2023-05-03 Todd Combs.Meeting Munger, Buffett and Joining Berkshire

On May 3, 2023, Berkshire Hathaway investment manager (and GEICO chief executive) Todd Combs joined NFM’s i am home podcast and spoke for over an hour about his investing career. Over the past few weeks, I transcribed (and lightly annotated) his remarks for posterity and future study.

在 2023 年 5 月 3 日，伯克希尔·哈撒韦的投资经理（以及 GEICO 首席执行官）托德·科姆斯加入了 NFM 的我在家播客，并且谈了一个多小时关于他的投资生涯。在过去的几周里，我为后人和未来的研究转录（并轻微注释）了他的发言。

A few notes: 几点说明：

My main focus is accuracy and readability.

我的主要关注点是准确性和可读性。

I summarized some of the questions to save space. All of Todd’s answers are transcribed verbatim.

我总结了一些问题以节省空间。托德的所有回答都逐字转录。

I added footnotes with additional information at relevant points. Hopefully, these will prove useful to readers.

我在相关部分添加了带有额外信息的脚注。希望这些对读者有所帮助。

The full transcript is available to all paid supporters. Free subscribers have access to the first 2,500-ish words. (That’s longer than the typical Kingswell article.)

完整的文字记录对所有付费支持者开放。免费订阅者可以访问前 2500 个左右的单词。（这比典型的 Kingswell 文章要长。）

I’ve tried to do my best to ensure that no one feels short-changed.

我尽力确保没有人感到被亏待。

So, without further ado, here is the transcript of Todd Comb’s appearance on NFM’s i am home podcast…

那么，事不宜迟，这里是 Todd Comb 在 NFM 的i am home播客上的文字记录……

NFM: I wanted to start with your Berkshire Hathaway origin story. It seems like there were two main points on your journey to there. The first was when you were at Columbia and Warren came and spoke [to your class]. You didn’t meet him at the time, but he said to read… Is it 500 [pages] a day or 500 a week?

NFM：我想从你的伯克希尔哈撒韦起源故事开始。看起来你到达那里有两个主要的节点。第一个是在你在哥伦比亚大学时，沃伦来给你的班级演讲。你当时没有见到他，但他说要读……是每天 500 页还是每周 500 页？

Todd Combs: A week. I definitely want to clarify that. (Laughs) 500 a day is a little over the top.

托德·科姆斯：一周。我确实想澄清这一点。（笑）每天 500 有点过分。

NFM: The second is when, years later, you did that cold call to Charlie Munger. Can you talk about both of those stories and how that happened?

NFM:第二个是多年后，你给查理·芒格打了那个冷电话。你能谈谈这两个故事以及是如何发生的吗？

TC: I’ll start with the first one. I didn’t really meet Warren because, as you said, he came and spoke to Professor… [There’s this] legendary value investing professor at Columbia, Professor Greenwald[1] — who’s this larger than life figure. He’s now since retired a couple of years, but it was the pre-eminent value investing course anywhere.

TC：我先从第一个开始。我并没有真正见过沃伦，因为，正如你所说，他来过并与教授交谈…… [有这样一位] 传奇的价值投资教授在哥伦比亚大学，格林沃尔德教授[1] — 他是一个超凡脱俗的人物。他现在已经退休几年了，但这是最杰出的价值投资课程。

In the first half of the class, he would talk about value investing. It would be case studies — Bud vs. Coors. He didn’t do this, but it could be GEICO vs. Progressive, GM vs. Ford, etc.

在课堂的前半部分，他会讲述价值投资。这将是案例研究——百威与科尔斯。他没有这样做，但可以是 GEICO 与 Progressive，通用汽车与福特等。

Then, in the second half, he would have — over twelve or fifteen weeks — legendary speakers come in. It was everybody from Marty Whitman and Michael Price and Seth Klarman — and, then, he’d always finish with Warren. There were, I think, about 65 of us or so in the class in the value investing program.

然后，在下半部分，他会在十二到十五周内邀请传奇演讲者来。参与者包括马蒂·惠特曼、迈克尔·普赖斯和塞斯·卡拉曼——最后，他总是以沃伦结束。我想我们在价值投资项目的班级里大约有 65 人左右。

That would have been the fall of 2001, because I graduated in ’02. So I think it was the fall of ’01 — right after 9/11, if I remember correctly. [Warren] came and spoke and you’d fire away with questions just like he does at the annual meeting. The very last question, I remember that, was that somebody said, “How do you spend your time?” He had brought in this rumpled, accordion folder — it was a complete mess, it had papers everywhere spewing out of it — and he said, “Well, I read newspapers and this and that.”

那应该是 2001 年的秋天，因为我在 2002 年毕业。所以我想是 2001 年的秋天——如果我没记错的话，就是在 911 事件之后。[沃伦]来了并发表了讲话，你可以像在年度会议上一样提问。我记得最后一个问题是，有人问：“你是怎么花时间的？”他带来了一个皱巴巴的手风琴文件夹——里面一团糟，纸张到处乱飞——他说：“嗯，我看报纸，还有这个那个。”

[The questioner] had a follow-up of, “No, how do you actually really spend your time? You can’t read twelve hours [a day]?” And he turned around and picked this accordion folder up and he said, “I just read. I read and the compounding of that knowledge accrues over time because it never goes away. There’s no decay rate.” He said, “What is this, about 500 pages or so? Each and every one of you can do it. It’s free. But most people don’t because they get distracted.” And he used his Socratic method, then, to go into why focus is so important.

“你实际上是如何花时间的？你不可能每天读十二个小时吧？”他转过身来拿起这个手风琴文件夹，说：“我只是读书。我阅读，知识的积累随着时间的推移而增加，因为它永远不会消失。没有衰减率。”他说：“这大约有 500 页吧？你们每一个人都可以做到。这是免费的。但大多数人做不到，因为他们会分心。”然后他用苏格拉底的方法来探讨专注为何如此重要。

And, from that day forward, it really had a huge impact on me. It was a real epiphany for me. I almost took it like a challenge. He definitely didn’t mean it as a challenge, but I took it that way. Like, “You know, I’m going to start doing this” — so I started from then. At first, I was very meticulous about it, like counting the pages and everything. But, now, there’s only one or two things I’m [still] reading today that I had started back then because you evolve and so forth and so on. But it’s still about the same amount, give or take.

从那天起，这对我产生了巨大的影响。这对我来说是真正的顿悟。我几乎把它当作一种挑战。他显然并不是想把它当作挑战，但我就是这样理解的。就像，“你知道，我要开始这样做”——所以我从那时起就开始了。起初，我对此非常细致，比如数页数等等。但现在，只有一两样我今天还在读的东西是我当时开始的，因为你会不断发展等等。但总体上还是差不多的，增减不一。

NFM: You actually took action.

NFM：你实际上采取了行动。

TC: Yeah, and he meant it that way. You can either approach things actively or passively and I think a lot of people can take it passively. Probably a lot of people that were there that day — they certainly all remember Warren, I don’t know how many would actually remember that comment — [but] how many actually acted on it? I don’t know.

是的，他确实是这样想的。你可以主动或被动地处理事情，我认为很多人可能会选择被动。那天在场的很多人——他们肯定都记得沃伦，我不知道有多少人会真正记得那句话——但有多少人实际上付诸行动了呢？我不知道。

There was a lot of fame around this “10,000 hour rule” that Malcolm Gladwell made famous[2], but actually it happened to have been a Florida State professor, K. Anders Ericsson, that came up with that. But the real point wasn’t the 10,000 hours — people became kind of stuck on that. To me, the point was active vs. passive [learning].

关于这个“1 万小时法则”，马尔科姆·格拉德威尔让它声名显赫[2]，但实际上是佛罗里达州立大学的教授 K·安德斯·埃里克森提出的。真正的重点并不是 1 万小时——人们对此有些固执。对我来说，重点是主动学习与被动学习。

Whether you’re learning to play golf or you’re trying to get better at running or cycling or investing or whatever you’re trying to do, if you do it actively vs. passively, you pull those things forward and you create a tighter feedback loop on your mistakes and your learning process and it becomes more iterative. That’s what I took away from it, at least.

无论你是在学习打高尔夫，还是想提高跑步、骑自行车、投资或其他任何事情，如果你是主动参与而不是被动接受，你就能更快地进步，并且在错误和学习过程中形成更紧密的反馈循环，这样就变得更加迭代。这是我从中得到的收获，至少是这样。

只有主动才能够发展和迭代。

NFM: So that changed your trajectory on how you thought about yourself and how you read and educated yourself.

NFM：这改变了你对自己的看法，以及你如何阅读和自我教育。

TC: For sure, yeah. 当然，没错。

NFM: Then, the cold call [to Charlie Munger]. Tell us about that story.

NFM：然后，给查理·芒格的冷电话。告诉我们这个故事。

TC: I started my own fund[3] in October of ’05. I had run it through the Global Financial Crisis and I was pretty fried. We had done quite well, but it took everything out of me. I was working 100+ hour weeks, sleeping at the office, etc. Part of my dream was always to run my own investment partnership — and the process and the journey of going through that and doing it yourself. Painting your own portrait, so to speak.

TC：我在 05 年 10 月创办了自己的基金[3]。我经历了全球金融危机，感觉非常疲惫。我们做得相当不错，但这让我耗尽了所有精力。我每周工作超过 100 小时，甚至在办公室睡觉等等。我的梦想之一一直是经营自己的投资合伙企业——这个过程和自己亲自去做的旅程。可以说，是在画自己的肖像。

I had done that — and I had lived in dog years during that Global Financial Crisis. Everyone did, to be clear. It wasn’t just me. In those five years, there were amazing ups and downs throughout the whole thing. And we did quite well[4] — but, as I said, it took everything out of me.

我经历过那段时期——在全球金融危机期间，我感觉时间过得像狗年一样漫长。要明确一点，不仅仅是我，大家都感同身受。在那五年里，我们经历了惊人的起伏。我们做得相当不错[4]，但正如我所说的，那段时间耗尽了我的全部精力。

I had experience at that time, at Progressive, in running insurance and I’d followed Berkshire for a long, long time. I had this epiphany one day that, well, if I know insurance and having seen what Warren and Charlie did with float and so forth — that’s a much, much better way to do it. You know, permanent capital and not having to post monthly results. I loved my LPs, but not having to constantly live up to those expectations and standards and just kind of changing the dynamic quite a bit.

在那段时间，我在Progressive有过运营保险的经验，而且我长期关注伯克希尔。我有一天突然领悟到，如果我了解保险，并且看到了沃伦和查理是如何利用浮存金等策略来运作的——那是一种更好的方式。你知道，拥有永久资本，不需要每月发布业绩。我很喜欢我的有限合伙人（LPs），但不必时刻满足他们的期望和标准，这会在很大程度上改变动态。

So that was my plan. I had some phenomenal partners that were also experts in financial services and insurance in Stone Point Capital[5], so I kind of knew that I was going to go that route. And, then, the question was how?

所以这就是我的计划。我有一些出色的合作伙伴，他们也是 Stone Point Capital 金融服务和保险方面的专家[5]，所以我大致知道我会走这条路。然后，问题是怎么做？

I obviously had always wanted to meet Charlie — I held him in such high regard — and I was going to be on the West Coast. I — in no way, shape, or form — thought I would actually get to meet him. I didn’t have any in or anything like that. I just called and talked to his assistant for a little while. The funny thing, that I recall, is that she was really trying to vet me for what I wanted because, of course, everyone is always trying to sell you something. She didn’t believe me at first, [but] I got her to believe me.

我显然一直想见查理——我对他非常尊敬——而且我将要去西海岸。我——无论如何——都没想到我真的能见到他。我没有任何内线或类似的东西。我只是打电话和他的助理聊了一会儿。我记得有趣的是，她真的在试图了解我想要什么，因为当然，每个人总是想卖给你一些东西。起初她不相信我，但我让她相信了我。

So, a couple of days later, I was in a meeting out there — Experian, the credit bureau, was a big position of mine — and I got an email from her that said Charlie can meet[6] tomorrow morning at The California Club at 7 a.m. My wife and I were staying at the Montage in Laguna at the time, so I went up and Charlie and I met for six hours.

所以，几天后，我在那边开会——Experian，信用局，是我的一项重要投资——我收到了她的邮件，邮件说查理可以在明天早上 7 点在加州俱乐部见面。[6]那时我和我的妻子住在拉古纳的蒙塔奇酒店，所以我上去和查理见了六个小时。

NFM: Wow. 哇。

TC: It started at 7 a.m. [and] they cleared all the breakfast, they brought lunch, they cleared the lunch. (Laughs)

TC: 它在早上 7 点开始。[然后]他们收拾了所有的早餐，带来了午餐，他们又收拾了午餐。（笑）

I really had no agenda or anything. We talked about life, we talked about family, we talked about the sciences. I remember we talked a lot about the universe. I had this book on me at the time that I read on the flight out there called Just Six Numbers and it was about how the universe can only exist in this way because gravity has to be… If you take it out sixty digits or whatever, it has to end in precisely the way that it does — or else the universe doesn’t [work]. We talked like for 45 minutes about that.

我真的没有任何议程或其他事情。我们谈论了生活，谈论了家庭，谈论了科学。我记得我们谈了很多关于宇宙的事情。那时我带着一本书，在飞往那里时阅读，书名叫《仅仅六个数字》，它讲述了宇宙只能以这种方式存在，因为引力必须是……如果你去掉六十个数字或其他什么，它必须以精确的方式结束——否则宇宙就不[运作]。我们谈了大约 45 分钟关于这个话题。

不够坦诚，诚实的本质是敢于面对现实。

At the very end — maybe the last hour — we talked about investing. He’s like, “By the way, what do you do?” (Laughs)

在最后一刻——也许是最后一个小时——我们谈到了投资。他说：“顺便问一下，你是做什么的？”（笑）

I told him what I wanted to do. I had a little over half-billion dollar fund at the time, which could have been a lot larger but we didn’t take in fund-of-funds money, we didn’t have European fund-of-funds, etc.

我告诉他我想做的事情。当时我管理着一个规模略高于五亿美元的基金，本可以更大一些，但我们没有接受基金中的基金的资金，也没有欧洲的基金中的基金等。

He said, “Why?” I think that really struck him because most people, if you could be a billion or a billion-and-a-half dollar fund, you do that instead of having a half-billion. I didn’t mean for it to strike him that way, but that started a conversation around my insurance background and looking to do something with permanent capital.

他说：“为什么？”我认为这真的让他感到震惊，因为大多数人如果可以拥有十亿或十五亿的基金，他们会选择这样做，而不是拥有五亿。我并不想让他这样想，但这引发了关于我保险背景的对话，以及希望做一些与永久资本相关的事情。

NFM: Why hadn’t you done that?

NFM：你为什么不这样做？

TC: Why hadn’t I already done the insurance company thing? Well, a couple of reasons. (1) I was still building up my personal capital because I had worked at a fund[7] for three years and, then, this fund for five. (2) I was building up my track record from running this fund. And, then, (3) In no particular order, I was trying to survive the Global Financial Crisis and do the best I could for my LPs. So I didn’t really have any time.

TC：我为什么还没有去做保险公司的事情？原因有几个。（1）我还在积累个人资本，因为我在一个基金工作了三年[7]，然后在这个基金工作了五年。（2）我在积累我管理这个基金的业绩记录。然后，（3）没有特别的顺序，我在努力度过全球金融危机，并尽我所能为我的有限合伙人服务。所以我真的没有时间。

永远没有准备好的那一天，一开始就没有想过“吃自己的饭”？

This was the spring of 2010. It was before the summer.

这是 2010 年的春天。那是在夏天之前。

So we met for six hours or so and Charlie said, “Stay in touch.” I thought he was just being nice. But, about a week later, I was back in my office in Greenwich, Connecticut, and he called me out of the blue. Completely out of the blue. I picked up [the phone] — I thought maybe it was a prank — and Costco had reported earnings. Of course, Charlie’s a huge Costco fan and, so, we talked about [the earnings].

所以我们见面大约六个小时，查理说：“保持联系。”我以为他只是客气而已。但大约一周后，我回到康涅狄格州格林威治的办公室，他突然给我打了电话。完全是突然。我接了电话——我以为可能是恶作剧——而且好市多刚刚公布了财报。当然，查理是好市多的超级粉丝，所以我们聊了聊财报。

投其所好。

Even though I was running a financials fund, I was so into investing that I would look at companies outside of financials. So I just serendipitously had looked at their report, their quarterly earnings, that day. We talked about Costco[8] for a little while and, then, he had a bunch of questions that he had for me that he hadn’t gotten to the first time — about investing and life and stuff like that.

尽管我在管理一个金融基金，但我对投资非常感兴趣，以至于我会关注金融以外的公司。所以那天我偶然看了他们的报告和季度收益。我们聊了一会儿关于好市多[8]，然后他有很多问题想问我，是第一次没有问到的——关于投资、生活和类似的事情。

He said, “The next time you’re out here, we should meet again.” One thing led to another and I met him again on the West Coast and we met at his house. And we would catch up over the phone, [too]. We probably did that a dozen times[9] or so before, one day, he finally said, “You should meet Warren.”

他说：“下次你来这里时，我们应该再见面。”事情发展到后来，我在西海岸再次见到了他，我们在他家见面。我们也会通过电话保持联系。[也是]。我们大概这样做了十几次[9]左右，直到有一天，他终于说：“你应该见见沃伦。”

NFM: Were they all marathon sessions like the six hours?

NFM：他们都是像六小时那样的马拉松会议吗？

TC: They weren’t all six hours. We got ‘em tighter. We got them down to 2-3 hours or something like that.

TC: 他们并不是全部六个小时。我们把它们缩短了。我们把时间缩短到 2-3 小时左右。

NFM: That’s still a significant amount of time.

NFM：那仍然是相当长的一段时间。

TC: For me, it would just fly because Charlie is just such a fountain of knowledge and a true renaissance man. He can literally talk about anything. In fact, that book Just Six Numbers [that] we started talking about, he said, “You know, they forgot this seventh thing…” Almost any book I mentioned, he had either read or read five books related to it or something like that.

TC: 对我来说，这简直是轻而易举，因为查理真的是一个知识的源泉，是真正的文艺复兴人。他几乎可以谈论任何事情。事实上，那本书《仅仅六个数字》 [我们开始谈论的]，他说：“你知道，他们忘记了第七个东西……”几乎我提到的任何书，他要么读过，要么读过五本相关的书，或者类似的东西。

I guess the important thing to note for your listeners is that — and it goes back to my original auspices for calling him — I didn’t even know why, there was no pretense as to why I was meeting him. So the twelfth time we were talking and he said, “You should talk to Warren,” I was really thinking… I had these top names in my fund, like Experian and Mastercard and Visa and so forth, that [had] a lot of analogies to names that Berkshire and Warren would own. So I was thinking all along — in fact, even up to the point that he said, “Go talk to Warren,” and when I flew out to see Warren — that they were really interested in one of these names.

我想，对你的听众来说，重要的一点是——这与我最初打电话给他的原因有关——我当时甚至不知道为什么要见他，也没有任何虚假的理由。所以当我们聊到第十二次时，他说“你应该去找沃伦谈谈”，我真的在想……我基金里的这些顶级公司，比如Experian、Mastercard和Visa等等，与伯克希尔和沃伦持有的公司有很多相似之处。所以我一直在想——实际上，即使在他说“去找沃伦谈谈”并且我飞去见沃伦的时候——我都以为他们对其中一个公司真的感兴趣。

Including when I first sat down with Warren. We started talking about Experian and I thought, Equifax had been on the market and he had done the Marmon deal[10] and it was all part of that same thing — so I totally assumed that was the reason for all these conversations. I never felt like I was interviewing, I guess is what I’m saying. They were just conversations. We were just having intellectual discussions.

包括当我第一次和沃伦坐下来谈话时，我们开始聊到Experian。我以为是因为Equifax曾在市场上，他又做了Marmon的交易[10]，我觉得这都是同一类事情——所以我完全以为这就是我们所有这些对话的原因。我从来没有觉得自己是在面试，我想表达的是这样。我们只是进行一些对话，进行一些智识上的讨论。

NFM: What is the time difference from your first cold call to —

NFM：从你第一次冷电话到——中间隔了多长时间？

TC: Oh, from reaching out to Charlie to [meeting] Warren? It was probably — that’s a good question — a couple months. Three months, four months.

TC: 哦，从联系查理到[见面]沃伦？大概——这是个好问题——几个月。三个月，四个月。

NFM: That’s a lot of meetings in a short amount of time.

NFM：在短时间内有很多会议。

TC: Yeah, but they were fun. (Laughs) They were more of conversations, you know?

TC: 是的，但它们很有趣。（笑）它们更像是对话，你知道吗？

NFM: When you came to meet Warren in Omaha, you had no idea that [a job] was even a possibility?

NFM：当你来到奥马哈见沃伦时，你根本不知道[一份工作]甚至是一个可能性吗？

TC: No. None. Which helped me, because otherwise I would have been too [nervous]. I was listening to a podcast recently — I think it was Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld and Veep fame — and she was talking about bombing auditions. When you really, really want the part is exactly when you don’t get it because you choke.

TC：没有。没有。这对我有帮助，因为否则我会太[紧张]。我最近在听一个播客——我想是朱莉娅·路易斯-德雷福斯（《宋飞正传》和《副总统》的名声）——她在谈论试镜失败。当你真的非常想要这个角色时，恰恰是你得不到它的时候，因为你会紧张。

So, no, under no circumstances [did I know]. I was nervous, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I wasn’t — but I, honestly to God, thought I was coming to talk about [Experian]. I knew my stuff when it came to the names I owned, obviously, so I felt comfortable there — but that’s what I thought I was coming [to Omaha] for.

所以，不，我在任何情况下都不知道。我很紧张，别误解我的意思，我不是说我不紧张——但我，发誓上帝，我以为我是来谈论[Experian]的。显然，当谈到我拥有的名字时，我对自己的了解很清楚，所以我在那方面感到很自在——但我以为我来[奥马哈]是为了这个。

NFM: It was at that meeting that he ended up offering you the role?

NFM：就是在那次会议上他最终给你提供了这个角色？

TC: Yeah, it was the first meeting with Warren. That was about a seven-hour meeting. I came around 9:30 or 10:00 a.m. and we sat in his office for a couple of hours. Literally didn’t talk about stocks at all. We talked about life and family. I was born in Peoria, Illinois, so there’s a lot of Midwest connections and so forth — so we talked a lot about that. And he said, “Do you want to go to lunch?”

TC: 是的，那是我第一次与沃伦见面。那次会议大约持续了七个小时。我大约在早上 9:30 或 10:00 到达，我们在他的办公室坐了几个小时。实际上我们根本没有谈论股票。我们谈论了生活和家庭。我出生在伊利诺伊州的皮奥里亚，所以我们有很多中西部的联系等等——所以我们谈了很多这方面的内容。他问我：“你想去吃午饭吗？”

I had no idea how long it would be or anything. At this point, I’m going, “Great, we get to go to lunch.” He talked a lot about Berkshire — the past, the present, the future, etc. That was a couple of hours, give or take, and then we got back to his office and he’s like, “When’s your flight?” And I said, “Uh, don’t worry about that.” (Laughs)

我不知道这会持续多久或其他任何事情。此时，我心想：“太好了，我们可以去吃午餐。”他谈了很多关于伯克希尔的事情——过去、现在和未来等等。大约过了几个小时，然后我们回到他的办公室，他问：“你的航班是什么时候？”我说：“呃，别担心这个。”（笑）

NFM: “I’ll move my flight!” (Laughs)

NFM：“我会改签我的航班！”（笑）

TC: Yeah. So we got back and we sat in his office for a couple of hours and that’s when we really started talking about stocks and names and how I think about investing, how he thinks about investing. He’d throw out random names — “How would you think about this and that?” — and we went through my top ten list, etc.

TC: 是的。我们回到办公室，坐了几个小时，那时我们真的开始谈论股票和公司名称，以及我对投资的看法，他对投资的看法。他会随意提一些名字——“你对这个和那个怎么看？”——然后我们讨论了我的前十名列表等等。

比想象中更少。

At the very end, he pulled out Lou Simpson’s contract. Lou[11] had retired from Berkshire, I don’t know, maybe six months or a year before that, something like that. That’s when he… This just goes to show — even at, I guess I was 39 at that point — how still naive I was. He said, “We’re thinking about bringing in a manager. Would you have anyone in mind?” And I said, “Oh, yeah, I can think of two or three people for you.” (Laughs) He kind of looked at me like, “Is this guy playing [unintelligible]?”

最后，他拿出了Lou Simpson的合同。Lou[11]从伯克希尔退休了，大概是在六个月或一年之前的事情吧。当时……这就说明了，即使到了那时，我大概是39岁，我还是有点天真。他说，“我们正在考虑引入一位经理，你有没有什么推荐的人选？”我回答道，“哦，是的，我能想到两三个合适的人选。”（笑）他看着我的样子就像在想，“这家伙是在开玩笑吗？”

NFM: You missed the tone of it right there.

NFM：你刚才的语气不对。

TC: Totally. It’s like lack of cues sometimes. He said, “Well, I was thinking about you.” Even after six hours, I still didn’t get it, I guess, is the point. (Laughs)

TC: 完全是这样。有时候就像缺乏提示一样。他说：“嗯，我在想你。”即使过了六个小时，我还是没明白，我想这就是重点。（笑）

乔布斯重回苹果时也有些激动，一早上打电话吵醒老朋友，参考：《2003 Steve Jobs.Steve on Returning to Apple》，两个人都是39岁，但这个问题是一次测试：坦诚的程度。

NFM: Where did your head go from there?

NFM：你接下来想到了什么？

TC: My wife is April and our oldest was in second grade at the time. We had pretty good roots — deep roots — in Connecticut. I still had my fund, I had partners, I had LPs, I had obligations. Now, I had thought about some of that because of the aforementioned insurance company and changing the structure and so forth. But your mind races, obviously.

TC: 我的妻子是四月，我们的老大那时上二年级。我们在康涅狄格州扎根很深。我仍然有我的基金，有合伙人，有有限合伙人，还有义务。现在，我曾考虑过一些事情，因为前面提到的保险公司和改变结构等等。但显然，你的思绪飞速运转。

Warren was fantastic with the whole thing. This is so Warren. This tells you everything, like what you get is what you see. He says, “Don’t make any rash decisions.”

沃伦在整个事情上表现得非常出色。这就是沃伦。这告诉你一切，比如你得到的就是你所看到的。他说：“不要做出任何冲动的决定。”

极致程度的一致性。

It might have been a Tuesday or Wednesday, something like that, and he said, “Go home and think about it and then let’s connect early next week — and hit me with the tough questions.” I think he would have been 80 or so at the time.

那可能是星期二或星期三之类的，他说：“回家想一想，然后我们下周早些时候再联系——问我一些难题。”我想那时他大约 80 岁。

I was out doing some yard work [back in Connecticut] on a Sunday and I came in and April was talking to someone [on the phone]. I thought it was my father. So you see where this is going — it was Warren. He called to talk to her. He knew exactly how to… (Laughs)

我在康涅狄格州的一个星期天外面做一些园艺工作，然后我进来了，April正在和某人通话。我以为是我父亲。所以你知道接下来会发生什么——是沃伦。他打电话来和她聊。他知道该怎么做……（笑）

And, then, I did — I hit him with the tough questions. He was always very open, always very honest. Again, you get what you see. When I joined Berkshire, he said, “Why don’t you and April come out on Thanksgiving weekend if you don’t have plans?” He took us out to dinner and it’s just like you’re part of the family.

然后，我确实这样做了——我问了他一些尖锐的问题。他总是非常坦诚，非常诚实。再说一次，你看到的就是你得到的。当我加入伯克希尔时，他说：“如果你们没有计划，为什么不在感恩节周末来我们这里呢？”他请我们吃晚餐，就像你是家里的一部分。

NFM: It was a quick decision then?

NFM：那是个快速的决定吗？

TC: Yeah, it was over 3-5 days or something like that.

TC: 是的，大约是 3 到 5 天左右。

NFM: I was reading about the announcement on Monday, October 25. I don’t know how much time that was between —

NFM：我在阅读关于 10 月 25 日星期一的公告。我不知道那之间有多少时间——

TC: It was probably pretty short. Within 2-4 weeks, as I recall. My memory is a little fuzzy with it, but something like that.

TC: 我记得可能很短。大约在 2 到 4 周内。我的记忆有点模糊，但大概就是这样。

NFM: So it’s suddenly announced on that Monday, the press release goes out, and you’re sort of the head-fake candidate. (Laughs)

NFM：所以在那个星期一突然宣布，新闻稿发布，你就成了“烟幕弹”候选人。（笑）

TC: I sure was. (Laughs) Out of nowhere.

TC:我确实是。（笑）突然之间。

NFM: They were digging up high school photos of you to post [in media stories]. Did you feel that instantly? Were you getting calls? What was that like?

NFM：他们在挖掘你的高中照片来发布[在媒体故事中]。你当时有感觉吗？你接到电话了吗？那是什么感觉？

TC: It was harder on my wife than it was on me. I told her there was going to be a lot [of attention] here. It’s going to feel like a wave. At first — if she were sitting here, she’d admit — she didn’t fully realize the ramifications of it.

TC:对我的妻子来说，这比对我更难。我告诉她这里会有很多关注。这会感觉像一波浪潮。起初——如果她坐在这里，她会承认——她并没有完全意识到这件事的影响。

And, then, when you have reporters… We were not on a private street — we were on a public street. It was a very nice public street, but it was still a public street. And, so, when there are Bloomberg reporters and they’re parked outside taking pictures and you have young children, it just feels invasive.

然后，当你有记者……我们并不在私人街道上——我们在一条公共街道上。这是一条非常漂亮的公共街道，但它仍然是一条公共街道。因此，当有彭博社的记者停在外面拍照，而你有年幼的孩子时，这感觉就像是一种侵犯。

There’s all kinds of psychology around this. When it’s your world, you see everything through your world. Even though in retrospect, I don’t want to say it wasn’t a big deal — it comes, it goes, it passes, etc. — [but], in the moment, it felt quite overwhelming.

这其中有各种各样的心理因素。当这是你的世界时，你会通过你的世界看待一切。虽然事后看来，我不想说这不是什么大事——事情发生了，过去了，一切都过去了——但在当时的情境下，感觉确实非常压倒一切。

And you want to protect [your kids]. Our kids were quite young — they were Pre-K, K, and second grade at the time — so it’s just a lot to go from zero to a million right away like that. We — in no way, shape, or form — were prepared for it or anything. But you get through it and it’s all fine and innocent at the end of the day.

你想要保护[你的孩子]。我们的孩子当时还很小——他们是学前班、幼儿园和二年级——所以一下子从零到一百万真的很难。我们——无论如何——都没有为此做好准备。但你会度过这一切，最终一切都是好的，都是无辜的。

NFM: How long did it last, that intensity of media interest?

NFM：这种媒体关注的强度持续了多久？

TC: Ehh, it was at least over a month. I remember Warren sent me the board materials and we had the board meeting in late 2010, around the holidays, here in Omaha and I remember he asked me to sit down with Carol Loomis[12]. I said, “Part of our agreement was no media,” as I recall saying, and he said, “Well, I think this will help, actually, with the other situation.” And he, of course, was right.

TC：嗯，那至少持续了一个多月。我记得沃伦给我发了董事会材料，我们在2010年底、节假日期间在奥马哈开了董事会会议。我记得他让我与Carol Loomis见面[12]。我说，“我们之前说好了不接受媒体采访，”这是我记得我当时说的，他说，“嗯，我认为这实际上会对其他情况有所帮助。”当然，他是对的。

I was relatively well-known in the investment community, but then there’s this much… You’re always a fish in some fishbowl, right? If you had asked almost any LP, family foundation, etc., they would have known me or the fund — but I was not Seth Klarman. I wasn’t that name[13] that had been bandied about. I think David Einhorn’s name…

我在投资界相对知名，但也仅此而已……你总是某个鱼缸里的鱼，对吧？如果你问几乎任何有限合伙人、家族基金等，他们会知道我或这个基金——但我不是塞思·卡拉曼。我不是那个被广泛提及的名字[13]，我想大卫·艾因霍恩的名字……

NFM: I kept seeing you described as “largely unknown”.

NFM：我一直看到你被描述为“基本上不为人知”。

TC: (Laughs) Yeah, it’s very flattering.

TC: （笑）是的，这非常令人受宠若惊。

All: (Laughs) 大家: （笑）

TC: Which I was perfectly fine with. I actually take some level of pride in that. I would have preferred to stay relatively unknown[14] — but that was not an option at that point. I feel like a lot is outside of your control, but you have to get over [it] like it doesn’t matter.

TC：我对此完全没有问题。对此我实际上感到有些自豪。我更希望保持相对不为人知[14] — 但那时这并不是一个选择。我觉得很多事情都在你的控制之外，但你必须像不在乎一样克服[它]。

NFM: I saw them using your high school picture. I thought that hilarious.

NFM：我看到他们用你的高中照片。我觉得太好笑了。

TC: I was not happy with my father because I had told everyone and April had told all of her friends not to confirm anything. They had a kid go by my father’s house and pretend to be a neighbor and confirm my picture. He thought it was a neighbor — he didn’t know it was a reporter. They didn’t identify [themselves].

TC: 我对我父亲不满意，因为我已经告诉了所有人，而April也告诉了她所有的朋友不要确认任何事情。他们让一个孩子去我父亲的家，假装是邻居，确认我的照片。他以为那是邻居——他不知道那是记者。他们没有自我介绍。

NFM: That’s pretty underhanded.

NFM：这真是阴险。

TC: It’s totally underhanded! (Laughs)

TC: 这真是太阴险了！(笑)

NFM: Poor dad. NFM: 穷爸爸。

TC: I was not happy with my father for a couple of days. (Laughs) The thing my wife was the least happy with was they put a picture of our house with our address [visible] online. I think that was BusinessWeek, if I remember correctly. Again, with kids and everything… There are a lot of weirdos out there.

TC：我有几天对我父亲不太高兴。（笑）我妻子最不高兴的事情是他们把我们房子的照片和我们的地址[可见]放到了网上。我想那是《商业周刊》，如果我没记错的话。再说了，孩子们和其他一切……外面有很多怪人。

NFM: Your first couple of days at Berkshire Hathaway — I read an article that said you were looking immediately for how you could add value.

NFM：你在伯克希尔哈撒韦的头几天——我读过一篇文章，说你当时立即在寻找如何增加价值。

TC: Yeah. That’s true. (Laughs)

TC: 是的。那是真的。（笑）

NFM: That’s such a good universal way of thinking about it, though. You’re like, okay, Warren knows how to pick stocks — what do I bring to it?

NFM：不过，这真是一个很好的普遍思维方式。你会想，好吧，沃伦知道如何挑选股票——我能带来什么？

TC: Totally. 完全。

NFM: Everyone has that, to some extent, going into a new role and that mindset of figuring out how you add value. How did you do that and where did you end up finding that and how did you get through that?

NFM：每个人在进入新角色时在某种程度上都有这种心态，想要弄清楚自己如何能增加价值。你是如何做到的？你在哪里找到了这个，如何度过这个过程的？

TC: You have to be comfortable in your own skin and you have to be comfortable with your own abilities. You can’t try to do it the way anyone else has done it, I guess, would be the advice I’d give my kids and I try to give students. If you try to change your swing, it isn’t gonna work.

TC: 你必须对自己感到自信，对自己的能力感到自信。我想我会给我的孩子和学生这样的建议：你不能试图以别人做过的方式去做。如果你试图改变你的挥杆，那是行不通的。

I thought a lot about it leading into day one and I kind of wrestled with this and that and the other because Warren handed me Lou Simpson’s portfolio — as I recall, it was $2.5 billion or something like that — and it still had Lou’s names in there. Warren said, “I know some of these. I don’t know others.” I said, “Okay, do you want to talk through them?” He said, “No, it’s yours. You do whatever you want with it.”

在正式上任之前，我对此思考了很久，一直在权衡各种因素。因为沃伦把Lou Simpson的投资组合交给了我——我记得大约是25亿美元左右——里面还有Lou持有的股票。沃伦说：“其中有些我知道，有些我不太了解。”我问他：“好的，你想一起讨论一下这些吗？”他回答：“不，这个组合现在是你的了，你可以随意处理。”

I thought, “Did he really mean that?” If you start down that path, you just second-guess everything. So I made a resolution to myself that I was going to do it my way. It’s the only way I know and I’m going to succeed or fail that way. I had enough confidence in myself, having run a fund or the GFC — we had good results — that I knew this area well and I could do that.

我想，“他真的这么想吗？”如果你开始走这条路，你就会对一切产生怀疑。所以我对自己下定决心，要按照自己的方式来做。这是我唯一知道的方式，我将以这种方式成功或失败。我对自己有足够的信心，曾经管理过一个基金或在全球金融危机期间——我们取得了不错的成绩——我知道这个领域很熟悉，我可以做到这一点。

Mastercard and Visa were my first names that I bought[15] [for Berkshire].

万事达卡和维萨卡是我购买的第一个名字[15] [为伯克希尔].

We had some restrictions, particularly around insurance companies and stuff like that. Like, I owned a lot of Chubb at my fund and there are restrictions around owning insurance companies within insurance companies. But, for the most part, I got to do whatever I wanted in whatever amount I wanted.

我们有一些限制，特别是在保险公司和类似的事情上。比如，我在我的基金中拥有很多查布（Chubb），而在保险公司内部拥有保险公司的话是有一些限制的。但总体来说，我可以随心所欲地做任何事情，任何数量都可以。

经验的积累非常重要，要有一个自己非常熟悉的名单。

So that led to, then, thinking about names. This is a good lesson or story with Warren — we were going to lunch once, twice, sometimes more every week and he was very much into talking about Berkshire — past, present, future — and, also, kind of like, “Hey, as you’re out there looking for things, we can acquire the whole thing if you really like it. Think big. We have to think big to move the needle.”

这就引出了对名字的思考。这是一个关于沃伦的好教训或故事——我们每周有时会一起吃午饭，一次、两次，有时更多，他非常喜欢谈论伯克希尔——过去、现在、未来——而且，还像是，“嘿，当你在外面寻找东西时，如果你真的喜欢，我们可以收购整个公司。要有大思维。我们必须有大思维才能有所突破。”

Lessons like that are invaluable because without someone reinforcing the intuition that you already have, but also have the guardrails to reinforce that intuition to know [that] I can swing and if I strike out, that’s okay. That’s a hugely important lesson that I try and still pass forward today at GEICO.

这样的课程是无价的，因为如果没有人来强化你已经拥有的直觉，同时也提供保护措施来加强这种直觉，让你知道“我可以尝试，如果失败了，那也没关系”。这是一个非常重要的教训，我今天仍然在 GEICO 努力传递。

平常心，排队心理上的干扰以后的感觉，乔布斯有一篇给高中生的演讲：《1996-06 Steve Jobs.Speech at Palo Alto High School》。

And the support of, look, if you’re going to have a $3 billion position in something and you believe that big in it, we should think about [buying] the whole thing.

而且支持，看看，如果你在某个东西上有 30 亿美元的投资，并且你对此有如此大的信心，我们应该考虑[购买]整个项目。

That led, serendipitously, to looking at acquisitions — both large, for Berkshire, and then tuck-ins, as we call them, for the smaller operating companies. One thing leads to another leads to another, as it always does in life, and then that led to working a lot more with our operating subsidiaries when they’d have questions that they didn’t want to bounce off Warren.

这巧合地引导我开始关注收购——既包括为伯克希尔进行的大型收购，也包括我们所谓的小型运营公司的一些小型并购。生活中总是这样，一件事引发另一件事，随后我就开始更多地与我们的运营子公司合作，尤其是在他们有一些不想直接向沃伦请教的问题时。

We’re incredibly autonomous and decentralized, as everyone knows, so that led to things like pooled purchasing, pooled health care, which then led to Haven[16] and things like that. One thing leads to another leads to another.

众所周知，我们是非常自主和去中心化的，这也促成了诸如联合采购、联合医疗等项目，后来又引发了Haven[16]等类似的事情。事情总是一环接一环地发展。

What I try and stress to kids, students, GEICO, etc. is that if you just keep your head down and you focus on the process, things will take care of itself. I feel like, sometimes, where people can get off the rails is when they focus on the outcome instead of the process. They’re trying, not even shortcuts, but sometimes, “I want this outcome. How do I back solve for that?” Instead of just focusing on doing your best, keeping your head down, one foot in front of the other, boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. There are different methods for everybody, but that’s what works for me.

我试图向孩子们、学生、GEICO 等强调的是，如果你保持专注于过程，低头努力，事情就会自然而然地解决。我觉得，有时候人们会偏离轨道，是因为他们把注意力集中在结果上，而不是过程。他们在寻找捷径，或者说，“我想要这个结果，我该如何倒推解决这个问题？”而不是专注于做到最好，低头前行，一步接一步，稳扎稳打。每个人的方法都不同，但这就是对我有效的方法。

非常好的理解。

NFM: Which is, actually, kind of how you ended up in the role in the first place.

NFM：实际上，这就是你最初是如何进入这个角色的。

TC: Exactly. I’m consistent. (Laughs)

TC: 没错。我很一致。（笑）

NFM: If you do that, you keep your head down — you usually get the outcome you were wanting anyways.

NFM：如果你这样做，你就低下头——通常你会得到你想要的结果。

TC: Yeah. Not always. That’s the key. Two steps forward, one step back sometimes.

TC: 是的。并不总是。关键在于。有时是两步向前，一步向后。

NFM: Did you have any big swings that didn’t work?

NFM：你有没有遇到过一些没有成功的大起伏？

TC: At Berkshire or anywhere?

TC: 在伯克希尔还是其他地方？

NFM: Anywhere. NFM：随时随地。

TC: Well, yeah, you always have [misses]. The story of Berkshire — Warren is very open about the mistakes, Dexter [Shoes][17], etc. We’ve been fortunate that most of them have been small, but you absolutely get things wrong. No question about it. Both personal and business, nobody’s perfect.

TC：嗯，是的，你总是会有[失误]。关于伯克希尔的故事——沃伦对错误非常坦诚，德克斯特[鞋子][17]等等。我们很幸运，大多数错误都很小，但你绝对会犯错。毫无疑问。无论是个人还是商业，没有人是完美的。

If you try and be perfect — and this is another thing I always tell the folks at GEICO and students and everyone else — if you think you’re batting 1.000, first of all you’re probably fooling yourself. Second of all, think about the opportunity cost and all of the things that you’re missing. Warren talks about this with philanthropy, you want to be striking out a lot. You want to be pushing the envelope.

如果你试图做到完美——这是我总是告诉 GEICO 的员工、学生和其他所有人的另一件事——如果你认为自己是满分，首先你可能是在自欺欺人。其次，想想机会成本和你错过的所有事情。沃伦在谈到慈善时提到过这一点，你希望经常失败。你希望不断挑战极限。

I think of it like concentric circles. I knew financials quite well — banking, finance, insurance, etc. Okay, so I don’t go from that to then suddenly something completely far afield like technology. You build concentric circles. The first one, I had done stuff with industrials — particularly industrials that had finance arms. So, it’s like CAT, Harley, GM, etc. Okay, if you can understand their finance arm, understanding the industrial aspect of it is generally simpler and more straightforward. Then you build out concentric circles from there and on top of that. So, again, you just take one step at a time.

我把它想象成同心圆。我对金融领域非常了解——银行、金融、保险等。好吧，我不会从这些突然跳到完全不同的领域，比如科技。你要建立同心圆。第一个，我曾经做过一些与工业相关的事情——特别是那些有金融部门的工业公司。所以，就像 CAT、哈雷、通用汽车等。如果你能理解它们的金融部门，那么理解它的工业方面通常会更简单、更直接。然后你从那里开始扩展同心圆，并在此基础上继续发展。所以，再次强调，你只需一步一步来。

You’re gonna make mistakes along the way, but you hope they’re small to medium mistakes — and not… You try to avoid path dependencies and I think people tend to underestimate path dependencies.

在前进的过程中，你肯定会犯错，但希望这些错误是小到中等规模的，而不是……你应该尽量避免路径依赖，我认为人们往往低估了路径依赖。

People will almost always overestimate not only their own abilities, but also the complexity that’s involved in any task. You ask anyone, “What are the odds of that success?” and they might say, “90-95%.” But when you break it down into its constituent parts and then, if there’s twenty things and it’s a multiplicative formula, you ask them what the odds are for each one of those, it might also be 90-95%. But guess what? Multiply 90% by twenty and you’re way under 50%. So you try and think in terms of those and you break it down and chunk it out and that’s at least helped me to avoid — mostly — really, really big mistakes.

人们几乎总是高估自己能力的同时，也高估任何任务所涉及的复杂性。你问任何人：“成功的几率是多少？”他们可能会说：“90-95%。”但是当你将其分解成组成部分时，如果有二十个因素，并且这是一个乘法公式，你问他们每一个的几率，可能也会是 90-95%。但你猜怎么着？将 90%乘以二十，你的结果远低于 50%。所以你试着从这些方面思考，将其分解并分块，这至少帮助我避免了——大多数情况下——真的、真的大错误。

不太好的思维方式。

NFM: Okay, can I jump back a bit?

NFM：好的，我可以回去一点吗？

TC: You can go wherever you want. It’s your show. (Laughs)

TC: 你可以去任何你想去的地方。这是你的表演。（笑）

NFM: I’m fascinated by some of your early relationships. You’re out of college and you went to Progressive. You were a pricing analyst, right? Still pretty junior in your career. But you had a relationship with Charles Davis[18], a director at Progressive. It’s a big company, it’s a big role, and that relationship ended up being important later in funding your own shop.

NFM：我对你早期的一些关系感到着迷。你大学毕业后去了 Progressive。你是一个定价分析师，对吧？在你的职业生涯中仍然相当初级。但你和 Charles Davis[18]，Progressive 的一位董事，有过关系。这是一家大公司，这是一个重要的角色，而这段关系后来在为你自己的公司融资时变得重要。

TC: Although I didn’t know him while I was at Progressive.

TC: 尽管我在Progressive时并不认识他。

NFM: Oh, because I was wondering how you made that connection. So you didn’t know him then?

NFM：哦，因为我在想你是怎么建立那个联系的。所以你当时并不认识他吗？

TC: No, I did not know him then. I can answer the question about how I made the connection if you want.

TC:不，我那时不认识他。如果你想的话，我可以回答我如何建立联系的问题。

NFM: Yeah. I was wondering how you met and how you nurtured that relationship — but it was later.

NFM：是的。我在想你们是如何相遇的，以及你们是如何培养那段关系的——但那是后来的事。

TC: The way that I met Chuck [Davis] and Steve Friedman, who ran Goldman in the ‘90s, was that they were… It’s now Stone Point Capital — it was MMC Capital[19] [back then]. MMC is Marsh & McLennan, the big broker. I think they’re still, along with Aon, the two largest insurance brokers in the world.

TC：我认识Chuck [Davis]和Steve Friedman的方式是，他们在90年代管理高盛时……现在是Stone Point Capital，那时是MMC Capital[19] 。MMC是Marsh & McLennan，大型经纪公司。我认为他们和怡安（Aon）依然是世界上最大的两家保险经纪公司。

They had a private equity arm that Marsh created due to capacity constraints when large hurricanes would come through. This goes back, I believe, to Hurricane Andrew in Florida in the early ‘90s.

他们有一个私募股权部门，这是Marsh因大型飓风来袭时的能力限制而创建的。我相信这可以追溯到 90 年代初佛罗里达的安德鲁飓风。

This [also] goes back to the Spitzer investigation of the insurance industry. They had caught wind, obviously, still being part of Marsh & McLennan. At the time, Marsh, the brokers, the insurance companies, everybody, was in Spitzer’s crosshairs. And, so, they were — and this was all public — looking for the next CEO at Marsh [in an attempt to], just like AIG and everybody else, get out of Spitzer’s crosshairs. They were looking at Steve and Chuck and they were trying to get a gauge of what their future looked like, both as being part of Marsh and what Marsh’s future looked like.

这还要追溯到Spitzer对保险行业的调查。当时，Marsh & McLennan（MMC）显然还属于该公司的组成部分，他们察觉到了一些风声。那时，Marsh、经纪公司、保险公司，所有人都在Spitzer的目标范围内。因此，他们——这些都是公开的消息——在寻找Marsh的下一任CEO，希望像AIG和其他公司一样，摆脱Spitzer的调查目标。他们在考虑Steve和Chuck，并试图评估他们的未来前景，无论是作为Marsh的一部分，还是Marsh的整体未来。

So, long story short, they reached out to people they knew in the industry and said, “Who’s really, really on top of this?” Almost like an investigative reporter type.

所以，长话短说，他们联系了行业内认识的人，问道：“谁对这个真的非常了解？”几乎就像是一名调查记者。

I had been on it for maybe two, two-and-a-half years at that point and I had been short Marsh and Fannie [Mae] and the GSEs. Steve had happened to be on the board of Fannie, as well, because there were some Goldman connections there.

我当时已经做了大约两年、两年半的空头，做空了Marsh和房利美以及政府支持企业。Steve恰好也在房利美的董事会，因为那里有一些高盛的关系。

So, anyway, their contacts had put them in touch with me so we met originally — again, not unlike Charlie and Warren — kind of serendipitously. “Hey, we hear you’re the axe on Marsh and this Spitzer situation.” So we sat down and had a couple of meetings on where do you think this is going, how severe is it, etc. That’s how we originally met.

所以，他们的联系人把他们介绍给我，所以我们最初见面——再次，不像查理和沃伦——有点偶然。“嘿，我们听说你是关于Marsh和这个Spitzer情况的专家。”于是我们坐下来开了几次会，讨论你认为这会发展到哪里，情况有多严重，等等。这就是我们最初见面的方式。

That led into discussions around — Marsh was my biggest short, Fannie was 1b. Fannie ended up, completely unrelated to Steve, to have a lot of accounting improprieties. I was a couple of years in front of that, as well, so we had a good discussion about that.

这引发了关于讨论——Marsh是我最大的空头，Fannie是第二大。Fannie后来因为与Steve无关的原因，出现了很多会计违规行为。我在那之前就已经预见到了这一点，所以我们也就此进行了深入的讨论。

Then, that ultimately led to them saying, “We’ve never found anyone we wanted to start a fund with, but we want to do it with you.” I was looking to leave the fund that I was at at the time — I’d been there for three years and I had my own track record. But if people thought I was unknown when I came to Berkshire, I was really unknown then. (Laughs)

然后，这最终导致他们说：“我们从未找到过想要一起成立基金的人，但我们想和你一起做。”我当时正考虑离开我所在的基金——我在那里待了三年，并且有自己的业绩记录。但如果人们认为我在来到伯克希尔时是个陌生人，那我当时真的很陌生。（笑）

All: (Laughs) 大家: （笑）

TC: They don’t know what unknown was. (Laughs) That’s how that whole relationship, the genesis of it, was.

TC: 他们不知道未知是什么。（笑）这就是整个关系的起源。

NFM: Similar to a lot of people at Berkshire Hathaway, you read a lot. How does that happen now, though, because you’ve got multiple roles. Are you still hitting your 500 pages a week?

NFM：和很多在伯克希尔·哈撒韦的人一样，你读了很多书。不过，现在你有多个角色，这种情况是怎么发生的？你还在每周读 500 页吗？

TC: I am, [but] it’s just different.

TC: 我就是，只是不同。

NFM: Are you podcasting it?

NFM：你在听播客吗？

TC: No. (Laughs) I do listen to a lot of podcasts, but I don’t count those as reading. I’m not cheating.

TC: 不。（笑）我确实听很多播客，但我不把那些算作阅读。我没有作弊。

Now, I would say 80-90% of it is GEICO. Certainly, 100% of my time is GEICO[20]. It adds up to more than 100%, to be clear. During the day, I’m 110% GEICO and I probably get through — I don’t count — but it’s well over 500 pages a week of GEICO material. That’s a different kind of reading because you’re going through specific roadmaps, tech plans, etc. I just went through a sixteen-page, very, very detailed deck with APIs and roadmaps and so forth. Versus reading a 10-K, reading a transcript, reading an annual report, a trade magazine, etc.

现在，我会说 80-90%都是 GEICO。当然，我的时间 100%都是 GEICO[20]。需要明确的是，这加起来超过 100%。白天，我是 110%的 GEICO，我可能会处理——我没有计算——但每周的 GEICO 材料超过 500 页。这是一种不同的阅读，因为你要浏览特定的路线图、技术计划等。我刚刚浏览了一份十六页的非常详细的文档，里面有 API 和路线图等等。与阅读 10-K、阅读记录、阅读年报、行业杂志等相比。

I do the investing stuff at night to relax and on the weekends. (Laughs) Warren and I meet, oftentimes, on Saturdays, so that’s when I do the investing stuff. I probably read more, but it’s just a very different composition now. There are similarities, but there are a lot of differences, obviously, between investing and operations.

我晚上和周末做投资的事情来放松。（笑）沃伦和我经常在星期六见面，所以那时我会做投资的事情。我可能读得更多，但现在的组成方式非常不同。虽然有相似之处，但投资和运营之间显然有很多不同。

NFM: Anything you’ve read in the last year or so that you’d recommend? Last year, Ted [Weschler] gave us Trillion Dollar Triage, which was great. We did a book club internally on it.

NFM：你在过去一年左右读过的书中，有什么推荐的吗？去年，Ted [Weschler] 给我们推荐了《Trillion Dollar Triage》，这本书很棒。我们内部进行了一个读书俱乐部。

TC: Investing-wise or just anything?

TC: 投资-wise 还是随便什么？

NFM: Just general. NFM：只是一般。

TC: The movie is coming out soon, but one of my favorite books that I’ve read in the last — this might even be more than a year ago — is Killers of the Flower Moon. DiCaprio and I think it’s on Apple TV, it’s coming out21 right after the annual meeting. I haven’t seen the reviews for it yet, but I’ve got to believe [it will be great]. The book is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I couldn’t put it down. It’s about the origins of the FBI and going through the Osage Indians in Oklahoma. It’s just absolutely phenomenal.

TC：这部电影即将上映，但我在过去——这可能已经超过一年——读过的我最喜欢的书之一是《Killers of the Flower Moon》。迪卡普里奥主演，我想它将在苹果电视上上映，21号就在年度会议之后。我还没有看到它的评论，但我必须相信[它会很棒]。这本书是我读过的最好的书之一。我无法放下它。它讲述了联邦调查局的起源，以及在俄克拉荷马州的奥萨奇印第安人之间的故事。简直太棒了。

I used to be able to get through about a book a week. I would nail pretty much 48 books a year for quite a while there. Last year, it was a struggle to get over 12. I’m literally maxed out in every way, shape, or form — and any marginal time, obviously, goes to the family. Then, whatever rolls over goes to cycling or running.

我以前每周能读完一本书。那段时间我每年能读大约 48 本书。去年，勉强读过 12 本书都很困难。我在各个方面都感到精疲力竭，任何额外的时间显然都用来陪伴家人。然后，剩下的时间就用来骑自行车或跑步。

来自PGR的竞争。

NFM: Marginal time? NFM：边际时间？

TC: Right, over and above. My equity tranche. No, I’ve got a long, long list of book reviews that I could… There are so many. I used to have a really challenging time — if I started a book, I’d feel like — I didn’t fully appreciate sunk cost, apparently, at the time — I would feel the need to finish it regardless. Now, if I can only get through twelve, if I’m a couple of chapters in and it’s a dud, I move on.

TC: 对，超出我的权益部分。不，我有一长串的书评可以……有太多了。我以前常常面临一个很大的挑战——如果我开始一本书，我会觉得——显然当时我并没有完全理解沉没成本——我会觉得必须把它读完。现在，如果我只能读到十二页，如果我读了几章觉得不好，我就会继续往下看。

The one thing I still read, that I’ve always read from those days of Warren at Columbia, is Jim Grant’s Interest Rate Observer. It’s a phenomenal publication. It’s very widely followed on the Street. He’s a phenomenal writer.

我仍然阅读的唯一一件事，从沃伦在哥伦比亚的那些日子开始我就一直在读的是吉姆·格兰特的利率观察。这是一本非凡的出版物。在华尔街上受到广泛关注。他是一位杰出的作家。

I think a lot of people now read Matt Levine on Bloomberg. I gave it to Warren a couple years ago and his writing is very pithy and witty — and, now, everybody reads it. He kind of becomes the go-to source on whether it’s Silicon Valley Bank or what have you.

我觉得现在很多人都在阅读马特·莱文在彭博社上的文章。我几年前把它推荐给沃伦，他的写作非常简练和机智——现在，大家都在读它。他似乎成为了关于硅谷银行或其他相关话题的首选来源。

NFM: Do you read anything that you think nobody else reads?

NFM：你有没有读过一些你认为没有人会读的书？

TC: I don’t think a lot of people read… It’s going to come off the wrong way, so I don’t mean it to come off this way — but I think most people would probably be surprised how few people actually read annual reports and 10-Ks, let alone trade magazines[22].

TC：我认为很多人并不阅读……这可能会让人误解，所以我并不是想让它这样被理解——但我认为大多数人可能会惊讶于实际上有多少人很少阅读年报和 10-K 报告，更不用说行业杂志了[22]。

I still read trade magazines and they’re a phenomenal source of information. If Becca23 is quoted in a furniture trade magazine, now you know what she says, what she believes, she’s likely to call you back because you’ve got a lead-in, etc. I’ve used that for 25+ years to get information, just as a journalist would.

我仍然阅读行业杂志，它们是信息的极好来源。如果 Becca23 在一家家具行业杂志上被引用，现在你知道她说了什么，她相信什么，她很可能会给你回电话，因为你有了引子，等等。我已经用这个方法超过 25 年来获取信息，就像记者一样。

NFM: So you call? NFM：所以你打电话了吗？

TC: Absolutely. 绝对是。

NFM: So you might read something, someone gives a quote, you might just follow up with them, pick up the phone —

NFM：所以你可能会读到一些东西，有人给了一个引用，你可能会跟进他们，打个电话——

TC: I used to do it myself, but now I have analysts that do it for me. I miss doing it myself, to be clear.

TC: 我以前自己做，但现在有分析师为我做。我想念自己做的感觉，明确一点。

NFM: And people pick up and talk?

NFM：人们会接起电话并交谈吗？

TC: Yeah, it’s surprising — 9 out of 10 or something like that. And that’s where you get… In investing, there’s a quantitative and there’s a qualitative. If you’re really thinking about it, there should be two courses. I think Warren has said this, too.

TC: 是的，这很令人惊讶——大约有 90%。这就是你得到的……在投资中，有定量和定性。如果你真的考虑这个问题，应该有两门课程。我认为沃伦也说过这个。

How to value a security — that’s kind of relatively easy. The math is not complicated. That’s the quantitative.

如何评估证券——这相对简单。数学并不复杂。这是定量分析。

The qualitative is the really, really unique part. That’s the secret sauce. You could compare it to being a chef or something like that. You can give two chefs a recipe and the master chef is going to cook it very differently than I would.

定性部分是真正独特的部分。这就是秘密所在。你可以把它比作一个厨师之类的东西。你可以给两个厨师一个食谱，而大师厨师做出来的菜和我做的会非常不同。

NFM: It’s the technique. NFM：这就是技巧。

TC: Yeah — and it matters! That’s where details matter.

TC: 是的——这很重要！细节在这里很重要。

When Warren and I would talk about stocks, acquisitions, whatever, it’s 95-99% qualitative, qualitative, qualitative.

当沃伦和我谈论股票、收购或其他事情时，95-99%都是定性的，定性的，定性的。

That comes down to all the stuff that he talks about in terms of moats, barriers to entry. You’re not getting that, necessarily, in a filing or an annual report. You get a sense for it — it’s a starting point — but you want to work, essentially, inside out. What I mean by that is starting with the details and, then, those details form the foundation from which you can build upon — that you then gain a qualitative understanding.

这归结于他所谈论的所有内容，比如护城河和进入壁垒。你在文件或年报中不一定能得到这些信息。你会对它有一个大致的了解——这只是一个起点——但你想要从内到外地工作。我所说的意思是，从细节开始，然后这些细节构成了你可以在其基础上构建的基础——这样你就能获得定性的理解。

I personally feel like too many people start outside in. And what I mean by that is they’re starting with a narrative. They’re starting because they heard something from someone or they saw it on CNBC or they read a research report or what have you. If you start with any narrative… One of the real cognitive dissonances that we can all have, or blind spots, is that then you start forming all of your opinions based on a loose narrative that you formed that was completely erroneous to begin with.

我个人觉得太多人是从外部开始的。我的意思是，他们是从一个叙述开始的。他们开始是因为听到了某人的话，或者在 CNBC 上看到了什么，或者读了一份研究报告，或者其他什么。如果你从任何叙述开始……我们所有人都可能有的一个真正的认知失调，或者盲点，就是你开始根据一个你形成的松散叙述来形成你所有的观点，而这个叙述一开始就是完全错误的。

It’s no different than the scientific process: You don’t start with a narrative and try to prove it. You start with the facts and build it from there.

这与科学过程没有什么不同：你不是从叙述开始并试图证明它。你是从事实开始，然后从那里构建。

NFM: You’ve said that you try to clear the noise of the narrative until you’ve done your own research.

NFM：你说过你会努力清除叙述中的噪音，直到你自己做了研究。

从一个聪明的假设开始，包括商业模式和企业文化，但凡有一个不符合就不能进入备选的清单。

TC: I don’t even look at the market cap of a name. A game that I’ve always played with myself is, like, look at the name, do your work, build up what you would buy that entire business for, and 80-90% of the time you’re within 20% of what the enterprise value or the market cap trades for. But, sometimes, it’s just completely [different].

我甚至不看一个公司的市值。我一直在和自己玩一个游戏，比如，看一下这个名字，做你的功课，估算一下你愿意为整个业务支付的价格，80-90%的时间你会在企业价值或市值交易价格的 20%以内。但有时候，它就是完全不同。

Mastercard is a good example of that. I think it came public for $3-3.5 billion and I purposely didn’t want to know — and did not know or hear that at the time — and I valued it at like $30 [billion] or something like that.

万事达卡就是一个很好的例子。我记得它上市时的市值在30-35亿美元左右，而我当时有意不去了解这些信息，并且确实不知道或没听到这些消息。我自己估值大概是在300亿美元左右。

NFM: Those are the ones you’re looking for.

NFM：那些就是你在寻找的。

TC: Exactly. And when I was shorting, vice versa. This thing isn’t worth anything and yet it’s trading for $100 billion or something.

TC: 正是如此。当我做空的时候，情况正好相反。这东西根本不值钱，却在交易中达到 1000 亿美元左右。

You avoid the anchoring effect that way. Once you’re anchored, you’re anchored. You can’t undo it. The genie is out of the bottle.

你这样可以避免锚定效应。一旦你被锚定，就无法改变。瓶子里的精灵已经放出来了。

为什么会被锚定？我对字节的看法已经改变了很多回，最近一次是《I.H.25.Eric Schmidt.TikTok as Television》，哪个是更接近本质的观点，一目了然的事。

You start double-questioning yourself, “Well, they think this — why don’t I think that?” And, now, you’re just wrapped around an axle.

你开始对自己产生双重怀疑，“好吧，他们这么想——我为什么不这么想？”现在，你只是陷入了困境。

NFM: I read where you talked about the importance of understanding the parts of the business that are dying.

NFM：我看到你谈到理解那些正在衰退的业务部分的重要性。

TC: Yeah. 是的。

NFM: Which was super interesting because I think we’re always focused on the growth and what’s new, but I’d love to hear more of your thoughts around that. I think you were talking about that from the business side, the CEO side vs. the investing side.

NFM：这非常有趣，因为我认为我们总是关注增长和新事物，但我想听听你对此的更多看法。我觉得你在谈论商业方面，CEO 方面与投资方面的区别。

TC: I don’t know where I said that — I don’t remember.

TC: 我不知道我在哪里说过这个——我不记得了。

A couple thoughts come to mind: One is that every business has a golden goose. It doesn’t mean it’s one golden goose. Sometimes, you have multiple golden gooses. But an error that people make — and God knows I’ve made this myself — is you look at the whole thing versus really getting down into the constituent parts, into the details, and saying, “Oh, this makes that work. And, because this makes that work, this then makes everything else work.” There’s a domino effect or a compounding effect — every business can be similar but also different. So really understanding that…

我想到几个问题：一个是每个企业都有一只金鹅。这并不意味着只有一只金鹅。有时，你可能有多只金鹅。但人们常犯的一个错误——上帝知道我自己也犯过——是你看整个事情，而不是深入到组成部分、细节中去，问自己：“哦，这个使得那个运作。而因为这个使得那个运作，这个就使得其他一切都运作。”这有一个多米诺效应或复合效应——每个企业可以是相似的，但也可以是不同的。所以真正理解这一点……

Conversely, understanding where the risks are that people don’t appreciate. One of things I remember both Warren and Charlie and I discussed in our first meetings was… In fact, the first book I gave both of them is this book called Ubiquity by Mark Buchanan. It’s about power laws and fractal laws and how low-frequency, high-severity… And the higher up you go on severity, it’s not linear. We all tend to think linearly about life and about risk, but in fact it’s much more about a power law which is a logarithmic-type function.

相反，了解人们未能意识到的风险所在。我记得沃伦和查理以及我在第一次会议上讨论的事情之一是……实际上，我送给他们的第一本书是这本名为《Ubiquity》的书，作者是马克·布坎南。它讲述了幂律和分形法则，以及低频率、高严重性……而且在严重性上升时，它不是线性的。我们都倾向于线性思考生活和风险，但实际上，这更多的是关于幂律，这是一种对数型函数。

When you double a severity, generally the frequency goes down by a larger factor. Almost with anything. Whether it’s catastrophes like hurricanes or war or anything. It could be good things, too, by the way. But looking for that and thinking about that in a business, in terms of where they’re taking risks.

当你将严重性加倍时，通常频率会以更大的因素下降。几乎适用于任何事物。无论是飓风或战争等灾难，还是其他任何事情。顺便说一下，这也可以是好事。但在商业中考虑这一点，思考他们在承担风险的地方。

The words that I remember stuck with both Warren and Charlie were having way-out-of-the-money puts. A lot of people have…

我记得沃伦和查理都提到过的词是“深度虚值的puts”。很多人都有……

NFM: Can you say that again?

NFM：你能再说一遍吗？

TC: Sorry, selling way-out-of-the-money puts. You can do this in life — it’s essentially like borrowing from the future or ignoring a risk. Selling a way-out-of-the-money put, you’ll win nine out of ten times — but that tenth time, you get tattooed. You lose everything.

抱歉，卖出远离实值的看跌期权。你可以在生活中这样做——这本质上就像是从未来借钱或忽视风险。卖出远离实值的看跌期权，你十次中有九次会赢——但第十次，你就会遭受重创。你会失去一切。

I think the closest analogy is how Warren and Charlie talk about the insurance business. And, more specifically, last year Charlie was the one who commented that the brilliance of Ajit [Jain] is not the premiums that he’s grown and the money that he’s made, it’s avoiding selling cheap out-of-the-money puts. That’s where the rubber [really] meets the road because anyone can do that (selling those puts).

我认为最接近的类比是沃伦和查理谈论保险业务的方式。更具体地说，去年查理评论说，阿吉特[贾因]的聪明之处不在于他所增长的保费和赚到的钱，而在于避免出售便宜的虚值看跌期权。这才是真正的关键，因为任何人都可以做到这一点（出售这些看跌期权）。

You see it in banking all the time. You see it in finance all the time. You see it when hedge funds blow up, when banks blow up, etc. They are, essentially, selling way-out-of-the-money puts. They’re betting that something extreme doesn’t happen.

你在银行业中经常看到这种情况。在金融领域中你也经常看到。当对冲基金崩溃、银行崩溃时等等。他们本质上是在卖出深度虚值的看跌期权。他们在押注极端事件不会发生。

And, look, we all make mistakes — but, oftentimes, the risk is right there. It’s very obvious. It’s just that they’ve completely mis-priced it or they’ve not even thought about it or taken it into account. Sometimes it’s greed [or] time horizons get arbitraged. Charlie talks about bankers getting paid annual bonuses versus taking five-plus year risks.

而且，看看，我们都会犯错误——但很多时候，风险就在眼前。非常明显。只是他们完全错误定价，或者根本没有考虑到这一点。有时是贪婪[或]时间范围被套利。查理谈到银行家获得年度奖金与承担五年以上的风险。

I’ve always been really, really fascinated with that and my mind has always worked very much that way — so that, when I look at businesses and look at companies, I look for those. I start at the edges and look for those. Where are they taking those risks that are laying below the surface? GE Capital is a very poignant example that everybody is aware of.

我一直对这种情况非常着迷，我的思维方式也一直是这样的——所以，当我审视业务和公司时，我会寻找那些隐藏在表面之下的风险。我从边缘开始，寻找这些风险。GE Capital是一个非常鲜明的例子，大家对此都很清楚。

You look for asymmetries, basically. You’re looking for asymmetric risk and you’re looking for asymmetric upside that is also unaccounted for.

你基本上是在寻找不对称性。你在寻找不对称风险，以及未被考虑的不对称上行潜力。

NFM: One of the main reasons we’re here is the Berkshire Hathaway conference coming up. It’s themed this year — the Seventies. You were born in ’71 — how much influence did you have on the theme?

NFM：我们在这里的主要原因之一是即将举行的伯克希尔·哈撒韦会议。今年的主题是——七十年代。你出生于 71 年——你对这个主题有多大影响？

TC: None. Absolutely none. (Laughs) I actually did not know that was the theme. I just learned that. You learn something new every day. I checked that box today.

TC: 没有。绝对没有。（笑）我实际上不知道那是主题。我刚刚才知道。每天都有新的东西可以学习。今天我勾选了那个选项。

NFM: We asked Ted this last year, but there’s obviously a huge buzz about the annual event every single year. Tens of thousands of people make the trip into Omaha for it. How exciting does it feel for you and the rest of the Berkshire Hathaway team every year?

NFM：我们去年问过泰德这个问题，但每年关于这个年度活动的热议显然是巨大的。成千上万的人为此来到奥马哈。对你和伯克希尔·哈撒韦团队来说，每年感觉有多激动人心？

TC: For me, I have a lot of friends and, sometimes, family that come in for it. It’s always great — we have people stay with us and friends that I’ve known for decades. Last year, both my best friend from Columbia — as well as the best man in each other’s weddings — came in and stayed with us at our house, which was fantastic. And there are a lot of people who are friends, acquaintances, that you only get to see maybe once a year that are coming from overseas, Australia, Asia, Europe, etc. It’s a chance to see them. Our one and only touchpoint that’s better than over the phone.

TC: 对我来说，我有很多朋友，有时还有家人会来参加。这总是很棒——我们有朋友住在我们家，还有我认识几十年的朋友。去年，我在哥伦比亚的最好的朋友，以及我们彼此婚礼上的伴郎，都来我们家住，这真是太好了。还有很多朋友和熟人，你可能一年只见一次，他们来自海外，澳大利亚、亚洲、欧洲等等。这是一个见面的机会。我们唯一比电话更好的接触点。

Now that I’m running GEICO, we have 30-40 people that come in that are on the floor. Sales and service professionals that are there to help existing and new customers.

现在我在管理 GEICO，我们有 30 到 40 名员工在现场。他们是销售和服务专业人员，旨在帮助现有客户和新客户。

I also use it as an opportunity to have in — even though Warren comes out twice a year to GEICO, that’s the only subsidiary he does that for — I also use it to bring a dozen or so of our senior folks out as kind of a reward and a treat. So, last year, it was all my direct reports. This year, we went through a big re-org about six months ago and the people that were really instrumental in getting that over the line, I’m bringing out and we’re having dinner Saturday night together. It’s a win all around.

我也把这当作一个机会来邀请——尽管沃伦每年只来 GEICO 两次，这是他唯一为此做的子公司——我还利用这个机会邀请十几个我们的高级员工，作为一种奖励和款待。所以，去年是我所有的直接下属。今年，我们大约六个月前经历了一次大规模的重组，那些在推动这项工作上发挥了重要作用的人，我会邀请他们出来，我们周六晚上一起吃晚餐。这对大家来说都是一个双赢的局面。

NFM: Can you speak to how you approach networking? I think a lot of people look at it as a chore, but that’s not your approach at all.

NFM：你能谈谈你是如何看待人际网络的？我觉得很多人把它看作是一项繁琐的工作，但你并不是这样看待的。

TC: When I hear the word “networking”, I have a little bit of a — and I don’t want to offend anyone — not a vitriolic reaction, but a negative reaction.

TC: 当我听到“网络”这个词时，我有一点——我不想冒犯任何人——不是一种尖刻的反应，而是一种消极的反应。

NFM: Like there’s an underlying motive.

NFM：就像有一个潜在的动机。

TC: Yeah, that there’s some motive. Like a sleight of hand. I’m going to sound like a broken record, but I go back to the process vs. outcome thing. I don’t think I’ve ever actively used the word “networking”. I just have friends and people I enjoy. And, then, there’s people you interact with [where] one thing leads to another. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. I just look at it that way — one thing leads to another.

TC: 是的，这里有一些动机。就像变魔术一样。我可能听起来像个老生常谈，但我还是要回到过程与结果的问题上。我觉得我从来没有主动使用过“人脉”这个词。我只是有朋友和我喜欢的人。然后，还有一些人你会互动，事情就这样一环扣一环。有时候会，有时候不会。我就是这样看待它——一件事引出另一件事。

Sometimes, as people get older, they can narrow their world. I’ve learned a lot from Warren and Charlie and others over the years, but one of the things I’ve really learned from Warren is he’s absolutely spectacular about keeping a very wide aperture.

有时候，随着年龄的增长，人们可能会缩小自己的世界。我从沃伦、查理和其他人身上学到了很多，但我从沃伦身上真正学到的一件事是，他在保持非常宽广的视野方面绝对出色。

But, also, you only get so much time — so focusing your time on the people that you enjoy spending it with and who make you feel good and are happy and accretive. Accretive in a happy sense, not a monetary sense. (Laughs)

但是，你的时间是有限的——所以要把时间集中在那些你喜欢和他们共度时光的人身上，他们让你感觉良好，快乐，并且是积极向上的。积极向上是指快乐的意义，而不是金钱的意义。（笑）

You’d much rather do that and you don’t repeat the people you don’t want to spend time with than try to create a narrow aperture, so to speak. I try to learn something from that.

你宁愿这样做，而不是和那些你不想花时间的人重复相处，试图创造一个狭窄的视野。我试着从中学习一些东西。

NFM: The idea behind the wide aperture is just being open to talking to a wide amount of people from different industries?

NFM：大光圈的想法就是开放与来自不同行业的广泛人群交流吗？

TC: Within [reason]. Time is valuable, right? There’s always a trade-off there. And I’m introverted, to be clear. I’m a pretty introverted person.

TC: 在[合理范围]内。时间是宝贵的，对吧？总是有权衡的。而且我想明确一下，我是个内向的人。我是一个相当内向的人。

NFM: You wouldn’t know. NFM：你不会知道。

TC: Then I hide it well because I’m quite introverted. I like sitting in a room and reading[24].

TC：然后我把它藏得很好，因为我很内向。我喜欢坐在房间里看书[24]。

I do enjoy people, but I probably don’t go out of my way as much as I should — that’s a blindspot of mine — to initiate things. But once it’s initiated, I feel like I have a decent read [of other people]. I’m sure most people feel like they have a decent read for other people and I’m pretty good at either reinforcing those or cutting it off or whatever.

我确实喜欢与人交往，但我可能没有像应该的那样主动去发起互动——这是我的一个盲点。但一旦互动开始，我觉得我能够很好地读懂他人。当然，大多数人可能都觉得自己能很好地理解他人，而我在强化这种理解或及时切断关系方面做得还算不错。

主动是一个关键的点。

And, then, it just builds over time. You meet friends through other friends and so forth. People tend to be pretty like-minded.

然后，这种关系随着时间的推移而建立。你通过其他朋友认识朋友，等等。人们往往志趣相投。

NFM: Did you participate in the Berkshire Hathaway March Madness[25]?

NFM：你参加了伯克希尔哈撒韦的三月疯狂吗[25]?

TC: I did, yeah. I forget exactly how many people at GEICO [played], but we had pretty good participation. We have about 35,000 employees and — I don’t want to quote it exactly — but it was tens of thousands that we had participate in it. We get pretty good participation from the subs.

TC:我参加了，是的。我不太记得在 GEICO 有多少人参与，但我们的参与度相当不错。我们大约有 35,000 名员工——我不想确切引用——但参与的人数是成千上万的。我们从子公司获得了相当不错的参与。

With Covid, all these dates get skewed. I used to be pretty locked in on these things, but I don’t remember when our first one was — six, seven, eight years ago, or something like that.

由于疫情，所有这些日期都变得模糊。我以前对这些事情非常确定，但我不记得我们的第一次是什么时候——六年前、七年前、八年前，或者类似的时间。

[Warren] would come down five or six times a day when I was in the office every day, before I was running GEICO and before Covid, and he said, “This is what I’m thinking about. What do you think the odds are?” I said, “Well, it’s actually pretty relatively easy to calculate the odds because you’ve got a pretty good history on #1 vs. #16, #8 vs. #9, etc.”

[沃伦]在我每天都在办公室的时候，会下来五六次，那个时候我还没有管理 GEICO，也还没有疫情，他说：“这是我在考虑的事情。你觉得成功的几率是多少？”我说：“其实计算几率相对来说是比较简单的，因为你有关于#1 对#16、#8 对#9 等的相当不错的历史数据。”

I did a pretty quick calculation on it and I think Ajit and Don Wurster[26] did as well — and we were all pretty, pretty close. I don’t think anyone’s ever won the entire thing with a perfect pool. And, as you guys know, there’s a lot more competition today than there’s ever been. It’s a lot flatter. You get more upsets, obviously, which then extends the odds even more. But that’s fun.

我对此做了一个相当快速的计算，我认为 Ajit 和 Don Wurster[26]也这样做了——我们都非常接近。我认为没有人曾经以完美的预测赢得整个比赛。而且，正如你们所知道的，今天的竞争比以往任何时候都要激烈得多。竞争更加平坦。显然，你会看到更多的冷门，这进一步增加了赔率。但这很有趣。

NFM: How did you do?

NFM：你做得怎么样？

TC: Oh, I did terrible. (Laughs) I don’t know if it was the second game or the third game and I was [already] out. Whenever the first upset was.

TC: 哦，我表现得很糟糕。（笑）我不知道是第二局还是第三局，我就已经出局了。每当第一次冷门发生的时候。

NFM: That makes us feel a little better.

NFM: 这让我们感觉好一些。

TC: It’s impossible. It’s not meant to win, it’s just meant to be fun.

TC: 这不可能。这不是为了赢，而是为了好玩。

NFM: When you think about what you’ve achieved in your career overall — starting your own hedge fund at Castle Point, all the accomplishments at Berkshire, and now CEO of GEICO — do you think that eighteen-year-old Todd would believe you if you went back and told him?

NFM：当你回顾自己在职业生涯中所取得的成就——在 Castle Point 创办自己的对冲基金，在 Berkshire 的所有成就，以及现在担任 GEICO 的首席执行官——你认为如果你回到过去告诉十八岁的 Todd，他会相信你吗？

TC: Hell no. No, absolutely not. April and I talk about this sometimes, because we’ve done it together. You never accomplish any of this on your own. One of the really, really amazing feelings — and this is going to sound cliche or cheesy, but I mean it — is the feeling of gratitude that you have when you accomplish [something].

TC: 绝对不行。绝对不。April和我有时会谈论这个，因为我们一起做过。你永远无法独自完成这些事情。那种真正令人惊叹的感觉——这听起来可能有些陈词滥调或老套，但我是真心的——就是当你完成某件事情时所感受到的感激之情。

When people see something in you that you don’t see in yourself. My first outside investor, that invested when I started my fund, they had absolutely no reason to take a chance on me versus giving money to any one of the other names that the media likes. You’ll never forget that. And the people that mentored me and brought me along. You really are standing on the shoulders of others, as much as that sounds like a cliche. So, no, under no circumstances, would I have ever even remotely believed any of it.

当人们在你身上看到你自己看不到的东西时。我第一个外部投资者在我开始我的基金时投资，他们完全没有理由冒险选择我，而不是把钱给媒体喜欢的其他任何名字。你永远不会忘记这一点。还有那些指导我、带我前行的人。你确实是在他人的肩膀上站着，尽管这听起来像个陈词滥调。所以，不，我在任何情况下都不会相信这些。

I remember sitting at Progressive in the ‘90s, back when you still had to buy mutual funds before index funds were big. I was in Dean Witter or Morgan Stanley funds or something like that and, of course, you had to have a broker because that’s the way things were done. I remember asking for the prospectus and, apparently, no one really ever looked at those things. (Laughs)

我记得90年代在Progressive工作的时候，那时还得购买共同基金，因为指数基金还没有那么流行。我投资了Dean Witter或Morgan Stanley的基金之类的东西，而且当然，你必须有一个经纪人，因为那时的运作方式就是这样。我记得当时我要求看招股说明书，而显然没有人真正去看那些东西。（笑）

I read it and I actually read the background on each of the managers and they all had MBAs from Columbia, Harvard, Ivy League schools. I asked my broker, “I love securities and I love investing. What would it take to do that?” He basically said, “You’ve got no chance in hell, kid. Just forget about it.” (Laughs) So, little do you know. Again, you just put one [foot] in front of the other.

我仔细阅读了招股说明书，甚至查看了每位基金经理的背景，他们都有哥伦比亚大学、哈佛大学和常春藤联盟学校的MBA学位。我问我的经纪人，“我喜欢证券和投资，想知道要怎么才能做到像他们那样？”他基本上回答说，“你根本没有任何机会，小子。就忘了这事吧。”（笑）所以，你永远不知道未来会怎样。再次说明，只要一步步走下去就行。

When I started studying for the GMAT, I loved my job at Progressive and I had a pretty good career trajectory going. Glenn Renwick, who went on to be the CEO shortly thereafter, we were kind of three doors down from each other. He was — to be clear — many, many levels above me. But it was not an easy decision getting into Columbia to forgo that known income. It was a burden on my wife, who was working at the time. We pushed back having kids for two years. So there were sacrifices along the way, too.

当我开始准备GMAT考试时，我非常喜欢我在Progressive的工作，并且我的职业发展轨迹相当不错。Glenn Renwick，后来很快成为了公司的CEO，我们的办公室大概相隔三扇门。当然，他的职位比我高很多级别。但是，放弃那份稳定的收入去哥伦比亚大学读书并不是一个容易的决定。这对我的妻子也是一种负担，当时她在工作。我们推迟了两年才要孩子。所以在这过程中也有一些牺牲。

To come back and answer your question — no, under no circumstances [did I expect this]. There’s been a lot of luck involved. If I didn’t call Charlie, if, if if. A million things had to happen the way that they did.

回到你的问题——不，在任何情况下我都没有预料到这一点。这其中有很多运气。如果我没有打电话给查理，如果，如果，如果。有一百万件事情必须以这样的方式发生。

Here’s an interesting tie-in to Berkshire. When I started at Columbia, Progressive, back then, did not have public calls and so I was pretty tight with many of our general managers because we had rolled out credit and telematics and so forth — and I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and spearhead a lot of that. So I was going to business school, we had some general managers who had gone to Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, etc. and they said, “You should talk to Weston Hicks,” who was, at that time, the #1 II-rated insurance analyst at JPMorgan.

这里有一个有趣的与伯克希尔相关的故事。当我开始在哥伦比亚大学读书时，Progressive那时候还没有公开电话会议，因此我与许多总经理关系非常紧密，因为我们当时推出了信用评分和远程信息处理等技术——而我很幸运，恰逢其时，领导了许多这些项目。当我去读商学院时，有些总经理曾就读于芝加哥大学、哥伦比亚大学、哈佛大学等学校，他们对我说：“你应该去找Weston Hicks聊聊。”当时他是摩根大通的首席保险分析师，并且在《机构投资者》排名中位列第一。

If you had told me then that I would be on the board of JPMorgan[27]…

如果你那时告诉我我会在摩根大通的董事会中[27]…

Weston went on to be the CEO of Alleghany, which we just purchased last year[28]. Weston took the time to meet with me, knowing full well that I could not in any way [help him]. I knew a little bit about Progressive that he wanted to fish around about, but he put me in touch with these guys at Blue Ridge Capital[29], which was one of the big Tiger Cubs[30], and said, “They’re really doing a lot in insurance right now. You know insurance and they know investing.” You look for win-wins — and one thing led to another led to another led to another. That’s been the story of my life.

Weston后来成为了Alleghany的CEO，而我们去年刚刚收购了Alleghany[28].。Weston花时间与我见面，尽管他完全清楚我并不能给他带来任何帮助。我知道他想从我这里打听一些关于Progressive的情况，但他还是把我介绍给了Blue Ridge Capital的人[29]，这家公司是“老虎基金小虎队”之一[30]，并对我说：“他们现在在保险领域做了很多工作。你了解保险，而他们了解投资。”你总是寻找双赢的机会，而一件事引发了另一件事，一步接着一步，这就是我人生的故事。

NFM: I get your point on luck, but — at the same time — you took action to put yourself in a place where things could happen for you. My guess is that your luck came from taking action and putting yourself out there.

NFM：我明白你对运气的看法，但与此同时，你采取了行动，让自己处于能够发生事情的地方。我的猜测是，你的运气来自于采取行动和让自己走出去。

TC: I won’t lie — I’m a hard worker[31] and I have a lot of grit. I’ve got a lot of blindspots and I’ve got a lot of weaknesses, but I have those qualities. There’s that probably Mark Twain saying about preparation is your best luck[32] or something along those lines. I had to have substance when I met Charlie or when I met Weston or when I met the guys at Blue Ridge, etc.

TC: 我不会撒谎——我是一个努力工作的人[31]，而且我有很强的毅力。我有很多盲点，也有很多弱点，但我具备这些品质。大概有马克·吐温说过的那句话，准备是你最好的运气[32]，或者类似的说法。当我见到查理、韦斯顿或蓝岭的那些家伙时，我必须有实质内容。

I was very green in many of those instances. I remember Weston saying, “Oh, you want to be an investor? I’ll put you in touch with a hedge fund — a Tiger Cub.” I didn’t know what a Tiger Cub was. I had been a pricing analyst at Progressive. I knew about investing, but I didn’t know what a Tiger Cub was. [That] was three standard deviations away from where my knowledge base was at the time.

我在许多情况下都很稚嫩。我记得韦斯顿说：“哦，你想成为投资者？我会让你联系一个对冲基金——一个Tiger Cub。”我不知道什么是Tiger Cub。我曾在 Progressive 担任定价分析师。我知道投资，但我不知道什么是Tiger Cub。[那]与我当时的知识基础相差了三个标准差。

It’s both [luck and preparation], for sure.

这肯定是[运气和准备]。

NFM: I’m sure there were situations where no one called you back.

NFM：我相信有些情况下没有人给你回电话。

TC: Oh, for sure. One of the things I worry about with this [generation]… It’s easy to always be dour about the generation, but sometimes I worry that we’re making our generation too soft because we can make things so easy on them and that we don’t build up enough grit. And, look, that comes with having a society that’s more wealthy and is moving along. Not that everybody is, by any stretch.

TC: 哦，当然。关于这一代人，我担心的事情之一是……总是对这一代人感到沮丧很容易，但有时我担心我们让这一代人变得太软弱，因为我们可以让他们的生活变得如此简单，而没有培养足够的韧性。而且，看看，这与一个更加富裕和不断发展的社会有关。并不是说每个人都是这样。

It’s the whole marshmallow test[33], going back to Stanford. That’s like the one thing that I think they’ve statistically proven has a correlation with success in life. That ability to not have that marshmallow — and you get two if you wait fifteen minutes or whatever the number was. Having grit goes a long way. Angela Duckworth wrote an entire book[34] on it.

这就是整个棉花糖测试[33]，回到斯坦福大学。这就像是我认为他们在统计上证明与生活成功有相关性的唯一一件事。那种不吃棉花糖的能力——如果你等十五分钟或者其他的数字，你就能得到两个。拥有毅力是非常重要的。安吉拉·达克沃斯写了一整本书[34]来讲这个。

But you make your own luck, too. There’s definitely some of that.

但你也会创造自己的运气。这确实是有的。

NFM: We’ve got to ask you about home. That’s our thing. (Laughs)

NFM：我们得问你关于家的事。这是我们的事。（笑）

TC: My wife would argue my home is work. (Laughs)

TC:我的妻子会说我的家就是工作。（笑）

NFM: Speaking of your wife, you met her at Florida State University.

NFM：说到你的妻子，你是在佛罗里达州立大学遇到她的。

TC: That’s right. 没错。

NFM: I imagine that you’ve moved quite a bit during your career. How have you and your family made all of these new places feel like a home?

NFM：我想在你的职业生涯中你搬过很多地方。你和你的家人是如何让这些新地方感觉像家一样的？

TC: I’m going off the top of my head — which is always dangerous — [but] I think we may have moved sixteen times. It’s a lot. We met in September of ’92 in a class at Florida State and we got married in May of ’98, so we’ve known each other for over thirty years. Our oldest is a sophomore in college and is turning 20 next month and he will be the same age as when April and I met. It’s crazy even for those words to come out of my mouth.

TC:我随便说说——这总是危险的——但我想我们可能搬了十六次。这很多。我们在 1992 年 9 月在佛罗里达州立大学的一门课上相遇，1998 年 5 月结婚，所以我们已经认识超过三十年了。我们的老大是大学二年级学生，下个月就要满 20 岁了，他的年龄和我和艾普丽尔相遇时是一样的。说出这些话真是太疯狂了。

We rented a lot, every two years and that kind of thing. We didn’t own our own home until the home that I then owned when I started my own fund and started the Berkshire job. That was ’02 or ’03 or something like that. Not because we couldn’t afford it, but just because we were renting and so forth.

我们租了很多房子，每两年换一次之类的。直到我开始自己的基金并开始在伯克希尔工作时，我才拥有自己的房子。那是 2002 年或 2003 年左右。并不是因为我们买不起，而只是因为我们在租房等等。

Sorry, what was the second part of your question?

抱歉，你的问题的第二部分是什么？

NFM: How did you make those sixteen places feel like a home?

NFM：你是如何让那十六个地方感觉像家一样的？

TC: It’s her, to be clear. Some people say the better half — I say the better 99%.

TC:她，明确地说。有些人说更好的另一半——我说更好的 99%。

NFM: (Laughs) That’s a good line. I’m going to steal that.

NFM: （笑）那是个好台词。我打算偷用它。

TC: I highly recommend it. (Laughs) Especially when it’s true. There’s that whole saying — “Happy wife, happy life”.

TC:我强烈推荐它。（笑）尤其是当这是真的时候。那句老话——“妻子快乐，生活快乐”。

Let’s just use Berkshire as an example. I was flying out once every other week or something like that to come [to Omaha]. I would stay the week, Warren and I would talk, etc. This was 2011 — Michael, our oldest, was in second grade. And here’s a great testament to April. She says, “Let’s go out to Omaha for the summer so we can all be together.” It was a huge sacrifice for her. We’ve got a house on the water, we have a boat, we love Connecticut, we’ve got our friends, etc., but she wanted the family to be together. Again, it comes back to sacrifice. It’s not just my sacrifice — it’s her sacrifice.

让我们以伯克希尔为例。我每隔一周就飞一次来[奥马哈]。我会待一周，沃伦和我会谈话等等。这是 2011 年——我们的长子迈克尔上二年级。这里有一个很好的证明，April说：“我们夏天去奥马哈，这样我们就可以在一起。”这对她来说是一个巨大的牺牲。我们在水边有一栋房子，我们有一艘船，我们喜欢康涅狄格州，我们有朋友等等，但她希望家人能在一起。再次回到牺牲。这不仅是我的牺牲——也是她的牺牲。

So she comes out and we spend the summer together. She sees how great it is [and] we make fast friends and, then, one thing leads to another and, before you know it, she said, “Why don’t we move out here? The schools are great. A great sense of community. Omaha is amazing.”

所以她出来了，我们一起度过了夏天。她看到这里有多好，我们很快成了朋友，然后，一件事引发了另一件事，不久之后，她说：“我们为什么不搬到这里来？学校很好，社区感很强。奥马哈真棒。”

We were very, very fortunate to have people like Warren and his daughter Susie that introduced us to lifelong friends of theirs, like the Blumkins. And then you meet people like Rory and Becca. Again, one thing leads to another. That makes it a lot, lot easier.

我们非常非常幸运，有像沃伦和他的女儿苏西这样的人，他们把我们介绍给了他们的终身朋友，比如Blumkins一家。然后你又会遇到像罗瑞和贝卡这样的人。再一次，一件事引出另一件事。这让一切变得容易得多。

NFM: We have to ask — did you buy furniture from NFM?

NFM：我们必须问——您从 NFM 购买了家具吗？

TC: I did. Oh, yeah, absolutely. As Becca and Rory know, our entire house is NFM. It looks like the showroom right out here. (Laughs) Even the TV.

TC: 我做到了。哦，是的，绝对如此。正如贝卡和罗瑞所知道的，我们整个房子都是 NFM。看起来就像外面的展厅一样。（笑）连电视都是。

NFM: Do you have a favorite —

NFM：你有最喜欢的——

TC: Favorite TV? (Laughs)

TC: 最喜欢的电视节目？（笑）

NFM: You know what, yes, you can say your favorite TV.

NFM：你知道吗，是的，你可以说你最喜欢的电视节目。

TC: We just got… I should know this, but do you guys sell 90-inch [TVs]?

TC: 我们刚刚得到……我应该知道这个，但你们卖 90 英寸的电视吗？

NFM: Yeah, we have like 100-inch [TVs]. They’re giant now.

NFM：是的，我们有大约 100 英寸的电视。它们现在非常巨大。

TC: It’s crazy. I remember when 32-inch used to be big. So we have — let’s call it a 90-inch TV that we just got from NFM.

TC: 这太疯狂了。我记得 32 英寸曾经是很大的。所以我们有——让我们称之为 90 英寸的电视，是我们刚从 NFM 买来的。

NFM: Do you have time for one more?

NFM：你有时间再来一次吗？

TC: I’ve got all the time in the world. Fire away.

TC: 我有的是时间。尽管问吧。

NFM: GEICO has had some great commercials over the years. They really pioneered that approach with the Gecko —

NFM：GEICO 多年来制作了一些很棒的广告。他们确实开创了与壁虎合作的这种方式——

乔布斯肯定不会选择这个作为品牌的形象。

TC: Yeah, using humor. TC: 是的，使用幽默。

NFM: Do you have a favorite mascot from GEICO or a [favorite] commercial?

NFM：你有喜欢的 GEICO 吉祥物或广告吗？

TC: Oh, boy, it’s like [picking a favorite from among] your children. It’s like sacrilege to say, “This is my favorite.” But, just between us, obviously the Gecko is a favorite. The guy is just so adorable.

TC: 哦，天哪，这就像在你孩子中挑选一个最喜欢的。说“这是我最喜欢的”简直是亵渎。但，就我们之间说，壁虎显然是一个最爱。这个家伙实在是太可爱了。

The ones that come to mind, actually, I’m a big fan of “Hump Day”. Remember Hump Day? Wednesday, Hump Day. And I’m a big fan of Caveman and there was the one with the pig whirling out the window with the pinwheel.

我想到的其实是我非常喜欢“ hump day”。还记得 hump day 吗？星期三， hump day。我非常喜欢穴居人，还有那个猪在窗外转着风车的情节。

NFM: Wheeee! NFM: 哇哦！

TC: Yeah, I’m a big fan of that one, too. We have a whole new line coming out soon called “Frenemy”[35]. I don’t want to spoil it for our marketing department, but I just saw them this week and they’re absolutely fantastic.

TC：是的，我也非常喜欢那一款。我们即将推出一个全新的系列，叫做“Frenemy”[35]。我不想提前透露太多给我们的营销部门，但我这周刚看到它们，真的非常出色。

NFM: That’s something to look forward to. Todd, thank you so much for joining us.

NFM：这是值得期待的事情。托德，非常感谢你加入我们。

TC: Thanks for having me! This was a lot of fun.

谢谢你邀请我！这真是太有趣了。

NFM: This was a real masterclass. I think we learned a lot. You’re welcome back anytime, by the way.

NFM：这真是一堂精彩的课程。我觉得我们学到了很多。顺便说一下，欢迎你随时回来。

[1]Professor Bruce Greenwald serves as the academic director of Columbia Business School’s Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing. The New York Times once described him as “a guru to Wall Street’s gurus”.

布鲁斯·格林瓦尔德教授担任哥伦比亚商学院海尔布伦·格雷厄姆与多德投资中心的学术主任。纽约时报曾将他描述为“华尔街大师的导师”。

[2]Malcolm Gladwell popularized the “10,000 hour rule” in his 2008 bestseller, Outliers. The rule states that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in any given field.

马尔科姆·格拉德威尔在他 2008 年的畅销书《异类》中普及了“1 万小时法则”。该法则指出，成为任何领域的专家需要 1 万小时的练习。

[3]Castle Point Capital Management in Greenwich, Connecticut.

格林威治，康涅狄格州的城堡点资本管理。

[4]Combs primarily focused on financial stocks while running Castle Point. Even so, he drastically outperformed the S&P 500 in 2008 during the GFC. Castle Point posted a 5.7% loss that year — compared to the benchmark index’s fall of 38%. This knack for risk management surely endeared him to Warren Buffett.

科姆斯在管理城堡点时主要专注于金融股票。即便如此，他在 2008 年全球金融危机期间的表现远超标准普尔 500 指数。那一年，城堡点的损失为 5.7%——而基准指数则下跌了 38%。这种风险管理的才能无疑让他赢得了沃伦·巴菲特的青睐。

[5]Stone Point Capital seeded Castle Point in 2005.

石点资本于 2005 年投资了城堡点。

[6]Munger recalls that “something in [Combs’s] request piqued my interest”.

芒格回忆说：“[科姆斯]的请求中有些东西引起了我的兴趣。”

[7]Between 2003 and 2005, Combs worked for Scott Sipprelle at Copper Arch Capital. “We called Warren Buffett the spiritual mentor of [Copper Arch],” Sipprelle said in 2010. “We talked about him constantly, read and debated his annual letters, and analyzed his portfolio religiously.”

在 2003 年至 2005 年间，科姆斯在Copper Arch Capital为斯科特·西普雷尔工作。“我们称沃伦·巴菲特为[Copper Arch Capital]的精神导师，”西普雷尔在 2010 年说。“我们不断讨论他，阅读并辩论他的年度信件，虔诚地分析他的投资组合。”

[8]I wonder if this story would have ended differently if Combs had not read the Costco 10-Q before Munger called. Perhaps a sliding door situation of sorts.

我想知道如果科姆斯在芒格打电话之前没有阅读好市多的 10-Q，这个故事是否会有不同的结局。也许这是一种滑动门的情境。

[9]After one of these conversations, Munger called Buffett and told him, “This is a guy I am sure you are going to like.”

在其中一次谈话后，芒格给巴菲特打了电话，告诉他：“这个人我相信你会喜欢的。”

[10]On Christmas Day in 2007, Berkshire Hathaway announced the acquisition of Marmon Holdings from the Pritzker family. It was a complicated transaction: Berkshire purchased 60% of the company for $4.5 billion and, then, the remaining 40% was acquired in stages over the next several years.

在 2007 年圣诞节，伯克希尔哈撒韦宣布收购普利兹克家族的Marmon Holdings。这是一笔复杂的交易：伯克希尔以 45 亿美元购买了该公司 60%的股份，随后在接下来的几年中分阶段收购了剩余的 40%。

[11]Lou Simpson, who oversaw GEICO’s stock investments, retired in 2010. He had long been mooted as a potential candidate to take over Berkshire’s portfolio in the post-Buffett era. Simpson passed away in January 2022.

卢·辛普森负责 GEICO 的股票投资，2010 年退休。他长期被认为是巴菲特时代后接管伯克希尔投资组合的潜在候选人。辛普森于 2022 年 1 月去世。

[12]Carol Loomis published a story for Fortune on November 15, 2010, entitled, “Welcome to Omaha, Todd Combs”. Her article mentions that Combs was in town for his first Berkshire Hathaway board meeting, though she also admits, “We have no quote from Combs. He’s still ducking the press.”

卡罗尔·卢米斯于 2010 年 11 月 15 日为《财富》发表了一篇题为“欢迎来到奥马哈，托德·科姆斯”的文章。她的文章提到科姆斯是为了参加他的第一次伯克希尔·哈撒韦董事会会议而来到这里，尽管她也承认，“我们没有科姆斯的引用。他仍在躲避媒体。”

[13]Li Lu was another popular choice, back then, to take over a portion of Berkshire’s portfolio. Even though Charlie Munger made it sound like a fait accompli — “In my mind, it’s a foregone conclusion” — Li ultimately chose to stay at Himalaya Capital. Buffett told the Wall Street Journal: “[Li Lu] decided he would prefer to be where he was. In effect, he didn’t want the job. He [has] made a lot of money doing what he’s doing and he has a very good position in life.”

李录在当时也是一个受欢迎的选择，接管伯克希尔的一部分投资组合。尽管查理·芒格让这听起来像是一个既成事实——“在我看来，这是一个不争的结论”——李最终选择留在喜马拉雅资本。巴菲特对《华尔街日报》说：“[李录]决定他更喜欢待在他现在的地方。实际上，他并不想要这个职位。他[已经]通过他所做的事情赚了很多钱，并且在生活中有一个非常好的位置。”

[14]“None of the superstars are going to take this job,” the aforementioned Professor Bruce Greenwald of Columbia told the New York Times in 2010. “If you’re a very successful investor, who needs the meshugas of following Warren Buffett and being compared to him?”

“没有哪个超级明星会接受这个工作，”哥伦比亚大学的布鲁斯·格林瓦尔德教授在 2010 年对《纽约时报》说。“如果你是一个非常成功的投资者，谁需要跟随沃伦·巴菲特的麻烦，并被拿来与他比较呢？”

[15]Berkshire opened a position in Mastercard in Q1 2011 (2.16 million shares) and then doubled down on it in the second quarter. The Visa position (9.1 million shares) arrived in Q3 2011.

伯克希尔在 2011 年第一季度开设了对万事达卡的头寸（216 万股），并在第二季度加倍增持。维萨的头寸（910 万股）是在 2011 年第三季度建立的。

[16]In 2018, Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, and Jeff Bezos announced a new joint venture, called Haven, that would attempt to lower costs and improve outcomes in health care. It was disbanded three years later.

在 2018 年，沃伦·巴菲特、杰米·戴蒙和杰夫·贝索斯宣布了一项名为 Haven 的新合资企业，旨在降低医疗保健的成本并改善结果。三年后，该企业解散。

[17]Last year, I wrote about the Dexter Shoes misstep in Warren Buffett’s $11 Billion Mistake.

去年，我写过关于Dexter Shoes失误的文章，沃伦·巴菲特的 110 亿美元错误。

[18]Davis is CEO of Stone Point Capital. He previously worked at Goldman Sachs — and also serves on the Progressive board of directors.

戴维斯是Stone Point Capital.的首席执行官。他曾在高盛工作，并且还担任Progressive董事会的成员。

[19]Marsh & McLennan sold MMC Capital to the fund’s management team (including Charles Davis) in 2005. The private equity fund then renamed itself Stone Point Capital.

马什·麦伦公司在 2005 年将 MMC 资本出售给了该基金的管理团队（包括查尔斯·戴维斯）。该私募股权基金随后更名为石点资本。

[20]Combs took over as CEO of GEICO on January 1, 2020.

科姆斯于 2020 年 1 月 1 日接任 GEICO 首席执行官。

[21]The film — directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro — premiered in Cannes on May 20, 2023 and will release in theaters in October. It will also stream on Apple TV+ at some point.

这部电影由马丁·斯科塞斯执导，莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥和罗伯特·德尼罗主演，于 2023 年 5 月 20 日在戛纳首映，并将在 10 月上映。它还将在某个时间点在 Apple TV+上播放。

[22]“Investing is all about turning over a lot of stones,” Combs told CNBC. “The way that I spend my day is just reading. Annual reports, transcripts, delta reports, regulatory filings, channel checks — anything that I can get my hands on, really — trade magazines, etc.”

“投资就是要翻很多石头，”科姆斯告诉 CNBC。“我一天的时间就是在阅读。年报、会议记录、增量报告、监管文件、渠道检查——我能找到的任何东西，真的——行业杂志等等。”

[23]Becca Sudbeck is one of the hosts of NFM’s podcast, as well as GM of Brand & Creative for the company. She is also a fourth-generation member of the Blumkin family.

贝卡·苏德贝克是 NFM 播客的主持人之一，同时也是公司的品牌与创意总经理。她还是Blumkin家族的第四代成员。

[24]Here is how Combs described a typical day (before he took over at GEICO): “I get into the office around 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. and I read until about 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. at night. I go home, see my family, and I’ll read for another hour or two in bed at night. There might only be 3-4 phone calls the entire week, so there’s very, very few interruptions … It’s literally just reading for about 12 hours a day.”

这是科姆斯描述他典型一天的方式（在他接管 GEICO 之前）：“我大约在早上 7 点或 8 点到办公室，然后一直读书到晚上 7 点或 8 点。我回家，见我的家人，然后晚上在床上再读一两个小时。整个星期可能只有 3-4 个电话，所以几乎没有干扰……这实际上就是每天读书大约 12 个小时。”

[25]Since 2014, Warren Buffett has run an NCAA Basketball Tournament contest for Berkshire Hathaway employees that offers $1 billion to anyone who fills out a perfect bracket. As you might imagine, no one has ever won the full prize. Some estimates peg the odds of a perfect bracket at around 9.2 quintillion to one. (Buffett is a big fan of Omaha’s Creighton Bluejays college hoops team.)

自 2014 年以来，沃伦·巴菲特为伯克希尔·哈撒韦的员工举办了一场 NCAA 篮球锦标赛比赛，任何填写完美赛程的人将获得 10 亿美元的奖金。正如你想象的那样，至今没有人赢得过全额奖金。一些估计将完美赛程的概率定为约 9210 亿分之一。（巴菲特是奥马哈克雷顿蓝鸟大学篮球队的忠实粉丝。）

[26]Wurster is the president and CEO of National Indemnity.

沃斯特是国家赔偿公司的总裁兼首席执行官。

[27]Combs was elected to JPMorgan Chase’s board of directors in 2016. A Bloomberg story from 2018 states that he “impressed [Jamie] Dimon so much when the banker visited Omaha that he was invited to join the board”.

科姆斯于 2016 年当选为摩根大通董事会成员。彭博社2018 年的一篇报道指出，他“在银行家访问奥马哈时给[杰米]戴蒙留下了深刻印象，因此被邀请加入董事会”。

[28]On October 19, 2022, Berkshire acquired all of the outstanding common stock of Alleghany Corporation for $11.5 billion. Joe Brandon succeeded Hicks as Alleghany CEO in 2022.

2022 年 10 月 19 日，伯克希尔以 115 亿美元收购了阿勒格尼公司的所有流通普通股。乔·布兰登于 2022 年接替希克斯成为阿勒格尼的首席执行官。

[29]A hedge fund founded in 1996 by John Griffin. It closed down in December 2017.

一家由约翰·格里芬于 1996 年创立的对冲基金。它于 2017 年 12 月关闭。

[30]Former employees of Julian Robertson (Tiger Management) who flew the coop and created their own funds. Robertson himself invested in many of these funds to help his proteges get off to a smooth start.

朱利安·罗伯逊（老虎管理）的前员工们离开了公司，创办了自己的基金。罗伯逊本人也投资了许多这些基金，以帮助他的门徒顺利起步。

[31]In 2010, Buffett waxed lyrical about the many qualities that Combs brought to Berkshire. “He is a 100% fit for our culture,” said the Oracle. “I can define the culture while I am here, but we want a culture that is so embedded that it doesn’t get tested when the founder of it isn’t around. Todd is perfect in that respect.”

在 2010 年，巴菲特对科姆斯为伯克希尔带来的许多品质赞不绝口。“他与我们的文化完全契合，”这位神谕说。“我可以在这里定义文化，但我们希望有一种文化，它是如此根深蒂固，以至于在创始人不在时也不会受到考验。托德在这方面是完美的。”

[32]Combs is probably referring to this quote from Roman philosopher Seneca: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

科姆斯可能是在引用罗马哲学家塞内卡的话：“运气是准备与机会相遇时发生的事情。”

[33]A delayed gratification test from the 1960s. Researchers placed a single marshmallow in front of a young child and said that if he could wait fifteen minutes without eating it, he would receive a second marshmallow. The child was then left alone and observed from an adjacent room to see if he possessed the willpower to wait and double his reward.

1960 年代的延迟满足测试。研究人员在一个小孩面前放了一颗棉花糖，并告诉他如果能等十五分钟不吃，就可以得到第二颗棉花糖。然后，孩子被单独留下，研究人员从隔壁房间观察他是否有意志力等待并获得双倍奖励。

[34]Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance released in 2016 and quickly became a New York Times bestseller.

毅力：激情与坚持的力量于 2016 年发布，并迅速成为纽约时报的畅销书。

[35]This ad campaign, which released in May 2023, stars Will Arnett (Gob Bluth!) alongside the GEICO Gecko.

这则广告活动于 2023 年 5 月发布，主演是威尔·阿奈特（戈布·布鲁斯！）和 GEICO 壁虎。

2023-05-03 Todd Combs.Meeting Munger, Buffett and Joining Berkshire

2023-05-03 Todd Combs.Meeting Munger, Buffett and Joining Berkshire

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