many times before and spent enough time talking to each other that it had a sometimes rehearsed quality. Wit, loyalty, & honesty were the 3 qualities that were cited over and over.
爱丽丝：是的，实际上，这样的重复性太强，以至于我能看出这些人中有些人之前已经被采访过很多次，并且花了足够的时间互相交谈，以至于有时显得像是排练过的。机智、忠诚和诚实是反复提到的三种品质。
He’s extremely witty. He can knock out a one-liner every few seconds. One of the nicer aspects of being around him is the easy humor of the conversations. I tried to include as many quotes as I could in The Snowball so that readers could get a sense of what a terrific conversationalist he is. When Michael Lewis reviewed The Snowball in The New Republic magazine, his conclusion from reading these quotes was that “Buffett is incapable of being dull,” which is so true.
他非常机智。每隔几秒钟就能说出一句俏皮话。与他在一起的一个美好方面是对话中的轻松幽默。我尽量在The Snowball中包含尽可能多的引用，以便读者能够感受到他是多么出色的谈话者。当迈克尔·刘易斯在The Snowball中评论时，他在The New Republic杂志上得出的结论是“巴菲特无法无聊”，这真是太对了。
In terms of loyalty, Buffett cherishes relationships and has gone to a lot of effort to maintain contact with old friends. Far more so than the average person does. He told me once that his mother got more than 65 birthday cards on her 65th birthday. This was a real point of pride. There’s an element of the collector that comes to the forefront in his loyalty about people. It’s not dissimilar to the way he views the companies Berkshire owns as paintings in a museum.
在忠诚方面，巴菲特珍视人际关系，并付出了很多努力来保持与老朋友的联系。远比普通人做得多。他曾告诉我，他母亲在 65 岁生日时收到了超过 65 张生日卡。这是他非常自豪的一点。他对人们的忠诚中有一种收藏家的元素。这与他将伯克希尔拥有的公司视为博物馆中的画作的方式并没有太大不同。
He’s almost painfully honest at times. Yet some people I interviewed belabored his honesty beyond the point that made sense. They would belabor it to such a degree that you began to realize they held some specific concerns in this area. Eventually it became clearer that this had to do with the incidents in his life where he has been ruthless. I included some representative examples in The Snowball, but space allowed only a fraction to make it into the book.
他有时几乎诚实得让人感到痛苦。然而，我采访的一些人对他的诚实进行了过度的强调，超出了合理的范围。他们强调得如此严重，以至于你开始意识到他们在这个领域有一些特定的担忧。最终，越来越清楚的是，这与他生活中一些无情的事件有关。我在The Snowball中包含了一些代表性的例子，但由于篇幅限制，只有一小部分得以收入书中。
Look, he’s allowed to be human. He’s a decent, honest, admirable person of integrity who’s accomplished magnificent achievements. That should be enough. Surely people realize that he didn’t get where he is by running a philanthropic institution. But some who are loyal to Warren equate loyalty with portraying him as infallible. Those two things are not the same. It’s not necessary at all to pretend that someone is infallible in order to be loyal and admire them. I found in the case of Warren Buffett that there were people who genuinely believed that if they admitted any imperfections in him, it would make them disloyal.
看，他有权做一个人。他是一个正直、诚实、令人钦佩的人，拥有卓越的成就。这应该足够了。人们肯定意识到，他之所以能走到今天，并不是因为经营一个慈善机构。但是一些忠于沃伦的人将忠诚等同于将他描绘成无懈可击。这两者并不相同。为了忠诚和钦佩某人，根本不需要假装他是无懈可击的。我发现，在沃伦·巴菲特的案例中，有些人真心相信，如果他们承认他有任何缺陷，那将使他们不忠。
Miguel: They were turning him into a saint, so to speak?
米格尔：他们是在把他变成圣人，怎么说呢？
Alice: They were, and, the more you saw it, the sillier it became. I will never forget a few people insisting to me that Warren is really not that interested in money.
爱丽丝：他们是这样，而且，你越是看到，就越觉得可笑。我永远不会忘记有几个人坚持告诉我沃伦其实并不那么在乎钱。
Buffett The Investor & Businessman
巴菲特 投资者与商人
Miguel: How is Warren different than other value investors?
米格尔：沃伦与其他价值投资者有什么不同？
Alice: He’s more interested in money, for one thing (laughs).
Alice: 他对钱更感兴趣，首先是这个（笑）。
In terms of how that affects his investing behavior, number one, in his classic investments he expends a lot of energy checking out details and ferreting out nuggets of information, way beyond the balance sheet. He would go back and look at the company’s history in depth for decades. He used to pay people to attend shareholder meetings and ask questions for him. He checked out the personal lives of people who ran companies he invested in. He wanted to know about their financial status, their personal habits, what motivated them. He behaves like an investigative journalist. All this stuff about flipping through Moody’s Manual’s picking stocks … it was a screen for him, but he didn’t stop there.
就他的投资行为而言，首先，在他经典的投资中，他会投入大量精力来核查细节，挖掘信息，远超出财务报表的范围。他会深入回顾公司的历史，研究几十年来的细节。他曾经花钱让人参加股东大会并为他提问。他还会调查那些他投资的公司高管的私人生活，了解他们的财务状况、个人习惯以及他们的动机。他的行为就像一名调查记者。所有关于他翻阅《穆迪手册》选股的事情……那只是一个筛选工具，但他并不会止步于此。
Number two, his knowledge of business history, politics, and macroeconomics is both encyclopedic and detailed, which informs everything he does. If candy sales are up in a particular zip code in California, he knows what it means because he knows the demographics of that zip code and what’s going on in the California economy. When cotton prices fluctuate, he knows how that affects all sorts of businesses. And so on.
第二，他对商业历史、政治和宏观经济的知识既广泛又详细，这影响着他所做的一切。如果加利福尼亚某个邮政编码的糖果销售上升，他知道这意味着什么，因为他了解该邮政编码的人口统计数据以及加利福尼亚经济的动态。当棉花价格波动时，他知道这会如何影响各种企业。等等。
The third aspect is the way he looks at business models. The best way I can describe this is that it’s as if you and I see an animal, and he sees its DNA. He isn’t interested in whether the animal is furry; all he sees is whether it can run and how well it will reproduce, which are the two key elements that determine whether its species will thrive.
第三个方面是他看待商业模型的方式。我可以这样描述：就好像你我看到一只动物，而他看到的是它的 DNA。他对动物是否有毛发并不感兴趣；他只关注它是否能跑以及它的繁殖能力，这两个关键因素决定了它的物种是否能够繁荣。
I remember when his daughter opened her knitting shop. Many parents would say, I’m so proud of Susie, she’s so creative, this is something of her own, maybe she can make a living at it. Warren’s version is, I’m so proud of Susie, I think a knitting shop can produce half a million a year in sales, they’re paying whatever a square foot for the storefront, and labor is cheap in Omaha.
我记得他女儿开了她的针织店。许多父母会说，我为苏西感到骄傲，她真有创意，这是她自己的事业，也许她可以靠这个谋生。沃伦的说法是，我为苏西感到骄傲，我认为一家针织店每年的销售额可以达到五十万美元，他们为店面支付的租金是每平方英尺的价格，而奥马哈的劳动力成本很低。
It was similar when Peter was producing his multimedia show, The Seventh Fire. Many parents would say, wow, my son has pulled off a critically acclaimed show. Warren obviously thought that, but what he articulated was, they’re charging $40 a ticket, I think the Omaha market is too small for that price point, whereas in St. Louis they may cover the overhead, and I think he paid too much for the tent because the audience doesn’t really care what kind of tent it’s sitting in and it hurts margins, etc. etc.
当彼得制作他的多媒体节目《第七火焰》时，情况也类似。很多父母会说，哇，我的儿子成功推出了一个备受好评的节目。沃伦显然也是这么想的，但他表达出来的却是：“他们每张票要价40美元，我认为奥马哈市场太小，这个价格点不合适。而在圣路易斯，他们或许可以覆盖开销。我还认为他花太多钱买帐篷了，因为观众其实并不在乎自己坐在什么样的帐篷里，这影响了利润率，等等。”
Miguel: Speaking of tents. I have never been to the BRK shareholder meeting. Has it become cult-like at this point?
米格尔：说到帐篷。我从未参加过 BRK 股东大会。现在已经变得像宗教一样了吗？
Alice: I started going in the late 90’s. I envy people who were going earlier. But I’ve been going long enough to see how it has grown over the years and turned into more of a circus. Warren has got a huge streak of P.T. Barnum in him and likes to put on a show that every year, tops itself. He encourages the cult. It’s like the nerdy kid whose lunch money was stolen grew up, and now even the popular kids treat him like a god. Put yourself in his shoes and you’ll get a sense of it.
爱丽丝：我在 90 年代末开始去。我羡慕那些更早去的人。但我去的时间足够长，看到它是如何随着岁月的推移而成长，并变成了更多的马戏团。沃伦身上有着强烈的 P.T.巴纳姆的特质，喜欢每年都举办一场更盛大的表演。他鼓励这种崇拜。就像那个午餐钱被偷的书呆子长大后，现在连受欢迎的孩子们都把他当作神一样。把自己放在他的角度，你就能感受到这一点。
From the perspective of the shareholders, I think there used to be more serious investing content. Warren uses set pieces to describe certain ideas that he repeats tirelessly. This is efficient; he’ll never be caught out for being inconsistent; it drills home his points through repetition. It’s also simply the way his mind works. He thinks of a story to explain a concept (See’s Candies = moat) and when the subject comes up, he turns on the mental tape recorder and it plays. Repetition doesn’t bore him the way it bores other people.
从股东的角度来看，我认为过去有更多关于投资的严肃内容。沃伦经常使用一些固定的例子来阐述某些观点，并且他不厌其烦地重复这些内容。这种方式非常高效，他永远不会被发现前后矛盾，并且通过重复不断强化他的观点。这也是他思维方式的体现。他会想出一个故事来解释一个概念（例如，喜诗糖果 = 护城河），当相关话题出现时，他就像打开了脑海中的录音机，自动播放这些内容。重复不会像让其他人感到厌烦那样让他感到无聊。
At the shareholder meeting, I do think the repetition stokes the cult because it discourages people who used to come for the unfolding, unique quality of the dialogue from attending.
在股东大会上，我确实认为重复性内容助长了“狂热崇拜”，因为这会让那些曾经为了独特对话的展开而来的人失去兴趣，最终不再参加。
Miguel: Okay, so back to Warren tell us about his ruthless side?
米格尔：好的，回到沃伦，告诉我们他的无情一面？
Alice: Sure…sure… How he bought National Indemnity; how he bought stock back from his partners; how he bought and got his price for Nebraska Furniture Mart; how he has dealt with labor unions. Salomon is another instance, and probably the best publicly-known example.
爱丽丝：当然……当然……他是如何购买国家赔偿公司；他是如何从合作伙伴那里回购股票；他是如何购买并为内布拉斯加家具市场获得价格；他是如何与工会打交道的。所罗门是另一个例子，可能是最著名的公开案例。
To use a nonpublic example, I’ve seen him “encourage” people to do what he wants by subtly raising the possibility of what he might leave them in his will. But without promising anything. This is torture for some people; they are always working for a commitment that never comes.
以一个不公开的例子来说，我见过他通过微妙地暗示他可能在遗嘱中留给他们的东西来“鼓励”人们做他想要的事情。但并没有承诺任何东西。这对一些人来说是折磨；他们总是在为一个永远不会到来的承诺而努力。
Another aspect to it is the degree to which other people are the bad cop when it’s necessary to be ruthless. I once commented to him on the way he uses other people as surrogates to protect himself from being the bad guy, and his response was, “Prepare to be enlisted,” not really jokingly. Now that I think of it, in a sense, I did get enlisted.
另一个方面是，当需要无情决断时，他在多大程度上让其他人扮演“坏警察”的角色。我曾经对他评论过他如何使用他人作为代理人来保护自己不成为那个“坏人”，他的回应是：“准备好被征召吧，”并且他并不是在开玩笑。现在想想，从某种意义上说，我的确被“征召”了。
Giving the managers sole responsibility for everything that happens at their businesses is always described as a unique and friendly aspect of Berkshire. While that is true on one level, it is also a way of protecting Warren. Warren takes being risk-averse to a level that is barely comprehensible. He has boundaries made of steel. If he can’t control something completely he doesn’t want to control it at all. It’s how he behaved with the partnership, and he’s extended this to Berkshire Hathaway.
将经理们对其业务发生的所有事情负有唯一责任，总是被描述为伯克希尔的一个独特而友好的方面。虽然在某种程度上这是真的，但这也是保护沃伦的一种方式。沃伦对风险的厌恶达到了几乎难以理解的程度。他有着钢铁般的界限。如果他无法完全控制某件事，他就不想控制它。正是他与合伙人关系的表现，他将这一点扩展到了伯克希尔哈撒韦。
Therefore, this way of delegating “to the point of abdication” (in his words) is actually filed with the SEC; the 10-K for Berkshire Hathaway emphasizes that it is unusually decentralized and that Warren delegates to an extreme degree. I’ve seen Warren claim that he cannot overrule a decision of Debbie Bosanek: not that he is delegating to her, but that he actually isn’t empowered to overrule her.
因此，这种“委托到放弃权力的地步”（用他的话说）实际上是向证券交易委员会备案的；伯克希尔·哈撒韦的 10-K 报告强调它是异常分散的，而沃伦的委托程度极高。我见过沃伦声称他无法推翻黛比·博萨内克的决定：并不是说他在委托给她，而是他实际上没有权力推翻她的决定。
If there were ever a serious shareholder class action lawsuit, the lawyers would pull out the 10-K and claim that Warren should not be deposed because he is not really responsible for what happens at Berkshire. There’s an absurdity to it, because the CEO of a company is responsible for the actions of his direct reports whether he wants to be or not. Their title is manager, not CEO.
如果真的有一个严重的股东集体诉讼，律师们会拿出 10-K 文件，声称沃伦不应该被传唤，因为他并不真正对伯克希尔发生的事情负责。这是荒谬的，因为公司的首席执行官对其直接下属的行为负责，无论他是否愿意。他们的职称是经理，而不是首席执行官。
Lastly, Warren can sometimes have a hard time seeing the human side of things. So for example, when his sister was close to filing for bankruptcy after the crash of 1987, he rationalized not helping her on the grounds that if he helped her, he was helping her creditors, who were market speculators. His kids have been on the receiving end of similar episodes, large and small, for years. But I’d rather not tell other peoples’ stories and expose them to the potential consequences.
最后，沃伦有时很难看到事物的人性一面。例如，当他的姐姐在 1987 年崩盘后快要申请破产时，他以帮助她会帮助她的债权人——市场投机者为理由，合理化了不帮助她的决定。他的孩子们多年来也经历过类似的大大小小的事件。但我不想讲述其他人的故事，也不想让他们面临潜在的后果。
Miguel: I see what you’re saying. I remember a story regarding his children (or friends of his children) and him saying “If I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone.”
米格尔：我明白你的意思。我记得一个关于他的孩子（或他孩子的朋友）的故事，他说：“如果我为你做这件事，我就得为每个人都做。”
Alice: That’s a favorite phrase of his. It’s actually a great concept. He’s wise to be wary of setting precedents. You have to think through the whole chain of consequences before you agree to what might seem like a small favor. That’s especially true of someone in his position.
爱丽丝：这是他最喜欢的短语。实际上，这是一个很好的概念。他明智地对设定先例保持警惕。在你同意看似微不足道的小恩惠之前，必须考虑整个后果链。对于他这样的位置的人来说，这一点尤其重要。
Still, it can become a catch-all excuse. It’s not true that if he gave money to one friend’s charity, he would have to give to everybody’s. You can make distinctions between your kids based on their individual needs. He’s capable of making choices.
不过，这可能成为一个万用借口。并不是说如果他给了一个朋友的慈善机构钱，他就必须给每个人的钱。你可以根据孩子们的个体需求进行区分。他能够做出选择。
Miguel: What you are saying about setting precedents? It reminds me of Cialdini’s tactics of persuasion and especially reciprocation and foot in the door technique.
米格尔：你所说的关于设定先例的事情让我想起了西尔迪尼的说服策略，尤其是互惠和“脚在门口”技巧。
Alice: Yes…When I read Cialdini I thought, “Gosh. It’s as if Warren wrote this book based on his experience.”
爱丽丝： 是的……当我读到 西尔迪尼 时，我想，“天哪。就好像沃伦是根据他的经验写的这本书。”
Miguel: He understands the psychology of people.
米格尔：他理解人们的心理。
Alice: Reciprocity and Social Proof. Those are his top two techniques. I think it was also Cialdini who mentioned that if people do you a favor they like you more. Warren has an ability to get people to invest psychologically in him.
爱丽丝：互惠 和 社会 证明。这两种是他的顶尖技巧。我认为也是 Cialdini 提到过，如果人们帮你一个忙，他们会更喜欢你。沃伦有能力让人们在心理上投资于他。
One reason he prefers people visit him in Omaha is that somebody spending the time and money to make that journey is going to leave persuaded. They aren’t going to go away thinking they wasted their money. Because the way you resolve cognitive dissonance is in whatever way makes you feel most comfortable.
他更喜欢人们来奥马哈看他的一个原因是，花时间和金钱来进行这趟旅程的人会被说服。他们不会觉得自己浪费了钱。因为解决认知失调的方式是以让你感到最舒适的方式。
Now obviously it’s not a waste to go see Buffett speak. What I’m saying is that this kind of structural persuasion and elicited psychological investment tilts the odds in his favor.
显然，去听巴菲特演讲并不是浪费时间。我想说的是，这种结构性的劝说和引发的心理投资使得他在竞争中占据了优势。
Miguel: So it’s almost like an emotional sunk cost. You don’t think of it as a sunk cost so you keep reinvesting emotional resources to sustain a view or experience.
米格尔：所以这几乎就像是一种情感上的沉没成本。你并不把它视为沉没成本，因此你不断地重新投入情感资源来维持一种观点或体验。
Alice: Yes.
爱丽丝： 是的。
Miguel: What else can you tell me about his ruthlessness? It’s interesting that he can be so strong willed and yet has that characteristic where he is very cautious and doesn’t want to be disliked. Where does this strength come from? From my interpretation of your book, it seems to stem from a young age. That is to say he has a backbone when it comes to business and money even from an early age.
米格尔：：你还能告诉我关于他冷酷无情的其他方面吗？有意思的是，他意志如此坚定，但又非常谨慎，不希望被人讨厌。这种力量源自何处？从我对你书中的解读来看，这似乎是从小就形成的。也就是说，他在商业和金钱方面从小就有自己的底线和立场。
Alice: No one can ever know for certain but I believe it was innate in him. He told me a story about when he was 6 years old, and a customer wanted him to break a pack of gum that the was selling into individual pieces. His reaction was, “I’ve got my principles,” and he refused to do it. I don’t think anyone taught him that. I think he was born with that.
爱丽丝：没人能够确切知道，但我相信这是他与生俱来的。他曾给我讲过一个故事，说他六岁时，有个顾客想让他把一包他在卖的口香糖拆开单独卖。他的反应是：“我有我的原则，”然后他拒绝了。我不认为这是有人教给他的，我觉得他天生就有这种性格。
Miguel: Tell me about his memory. I ask about this because psychological research has uncovered a capacity for forming false memories and yet Warren Buffett seems to retain massive amounts of information (with minimal distortions). In your opinion, how does Buffett’s memory work?
米格尔：告诉我关于他的记忆。我之所以问这个，是因为心理学研究发现人们有形成虚假记忆的能力，而沃伦·巴菲特似乎能够保留大量信息（几乎没有扭曲）。在你看来，巴菲特的记忆是如何运作的？
Alice: Well I wrote about the bathtub memory in the book. If something is unpleasant, it goes down the drain. He also retains a sort of DVD of events in his head.
爱丽丝：我在书中写到了浴缸的记忆。如果有什么不愉快的事情，它就会被冲走。他的脑海中也保留着一种事件的 DVD。
If there is new information the old version gets overwritten. It’s gone. He remembers stories and certain facts, and the rest is discarded as if for efficiency or comfort.
如果有新信息，旧版本会被覆盖。它就消失了。他记得故事和某些事实，其余的则被丢弃，仿佛是为了效率或舒适。
So let’s say he is at a party. There will be 2 things he remembers. He will remember that Carol Loomis wore a yellow dress and that somebody else told him a certain joke. That is all he will remember. It’s as if the rest disappears. Sometimes he’ll remember more if prompted, but there’s not much fuzziness. Either he remembers something or he doesn’t. Then, if it turns out the joke was a different one than he thought, it’s as if he never heard of the first joke.
假设他在一个聚会上。他会记住两件事。他会记得卡罗尔·卢米斯穿了一件黄色的裙子，还有其他人告诉了他一个特定的笑话。就这些，他不会记得其他的。好像其余的都消失了。有时如果被提示，他会记得更多，但并没有太多模糊的地方。他要么记得某件事，要么不记得。然后，如果结果证明那个笑话和他想的不同，就好像他从未听过第一个笑话。
That is not to say he believes his own memory is infallible. He’s keenly aware of how stories are transmuted through the telling. He was very clear (and upfront) with me about this in the beginning. One reason he said, “Use the less flattering version,” is that he thought other people might remember things better than him.
这并不是说他相信自己的记忆是无懈可击的。他清楚地意识到故事在叙述中是如何被转化的。他在一开始就非常明确（并且坦率）地告诉我这一点。他说“使用不那么美化的版本”的一个原因是，他认为其他人可能比他记得得更清楚。
Miguel: What about his memory in terms of investments?
米格尔：他的投资记忆怎么样？
Alice: Oh that’s freaky. You’re sitting there talking about something like “Isn’t it amazing that after Jack Welch left GE, the company started having all these problems because of buried accounting issues?” and he will say, “Yes, that’s like …” and pull a company from 30 years prior and start spouting numbers. Then he will pick another more recent company, and another.
爱丽丝: 哦，这真让人毛骨悚然。你坐在那里谈论一些事情，比如“杰克·韦尔奇离开通用电气后，公司因为隐藏的会计问题开始出现这些问题，这不是很惊人吗？”然后他会说，“是的，这就像……”然后提到一家 30 年前的公司，开始说出一些数字。接着他会再提到另一家较新的公司，还有其他的。
He has accumulated a filing cabinet of knowledge about companies, and it’s very big. Part of his teaching style is to have certain examples at the ready.
他积累了大量关于公司的知识，就像一个文件柜一样，而且非常庞大。他的教学风格之一是随时准备好一些例子。
Miguel: How has he developed this mental database ?
米格尔：他是如何建立这个心理数据库的？
Alice: Well I think there are things you can do to improve recall. But there is something to be said about being born with a prodigious memory. It seems to me that there are 3 qualities of great investors that are rarely discussed:
爱丽丝： 我认为有一些方法可以提高记忆力。但天生拥有惊人记忆力也是有其道理的。在我看来，优秀投资者有三个很少被讨论的品质：
They have a strong memory;
他们有很强的记忆力；
They are extremely numerate;
他们的数学能力非常强
They have what Warren calls a “money mind,” an instinctive commercial sense.
他们拥有沃伦所称的“金钱思维”，一种本能的商业意识。
Warren is all of these.
沃伦就是这些。
By numeracy I mean an excellent recall for numbers, fast mental arithmetic skills, and preferably, an intuitive grasp of the time value of money, intuitive enough that you don’t necessarily need a calculator to do basic calculations. The money mind is far more important than the others.
通过数字能力，我指的是对数字的优秀记忆、快速的心算技能，以及最好是对货币时间价值的直观理解，直观到你不一定需要计算器来进行基本计算。金钱思维远比其他更重要。
Miguel: Tell me a little more about this.
米格尔：告诉我更多关于这个的事情。
Alice: Warren’s skills as an investor have often been compared with a musician, and I think that’s exactly right. The “money mind” is an instinct, almost a sixth sense, of sniffing where there is an opportunity to make money and knowing how to exploit it. Somebody who is starting businesses when they are six years old is different than the average kid. When you apply focus (which he often talks about) to those three qualities then your skills as an investor are turbo-charged.
爱丽丝：沃伦作为投资者的技能常常被比作音乐家，我认为这非常正确。“金钱思维”是一种本能，几乎是一种第六感，能够嗅出赚钱的机会并知道如何利用它。一个六岁就开始创业的人与普通孩子是不同的。当你将专注（他常常提到的）应用于这三种品质时，你作为投资者的技能就会得到增强。
Miguel: How can we develop more of a money mind? Is this the part that is more innate or is it more a consequence of him being an entrepreneur at a young age?
米格尔：我们如何能培养更多的金钱思维？这是更内在的部分，还是更多是他年轻时作为企业家的结果？
Alice: I have had many conversations with him about this. He thinks it’s innate. There are people who just naturally gravitate towards activities that make money. That’s not a value judgment. Something else might be more socially useful. However, I also believe the average person can be trained to become much more “money aware.” You can train yourself to do an amazing amount … to go from being average to becoming good. But you will have to work at it in a way that someone like Warren will not.
爱丽丝：我和他就这个问题进行了很多次对话。他认为这是与生俱来的。有些人自然会倾向于那些能赚钱的活动。这并不是价值判断。其他事情可能更具社会价值。然而，我也相信普通人可以被训练得更加“意识到金钱”。你可以训练自己做很多事情……从普通变得优秀。但你必须以一种沃伦那样的人不会的方式去努力。
Miguel: You say it’s important to be numerate. Is this what attracted you to accounting?
米格尔：你说数字能力很重要。这是吸引你从事会计工作的原因吗？
Alice: No. Personally I have a lopsided skill set when it comes to mathematics. Patterns of numbers are not like musical bars to me. I was decent at geometry, higher math but had to work at them. Where I excelled was statistics. I did extremely well at statistics. It’s interesting but Charlie Munger says that’s the course that isn’t mandatory but should be.
爱丽丝：不。就我个人而言，我在数学方面的技能不太平衡。数字的模式对我来说不像音乐的节拍。我在几何和高等数学方面还不错，但需要努力去学习。我擅长的是统计学。我在统计学方面表现得非常好。这很有趣，但查理·芒格说这是一门不是必修的课程，但应该是必修的。
Insurance is a business of statistics and probability. I have wondered whether the mathematics of statistics uses a different part of your brain than discrete math.
保险是一项统计和概率的业务。我一直在想，统计学的数学是否使用了大脑中与离散数学不同的部分。
Miguel: Are there any other traits that act as a magnifying glass for Warren Buffett? Comment on how his traits help him see the world in a different way?
米格尔：还有其他哪些特质可以作为沃伦·巴菲特的放大镜？评论一下他的特质如何帮助他以不同的方式看待世界？
Alice: Yes. There is temperament. His emotional oscilloscope moves in quite a narrow range. That’s useful when you’re playing against with Mr. Market. He’s stressed it as an essential quality.
爱丽丝：是的。确实有气质。他的情感示波器在相当狭窄的范围内波动。这在与市场先生对弈时非常有用。他强调这是一个重要的品质。
I also believe his understanding of human nature is immensely valuable. He is superb at figuring out what the great businesses are, but great people must run them. And he has been successful at seeking out really terrific management. He has made a few whopper mistakes, but they are definitely outliers in the trend of being great at picking top people.
我也认为他对人性的理解是极其宝贵的。他在识别优秀企业方面非常出色，但这些企业必须由出色的人来管理。他在寻找优秀的管理层方面非常成功。他确实犯过一些大错误，但这些错误绝对是他在挑选顶尖人才方面的少数例外。
Miguel: What are Warren’s weaknesses as an investor?
米格尔：沃伦作为投资者的弱点是什么？
Alice: It’s as if large amounts of money paired with limited risk can overwhelm his peripheral vision. So if there’s is a disproportionate opportunity to make money in what is a superficially a protected way such as through a preferred stock where your downside is limited, he doesn’t blink at things that would normally give him pause.
爱丽丝：就好像大量资金与有限风险的结合可以压倒他的边缘视野。因此，如果在表面上看似受保护的方式中，比如通过优先股，存在不成比例的赚钱机会，而你的下行风险是有限的，他对那些通常会让他犹豫的事情毫不在意。
He did this with US Air and Salomon Brothers. You could also argue Goldman Sachs convertible preferred and USG were hardly typical investments.
他这样做是与美国航空和所罗门兄弟公司合作的。你也可以说高盛的可转换优先股和 USG 几乎不是典型的投资。
Second, sometimes he will decide on some theory upon which he wants to invest in something even if it’s not an obvious barn burner in terms of financial aspects.
其次，有时他会决定某种理论，基于这个理论他想投资于某个项目，即使在财务方面这并不是一个显而易见的热门选择。
BNSF is an example. You have people championing this for all sorts of reasons, but certainly it did not meet his normal investing metrics. That doesn’t mean it was a mistake, but it may be a good investment for different reasons than people think.
BNSF 就是一个例子。有人出于各种原因支持这个，但它显然没有符合他正常的投资标准。这并不意味着这是一个错误，但它可能是一个出于不同原因的好投资。
有同样的感觉。
Sometimes he falls in love with people and invests accordingly or, worse, falls in love with people because they’ve sold him their companies. He fell in love with John Gutfreund at Salomon, and with Ron Ferguson at General Re. Among others.
有时他会爱上某些人并相应地投资，或者更糟的是，爱上那些因为他们把公司卖给他而爱上的人。他爱上了在所罗门的约翰·古特弗伦德，以及在通用再保险的罗恩·弗格森，还有其他人。
Lastly, he clearly has a blind spot when it comes to anything that flies and has wings.
最后，他显然对任何会飞的、有翅膀的东西有盲点。
Miguel: Meaning?
米格尔：什么意思？
Alice: Meaning he has invested 3 times in aviation: Pacific SW Airways, USAir (LCC), and NetJets. These have ranged from near-misses to disasters. He hasn’t had good luck with aviation. He’s called himself an Air-a-Holic. It’s a weird little quirk to see this in somebody that you think of as super-rational.
爱丽丝：这意味着他在航空业投资了三次：太平洋西南航空、美国航空（低成本航空）和 NetJets。这些投资从差点失败到灾难不等。他在航空业运气不佳。他称自己为“航空迷”。在一个你认为非常理性的人身上看到这种奇怪的小癖好，真是让人感到奇怪。
Miguel: What other blind spots does he have that we can learn from?
米格尔：他还有哪些盲点是我们可以学习的？
Alice: I’m sure I could think of other things, but it would be disproportionate to spend more time focusing on blind spots. His accomplishments outweigh his blind spots by so much.
爱丽丝：我相信我可以想到其他事情，但花更多时间关注盲点是不成比例的。他的成就远远超过了他的盲点。
Miguel: Sure.
米格尔: 当然。
Miguel: Do you think there is particular reason for his focus on consumer and financial companies?
米格尔：你认为他特别关注消费和金融公司的原因是什么吗？
Alice: Yes. With financial companies you have leverage that can be controlled, “regulatory oligopoly,” and trust. Insurance float is only one example of leverage. The spread on “float” in banking can be controlled too, if you lend intelligently. Banking is a nice little business for the few who are willing to do it in a vanilla manner. “Regulatory oligopoly” is the entrenched competitive position that’s, in effect, provided by your regulator and its rules. It can give you quite a few, or few hundred, extra basis points of return.
爱丽丝：是的。与金融公司合作时，你可以控制杠杆、实现“监管寡头”以及建立信任。保险浮存金只是杠杆的一个例子。如果你聪明地放贷，银行业的“浮存金”利差也可以被控制。对于那些愿意以简单方式经营的人来说，银行业是一个不错的小生意。“监管寡头”是由你的监管机构及其规则所提供的根深蒂固的竞争地位。它可以为你带来相当多的，或者几百个额外的基点回报。
I think Buffett’s consumer plays have been overrated as a theme. He likes good companies with enduring business models. Many happen to have been consumer companies. He got intrigued by the idea that a brand could be a very enduring asset. Then he was surprised at how quickly the value of brands eroded in the 1990’s. Brands with true “moats” are exceedingly rare. Of course he wants one when he can get it, but these companies usually also are expensive.
我认为巴菲特对消费品的投资主题被高估了。他喜欢那些拥有持久商业模式的优秀公司。许多恰好是消费品公司。他对品牌可以成为一种非常持久的资产的想法感到好奇。然后他惊讶于品牌在 1990 年代的价值是多么迅速地下降。真正拥有“护城河”的品牌是极其稀有的。当然，他希望在能够获得时拥有一个，但这些公司通常也很昂贵。
Miguel: Maybe I can ask you a tangential question. Many value investors follow this lead of avoiding all macroeconomics, whether it’s risk, etc. Tell us about the way he looks at the economy as a whole? How does he factor that into his database and decisions?
米格尔：也许我可以问你一个旁及的问题。许多价值投资者遵循避免所有宏观经济学的原则，无论是风险等。请告诉我们他如何看待整体经济？他如何将其纳入他的数据库和决策中？
Alice: Buffett is keenly aware of the economic cycle and relevant data. He uses economic data to put context around what is happening in specific businesses. Meaning that it lets him visualize macro-risks at the company-specific level. Second, macro data signals to Buffett where Mr. Market is going awry, for example, what parts of the stock market might be fertile digging grounds.
爱丽丝：巴菲特对经济周期和相关数据有着敏锐的洞察力。他利用经济数据为特定企业发生的事情提供背景。这意味着它让他能够在公司特定层面上可视化宏观风险。其次，宏观数据向巴菲特发出信号，告诉他市场先生的走向出现了偏差，例如，股市的哪些部分可能是肥沃的挖掘场。
For example, he knew to some degree that we were in a bubble in the past few years (leading up to 2008) because you could do some statistics that would show corporate profits being at unsustainable levels and housing growth exceeding demographics to a ridiculous degree. He didn’t get into the mortgage business, although you’d better believe, people were showing up on his doorstep urging him to do it with all sorts of apparently lucrative deals. The economy is context.
例如，他在过去几年（直到 2008 年）知道我们处于一个泡沫中，因为你可以做一些统计，显示企业利润处于不可持续的水平，住房增长超过人口统计的程度非常荒谬。他没有进入抵押贷款业务，尽管你最好相信，人们纷纷上门催促他去做各种看似有利可图的交易。经济是有背景的。
Miguel: How else does he process macroeconomic information? How does this relate to his fascination with history?
米格尔：他还如何处理宏观经济信息？这与他对历史的迷恋有什么关系？
Alice: History was one of Warren’s best subjects even when he was very young (in school). He has a liking for it. But at the same time pattern recognition is one of his primary skills and perhaps his greatest skill. So in terms of data points, unlike many people who learn by seeking information on an as-needed basis, Warren is always looking for fuel for pattern recognition before he needs it.
爱丽丝：历史一直是沃伦从小就擅长的科目之一。他对历史有很大的兴趣。但与此同时，模式识别是他最主要的能力之一，甚至可能是他最强的能力。因此，谈到数据点，不像许多人在需要时才寻求信息，沃伦总是在提前为模式识别寻找“燃料”，在他还没有需要它的时候就开始准备。
He’s always looking for context. Having an interest in a broad sweep of history provides vast context for making many decisions because it enables analogies. And that I think has been very helpful for him in avoiding fallacies such as “This time it’s different.”
他总是寻找背景。对广泛历史的兴趣为做出许多决策提供了丰富的背景，因为它能够启发类比。我认为这对他避免“这次不同”的谬论非常有帮助。
It allows him to make analogies between industries, for example between the internet/dotcom stocks and early auto stocks, as in the speech he gave at Sun Valley that is described in The Snowball.
这使他能够在行业之间进行类比，例如在他在《雪球》一书中描述的太阳谷演讲中，将互联网/点com股票与早期的汽车股票进行比较。
Miguel: Tell me more about his pattern recognition skills? How is this one of his greatest skills?
米格尔：告诉我更多关于他的模式识别技能？为什么这是他最重要的技能之一？
Alice: Take this example. If you look at the dotcom stocks, the meta-message of that era was world-changing innovation. He went back and more patterns of history when there was a similar meta-message, great bursts of technological innovation in canals, airplanes, steamboats, automobiles, television, and radio. Then he looked for sub-patterns and asked what the outcome was in terms of financial results.
爱丽丝： 以这个例子为例。如果你看看点com股票，当时那个时代的元信息是改变世界的创新。他回顾了更多历史上的模式，当时也有类似的元信息，即在运河、飞机、蒸汽船、汽车、电视和广播等领域的伟大技术创新浪潮。然后他寻找子模式，问这些技术创新在财务结果方面的结局是什么。
With the dotcoms, people were looking to see what was different and unique about them. Warren is always thinking what’s the same between this specific situation and every other situation.
随着互联网公司的兴起，人们在寻找它们与众不同和独特之处。沃伦总是在思考这个特定情况与其他所有情况之间有什么相同之处。
That is the nature of pattern recognition, asking “What can I infer about this situation based on similarities to what I already know and trust that I understand?” There is less emphasis on trying to reason out things on the basis that they are special because they are unique, which in a financial context is perhaps the definition of a speculation. (Warren is not averse to speculation, by the way, as long as it’s what he calls “intelligent speculation,” meaning he’s got long odds in his favor.) But pattern recognition is his default way of thinking. It creates an impulse always to connect new knowledge to old and to primarily be interested in new knowledge that genuinely builds on the old.
这就是模式识别的本质，问自己“根据我已经了解并信任的情况，我能从这个情况中推断出什么？” 他更少强调试图基于它们的独特性来推理，这在金融背景下或许可以定义为投机行为。（顺便说一下，沃伦并不反对投机，只要它是他所称的“明智的投机”，意思是他在这场赌局中有极大的胜算。）但模式识别是他默认的思维方式。这种思维方式促使他总是将新知识与旧知识联系起来，并主要对能够真正建立在旧知识基础上的新知识感兴趣。
Miguel: Comment on Warren Buffett’s emotions. I’m particularly interested in his ability to be so rational and unemotional.
米格尔：评论沃伦·巴菲特的情感。我特别感兴趣的是他能够如此理性和不带情感。
Alice: This is a great segue. Pattern recognition skills are worthless if you invent patterns that aren’t there. My one really difficult experience as an analyst was at PaineWebber during the dotcom bubble. It was like bullishness was a drug poured into the NYC water supply. Everyone believed. The idea that investment banking pressure was solely responsible for the Internet bubble has been overplayed. We were a wirehouse, and we drank the Kool-Aid just like everybody else.
爱丽丝： 这是一个很好的过渡。如果你发明了不存在的模式，那么模式识别技能就毫无价值。我作为分析师唯一一次真正艰难的经历是在PaineWebber工作期间，正值互联网泡沫时期。当时的情况就像是乐观情绪成了一种被倒进纽约市供水系统的毒品。每个人都相信这种乐观情绪。关于投资银行压力是互联网泡沫唯一原因的说法被夸大了。我们是一家综合证券公司，我们也像其他人一样喝了那杯“Kool-Aid”。
People think Wall Street was cynical; there was less cynicism than history has recorded. Largely, the predictions about the Internet’s transformative power were true. There just wasn’t a lot of money in it for investors. Which is another favorite theme of Warren’s. The futility of standing on tiptoe at the parade.
人们认为华尔街充满了犬儒主义；其实历史记录中的犬儒主义比当时实际情况要多得多。关于互联网变革力量的预测大部分是正确的，只是对投资者来说，这里面并没有太多赚钱的机会。而这恰恰是沃伦最喜欢的主题之一：在游行中踮脚的徒劳无功。
I recommended insurance stocks when they looked moderately priced, and then followed them all the way down to dirt cheap. Nobody wanted to buy anything real. My stock calls were mostly awful, and they would have been awful no matter what I picked unless I had said to sell the whole group. It’s that difference between stock-picking and investing.
我在保险股看起来价格适中的时候推荐了它们，然后一路跟随它们跌到极便宜。没有人想买任何真实的东西。我的股票推荐大多糟糕，无论我选择什么，结果都不会好，除非我说卖掉整个组。这就是选股和投资之间的区别。
Somehow, Warren was able to ignore the whole thing. People sometimes speculate that he is emotionless, and I’m frequently asked if he is autistic. He’s certainly not emotionless, but his emotional pendulum swings in a very narrow arc except on those rare occasions when something personal has deeply upset him. While he does use rules to make decisions, it’s key that he’s detached and not temperamentally excitable to begin with.
不知怎么的，沃伦能够忽视整个事情。人们有时猜测他没有情感，我经常被问到他是否自闭症。他当然不是没有情感，但他的情感摆动幅度非常狭窄，除非在那些罕见的情况下，某些个人事务深深地让他不安。虽然他确实使用规则来做决定，但关键是他保持冷静，性情上不容易激动。
On business matters, his steady pulse is helped by his exceptional skill at reading other people’s emotions. He reads people in a conscious manner that could be the result of self-training to recognize ”emotional tells”; even so, he’s remarkably fluent at it. If this skill could be bottled he could sell it for an awful lot of money.
在商业事务上，他稳定的脉搏得益于他出色的解读他人情感的能力。他以一种有意识的方式解读他人，这可能是自我训练以识别“情感信号”的结果；即便如此，他对此的掌握仍然相当流利。如果这种技能可以被提炼出来，他可以以高价出售。
Temperament is innate, but I would argue that anyone can focus on modulating their temperament within whatever band they have to work with. Anyone can work at being better at reading other people’s emotions.
气质是与生俱来的，但我认为任何人都可以专注于调节他们的气质，无论他们有多少范围可供调整。任何人都可以努力提高自己理解他人情感的能力。
Curve Ball – Surprising Facts About Warren Buffett
曲线球 - 关于沃伦·巴菲特的惊人事实
Miguel: How has Warren Buffett’s intellect surprised you over the years?
米格尔：沃伦·巴菲特的智慧这些年来是如何让你感到惊讶的？
Alice: For example, he recognizes square roots and sometimes cube roots of very large numbers; which is slightly unnerving, especially when he starts telling you the square and cube roots of license plate numbers. It’s something he does as a mild form of entertainment while driving.
爱丽丝：例如，他能识别非常大的数字的平方根，有时还包括立方根；这有点让人不安，尤其是当他开始告诉你车牌号码的平方根和立方根时。这是他在开车时作为一种轻松的娱乐方式所做的事情。
More unnerving is that he remembers conversations that he has with you better than you do. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in that situation –- where you realize the other person has asked you the same question some time ago. When Buffett does that, it’s often a test.
更让人不安的是，他对与你的对话记得比你更清楚。我不知道你是否曾经遇到过这种情况——你意识到对方在一段时间前问过你同样的问题。当巴菲特这样做时，这通常是一种测试。
He will ask very probing and penetrating questions and then 2 months later he will ask again and you know he remembers the exact words you said. It can feel a little like getting deposed, and it’s a bit spooky to have a human tape recorder sitting in front of you. He doesn’t have a photographic memory, but sometimes it feels close enough. And of course, he’s reading you emotionally at the same time, and you know it.
他会问非常深入和尖锐的问题，然后两个月后再问一次，你知道他记得你说的确切话语。这感觉有点像被传讯，面前坐着一个人类录音机让人有点毛骨悚然。他没有过目不忘的记忆，但有时感觉差不多。当然，他同时也在情感上解读你，而你知道这一点。
Please understand, this only happens occasionally. Most conversations with him are really enjoyable because they’re full of witty repartee and a download of information from his unusual brain.
请理解，这种情况只是偶尔发生。与他的大多数对话都非常愉快，因为充满了机智的对话和他那不同寻常的大脑中信息的分享。
Other interesting situations: I have seen him make his famous 5-minute decisions on the phone. Five minutes is the outside amount of time it takes him to make a decision. If the person can be succinct and convey the salient points in 60 seconds he’ll say, “Yes” or “No” in 60 seconds.
其他有趣的情况：我见过他在电话上做出他著名的五分钟决策。五分钟是他做出决策所需的最长时间。如果对方能够简明扼要地在 60 秒内传达要点，他会在 60 秒内说“是”或“否”。
The time is determined by how long it takes the person to convey the salient points, not how long it takes him to think about it. It’s virtually instant once he has grasped the 2 or 3 variables or points that are important to him.
时间是由一个人传达要点所需的时间来决定的，而不是他思考所需的时间。一旦他掌握了对他重要的 2 或 3 个变量或要点，这几乎是瞬间的。
Typically, and this is not well understood, his way of thinking is that there are disqualifying features to an investment. So he rifles through and as soon as you hit one of those it’s done. Doesn’t like the CEO, forget it. Too much tail risk, forget it. Low-margin business, forget it. Many people would try to see whether a balance of other factors made up for these things. He doesn’t analyze from A to Z; it’s a time-waster.
通常，这一点并不被很好地理解，他的思维方式是，投资有一些不合格的特征。因此，他会快速浏览，一旦遇到其中一个，就结束了。不喜欢首席执行官，算了。尾部风险太大，算了。低利润业务，算了。许多人会尝试看看其他因素是否能弥补这些问题。他不从头到尾分析；这浪费时间。
Lastly, the speed of thought is so startling. Remember the 60 questions I started with the first time I interviewed him, which he covered in 45 minutes or so. He later took me to Nebraska Furniture Mart carpet warehouse and started quoting how many yards they sell of each type of carpet each week and at x price and it costs y amount a yard and we mark it up at z. He was sprinting through the carpet warehouse pointing at roles of carpet and telling me which ones sell at what price.I jogged alongside him with my jaw dragging behind me on the floor in disbelief.
最后，思维的速度令人震惊。记得我第一次采访他时提出的 60 个问题，他大约在 45 分钟内就回答完了。后来他带我去内布拉斯加家具市场的地毯仓库，开始引用他们每周销售的每种地毯的码数，以及每码的价格和成本。他在地毯仓库里飞快地走动，指着地毯卷告诉我哪些以什么价格出售。我跟在他身边，简直不敢相信，嘴巴都快掉到地上了。
I used to spend 4.5 days a week in Omaha, and I would be so wrecked by the time I got home it was unbelievable. I thought it was me; then, when I started interviewing other people who are his friends and colleagues, they would tell me that they also needed time to recuperate after seeing him. Or that they could only take him in doses of 2 hours at a time. They all like him, but it’s so intense to have someone racing ahead of you mentally and you are trying to keep up. This is clearly one reason for his bond with Bill Gates. They don’t have to wait for each other to catch up.
我过去每周要在奥马哈待 4.5 天，回到家时我感到疲惫不堪，简直不可思议。我以为是我自己的问题；然后，当我开始采访其他他的朋友和同事时，他们告诉我，他们在见到他后也需要时间来恢复。或者他们只能一次接受他两个小时。他们都喜欢他，但与一个在精神上超前于你的人相处是如此紧张，而你却在努力跟上。这显然是他与比尔·盖茨之间关系的一个原因。他们不需要等对方赶上。
Miguel: Tell me more anecdotes, particularly about his processing skills.
米格尔：告诉我更多的轶事，特别是关于他的处理技能。
Alice: I don’t want to dispel any notion of his intuition. But he has internalized so much information over the years and uses so many mental models (to quote a Mungerism) that they have coalesced into an almost visceral reaction to an investing situation. And this is what you strive for. It’s not mystical, even if you can’t verbalize your analysis. Much of his decision-making has sunk to almost the unconscious realm, it is so refined.
爱丽丝：我不想消除他直觉的任何观念。但多年来他内化了如此多的信息，并使用了如此多的思维模型（引用芒格的话），以至于这些都凝聚成了对投资情况的几乎本能的反应。这就是你所追求的。即使你无法用语言表达你的分析，这也并不是神秘的。他的决策过程已经几乎沉浸在无意识的领域，变得如此精炼。
Part of his skill and speed comes from a complete unwillingness to overpay for anything, which I think, is innate or formed in him by the time he very young. When he spots something it’s like a siren goes off telling him its overpriced (either quantitatively or qualitatively).
他的一部分技能和速度来自于对任何东西完全不愿意多花钱的态度，我认为这要么是与生俱来的，要么是在他很小的时候形成的。当他发现某样东西时，就像警报响起，告诉他这东西价格过高（无论是定量还是定性）。
We would kick around insurance pricing at different times. He would say, “How much would you pay to write terrorism risk on this building from now 2002 until 2012 for X events?” I would give some number and then he would say yea or nay.
我们会在不同的时间讨论保险定价。他会问：“从 2002 年到 2012 年，你愿意为这栋建筑的恐怖主义风险支付多少费用，针对 X 事件？”我会给出一个数字，然后他会说是或不是。
Because I like probabilities and have enough experience with insurance, I usually did okay with this game. But his ability was remarkable. You could describe a situation with many contingencies, many derivatives, many puts and calls and swaps, and he would instinctively know whether it was priced well or not.
因为我喜欢概率，并且在保险方面有足够的经验，所以我通常在这个游戏中表现不错。但他的能力非常出色。你可以描述一个有许多偶然情况、许多衍生品、许多看跌和看涨期权以及掉期的情境，而他会本能地知道这个价格是否合理。
Those equity index puts that created issues with the rating agencies. I think the reason he had difficulty with those is that he knew immediately how to price them and that the odds were very high that they would make money for Berkshire, if looked at on their own as contracts.
那些与评级机构产生问题的股指期权。我认为他在处理这些期权时遇到困难的原因是，他立即知道如何为它们定价，并且如果单独作为合约来看，它们为伯克希尔赚钱的几率非常高。
The other elements that were subjective — the way they would create short-term volatility in the balance sheet; the way hedgers might respond; the regulating agencies — these didn’t come into the equation because the trained, automatic part of his mind fastened on how much money could be made and the probability.
其他主观因素——它们如何在资产负债表中造成短期波动；对冲者可能的反应；监管机构——这些都没有被考虑在内，因为他训练有素的自动思维专注于可以赚多少钱和概率。
If you think about it carefully you realize how costly the equity index puts were in the financial crisis. Berkshire got the float from them to invest, but its negotiations with the rating agencies meant that, at a time when markets were in turmoil, during the very crisis that Warren had been waiting for all those years to put the tens of billions of dollars to cash to work, he couldn’t do it. He was able to participate in the market crash only in a tepid way. That opportunity cost has to be offset against the expected profit from those equity index puts. They weren’t worth it.
如果仔细想想，你会意识到在金融危机中，股指期权的成本是多么高。伯克希尔从中获得了资金进行投资，但与评级机构的谈判意味着，在市场动荡的时期，也就是沃伦多年来一直等待的危机中，他无法将数百亿美元的现金投入市场。他只能以一种温和的方式参与市场崩溃。这个机会成本必须与那些股指期权的预期利润进行抵消。它们并不值得。
Miguel: So what kinds of questions are not being asked about Warren Buffett? And on the flip side, what is overplayed with regards to his investment style (such as focusing on brands)?
米格尔：那么关于沃伦·巴菲特还有哪些问题没有被提问？反过来，关于他的投资风格（例如专注于品牌）又有哪些被过度强调？
Alice: We touched on this earlier. He is great at distilling important concepts into memorable sayings. But these sayings are not a substitute for doing work and analysis and he doesn’t use them that way in practice. For example, be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy, which is a Gus Levy (former CEO of Goldman Sachs) quote that he uses a lot.
爱丽丝：我们之前提到过这个。他擅长将重要概念提炼成易于记忆的格言。但这些格言并不能替代实际的工作和分析，他在实践中并不这样使用它们。例如，“当别人恐惧时要贪婪，当别人贪婪时要恐惧”，这是他经常引用的古斯·莱维（前高盛首席执行官）的一句名言。
I’ve seen people rationalize buying a beaten-down stock because other people are fearful. That’s not how Warren thinks. For the most part, he has a universe of stocks that he has analyzed. And when something hits his bid then he will buy it.
我见过人们因为其他人感到恐惧而合理化购买一只被打压的股票。但沃伦并不是这样想的。在大多数情况下，他有一套自己分析过的股票宇宙。当某个股票的价格达到他的出价时，他就会买入。
I think another thing people have gotten confused about is the sustainable competitive advantage and the moat. Durable competitive advantage and moats are not the same thing as brands. People sometimes use these terms interchangeably. I have also seen people ascribe competitive advantages to brands that don’t have them. For example, retailers — retailers have brands. We all know what Macy’s (M) is, but retailing is fundamentally a bad business.
我认为人们还常常混淆的是可持续竞争优势和护城河。持久的竞争优势和护城河并不等同于品牌。有人有时会把这些术语互换使用。我也见过有人将竞争优势归功于一些并不具备竞争优势的品牌。例如，零售商——零售商确实有品牌，我们都知道梅西百货(Macy’s)，但零售业本质上是一门糟糕的生意。
In essence, the merits of a brand are not the brand itself; they are the qualities of the product that create the consumer loyalty. What attracted him, ultimately, to Coca-Cola (KO) is that Coca-Cola’s formula make you more, not less, thirsty, and supposedly has been tested to prove that it doesn’t wear out the palate, no matter how much is consumed. This implies infinite sales potential. The cute commercials and cheery red logo create an association in people’s minds with those qualities. They aren’t what makes it Coca-Cola.
本质上，品牌的价值并不在于品牌本身，而在于产品的品质，这些品质能够创造出消费者的忠诚度。最终吸引他投资可口可乐（KO）的原因是，可口可乐的配方会让你越喝越渴，据说经过测试证明，不管喝多少，它都不会让味觉疲劳。这意味着无限的销售潜力。那些可爱的广告和欢快的红色标志只是在人们心中与这些品质建立了关联，它们并不是可口可乐真正的核心价值所在。
While there are moats that include brands, a brand is not a moat. The moat is whatever qualities are innate to the business that make it difficult to compete with.
虽然有些护城河包括品牌，但品牌本身并不是护城河。护城河是指企业固有的、使其难以竞争的特质。
Lastly, investing is not a religion. It’s not like you have to follow a creed. Warren will buy things that are simply cheap. He’s pragmatic. There’s no rule that he has to be absolutely consistent. If he sees something that he thinks is undervalued he’ll occasionally buy it, even if it’s a Korean dairy company. Then he’ll sell it. Everything doesn’t have to fit into a perfect framework.
最后，投资不是宗教。你不必遵循某种信条。沃伦会购买那些简单便宜的东西。他很务实。他并没有必须绝对一致的规则。如果他看到某样东西他认为被低估了，他偶尔会买下它，即使它是一家韩国乳制品公司。然后他会卖掉它。一切不必都符合一个完美的框架。
Miguel: What are other things to avoid?
米格尔：还有哪些事情需要避免？
Alice: One of Warren’s great strengths is that, despite his pragmatism, he is quite rigid when it comes to anything that could lead to emotional decision-making. This is the circle of competence. He never bought Intel, and if there is anyone who could have understood Intel it was him. I mean, he knows Andy Grove quite well and was around at the founding of the company and even knew Bob Noyce. There were times when it must have been obvious to him that Intel was a rocket.
爱丽丝：沃伦的一个伟大优势是，尽管他很务实，但在任何可能导致情感决策的事情上，他都相当固执。这就是能力圈。他从未购买过英特尔，如果有人能理解英特尔，那就是他。我的意思是，他对安迪·格罗夫非常了解，并且在公司成立时就在场，甚至认识鲍勃·诺伊斯。有时他一定很清楚英特尔是一颗火箭。
This is another way of saying that he has managed to avoid style drift for the most part. There’s nothing wrong with learning new things or adapting to changing circumstances. What’s wrong with style drift is that emotions are forming the current that’s drifts you along. Style drift is just endemic whenever the market is briskly valued and it’s hard to find ways to put money to work. You could argue it’s the most common reason highly regarded investors get blown up.
换句话说，他在大多数情况下成功避免了“风格漂移”。学习新事物或适应变化的环境并没有错，风格漂移的问题在于情绪推动了这种漂移的发生。每当市场估值较高、难以找到合适的投资机会时，风格漂移就变得司空见惯。可以说，这也是备受推崇的投资者“爆仓”的最常见原因。
Lastly, I would say that people got confused that leverage is okay in financial institutions as if they are exempt from the laws of leverage because of the nature of their business. That’s a mistake that people won’t be making again anytime soon.
最后，我想说，人们误以为金融机构的杠杆是可以的，仿佛由于其业务性质，它们免受杠杆法则的约束。这是一个人们不会很快再犯的错误。
People were investing in companies leveraged 30x where they would never dream of considering a stock like that in a value portfolio in any other industry. What is very interesting is that Warren did not do this (by this I mean investing in these types of financial institutions).
人们在投资那些杠杆达到 30 倍的公司，而在其他行业的价值投资组合中，他们绝对不会考虑这样的股票。非常有趣的是，沃伦并没有这样做（我指的是投资这些类型的金融机构）。
When he did finally invest, in Goldman, he bought preferred stock with mandatory interest payments and various forms of downside protection. It was primarily a bet on Goldman’s continued existence rather than its shorter or longer-term earnings trends. The $115 warrants were gravy.
当他最终投资高盛时，他购买了带有强制利息支付和各种形式下行保护的优先股。这主要是对高盛持续存在的押注，而不是对其短期或长期盈利趋势的押注。115 美元的认股权证则是额外的收益。
Miguel: You mention that Warren occasionally buys something because it’s cheap, that makes perfect sense to me. Sometimes you just have to buy something that’s okay but at an attractive price.
米格尔：你提到沃伦偶尔会因为便宜而买东西，这对我来说完全有道理。有时候你只需要买一些还不错但价格吸引的东西。
Alice: What you’re talking about is an instinctual attraction. Warren has an instinctual attraction for things that are worth more than they’re selling for. He’s tried over the years to articulate different criteria by which other people can find these opportunities. But the fact is that in he has a nose for things that are more valuable than their price and vice versa.
爱丽丝：你所说的是一种本能的吸引力。沃伦对那些价值超过其售价的事物有一种本能的吸引力。多年来，他试图阐明其他人可以用来发现这些机会的不同标准。但事实是，他对那些比价格更有价值的事物有敏锐的嗅觉，反之亦然。
To some extent, when he describes investing or writes he is refining and explaining the rules by which his instinct told him to operate. If you put a dollar in front of him and say, “I will sell this to you for 50 cents” he’s not going to say I don’t do cigar butts anymore, and I don’t see a moat there (laughter).
在某种程度上，当他描述投资或写作时，他是在提炼和解释他的直觉告诉他操作的规则。如果你在他面前放一美元，说：“我以 50 美分的价格卖给你这个”，他不会说我不再做烟屁股了，我也看不到有什么护城河（笑声）。
Miguel: Is this instinct is innate?
米格尔：这种本能是与生俱来的吗？
Alice: Some is temperamental but I also think people can figure it out. Clearly some of it is mathematical, and it’s a question of being alert to it and having focus. There are times when nothing works. I use to say this about insurance stocks that once every decade you should buy all of them and once every decade you should sell all of them and the rest of the time you should do nothing.
爱丽丝： 有些人情绪化，但我也认为人们可以弄明白。显然其中有一些是数学问题，这需要保持警觉和专注。有时候什么都不管用。我曾经说过关于保险股票的事情，每十年你应该买入所有股票，每十年你应该卖出所有股票，其余时间你应该什么都不做。
That’s probably true of a lot of industries, which means that doing nothing is the right answer most of the time. Much of the time you’re either looking for what’s cheap or waiting for that magic moment.
这可能适用于许多行业，这意味着大多数时候不采取行动是正确的答案。很多时候，你要么在寻找便宜的东西，要么在等待那个神奇的时刻。
Miguel: One of my friend’s likes to say, “People’s decisions compound money.”
米格尔：我一个朋友喜欢说：“人们的决策会积累财富。”
Alice: And that’s the other mistake, because the price you pay determines your return. For example, people will take an earnings yield, expressed in cash flow versus price paid, on a stock that they would never consider in a normal interest rate environment. Large caps are supposedly cheaper now than any time in decades based on dividend yields.
爱丽丝：这就是另一个错误，因为你支付的价格决定了你的回报。例如，人们会在一个正常利率环境下从未考虑过的股票上计算收益率，以现金流与支付价格的比率来表示。根据股息收益率，大型股现在据说比几十年来的任何时候都便宜。
Yet investors who pay 18x earnings if rates are 1% on the theory that getting a very low earnings yield is acceptable versus treasuries might wake up disappointed. You may have to wait an awfully long time to earn your way out of a hole because of the price paid.
然而，如果利率为 1%，投资者以 18 倍的收益率进行投资，基于与国债相比获得非常低的收益率是可以接受的理论，可能会感到失望。由于支付的价格，您可能需要等待很长时间才能挣脱困境。
Look at it this way. The economy will be struggling to eke out 2% growth for who knows how long. The average business cannot, on average, get 4 – 6% real growth in an environment like that, without some drastic change in relative currency values or some other unpleasant thing that resets the base. Yet all of the assumptions I see are based on 6 – 8% growth and everything else status quo.
从这个角度看，经济将努力维持 2%的增长，谁也不知道要持续多久。在这样的环境下，平均企业无法实现 4%到 6%的实际增长，除非相对货币价值发生一些剧烈变化，或者出现其他不愉快的事情来重置基数。然而，我看到的所有假设都是基于 6%到 8%的增长，以及其他一切保持不变。
It’s safe to assume that at some point, multiples are going to decline from here to reflect the economy’s real growth rate.
可以安全地假设，在某个时刻，倍数将会从这里下降，以反映经济的实际增长率。
Berkshire has put 60% of its cash flow into equities so far this year. It’s an increase from zero, which could easily be interpreted as a portfolio repositioning, but it is not. Warren is still building cash. He doesn’t like bonds right now, but he likes cash. The feeling of needing to be fully invested obstructs a lot of money managers.
伯克希尔今年迄今已将 60%的现金流投入股票。这是从零的增加，这可以很容易地被解读为投资组合的重新配置，但事实并非如此。沃伦仍在积累现金。他现在不喜欢债券，但喜欢现金。需要完全投资的感觉阻碍了许多资金经理。
Miguel: I think a lot of this irrationality has to do with capital market theories and so called portfolio optimization. Or simply put – a lack of common sense.
米格尔：我认为这种非理性很大程度上与资本市场理论和所谓的投资组合优化有关。简单来说，就是缺乏常识。
Alice: When people are spending a lot of their time marketing themselves and their businesses and they’re not a startup, it’s problematic. The greatest investors resent the time they spend marketing even though they have to do it. When marketing becomes the highlight of your day (that is to give a speech or be on television) that is a sign to be careful (of that manager).
爱丽丝：当人们花费大量时间来营销自己和他们的业务，而他们并不是初创公司时，这就成了一个问题。最伟大的投资者对他们花在营销上的时间感到不满，尽管他们必须这样做。当营销成为你一天的亮点（即发表演讲或上电视）时，这就是一个需要小心的信号（要小心那个经理）。
Miguel: It’s like winning a Nobel Prize…there is a curse attached (laughter).
米格尔：这就像赢得诺贝尔奖……有一个诅咒附带着（笑声）。
Alice: Sure…there is mean reversion and it’s true in any business. People reach a certain level and then they are not as hungry and they start to plateau. It’s more fun to be on television and be awarded honorary degrees and give speeches.
爱丽丝：当然……存在均值回归，这在任何行业都是如此。人们达到一定水平后，就不再那么渴望成功，开始停滞不前。上电视、获得荣誉学位和发表演讲更有趣。
Miguel: How has Warren evolved in the past years. Also tell us about his moves during the financial crisis.
米格尔：沃伦在过去几年中是如何发展的？还请告诉我们他在金融危机期间的举动。
Alice: After the Internet bubble, there was a point where he was seriously worried that he wouldn’t get another chance to make any big scores because of his age. Instead, he has had, since 2002, a run of unique opportunity that was interrupted briefly by the housing bubble.
爱丽丝：在互联网泡沫之后，他曾一度非常担心由于年龄的原因，他不会再有机会获得任何重大成功。相反，自 2002 年以来，他经历了一段独特的机会，虽然这段时间被房地产泡沫短暂打断。
I’ve heard some people say, “He’s in his heyday.” The market has certainly worked in his favor. But the gigantic anchor of capital that Berkshire has to invest means that no environment can be as good for him as the past. If people are following his investments, they should consider how limited his universe of possible ideas is compared to their own.
我听到一些人说：“他正处于巅峰期。”市场确实对他有利。但伯克希尔拥有的巨额资本意味着，没有任何环境能像过去那样对他有利。如果人们在关注他的投资，他们应该考虑与自己相比，他的可能投资想法的范围是多么有限。
He is being forced to accept lower returns than smaller investors simply by virtue of his market cap limitation. He’s given fair warning of this often enough, so it shouldn’t surprise us now. He’s often spoken nostalgically of how much better he could do running a smaller portfolio.
他被迫接受比小型投资者更低的回报，仅仅是因为他的市值限制。他对此已经得到了足够的警告，所以现在不应该让我们感到惊讶。他常常怀念自己如果管理一个更小的投资组合会做得更好。
Therefore, let’s invert the situation. If you are running a smaller portfolio, the stocks he owns are interesting to consider, but not necessarily the first place I would look for investment ideas.
因此，让我们反转一下情况。如果你正在管理一个较小的投资组合，他所拥有的股票值得考虑，但不一定是我寻找投资想法的首选。
On a slightly different aspect of his life, I posted by the way on my blog called Cirque du Berk 2012 which is a proposal to move the BRK meeting to Vegas in 2012. It’s only partly, barely, tongue in cheek. Warren’s desire to be in the spotlight has gotten a bit stronger in recent years. He used to really shun publicity. The shareholder meeting has grown in proportion to his appearances on CNBC. It’s okay, he’s entitled to have some fun. But why not move the meeting?
在他生活的一个稍微不同的方面，我顺便在我的博客“Cirque du Berk 2012”上发布了一篇文章，提议将 BRK 会议移到 2012 年的拉斯维加斯。这只是部分、勉强地开玩笑。沃伦近年来渴望成为焦点的愿望变得更强烈了。他曾经非常避讳公众关注。股东大会的规模与他在 CNBC 上的露面成正比。没关系，他有权享受一些乐趣。但为什么不把会议移过去呢？
Miguel: So Omaha is Too large?
米格尔：那么奥马哈太大了吗？
Alice: Yes, Omaha isn’t a big enough town anymore to handle this event. It’s classic price-gouging; even low tier hotels are jacking up rates and requiring 3 night minimums. Some people are spending $2,500 to go to Omaha to stay at a Holiday Inn. The airline fares are a disgrace and rental cars are just as bad. The past couple of years have seen a dramatic change and it’s made the shareholder meeting unaffordable.
爱丽丝： 是的，奥马哈现在已经不是一个足够大的城市来处理这个活动了。这是典型的价格欺诈；即使是低档酒店也在抬高价格，并要求最低入住三晚。有些人花费 2500 美元去奥马哈住在假日酒店。机票价格令人不齿，租车的情况也一样糟糕。过去几年发生了剧烈变化，这使得股东会议变得无法承受。
I know that Warren isn’t happy about this. People are staying home because it costs too much to attend. You can spend 4-5 nights in Paris or Bali, all in, for what it costs to go to Omaha. We’re talking April in Paris vs. April in Omaha. With no disrespect to Omaha, I would rather go to Paris.
我知道沃伦对此并不满意。人们选择待在家里，因为参加的费用太高。你可以花费 4-5 个晚上在巴黎或巴厘岛，所有费用加起来也比去奥马哈便宜。我们在谈论的是巴黎的四月和奥马哈的四月。无意冒犯奥马哈，我更愿意去巴黎。
By the way, the people of Omaha aren’t the ones doing this — it’s the hotel chains based elsewhere. I think he should move the meeting.
顺便说一下，奥马哈的人并不是在做这件事——这是其他地方的酒店连锁在做。我认为他应该把会议移开。
Miguel: Tell us about your interests? How can people follow your latest endeavors? Where are things going for you?
米格尔：告诉我们你的兴趣是什么？人们如何关注你的最新动态？你接下来有什么计划？
Alice: I’m working on a Buffet investing book. This, I’m pretty excited about because there is so much interesting material that I think will help people apply in practice the ideas that they work with on a very high level now. I also write a column approximately once a month for Bloomberg on whatever business topic is of interest at the time. I’ve written about Greece, BP, Wall Street. I’m doing public speaking. I’m doing some feature writing. I’m investing. I’m doing some nonprofit work.
爱丽丝：我正在写一本关于巴菲特投资的书。这让我非常兴奋，因为有很多有趣的材料，我认为这些材料将帮助人们在实践中应用他们现在在很高层次上所研究的想法。我还大约每个月为彭博社写一篇专栏，内容是当时感兴趣的商业话题。我写过关于希腊、BP、华尔街的文章。我在进行公众演讲。我在做一些特写写作。我在投资。我还在做一些非营利工作。
Miguel: What motivates you?
米格尔：是什么激励着你？
Alice: Curiosity. When something crosses my field of vision I will spend time to figure it out and if it’s complicated and interesting enough I’ll keep figuring it out – which is why Warren Buffett was fun to study. It was delightful to write about this amazing American business story. Warren was the perfect subject.
爱丽丝：好奇心。当有东西出现在我的视野中时，我会花时间去弄清楚，如果它足够复杂和有趣，我会继续研究下去——这就是为什么研究沃伦·巴菲特很有趣。写下这个令人惊叹的美国商业故事真是令人愉快。沃伦是一个完美的研究对象。
I’m motivated by my curiosity to uncover, analyze, and present important stories with interesting characters.
我受到好奇心的驱动，去发现、分析和呈现重要的故事以及有趣的角色。
Miguel: Alice thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. It has been a privilege working with you. I wish you the best of health.
米格尔：爱丽丝，谢谢你抽出时间回答我的问题。和你一起工作是我的荣幸。祝你身体健康。
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