本记录稿的内容仅用于教育和娱乐目的，并非也无意成为财务、法律、会计、税务或投资建议。所讨论的投资或策略可能不适合您，没有考虑到您的特定投资目标、财务状况或需求，也无意提供适合您的投资意见或建议。在进行任何投资或交易之前，请考虑该投资或交易是否适合您，并考虑向您自己的财务或投资顾问寻求建议。

Prof. Liu: Hello everyone. Let us welcome Mohnish Pabrai, the Managing Partner of Pabrai Investment Funds inspired by the original 1950s Buffett partnerships and a close replica of the original Buffett partnership rules. From inception in 1999 through December 2023, a hundred thousand investments in Pabrai Investment Funds had grown to 1.83 million. This equals an annualized gain of more than  versus   for the S&P 500.

刘教授：大家好。让我们欢迎帕布雷投资基金（Pabrai Investment Funds）的管理合伙人莫尼什-帕布雷（Mohnish Pabrai），帕布雷投资基金的灵感来源于上世纪50年代巴菲特最初的合伙制，并严格复制了巴菲特最初的合伙制规则。从 1999 年成立到 2023 年 12 月，Pabrai 投资基金的十万美元投资已增长到 183 万美元。这相当于年化收益超过12%，而标准普尔 500 指数的年化收益为7%。

Mr. Pabrai is the founder and the chairman of Dakshana Foundation, which is a public US   charity. Dakshana Foundation focuses on poverty alleviation through education. Mohnish loves playing duplicate bridge and received his first lifetime ban in 2019 from playing Blackjack at Las Vegas Casino. With all that, let us give a big round of applause to our dearest guest Mohnish Pabrai.

帕布雷先生是达克沙纳基金会（Dakshana Foundation）的创始人和主席，该基金会是美国的一家公共慈善机构   。Dakshana 基金会致力于通过教育扶贫。Mohnish 喜欢打桥牌，2019 年，他第一次被终身禁止在拉斯维加斯赌场玩二十一点。说了这么多，让我们以热烈的掌声欢迎我们最亲爱的嘉宾 Mohnish Pabrai。

Mohnish: It is great to be here and wonderful to have UNO hosting us. Thank you, Professor Liu and the team at UNO. It is wonderful to be here. It is going to be hallowed ground to be able to speak to all of you, and I will try to keep my monologue brief, as I am more interested in learning what you want to talk about. Last year I talked about this concept of circling the wagons, which is an important concept for my vantage point on getting great results on investments. The best way I know to learn is to teach and so, I have an ulterior motive for being here which is trying to teach myself. What I am going to talk about today are some thoughts and ideas that are not fully formed. You guys are the guinea pigs. Thank you so much. I have never talked about these things before, and I do not have them developed enough to be a framework. In the next few months or maybe a year or two, we might put it together into a tight framework. Meanwhile, I am excited to at least help get my head around some of these ideas.

Mohnish: 很高兴来到这里，也很高兴UNO能接待我们。谢谢刘教授和 UNO 的团队。很高兴来到这里。我将尽量简短地独白，因为我更想知道你们想谈什么。去年，我谈到了 "把马车围成一圈"（注：circle the wagons，意译为“严阵以待、共同御敌”。18-19世纪，美国西部有一批时代拓荒者，他们驾驶货运的四轮马车旅行，如果途中出现敌人，就会把马车聚在一起围城圆形，每个人背对马车，面朝敌人，共同抵御外敌。莫尼什借用这一俗语，以此说明在我们的投资组合中，一些公司如同这一圈马车，能够保护整体投资组合不受侵害，我们应坚定地持有）的概念，这对我在投资中取得巨大成功的有利条件来说是一个重要的概念。我所知道的最好的学习方法就是教，所以，我来这里还有一个不可告人的目的，那就是教我自己。我今天要谈的是一些尚未完全成型的想法和观点。你们就是小白鼠。非常感谢你们。我以前从未谈论过这些东西，也没有足够的发展来成为一个框架。在接下来的几个月里，或者一两年后，我们可能会把它们整合成一个严密的框架。与此同时，我很高兴至少能帮助我理清其中的一些思路。

The wagons concept is that when we find ourselves in the fortunate situation of partial or complete ownership of a business that has great economics and wonderful prospects, we hang on to those businesses and do not try to become too cute about whether it is overvalued or should we buy something else, etc. Less is more, less activity is more profitable. Going down that path is a great way to go, but that concept kind of skims over the notion of intrinsic value, because intrinsic value at the end is the bedrock that we base everything on. The definition of intrinsic value is painfully simple. John Burr Williams came up with it probably close to a hundred years ago. It is just the sum of all the cash a business will produce and distribute between its start and end. That is the intrinsic value of a business discounted to present value by some reasonable interest rate. The definition is really simple. Figuring it out is far from simple and trying to figure out what a business might produce 5,10 , or 15 years from now becomes somewhat complicated. If you look at a business like Berkshire Hathaway

马车的概念是，当我们发现自己幸运地部分或完全拥有一家经济效益和前景都很好的企业时，我们就会紧紧抓住这些企业不放，而不要试图在其估值是否过高或我们是否应该购买其他东西等问题上变得过于矫揉造作。少即是多，活动越少，利润越高。走这条路是个好办法，但这个概念有点忽略了内在价值的概念，因为内在价值最终是我们一切的基石。内在价值的定义非常简单。约翰-伯尔-威廉姆斯（John Burr Williams）大概是在近百年前提出这个定义的。它只是一个企业从开始到结束所产生和分配的所有现金的总和。这就是企业的内在价值，按一定的合理利率折算成现值。定义其实很简单。但计算起来却远非如此简单，要计算一家企业 5 年、10 年或 15 年后可能产生的价值就变得有些复杂。如果你看看像伯克希尔-哈撒韦这样的企业。

that most of us are familiar with, both Warren and Charlie have commented that they both have an idea about the intrinsic value of Berkshire. If they were both to write down that number or range of numbers, they would not be identical. They would be somewhat different in that total. What Berkshire has also done is they have engaged in buybacks of the stock at prices that they believe are well below intrinsic value.

沃伦和查理都曾表示，他们都对伯克希尔的内在价值有所了解。如果他们都写下这个数字或数字范围，他们的想法不会完全相同。在总数上，他们会有些不同。伯克希尔还做了一件事，那就是以他们认为远远低于内在价值的价格回购股票。

Recently they were willing to buy back shares at 1.2 X of tangible book value. Both Buffett and Munger have commented that as Berkshire has become more of a collection of wholly owned businesses, tangible book value becomes less of a valid metric to value Berkshire. To give you an example, when they bought See's Candies, they paid more than three times the book value for See's. If you were valuing Berkshire at like 1.2 X book, you would undervalue a business like See's. If you look at a business like Burlington Northern Railway and you looked at it from a replacement cost point of view to replace that railroad, going transcontinental probably could not be done. Even if you were somehow able to do it, it would exceed the market cap of Berkshire, probably north of 700,800 billion, and might be over a trillion to replicate that railroad. How would you value Burlington Northern? If you valued it at those numbers, that might be overstated, because they do not have an earnings power that would correlate with that type of book value.

最近，他们愿意以有形账面价值的 1.2 倍回购股票。巴菲特和芒格都评论说，随着伯克希尔公司越来越多地成为全资企业的集合体，有形账面价值已不再是衡量伯克希尔公司价值的有效指标。举个例子，当他们收购 See's Candies 时，他们为 See's 支付了超过账面价值三倍的价格。如果伯克希尔的估值是账面价值的 1.2 倍，就会低估 See's 这样的企业。如果你看看伯灵顿北方铁路公司这样的企业，从重置成本的角度来看，要取代这条铁路，更换跨洲际铁路可能不太现实。即使你能做到，也会超过伯克希尔公司的市值，可能在 7,800 亿美元以上，复制这条铁路的成本可能超过一万亿美元。你如何估价伯灵顿北方公司？如果以这些数字来估价，可能会夸大其词，因为他们没有与这种账面价值相关的盈利能力。

For many reasons, book value is an inadequate measure. I also feel that when Buffett and Munger say that they have a range of the intrinsic value of Berkshire, in their mind, what they are thinking about is very likely to be a number less than two times book value. If you look at Berkshire Hathaway today, for example, it trades at approximately one and a half times book value. Current valuations are one and a half times, and I would say they would both consider it probably optimistic to value Berkshire two times book value. As I thought about this, what I realized is that when you look at Berkshire Hathaway's past, what you find is that there have been times in the past when Berkshire has been very willing to issue stock. They issued stock to buy Dexter shoes, which one would like to forget about. They also issued stock to buy Burlington Northern. There were times when even though they were reluctant to issue stock, they were very willing to issue stock to get these transactions done. When you look at Buffett himself, he has never bought or sold a share of Berkshire. In almost 60 years of running Berkshire, his ownership has stayed static. Even when the price has gone down a lot, he has not bought anything. When Berkshire has gotten into what some might consider euphoric pricing, he has not sold anything. Even though Berkshire Hathaway has engaged in transactions periodically in terms of issuing shares and buying back shares, Warren Buffett himself has never done that. Regarding this notion of intrinsic value, when you think about this notion that Warren and Charlie put forth, that probably the value of Berkshire is less than two times book value, that does not fully capture things. For example, let us say we go back to 1990, stock was trading at that time at approximately   a share. If you multiplied by one and a half million shares, which is approximately what they had outstanding then, and even now, it had a   billion market cap at the time, and book value was probably some fraction of that; maybe 3 or 4 billion. If you were to come up then and say, "Okay, we will apply this kind of two times of book value multiple as a shorthand for intrinsic value, you would end up with some number less than   a share, maybe   a share or something. 

出于多种原因，账面价值是一个不恰当的衡量标准。我还觉得，当巴菲特和芒格说他们对伯克希尔的内在价值有一个范围时，在他们的心目中，他们所想的很可能是一个低于账面价值两倍的数字。以伯克希尔哈撒韦公司为例，其目前的交易价格约为账面价值的 1.5 倍。目前的估值是 1.5 倍，我认为他们都会认为，将伯克希尔的估值定为账面价值的 2 倍可能是乐观的。当我思考这个问题时，我意识到，当你回顾伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司的过去时，你会发现过去伯克希尔公司曾经非常愿意发行股票。他们发行股票收购了 Dexter 鞋业，这一点大家都愿意忘记。他们还发行股票收购了伯灵顿北方公司（Burlington Northern）。有的时候，尽管他们不愿意发行股票，但为了完成这些交易，他们还是非常愿意发行股票。再看看巴菲特本人，他从未买卖过伯克希尔的股票。在经营伯克希尔近 60 年的时间里，他的持股比例一直保持不变。即使股价下跌了很多，他也没有买过任何东西。当伯克希尔进入某些人可能认为的亢奋价格时，他也没有卖出任何东西。尽管伯克希尔哈撒韦公司定期进行发行股票和回购股票的交易，但巴菲特本人从未这样做过。关于内在价值的概念，当你考虑沃伦和查理提出的概念，即伯克希尔的价值可能低于账面价值的两倍时，这并不能完全反映事物的本质。 例如，假设我们回到 1990 年，当时的股票交易价格约为每股4000。如果你乘以 150 万股，这大约是他们当时的流通股，即使是现在，它当时的市值也有60亿，而账面价值只是其中一小部分，也许是 30 或 40 亿。如果你当时说："好吧，我们用账面价值两倍的倍数来表示内在价值，你最终会得到一个低于每股8000美元的数字，也许是每股6000美元之类的。它

It would be some number not that far off from the   market price, but we know clearly since we are in the future. In 1990 we could not see it because we could not see the future cash flow stream.

这将和4000美元的市场价格相差不远。但因为我们身处未来，我们清楚地知道（实际价值与当时的市值相差甚远）。在1990年，我们还看不到这一点，因为我们无法看清未来的现金流。

If we step into the future and look at the future cash flow streams from 1990 to 2024 , and then you discount all of that back, what you would end up with is a number that would be much higher than even 10 or   a share. You would end up with several intrinsic values that would be significantly above the numbers that Warren and Charlie put forth as the likely intrinsic value. What is the intrinsic value of Berkshire? Is it using a metric like Warren and Charlie tell us to use, which is, some premium to book, or is it more where you run some assumptions on future cash flows and then try to discount back? In my simplistic way of thinking about it, there might be two different intrinsic values and two different ways to describe intrinsic value. Those two different ways to describe intrinsic value might correlate to the two different ways Warren Buffett deals with Berkshire stock. He deals with Berkshire stock one way when Berkshire is either buying businesses or buying back shares. There is some activity with Berkshire shares that goes on in that realm. Then we look at the second realm, which is his own ownership of Berkshire Hathaway, which never changes. It has been absolutely static other than giving money away to charity and so on. He has never entertained the notion of selling a share. He said that he will, in the future as well, never sell a share. In my opinion, Warren, the individual, had a far better grasp on the intrinsic value of Berkshire Hathaway than Berkshire Hathaway, the company, did.

果我们踏入未来，看看从1990年到2024年的未来现金流，然后将它们都折现回去，最终得出的数字甚至比每股 10000或20000美元还高得多。你最终会得到几个大大高于沃伦和查理提出的可能内在价值的数字。伯克希尔的内在价值是多少？是像沃伦和查理告诉我们的那样，用账面溢价来衡量，还是对未来现金流做一些假设，然后尝试折现？按照我的简单思维方式，可能有两种不同的内在价值和两种不同的内在价值描述方法。这两种不同的内在价值描述方式可能与沃伦-巴菲特处理伯克希尔股票的两种不同方式相关联。他处理伯克希尔股票的一种方式是，伯克希尔要么收购企业，要么回购股票。在这一领域，伯克希尔股票有一些活动。我们再看第二个领域，即他自己对伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司的所有权，这一点从未改变。除了把钱捐给慈善机构等之外，他对伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司的所有权是绝对不变的。他从未考虑过出售股份。他说，今后也不会出售任何股份。在我看来，沃伦个人对伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司内在价值的把握远胜于伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司。

Warren Buffett, the individual understood better what the value of Berkshire was. So, in 1990, at the $4,000 per share, they may have been willing to issue shares to buy businesses, but then, or even now, he is not willing to sell the stock at those prices. When I look at my own example, I run Pabrai Investment Funds, which has wonderful business economics. It is a great business. I have not really talked very much about the economics of the general partner of Pabrai Investment Funds, but I would just say this, in 25 years of running Pabrai Investment Funds, our pre-tax margin is about  . Of the fees that Pabrai Investment Funds earns and has earned over the last 25 years,   is operating income. It is a great business, better than Apple. Very nice, no complaints about life. People have approached me from time to time to buy a portion of the general partner, even though I have never shared financials with them, they were very eager to buy an interest in the general partner, and it did not even take me five seconds to ignore all those offers and turn them down. The reason was pretty simple; if I were to try to calculate what is the intrinsic value of the general partner for Pabrai Investment Funds, I do not know what that value is. I just know that there is probably a pretty wide range on that, and at the upper end of that wide range could be some spectacular numbers. I do not know which way it will fall in the sense of at the top end or the bottom end. One is that if Warren has ownership of Berkshire Hathaway and understands the business as well as he does, clearly he sees all the great wide deep moat on Berkshire and wants to stay there. It is the same with Charlie Munger, more than   of the net worth in Berkshire Hathaway.

沃伦-巴菲特个人更了解伯克希尔的价值所在。因此，在 1990 年，以每股 4000 美元的价格，他们可能愿意发行股票购买企业，但在当时，甚至现在，他都不愿意以这些价格出售股票。举个我自己的例子，我经营的帕布雷投资基金（Pabrai Investment Funds）的商业经济效益非常好。这是一个伟大的企业。我对帕布赖投资基金普通合伙人的经济效益谈得不多，但我想说的是，在帕布雷投资基金25 年的经营中，我们的税前利润率约为88%。在 Pabrai Investment Funds 过去 25 年赚取的费用中，88%是营业收入。这是一个伟大的企业，比苹果公司还好。非常好，对生活毫无怨言。不时有人来找我，希望购买普通合伙人的部分股份，尽管我从未与他们分享过财务数据，但他们都非常渴望购买普通合伙人的权益，而我甚至不需要花五秒时间就能忽略所有这些提议并拒绝他们。原因很简单，如果要我计算 Pabrai Investment Funds 普通合伙人的内在价值，我不知道这个价值是多少。我只知道可能会有一个相当大的范围，而在这个大范围的上限可能会有一些惊人的数字。我不知道它的上限或下限会是多少。一个原因是，如果沃伦拥有伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司的所有权，并对该公司的业务了如指掌，那么很显然，他看到了伯克希尔公司的所有巨大而深厚的护城河，并希望留在那里。查理-芒格也是如此，他在伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司的净资产超过90%。

There are two ways to think about intrinsic value. There is a standard way to think about intrinsic value, and then I would say there is another way which is owner intrinsic value, or the owner's definition of intrinsic value. Theowner's definition of intrinsic value is not just this maybe broader look at the business for a much longer period. It also has intangibles related to, for example, having control. One of the things I realized is that the moment I sold some portion of the general partner, there would be a clock on the business because whoever bought that stake at some point would want to monetize it. Those types of concepts were not of interest to me. There is an aspect of intrinsic value that relates to future cash flows in both definitions. There is an aspect of it that deals with the intangibles that come with ownership. When you go back to the notion of circling the wagons, it skimmed over the notion of intrinsic value. It just said, "Hey, you have a great business, you just hold onto it and do not ask too many questions." But if we were to ask some questions, we would say "no," but every business has a finite value. The reality is that we need to only get rich once. We do not need to get rich multiple times. In fact, as Charlie says, "Once you get there, you do not want to go back." The second is that for the most part, you only need to be right once. You might make 100 investments in stocks, and it is possible that even 90-plus percent of them do not work, but some could work so spectacularly that they could make your overall portfolio look great. In the last couple of days, the Financial Times noted that Warren Buffett in the Berkshire portfolio has bought and sold 65 companies, and 65 stocks, which is a lot.

内在价值有两种思考方式。一种是思考内在价值的标准方法，另一种方法是所有者的内在价值，或所有者对内在价值的定义。业主所有者对内在价值的定义不仅仅是这个，也许是对企业更长时期的更广泛的审视。它还包括与控制权等相关的无形资产。我意识到的其中一件事是，一旦我出售了普通合伙人的部分股权，企业就会面临倒闭，因为不管是谁在某个时候买下了这部分股权，都会希望将其货币化。我对这些概念不感兴趣。内在价值的一个方面与这两种定义中的未来现金流有关。还有一个方面涉及所有权带来的无形资产。当你回到 "把马车围成一圈 "的概念时，它略过了内在价值的概念。它只是说，"嘿，你有一个很好的企业，你只要守住它，不要问太多问题"。但如果我们偏要问一些问题，我们会说，“不对，每个企业的价值都是有限的。”诸如此类的。现实是，我们只需要致富一次。我们不需要多次致富。事实上，正如查理所说，"一旦你到达了那里，你就不想再回去了"。其次，在大多数情况下，你只需要做对一次。你可能会进行 100 次股票投资，甚至有可能 90% 以上的投资都不成功，但有些投资可能会非常成功，让你的整体投资组合看起来非常棒。最近几天，《金融时报》指出，沃伦-巴菲特在伯克希尔投资组合中买卖了 65 家公司和 65 只股票，这已经很多了。

We do not think of Warren as a trader. They said the average holding period of the stocks that he owned was a little over four years. Todd and Ted, under him the FT reported that they also had a large number of trades, and their average holding period was less than three years. A large error rate is normal in this business. Finding the holy grail of the great compounders is few and far between, but this notion of intrinsic value, is worth paying attention to, especially the notion of owner intrinsic value. The notion of owner intrinsic value can give us more conviction to hold on rather than just the basic "it is a great business." If I take the example of Starbucks, more recently, Starbucks was taken out back and shot in the last few days. Is it a business that has secular negative issues in the future or is it a business that had a speed bump? These things become hard to answer in real time. In the fullness of time, we will understand whether it was a speed bump or something more than a speed bump. If we were to look at a business like Starbucks and analyze every speed bump, it would become really hard to be able to hold that business for a long time.

我们并不认为沃伦是一名交易员。他们说，他拥有的股票的平均持有期是四年多一点。托德和泰德，在他手下，《金融时报》报道说，他们也有大量的交易，他们的平均持有期不到三年。在这个行业里，误差率大是正常的。找到伟大复利者圣杯的人少之又少，但这种内在价值的概念值得关注，尤其是所有者内在价值的概念。所有者内在价值的概念能给我们更多坚持下去的信念，而不仅仅是基本的 "这是一家伟大的企业"。如果我以星巴克为例，星巴克“拖出去给了一枪”（注：2024年一季度，星巴克毫无预兆地公布了有史以来最差的季度业绩，在中国和美国市场均出现营收放缓和利润下滑的情况下，股价大跌20%以上）。这究竟是一家未来会出现长期负面问题的企业，还是一家遇到过减速带的企业？这些问题都很难实时回答。随着时间的推移，我们就会明白，这究竟是一个减速带，还是比减速带更重要的东西。如果我们看星巴克这样的企业，对每一个减速带都进行分析，那就真的很难长期持有这家企业了。

I was listening to a podcast just before coming to Omaha with Ken Langone. Ken Langone was the founder of Home Depot, and he had multiple great hits. The interviewer asked him, "Ken, when you held Home Depot for more than four decades, what type of financial analysis did you do on Home Depot and what was the continuing financial analysis as it went along?" Ken just laughed and said, "I bet on people. I bet on these guys and that was the end of the analysis. There was nothing else I did beyond that." He said he has been married to the same woman for 68 years. She still puts up with him. He said that the mental framework he uses to stay married to the same woman and the framework he uses to hold onto the Home Depot stock are both the same. It is all about loyalty. He said, "If you want my framework, it is loyalty, and that is it." The guy had multiple 100-baggers in his lifetime, and multiple companies that did extremely well for him, all because of inactivity. He talked about some businesses that we had never heard of. He had a stake in Eli Lilly that came about when they bought a business that he had ownership of. Inactivity never did anything. That was a 40-bagger for him just on the side while Home Depot was going. These are other bets on the side that are happening.

就在来奥马哈之前，我在听肯-兰戈尼的播客。Ken Langone 是家得宝公司（Home Depot）的创始人，他曾多次创下佳绩。采访者问他："肯，当你控股家得宝公司四十多年时，你对家得宝公司做了哪种类型的财务分析，在发展过程中又持续进行了哪些财务分析？"肯笑着说："我在人身上下注。我把赌注押在这些人身上，分析就到此为止。除此以外，我再没做过别的。"他说，他已经和同一个女人结婚 68 年了。她仍然容忍他。他说，他与同一个女人保持婚姻关系所使用的心理框架与他持有家得宝股票所使用的框架是一样的。这就是忠诚。他说："如果你想要我的框架，那就是忠诚，仅此而已。"这家伙一生中有多次100倍回报的投资经历，多家公司表现极好，都是因为他按兵不动（inactivity）。他谈到了一些我们从未听说过的企业。礼来公司收购了他拥有所有权的一家企业，从而获得了礼来公司的股份。无所事事的他什么都做不了。在家得宝公司（Home Depot）发展壮大的时候，这些下注只是作为副业，而他只是站在一旁，什么也没做。

Let us try to think about intrinsic value from the perspective of an owner, even if we are not an owner. If you had ownership, a small ownership stake in Starbucks, if you thought about it the way Howard Schultz would think about it, for example, then your lens will go out further. It will look out further into the future, and you might be able to see things that a quantitative analysis is not going to show you. This is the limit of what I have to talk about to you today on this subject. I will reflect back and try to improve the next time I talk about the subject. I would like to switch to another subject. The second subject is that, again, going back to the circle, the wagons concept, I had mentioned that, Warren had 12 great super hits in 58 years that led to the creation of Berkshire Hathaway. I had speculated that he might have made 300 decisions, but 12 really mattered, given that he has been this hyperactive trader in the last couple of decades. Maybe he had 500 or 600 decisions, so it might be even a smaller number, like 2 or  that really hit the ball out of the park for all of us. The second question that comes up is, why is the ability to find hits so spread out? He said he was able to find on average one great idea every five years. For the rest of us humans, maybe one every 25 years.

让我们试着从所有者的角度来思考内在价值，即使我们不是所有者。如果你拥有星巴克的所有权，比如一小部分股权，如果你能像霍华德-舒尔茨（Howard Schultz）那样思考星巴克，那么你的视角就会放得更远。这样，你的视角就会放得更远，你就能看到定量分析无法显示的东西。这就是我今天在这个问题上要跟大家谈的极限。下次再谈这个话题时，我会反思并努力改进。我想换一个话题。第二个话题是，再回到“把马车围成一圈”的概念上，我曾提到，有12次超级成功的经历，创造了如今的伯克希尔哈撒韦。我推测他可能做过300个决定，但真正重要的也就12个。鉴于他在过去几十年里一直是个非常活跃的交易者，也许他做过500或600次决策，因此真正非常成功（hit the ball out of the park）的决策的占比可能更小，比如2%或3%。第二个问题是，为什么发现大牛股（hits）的能力如此分散？巴菲特说过，他平均每5年就能发现一个很棒的（投资）想法。对于我们这些凡人，也许每25年才能发现一个。

The question is, and this is Warren Buffett saying this, "Why does it take so long to be able to identify and invest in a great business and hold on?" The answer there is that the circle of competence grows very slowly, and both Warren's and Charlie's circles of competence have expanded dramatically over the last several decades. Both have said repeatedly that many of the deals they did in the last 10, 20, 30 years, would not have been possible for them in the first 30 years, because they were too dumb. They would not have understood them. The Coke investment, for example, would not have happened without the See's investment. If there was no investment in See's Candies, there was no investment in the Coca-Cola company. There are also no investments in probably Apple because both of those businesses were about brands. It was an investment related to the power of brands and where those brands could go.

问题是，这是沃伦-巴菲特说的，"为什么要花这么长时间才能发现并投资一家伟大的企业，并坚持下去？"答案是能力圈的增长非常缓慢，而沃伦和查理的能力圈在过去几十年里都有了显著的扩大。两人都曾多次表示，他们在过去 10 年、20 年、30 年所做的许多交易，在最初的 30 年是不可能实现的，因为他们太笨了。他们不会理解这些交易。例如，如果没有 See's 公司的投资，可口可乐的投资就不会发生。如果没有 See's 糖果公司的投资，就不会有可口可乐公司的投资。苹果公司可能也没有投资，因为这两项业务都与品牌有关。这种投资与品牌的力量以及这些品牌的发展方向有关。

If you look at a business like Coke, that Buffett invested in the late 80s, and early 90s, at that time, they put one-fourth of book value into Coke. That was a huge bet. It was probably the largest bet that Berkshire had made until that point. It might be the largest bet they have ever made. It is very atypical for an insurance company to take a quarter of its entire book value and put it into a business they do not control. But they were very confident in that bet and that confidence about the size of the bet and the duration of ability to hold on till today and beyond is because of the very deep learning that came to them after the See's Candies purchase. See's Candies was bought in 1972, and the very first Coke stock was bought in 1988, 16 years later. They would not have even fully figured out the framework for Coke until it was into the 80s.

如果你看看巴菲特在上世纪 80 年代末和 90 年代初投资的可口可乐这样的企业，当时，他们将账面价值的四分之一投入可口可乐。这是一个巨大的赌注。这可能是伯克希尔在此之前下的最大赌注。这可能是他们有史以来下的最大赌注。对于一家保险公司来说，将其全部账面价值的四分之一投入到自己无法控制的业务中是非常不寻常的。但他们对这一赌注非常有信心，之所以对赌注的规模和能够坚持到今天及以后的时间充满信心，是因为在收购 See's Candies 之后，他们学到了非常深刻的知识。See's Candies 是 1972 年买的，而第一只可乐股票是在 16 年后的 1988 年买的。直到 80 年代，他们才完全弄清可乐的框架。

For example, the only area of operations that Warren Buffett got involved in with See's Candies was changing the price on December 26th every year. He told Chuck Huggins, who was running the business, "Please run the business as if you own it. You are not going to hear from us. Just do what you think makes sense, except I, Warren Buffett will control pricing." On December 26th, he would sit down with See's pricelist, scratch out all the old prices, and jack the prices up by more than two or three times the rate of inflation,   a year when inflation might have been running   a year. He would himself be really surprised that a year later the volumes had gone up  , and that the prices were accepted by the consumers of See's. Then the following year he would bump it another   and he would again be amazingly surprised that it went up another   in volume. See's is a California phenomenon for the most part. California's GDP in the 70s, and 80s, was probably growing at 5 or   a year. It was a pretty rapid period of growth for California. These heavy price increases may have crimped some volume where it did not keep up with California's GDP growth. It was maybe   of GDP growth, but it did not matter. It was a brilliant decision because there was a river of cash coming out of See's. They had paid 25 million for See's. Even going back 10 or 15 years, they had collected dividends of more than 2 billion from See's.

例如，沃伦-巴菲特在 See's Candies 公司参与的唯一一个运营领域就是在每年 12 月 26 日改变价格。他对负责经营的查克-哈金斯说：“请把它当成你自己的生意来经营。你不会听到我们的指令，做你认为有意义的事情吧。除了，我（沃伦巴菲特）将掌控定价权。”，12月26日，他会坐下来，拿出喜诗的价格表，划掉所有的旧价格，把价格抬高到通胀率的两到三倍以上，即每年10%或12%，而通胀率每年可能在3%或4%。让他自己都感到非常惊讶的是，一年后，销量增长了2%，不算太高，但价格也得到了喜诗糖果消费者的认可。第二年，他又把价格提高了10%，结果又让他大吃一惊，销量又增加了2%。很大程度上，喜诗糖果是一种加州现象。70年代和80年代，加利福尼亚州的GDP每年大概增长5%或6%，对加州来说，这是一个相当快的发展时期。价格的大幅上涨或许抑制了一些销量，使销量增速无法跟上加州GDP的增长速度，前者可能只是后者的40%。但这无关紧要，这是一个明智的决定，因为当你将定价提高到通胀率的3倍，你将从喜诗公司挤出大量的现金流。他们为喜诗公司支付了2500万美元，而早在10年或15年前，他们从喜诗收取的分红就超过20亿美元。

However, they saw limitations in See's. The biggest limitation was they repeatedly tried to expand the geography. Warren wanted See's to be in all states and all countries. He could not even make it dominant in a second state. They repeatedly would open a store in Chicago and they would lose a lot of money, and then they would shut it down. They would open one in New York, same thing. The number of experiments See's did over the years, along with the brain power of both Warren and Charlie, could never expand the brand beyond California. When they encountered Coke and read its history, they saw Coke had no difficulty in geographic expansion. We only have two countries in the world today, Cuba and North Korea, that have no Coke. If tomorrow either of these countries opened up to Coke without a dollar of advertising, sales would take off in both those countries. The pop culture embeddedness of the brand and all of that is very powerful. When they compared Coke to See's, See's was already a home run, but they saw this was a home run to the power of a home run. It became a no-brainer. They were buying every share they could. That is the reason these hits show up every five years for Berkshire, because coming up and figuring out these types of insights into brands, intangibles, does it travel, the aftertaste, all these different things that come up with Coke and See's or with Apple, just take a long time. It takes a long time to get your head around them. With that, those are my comments. I appreciate your bearing with me. Thank you very much.

然而，他们也看到了 See's 的局限性。最大的限制是他们一再试图扩大地理范围。沃伦希望 See's 在所有的州和所有的国家都存在。他甚至无法让 See's 在第二个州占据主导地位。他们屡次在芝加哥开店，结果亏损严重，然后又关闭。他们会在纽约开一家店，也是一样。多年来，See's 做了大量的实验，加上沃伦和查理的聪明才智，却始终无法将品牌扩展到加利福尼亚以外的地区。当他们遇到可口可乐并阅读其历史时，他们发现可口可乐在地域扩张方面并不困难。当今世界上只有古巴和朝鲜这两个国家没有可乐。如果明天这两个国家都向可口可乐开放，不做一美元的广告，可口可乐在这两个国家的销量就会突飞猛进。品牌的流行文化嵌入和所有这些都非常强大。当他们把可口可乐与 See's 进行比较时，See's 已经是一个全垒打，但他们发现这是一个全垒打的全垒打。这变得不费吹灰之力。他们买下了他们能买下的每一份股票。这就是伯克希尔公司每五年就会出现这些成功案例的原因，因为对品牌、无形资产、是否旅行、回味，以及可口可乐、See's 或苹果公司的所有这些不同之处进行深入研究，需要很长时间。你需要花很长时间才能理解它们。以上就是我的评论。感谢您对我的宽容。非常感谢。

Prof. Liu: I would like to follow up on your talk. You talked about two intrinsic values and you talked about the value of people. Big investors, like you, have access to the management team, but a lot of ordinary investors, do not have that access to the management team to get to know the people in the companies. What do you advise those investors?

刘教授：我想跟进您的演讲。您谈到了两个内在价值，您谈到了人的价值。像您这样的大投资者有机会接触管理团队，但很多普通投资者却没有这种机会接触管理团队，了解公司里的人。您对这些投资者有何建议？

Mohnish: That is a great question. Access to management teams and insiders or owners can be a positive, but it can also be a negative. If we look at the Berkshire example of the Coke purchase, they had no contact with management. They never reached out to the Coca-Cola company. All they did was read the publicly available information on Coke and one of the things that both of them did is they read every annual report of Coke from the time Coke was public, which should have been something like 70 years of Coke annual reports. Warren and Charlie went through every one of those 70 years of annual reports, and they noticed that unit volumes never went down. They never went down during the Great Depression. They never went down during World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the stagflation of the 70s, all of that. The volumes just kept going up every single year. There is a large amount of information available on every public company. Some of the things that may really matter in terms of what will drive long-term results, insiders may not be able to help you plus insiders are salespeople. They are going to actually lead you astray. I have been led astray by many managers. It is better not to talk to them. If you are an individual investor, you have an advantage if you do not have access.

莫尼什：这是一个很好的问题。接触管理团队、内部人士或所有者可能是好事，但也可能是坏事。如果我们看看伯克希尔收购可口可乐的例子，他们与管理层没有任何接触。他们从未接触过可口可乐公司。他们所做的只是阅读可口可乐公司的公开信息，其中一件事，就是阅读可口可乐上市以来的每一份年报，应该有70多份。沃伦和查理翻阅了70余年的每一份年报，然后注意到其单位产量从未下降过。在大萧条时期，销量没有下降；第一次世界大战、第二次世界大战、朝鲜战争、70年代滞胀，所有这些情形下，销量仍年年攀升。每家上市公司都有大量信息，就驱动一家公司长期表现的因素而言，有些真的重要的东西，内部人士可能无法帮到你，再加上内部人士都是推销员（注：指管理层向投资者推介公司时，倾向于扬长避短、过度乐观）。实际上，他们会把你带偏，我就曾被许多经理人带偏过。最好不要和他们交谈。如果你是个人投资者，如果你没有门路接触管理层，这是一种优势。

Prof. Liu:Reading news from just public information can be more objective.

刘教授：只从公开信息中阅读新闻更能保持客观。

Mohnish:I was speaking at one of the colleges recently and one of the students asked, "My circle of competence is so small. I just understand very few things. How can I get an advantage?" I said that she had a significant advantage over me because college campuses are usually the places where change comes first. For example, college students were the first demographic to get rid of landlines. Everybody else got rid of landlines later. Some of you may not know what a landline is and that is okay. The first demographic that got rid of landlines was college students. The first demographic that started cutting the cord on cable was college students. The first people who got to experience Facebook were kids in a few colleges. In fact, Facebook was only open to initially Harvard and some Ivy Leagues, and then other colleges. A lot of restaurants get their start in college towns. You will be able to see some brands and stuff that will take off. In many ways, a young person has a huge advantage over someone like me, unlikely to change many things about the way I live my life; it is just static. But a young person is willing to experiment and do different things.

莫尼什：最近，我在一所大学演讲时，一位学生问道："我的能力范围太小了。我只懂很少的东西。我怎样才能获得优势呢？我说，她比我有很大的优势，因为大学校园通常是变革最先发生的地方。例如，大学生是第一个取消固定电话的人群。其他人都是后来才取消固定电话的。你们中有些人可能不知道座机是什么，没关系。第一个取消座机的人群是大学生。第一个开始切断有线电视的人群是大学生。第一批体验 Facebook 的人是一些大学里的孩子。事实上，Facebook 最初只对哈佛大学和一些常春藤联盟开放，后来才对其他大学开放。很多餐馆都是从大学城起步的。你将能看到一些品牌和产品的腾飞。在很多方面，年轻人比我这样的人有很大的优势，我不太可能改变我的生活方式；我的生活方式是一成不变的。但年轻人愿意尝试，愿意做不同的事情。

Prof. Liu:Yes, that is the way.

刘教授：是的，就是这样。

Mohnish:It is all happening at UNO.

莫尼什：这一切都发生在UNO。

Prof. Liu: Yes. That is great advice for college students who want to invest. That takes me to my next question. You mentioned that it can take five years to find a good investment. For five years, you see some return, but what about for young investors? For people like you, who are well established, even if the first four years, did not perform, people are patient. But for young hedge fund managers and young investors, five years is a long time. What is your advice for young people? What do you advise investors who want to start their career in this field?

刘教授：是的，这对想要投资的大学生来说是个很好的建议。接下来是下一个问题。您提到可能需要五年的时间才能找到一个好的投资项目。五年的时间，你看到了一些回报，但对于年轻的投资者呢？对于像您这样已经站稳脚跟的人来说，即使前四年业绩不佳，人们也会有耐心。但对于年轻的对冲基金经理和年轻投资者来说，五年是很长的时间。您的给年轻人的建议？您对想在这一领域开始职业生涯的投资者有何建议？

Mohnish: The very first thing that should have happened is you should have done well with your own investments. You have been doing this for some time, and you have got some track record that can be audited with your own money. Maybe there have been a few hits. If you have been doing it for  years, then you have got a few things that have worked really well. The next step after that is to talk to friends, family, and fools, especially the fools. Fools are important. Then you convince people that you are the person that they ought to give some money to manage, and then you go from there.

莫尼什：（在管理其他人的钱之前），理应发生的一件事是，你应该在个人投资方面做得很好。你得自己已经做了一段时间，用自己的钱进行投资，有了一些经得起检验的业绩记录。也许是成功地投过几只大牛股。如果你这样做了5年、10年、15年，那么你已经有了一些非常成功的经验。下一步就是与朋友、家人和“傻瓜”谈谈，尤其是和“傻瓜”谈谈。“傻瓜”很重要。你要让人们相信，你就是那个他们应该把一些钱托付给你来管的人，之后你再以此为起点继续努力。

Prof. Liu: Those are my questions from your talk. I also want to ask you questions about your background. You were majoring in engineering in college, and after many years you switched to investment. In your previous talk, you mentioned that when you were in engineering school, you needed to work hard. When you took some business classes, it was so easy and natural for you. At first, you thought that you did not want to be peers with these fools in business school. You wanted to do engineering. Many years later, you switch to business and investment. Can you tell us a pivotal moment or story about how you made that change, and do you think engineers are smarter or business people are smarter?

刘教授：这些是我针对你演讲所提的问题。我还想问一些关于你的背景的问题。你大学主修工程学，多年后才转到投资领域。在你之前的演讲中，你提到当你在工程学院学习时，你需要非常勤奋，而当你选修了一些商科课程后，对你来说却是那么容易和自然。起初，你认为自己不想与商学院的这帮傻瓜们为伍，你想学工程。多年后，你转而进入了商业和投资领域。有没有什么关键时刻或故事，让你做了这一转变？你认为工程师更聪明还是商人更聪明？

Mohnish: The 20-year-old Monish, who I am glad you guys did not meet, had a very jaundiced view of the world. He thought about things in a very limited way. I was an engineering student, but I really enjoyed taking business classes; accounting, economics, and investing. I did my undergrad at Clemson University, South Carolina. I used to take as many classes as they would allow me to take at the business school. What I noticed is that usually, I was topping the class. I would be number one in most of the classes I was taking. I remember that in one investing class, I had a   average going into the final. The professor called me to his office and said, "I looked up your background, and I was surprised to see that you are not a business major. I do not know what kind of engineer you are going to make, but you are in the wrong major. You need to switch." The very limited worldview Mohnish had at that time had a view that when I took my engineering classes, they were really hard and I was never the number one person in the class, or even the number three person in the class. I had to really work hard on those. In the business classes, it just came so easily that I just felt that the students I was taking the classes with were a little different demographically from my engineering classmates. I did not understand this at that time. This happened in 1984, and 1985, and the US Stock Market had bottomed in 82.1 remember in one of the investment classes we were doing, they had given us all subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal for the semester student rate and the professor had done a case study on Disney. I remember at that time companies like Disney were trading at six times, seven times earnings. Things were very cheap. I remember he went through some of the parts of Disney where just the real estate of Disney exceeded the market cap. Of course, Disney had a lot of intellectual property and all of that, which has grown over the years. I remember looking at all of that and said, "Wow, this is really remarkable. You can get these things so easily." I was really excited about my investment classes and probably was very engaged with all of that. The professor was right that I should have switched, but Mohnish was too dumb to make that switch at that time. About 8 or 9 years after that, I heard about Warren Buffett for the first time and eventually, I did make the switch. I made the switch maybe 15 years after I should have. We stumbled along but we got to some decent endpoint. It worked, and here we are.

莫尼什：20 岁的莫尼什，我很高兴你们没有见到他，他对世界的看法非常狭隘。他思考问题的方式非常有限。我是个工科生，但我非常喜欢上商科课；会计学、经济学和投资学。我在南卡罗来纳州的克莱姆森大学读本科。在商学院，只要他们允许，我就会尽可能多地选课。我注意到，通常情况下，我都是全班第一。在我选修的大部分课程中，我都是第一名。我记得有一门投资课，期末考试时我的平均成绩是   106%。教授把我叫到办公室，说："我查了你的背景，发现你不是商科出身，我很惊讶。我不知道你会成为什么样的工程师，但你选错了专业。你需要转专业。莫尼什当时的世界观非常有限，他认为当我上工程学课程时，这些课程真的很难，我从来都不是班里的第一名，甚至不是班里的第三名。我必须非常努力地学习。在商科课上，我觉得和我一起上课的学生在人口统计学上与我的工科同学有些不同，这让我感到很轻松。当时我并不明白这一点。这发生在1984年和1985年，美国股市在82年跌至谷底。记得在我们上的一门投资课上，他们给我们所有人订阅了《华尔街日报》，教授还做了一个关于迪斯尼的案例研究。我记得当时迪斯尼等公司的市盈率是 6 倍或 7 倍。当时的价格非常便宜。 我记得他还介绍了迪斯尼的一些情况，迪斯尼的不动产就超过了市值。当然，迪斯尼拥有大量的知识产权和所有这些，多年来不断增长。我记得当时看着这些东西说："哇，这真的太了不起了。你可以如此轻易地得到这些东西。"我对我的投资课感到非常兴奋，可能是非常投入。教授说得没错，我应该转学，但当时的莫尼什太笨了，没有转学。大约八九年后，我第一次听说沃伦-巴菲特，并最终做出了改变。我也许是在本该这样做的，15 年后才这样做的。我们一路跌跌撞撞，但我们到达了一些体面的终点。它起了作用，我们就这样了。

Prof. Liu: We are on the eve of the Berkshire Hathaway meeting. I believe many of the audience here are going to the Berkshire Hathaway meeting. Last year, Charlie Munger passed away, and we know that you had a profound friendship with both Warren and Charlie. Would you like to share a memory with Charlie?

刘教授：我们正值伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司会议前夕。我相信在座的很多听众都会去参加伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司的会议。去年，查理-芒格去世，我们知道您与沃伦和查理都有着深厚的友谊。您愿意分享一下与查理的回忆吗？

Mohnish: It is very sad and we will probably see the movie tomorrow. They said they are going to stream it. They have never streamed that movie before. It might be all Charlie zingers, so bring a lot of Kleenex to the meeting. Charlie was one of a kind. We never see someone like him again. The way I felt after Charlie passed away was similar to the way I felt after my mom passed away, and lesser extent my dad. I felt that my mother was an incredible person. I was really gifted and blessed to have a person like that as my mom. There are so many things that were great for me because she was my mother, but I realized after she passed that I had a lot of regrets. There were many things that I wish I had spent more time on, asked more things, did more things with her and all of that even though we had a whole life together. Many of the same thoughts came to me when Charlie passed away. There were so many things that I wanted to explore and talk about and never got there.

莫尼什：这让人很难过，我们可能明天就能看到这部电影了。他们说要用流媒体播放。他们以前从未播放过这部电影。可能都是查理的俏皮话，所以开会时要带很多面巾纸。查理是独一无二的我们再也见不到像他这样的人了。查理去世后，我的感受与我母亲去世后的感受相似，其次是我父亲去世后的感受。我觉得我的母亲是一个不可思议的人。能有这样的母亲，我真的很幸运。因为她是我的母亲，所以有很多事情对我来说都很好，但她去世后我意识到我有很多遗憾。有很多事情我希望能花更多的时间，问更多的事情，和她一起做更多的事情，尽管我们在一起生活了一辈子。查理去世时，我也有很多同样的想法。有太多的事情我想去探索和谈论，但却一直没有机会。

Last time I met Charlie was exactly a month before he passed away and I did not know at the time that it would be the last time I would see him. It was a dinner at his place, and it was just the two of us. Charlie never complained. He always had so much pain and things going on, but he would just joke and say, "Any morning I wake up without some new pain is a great day. If everything is the way it was yesterday, things are great." He was almost blind at that point. It was difficult for him to read, but still he never complained. He talked about soldiering on. Most of the things I learned from Charlie were just by observing him, not what he said, not what he wrote. Look at Poor Charlie's A/manac, there's a lot of incredible wisdom, but just by observing him, you could learn a lot. You could put any food in front of Charlie, and he would just eat it. He would never complain about anything.

我最后一次见到查理是在他去世前整整一个月，当时我并不知道这将是我最后一次见到他。那是在他家的一次晚餐，只有我们两个人。查理从不抱怨。他总是有那么多的痛苦和事情要处理，但他只是开玩笑说："任何一个我醒来没有新的痛苦的早晨都是美好的一天。如果一切都和昨天一样，那就是美好的一天"。那时他几乎失明。阅读对他来说很困难，但他从不抱怨。他谈到了坚持不懈。我从查理身上学到的大部分东西都是通过观察他而获得的，而不是他说了什么，也不是他写了什么。看看《穷查理宝典》，里面有很多不可思议的智慧，但仅仅通过观察他，你就能学到很多东西。你可以把任何食物放在查理面前，他都会乖乖吃掉。他从不抱怨任何事情。

You cannot do that with Warren. Warren told me that he ate exactly what he ate when he was six years old. No change in the diet from the age of 6 to the age of 93 . When I had lunch with him, someone put a shrimp on his plate, and he was horrified. He could not believe there was a shrimp on his plate. He could not wait to get rid of it, but Charlie would eat anything you put in front of him. Charlie loved See's Candies. I remember this one young lady I met at the airport, and she was talking about the meeting. It was the first time she came, and she said, "I wish Charles Munger spent less time eating peanut brittle and more time answering questions." He was just focused on eating the peanut brittle. When I would go to Charlie's house, the peanut brittle was rationed. I was told that the peanut brittle is only brought out for dinner twice a month. Sometimes it would happen when I would be there, and I would tell them, "Listen, try to keep the peanut brittle for when I come," because then there is an association tendency that when Mohnish shows up, life is great." I would see that after dinner, the peanut brittle would come out, and it would be gone in two seconds; all gone. But he would never ask for more. He would never, on a non-peanut brittle day, say

你不能对沃伦这么做。沃伦告诉我，他吃的东西和六岁时一模一样。从 6 岁到 93 岁，饮食没有任何变化。我和他共进午餐时，有人在他的盘子里放了一只虾，他吓坏了。他简直不敢相信自己的盘子里竟然有一只虾。他迫不及待地想把虾扔掉，但查理会吃掉你放在他面前的任何东西。查理很喜欢吃See's糖果。我记得我在机场遇到的一位年轻女士，她一直在谈论这次会议。那是她第一次来 她说 "我希望查尔斯-芒格少花点时间吃花生糖，多花点时间回答问题"他只顾着吃花生糖了。我去查理家的时候 花生糖是定量供应的，有人告诉我，花生糖每月只在晚餐时拿出两次。有时我去的时候就会发生这种情况，我会告诉他们："听着，尽量把花生糖留着我来的时候吃，"因为这样就会产生一种联想，当莫尼什出现的时候，生活就会很美好。"我看到晚饭后，花生糖会被拿出来，两秒钟就吃完了，吃光了。但他从来不会要更多。在没有花生脆的日子里，他绝不会说。

Prof. Liu: Thank you for sharing that with us. That is new for all of us. You observed Charlie Munger, not just in the investment field. You observed his personality, how he interacts with his family, and his lifestyle. How do you think that impacts your investments, personal growth, and even personal life? How does it influence the way you approach life?

刘教授：谢谢您与我们分享。这对我们大家来说都很新鲜。你观察查理-芒格，不仅仅是在投资领域。你观察了他的个性、他与家人的互动方式以及他的生活方式。你认为这对你的投资、个人成长甚至个人生活有何影响？它如何影响你对待生活的方式？

Mohnish: Being Charlie is not easy. He is so evolved. But whatever we can do to emulate him is going to make us a lot better. He is the gold standard, sitting up there, but whatever we can absorb and learn from him and bring into our lives would be great. In one of his last interviews, someone asked him, "What would you like on your gravestone?" His answer was, "I tried to be useful." That is a very accurate way of describing how Charlie was. Whoever he interacted with, whoever he encountered, he tried to be useful. If you look at Berkshire Hathaway, Warren wrote, "He started helping Berkshire Hathaway when he had no economic interest in the company." His willingness to work on improving Costco, including improving Berkshire or improving Mohnish had nothing to do with economic interest. It was all driven by him trying to be useful. It is a really great ethos to live by.

莫尼什：成为查理并不容易。他是如此进化。但无论我们做什么来模仿他，都会让我们变得更好。他是黄金标准，坐在那里，但无论我们能从他身上吸收和学习什么，并将其带入我们的生活，都会非常棒。在他最后一次接受采访时，有人问他："你希望自己的墓碑上写什么？"他的回答是："我努力成为一个有用的人"。这句话非常准确地描述了查理的为人。无论他与谁交往，无论他遇到谁，他都努力成为有用的人。如果你看看伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司，沃伦写道："当他在伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司没有经济利益时，他就开始帮助这家公司了"。他愿意致力于改善好市多，包括改善伯克希尔或改善莫尼什，这与经济利益无关。这一切都是因为他想成为一个有用的人。这真是一种伟大的人生态度。

Prof. Liu: Yes. I can see that impact through the charity work you have done both in the US and in India. That is remarkable.

刘教授：是的。通过您在美国和印度所做的慈善工作，我可以看到这种影响。这很了不起。

Mohnish: Thank you.

莫尼什：谢谢。

Prof. Liu: Even the thing you are doing for us, like right now. We met in the Berkshire Hathaway meeting in 2021. I walked up to Mohnish Pabrai and told him, "Would you like to give us a talk at UNO?" He accepted and did not even hesitate. He gave me his card. He did not even give me his assistant's card. His dedication to education, to the young people, to the investors is admirable. Thank you for all the work you have done.

刘教授：甚至您为我们做的事情，比如现在。我们是在 2021 年伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司的会议上认识的。我走到 Mohnish Pabrai 面前，对他说："你愿意在UNO给我们做一次演讲吗？他毫不犹豫地答应了。他给了我他的名片。他甚至没有给我他助手的名片。他对教育、对年轻人、对投资者的奉献精神令人钦佩。感谢您所做的一切工作。

Mohnish: Well, it has made my Omaha trips more fun, so thank you. It is awesome.

莫尼什：它让我的奥马哈之旅更加有趣，所以谢谢你。太棒了。

Prof. Liu: You mentioned you like to copy Charlie Munger's investment strategy. You also mentioned in your book you like cloning successful investors. Could you walk us through a specific instance where you have applied this strategy and the lessons learned from it?

刘教授：您提到您喜欢模仿查理-芒格的投资策略。你在书中也提到，你喜欢克隆成功的投资者。您能否向我们介绍一下您运用这一策略的具体案例以及从中汲取的经验教训？

Mohnish: From cloning?

莫尼什：克隆？

Prof. Liu: Yes.

刘教授：是的。

Mohnish: Well, Jim Senegal, who was the founder and CEO of Costco for a long time, used to work at Price Club before Costco and he worked under Sol Price. He was asked one time, "What have you learned from Sol Price?" He said, "It is the wrong question. There is nothing I know that did not come from Sol Price." Of course, what happened is, in the case of Costco, later Costco bought Price Club and became far more successful than Price Club. The student became better than the teacher.

莫尼什：吉姆·塞内加尔（Jim Senegal）是好市多创始人，且曾长期担任其CEO。在创办好市多之前，他曾在普莱斯会员店（Price Club）工作，是索尔·普莱斯（Sol Price）的下属。有一次，有人问他，“你从索尔·普莱斯身上学到了什么？”他说：“这是一个错误的问题。我所知道的一切，无不是从索尔普赖斯那里学来的。”当然，在好市多的案例中，后来的情况是，好市多收购了普莱斯会员店，变得远比普莱斯会员店成功。学生变得比老师更优秀。

Cloning is extremely powerful. Nothing I can think of that I know, came up with myself. Everything is cloned. That is the great thing about this world; you can just pick up things that are already known and someone has already done. People will say that Starbucks is a great business model, but somebody already did it or McDonald's is great, but somebody already did it. There is room for three or four or five. If you know that Starbucks is a great model, you can clone it and it will work. Just to give you an example, in my book, The Dhandho Investor, which I was writing in 2006 and 2007, I wrote about what an amazing business Chipotle was. I loved Chipotle. At that time, I was eating Chipotle for lunch every day, and I just marveled at the business. Bill Ackman is the one who made all the money from Chipotle, not Mohnish. I love the business, I never invested in the business, and it's been one of the most spectacular home runs. I saw Chipotle when it was embryonic. It was really small at that time. There were very few stores. I thought about it, then in 2006, and even today, no one has cloned Chipotle. The most surprising thing for me is that Chipotle has no clones. I remember there was another Mexican fast-food taco place, Baja Fresh, which Wendy's used to own then. I went to Baja Fresh, and of course, the experience was terrible compared to Chipotle. I never went back again. I thought to myself, why don't these guys just go and do what Chipotle does? Just reconfigure your line where you are producing the tacos and burritos to be exactly that. Make it the same ingredients, hire those chefs, and make the taste the same, nobody has done it. If you look at the world over and over and over again, you will find great things around with no clones and those are all wide-open opportunities, so long live cloning.

Prof. Liu: The "Heads I win; tails I do not lose much" philosophy resonates with many investors. Can you share a memorable investment where this principle was put to the test and the outcome taught you valuable lessons?

刘教授："正面我赢，反面我输得不多 "的理念引起了许多投资者的共鸣。您能否分享一下在投资过程中，这一原则经受了考验，而结果又给了您宝贵的经验教训？

Mohnish:"Heads I win, tails I do not lose much," is the cornerstone of investing. It is like breathing. They said that when Warren was like six or seven years old, he would walk with his knees slightly bent forward. The reason he did that is that he did not want to fall, and he found that if you walk with your knees slightly bent forward, you would never fall. Warren has a very extreme aversion to negative outcomes. Negative outcomes hurt him a lot, like falling down, for example. They gave away   of Berkshire Hathaway shares to buy Dexter shoes, and Dexter shoes went to zero. Whatever they paid in those shares went to zero. Every few years Warren will bring up Dexter's shoes and say, it is a   billion mistake. It is a   billion mistake and now it is more than a   billion mistake. Then he would say that when the stock goes down, he feels good. For someone like Warren, the experience of falling down and the experience of the loss of Dexter's shoes are very similar feelings. With both Warren and Charlie, their approach has always been a focus on the downside. As investors, we really want to be heavily focused on the downside. We must do whatever we can to reduce or eliminate the downside. Even then we make a lot of mistakes, but if the focus is on the downside, many times the upside will take care of itself.

莫尼什："正面我赢，反面我输得不多 "是投资的基石。这就像呼吸一样。据说沃伦六七岁的时候，走路时膝盖会微微向前弯曲。他之所以这样做，是因为他不想摔倒，而且他发现，如果你走路时膝盖微微向前弯曲，你就永远不会摔倒。沃伦对负面结果非常反感。负面结果对他伤害很大，比如摔倒。再比如，他出让伯克希尔哈撒韦2%的股份来购买戴克斯特（Dexter）鞋业公司，结果戴克斯特的股价归零。无论他们用了多少股份来支付，都归零了。每隔几年，沃伦就会提起戴克斯特鞋业，说这是一个100亿美元的错误，后来变成一个120亿美元的错误，现在是一个超过150亿美元的错误（注：因为巴菲特为这次收购所支付的伯克希尔股份的股价不断上涨）。

他常说，当股票下跌时，他感觉很好。对于沃伦这样的人来说，走路摔倒和在戴克斯特亏损，是十分相似的感受。对于沃伦和查理，他们的方法始终是关注下行风险（downside，或译为亏损风险）。作为投资者，我们的确要高度关注下行风险。我们必须竭尽所能地减少或消除下行风险。即便如此，我们还是会犯很多错误，但如果我们把重点放在下行风险上，很多时候上行空间（upside，或译为获利潜力）就会自行解决。

Many of the investments I made were investments where the downside was almost non-existent. Last year I invested in a company called Consol Energy. It is a thermal coal producer. Of course, now they have the Baltimore Bridge down, which has dramatically affected them in terms of the ability to ship anything for the last couple of months. I had never heard of the company before. Consol Energy was a company that came on my radar because someone put a tweet out saying, "David Einhorn's Consol Energy bet looks like Mohnish's IPSCO bet." IPSCO was a company I had invested in almost 20 years ago; in 2004. I have very fond memories of IPSCO. Whenever someone brings up IPSCO, I get very excited. IPSCO was this classic "Head I win, tails I do not lose much," where this was a Canadian steel company whose stock price was   a share. They had   a share in cash, they had no debt, and they had contracts that were going to give them at least   a share in earnings for each of the next two years. They had publicly given this guidance, and it was not just guidance. These were contracts on their books. If you have just bought the stock and you held it for two years, it would have  on the balance sheet, and all the plant, equipment, and inventory, would be free. I had no idea what Consol's long-term intrinsic value or cash flows or any of those things are. I had no idea about it. In fact, it was such a cyclical business that in year three earnings could be zero, earnings could even be negative because they could go up and down. All I wanted to do was to buy Consol. I want to own it for two years. I want to see what Mr. Market does to the stock price. That was the extent of my analysis on Consol, nothing more than that. What happened is, a year later, they announced we were going to have one more year of   a share. I said, "Hallelujah." We cannot lose money, and by that time, the stock had drifted north to about 80 or   a share. It almost doubled in 14 , or 15 months. I was thinking, it was time to move on. Who knows what happens after that, because this is very cyclical. Mr. Market is giving you a double in 15 months, life is good.

我所做的许多投资都是几乎没有负面影响的投资。去年，我投资了一家名为 Consol Energy 的公司。这是一家动力煤生产商。当然，现在他们的巴尔的摩大桥垮了，这在过去几个月里极大地影响了他们的运输能力。我从未听说过这家公司之前。康索尔能源公司之所以进入我的视线，是因为有人在推特上写道："大卫-艾因霍恩在康索尔能源公司的赌注看起来就像莫尼什在 IPSCO 公司的赌注"。IPSCO 是我 20 年前（2004 年）投资的一家公司。我对 IPSCO 记忆犹新。每当有人提起 IPSCO，我都会非常激动。IPSCO 是一家典型的 "正面我赢，反面我输得不多 "的加拿大钢铁公司，股价是每股45美元。他们有每股15美元的现金，没有债务，而且他们签有合同，在接下来的两年里，每年至少有每股15美元的盈利。他们公开给出了这样的指导，而且这不仅仅是指导。这些都是他们账面上的合同。如果你只是买入股票并持有两年，资产负债表上就会有45美元，而所有的厂房、设备和库存将是免费的。我不知道康索尔公司的长期内在价值、现金流或其他任何东西是什么。我对此一无所知。事实上，这是个周期性很强的行业，第三年的收益可能为零，甚至可能是负数，因为它们可能涨也可能跌。我只想买下康索尔。我想持有两年。我想看看 "市场先生 "对股价的影响。这就是我对 Consol 的分析，仅此而已。结果是，一年后，他们宣布公司又度过了每股15美元盈利的一年。我说“哈利路亚”，我们不可能亏钱了，而且到那时候，股价已经到了80或90美元一股，在14或15个月里几乎翻了一番。我心想，是时候获利了结了，谁知道之后会发生什么，因为这是非常周期性的生意。“市场先生”让你在15个月内翻了一番，生活很美好了。

Then, as I was thinking through all that, one day I woke up and the stock was at 155 . Some Swedish company offered to buy them for 160, and about five seconds after that, I sold all the shares I had. In 2023 when someone tweets, this is like Mohnish's IPSCO bet. I thought I would never see another IPSCO in my life. I said, "There is a God, and the God loves me. Let us look into Consol." Consol was very similar in the sense that they sold a year in advance all the coal that they were going to produce with price bands that were fixed. It cannot go above or beyond a certain range. In 2023, they have already done all the deals where that money is going to show up in 24 . It was not as good as IPSCO in the sense that it was not two years fully locked in for that, but the market cap was under 2 billion and these cash flows in a single year, which they locked in, was about 600 million. They were almost a third. There were two advantages they had over IPSCO. Unlike IPSCO, it was unlikely that they would have a year where they would lose money. Consol is a 150 -year-old company. They have never gone bankrupt in 150 years. They have always made money because they are the lowest-cost producer of some of the highest-quality thermal coal reserves in the world. They are sitting at a very low end of the cost curve, so they always make money. I said, "Okay, this is actually better than IPSCO because you are in advance, and you cannot really lose money. The second thing that they had going with IPSCO was that they were going to spend all their money buying back shares, even if you are trading at three times, four times, five times cash flows, and someone is going to buy back all the shares. Long live Twitter. That is all I have to say. Here we are heavily loaded on coal, because of that tweet, so life is good. Thank you.

就在我思考这一切的时候，有一天一觉醒来，发现股价已经到了155美元，因为一家瑞典公司提出以160美元的价格收购它们。大约五秒钟后，我卖掉了手中所有的股票。2023年，当有人在推特上说，这就像莫尼什在IPSCO上的赌注时，我本以为这辈子再也见不到IPSCO了。我说：“上帝是存在的，上帝爱我。让我们瞧瞧Consol吧。” Consol公司的情况非常相似，他们提前一年出售所有要生产的煤炭，价格区间是固定的。不能超过或超出一定的范围。在 2023 年，他们已经完成了所有的交易，这笔钱将在 24 年出现。虽然没有 IPSCO 那么好，没有锁定两年的时间，但市值不到 20 亿美元，而他们锁定的单年现金流约为 6 亿美元。他们几乎占了三分之一。与 IPSCO 相比，他们有两个优势。与 IPSCO 不同，他们不太可能有亏损的一年。Consol 是一家拥有 150 年历史的公司。150 年来，他们从未破产过。他们一直在赚钱，因为他们是世界上一些最高质量动力煤储量的最低成本生产商。他们处于成本曲线的低端，所以总是赚钱。我说："好吧，这其实比 IPSCO 更好，因为你们是先期投入，不会真正亏损。IPSCO 的第二点是，他们会花所有的钱回购股份，即使你的交易价格是现金流的三倍、四倍、五倍，也会有人回购所有股份。推特万岁。我就说这么多。 因为这条推文，我们这里的煤炭用量很大，所以生活还不错。谢谢。

Prof. Liu: Thank you for sharing that. You gave us several examples of evaluating the interesting value of business. That is one of the most important things for value investors. I want to ask you, how many of you are value investors? How many of you would consider yourselves to be value investors? We have a large audience of value investors, but there is also a trend that more people are making passive investments, investing in an index fund. There is this concern that the population of value investors is shrinking, like an index fund, does not pick up those undervalued stocks. If you are under a billing, it is hard to get noticed. In the past, the mechanism is that, like value investors, like you guys, you observe out there and there is an undervalued stock and the people started investing in it. They bring up the price of the stock, but the population of value investors is shrinking. What are your thoughts on that?

刘教授：感谢你的分享。你给我们举了几个评估企业价值的有趣案例，这是价值投资者最重要的事情之一。我想问一下，你们（注：指台下同学和老师）当中有多少人是价值投资者？有多少人自认为是价值投资者？（注：不少人举手）我们有一大批听众是价值投资者，但也有一种趋势，即越来越多的人在进行被动投资，投资指数基金。人们担心价值投资者的群体正在缩小，指数基金不会主动注意到那些价值被低估的股票。过去的机制是，你们这些价值投资者会在场外观察，发现有价值被低估的股票，就开始投资，以此抬升股价，但价值投资者的数量正在缩小。你对此有何看法？

Mohnish:It is good. When people ignore stocks, that is awesome. I would love for the Consol price to stay extremely low for a very long time. In fact, it is not good if it goes up. They would buy shares back at high prices. In general, if you have identified an undervalued business and no one agrees with you, and it remains undervalued, at the end of the day that business is producing cash flows and you have a claim on those cash flows. If the business is prudent about how it is either using or distributing those cash flows. At the end of the day, the market is a weighing machine. Those cash flows have to show up as dividends or value to the investor. I would say it is a blessing for investors that all the money goes into the Fab Four; that is awesome. Put it all there. It is great. Go Nvidia.

莫尼什：这是好事。当人们忽视个股时，那很好。我希望Consol公司的股价能在很长一段时间内保持极低的水平。事实上，如果价格上涨反而不太好，（因为）他们会以高价回购股票。

一般来说，如果你发现了一家价值被低估、且没人同意你的企业，并且它持续被低估，到头来，这家企业会产生现金流，而你对这些现金流有索取权。如果该企业在如何使用或分配这些现金流方面是审慎的，那市场最终是一台“称重机”，这些现金流必将以股息或其他对投资者有价值的形式显现。

我想说的是，如果所有资金都流入了“四大金刚”（注：指英伟达、亚马逊、脸书和微软，这几家科技巨头的股票在过去两年涨幅巨大），这是投资者的福气。把钱都投那里去吧，这太棒了。英伟达加油！

Prof. Liu: I am a professor of economics and macroeconomics. I also studied financial economics, like financial markets. I want to put an investment in this big environment, macroeconomic environment. We have seen lots of changes in the past few years. The pandemic changed the way of business. You also see the US-China, the tension, and political risk increasing, and you see the supply chain and Ukraine war conflicts. Like the rise of nationalism around the world, and the impact of globalization. In this dynamic macroeconomic environment, how does that affect your investment particularly?

刘教授：我是经济学和宏观经济学教授。我还研究金融经济学，比如金融市场。我想在宏观经济这个大环境下做一个投资。过去几年我们看到了很多变化。大流行病改变了商业方式。你还会看到中美关系紧张，政治风险增加，你还会看到供应链和乌克兰战争冲突。全球民族主义抬头，全球化带来冲击。在这种多变的宏观经济环境下，这对你们的投资有什么特别的影响？

Mohnish: I focus much more on the micro. I always start with the business. I do not start with, "Okay, there is a pandemic. Let me find out how I can make money from the pandemic or whatever." I always try to go back to business, because understanding economies or big macro things is beyond my little brain. I cannot get my arms around that. Understanding just a business itself is complicated, so I do not want to make it more complicated. Keep it as simple as possible.

Mohnish: 我更注重微观。我总是从业务入手。我不会一开始就说："好吧，现在有一种流行病。让我找出如何从大流行病中赚钱或其他什么"。我总是试图回到业务上来，因为理解经济或宏观大事件超出了我的小脑袋。我无法理解。仅仅理解企业本身就很复杂，所以我不想让它变得更复杂。尽可能简单。

Prof. Liu: Let us open the questions to the audience.

刘教授：下面请大家提问。

Alan:I am asking this on behalf of my kids. How can they be rich and successful like you, but faster? Thank you.

艾伦：我代表我的孩子们问这个问题：他们怎样才能像你一样富有和成功，但速度更快？谢谢。

Mohnish: Please make sure you repeat this to your kids. To ask the question is to answer it. The answer is in the question.

莫尼什：请务必向你的孩子重复这一点。提出问题就是回答问题。答案就在问题中。

Mohnish: When you figure it out, let me know next year. Next question.

莫尼什：等你想明白了，明年告诉我。下一个问题。

Speaker 1: Hi, Mohnish, thanks for giving this talk. I remember you said once that your dad gave you a credit card and he said, "I trust you with this. You do not have to tell me how much and you do not have to tell me what for." We just had our first son two months ago and my question is, raising a young son, what came first for your dad? Was it trust or did he know you would do the right thing because of how he raised you? What was the story and impetus behind all that?

演讲者 1：你好，莫尼什，感谢你的演讲。我记得你曾说过，你父亲给了你一张信用卡，然后说：“我相信你能处理好这件事。你不必告诉我花了多少，也不必告诉我为何而花。”两个月前，我们刚有了第一个儿子，我想替正在抚养年幼儿子的父母们问问，你父亲把什么放在第一位？是信任吗？还是说，因为他抚养你的方式，所以知道你会做正确的事？这个故事的全貌及其背后的动因是什么？

Mohnish: That is a great question. My dad was a very strict father. You had to be on your best behavior around him. Suddenly there was a switch when I turned 16. He told us, "You can go to my wallet, take as much money as you want, and spend it on whatever you want. You never need to tell me what you are doing." His demeanor changed from a father to a friend. I really could not believe this. I always thought there was an ulterior motive; something is going to change someday. What I realized later was that there was a transfer of values that took place in the first maybe 15 , or 16 years and he probably felt that things were okay. What I had done with my own daughters is I pushed the envelope a little bit. I did not wait till 16. We gave them both credit cards when they were 12 and these were Amex platinum cards. They had no limit. They had Amex platinum cards at 12, but not even   got spent. Of course, I had more tools than my dad, because he was giving cash, which he could not track. But with credit cards, the bills are coming to me. I can see what happened. It is actually a leash even though they do not realize that. We never saw anything happen with those cards at all, which gave me cause for concern. The important thing as a parent is a transfer of values, and you cannot transfer values by talking to them. Do not try to give them values by lecturing them. They will pick up values by observing you, especially when you do not think they are observing you. Just know that they are going to be watching things and seeing things, even the interaction between both of you, that will get deeply embedded in their psyches. Good parenting is about good behavior. All the best. Congratulations.

莫尼什：这个问题问得好。我父亲是个非常严厉的父亲。在他身边，你必须表现得最好。在我 16 岁的时候，他突然改变了主意。他告诉我们："你们可以去拿我的钱包，想拿多少钱就拿多少钱，想怎么花就怎么花。你们做什么从来不需要告诉我"。他的态度从父亲变成了朋友。我真的不敢相信。我一直以为他别有用心，总有一天会改变什么。后来我意识到，在最初的 15 年或 16 年里，价值观发生了转变，他可能觉得一切都好。我对我自己女儿所做的是，我把时间向前移了移，没有等到她们16岁（注：莫尼什有两个女儿，大女儿Monsoon Pabrai目前是一名初露头角的基金经理）。12岁时，我们给了她们两张信用卡，都是美国运通白金卡，没有限额。所以说，12岁她们就有了运通白金卡，但其实连10美元都没花过。当然，我的工具比我父亲多，因为他给的是现金，现金无法追踪。但信用卡的账单会找上门来，我能看到发生了什么。这实际上是一种束缚，虽然她俩并未意识到这一点。我从没看到这些卡有任何动静，这反而给了我担心的理由。作为父母，最重要的是价值观的传递，而价值观的传递不能靠跟他们说话。不要试图通过说教来给他们灌输价值观。他们会通过观察你，尤其是在你认为他们没有在观察你的时候，来学习价值观。你要知道，他们会观察和看到一些事情，甚至是你们之间的互动，这些都会深深地印在他们的心灵深处。好的父母就是要有好的行为。一切顺利祝贺你

Prof. Liu: I recently learned that your grandfather is a famous magician in India, how does that impact you?

刘教授：我最近得知您的祖父是印度著名的魔术师，这对您有什么影响？

Mohnish: The mustache is from him. He was far greater on stage. We can only aspire to be like him. My grandfather, my mother's dad, is probably the most incredible grandfather anyone could have. We used to go to his place in the foothills of the Himalayas. The day would start in the morning. He used to do magic tricks with us, and then he would take us for dessert. He was number one in the world; the best in the world in the art that he practiced, so it was really good.

莫尼什：胡子是他留的。他在舞台上要伟大得多。我们只能向往成为他那样的人。我的外公，也就是我母亲的父亲，可能是最不可思议的外公了。我们经常去他位于喜马拉雅山麓的家。一天从早上开始。他会和我们一起变魔术，然后带我们去吃甜点。他是世界第一；在他所练习的艺术中，他是世界上最好的，所以他的魔术真的很棒。

Speaker 2: Thank you for a great talk here. I was thinking about what you were saying about how investors have, or at least Warren Buffett and Charlie had a high loss aversion in terms of investments. As you know, there are many ways to invest, but how do you manage that? There are things that can tap into a company that is beyond our control. Then, how do you make sure that you are not having too much of a loss if something goes wrong that is beyond your control, but you're also heavily invested in one or a concentrated portfolio?

演讲者 2：谢谢你的精彩演讲。我在想你刚才说的，投资者，至少是巴菲特和查理，在投资方面有很强的损失厌恶情绪。如你所知，投资的方式有很多，但你如何管理呢？有些事情是我们无法控制的。那么，如何确保在出现无法控制的问题时，不会有太大的损失，但同时又大量投资于一个或一个集中的投资组合呢？

Mohnish: I would still say that the loss aversion aspect, there is no downside to overdosing on that. Obviously, at some point, you need to make some bets. But if you look at almost all entrepreneurs who start different businesses, people think that entrepreneurs take risks. The reality is entrepreneurs do everything possible to minimize risk. When you analyze what risk they are taking, typically they do not have much money. If you do not have much money, you cannot lose much money. The downside is already limited. When I started my first business, I had taken out about 25,000 from my 401(k). I was 24 , so I did not care so much about retirement at that time. I signed up for every credit card they would send to me. I had 70,000 in unused credit card lines and eventually, all of that got drawn as I was growing the business. But I had researched bankruptcy law at that time. If the business had not worked, that debt would have been wiped out. That law has been changed now. The   going away at 24 is not an extreme tragedy. I had looked at the downside of doing this versus the upside. The upside was very asymmetric. Loss aversion is a very good principle. It is a very good mental model to have. You do need to have some creativity, and you need to have some interest in at least making bets, and trying to exercise what you think might work. But you can do it in the context of minimizing or eliminating risk, and then that can work well.

Mohnish：我还是要说，在损失规避（loss aversion）方面，就算做过头也没什么坏处。显然，到了某个时候，你需要下一些注，你需要做点什么。但如果你看看那些创建过不同企业的创业者，人们都认为企业家敢于冒险。现实情况是，几乎所有创业者都会尽一切可能把风险降到最低。

当你真正去分析他们所承担的风险时，（你会发现）通常情况下，他们没多少钱。如果你钱不多，损失就不会太大，下行风险就已经很有限了。我的意思是，当我第一次创业时，我从我退休账户里取了大约25000美元。当时我24岁，还不太关心退休问题。我注册了银行发给我的每一张信用卡，有7万美元未使用的信用卡额度。最终，随着业务的发展，这些额度都被我支取了。当时我仔细研究过破产法，虽然那条法律现在已经改了。基本上，如果我生意没做成功，那些债务会一笔勾销，而退休金在24岁时化为乌有并非一个极端的悲剧。因此，我考虑过这样做的下行风险和上行潜力，（发现）上行潜力是非常不对称的。

我认为，损失规避是一个非常好的原则，一个非常好的思维模型。诚然，你需要有一定的创造力，你至少要对下注有些兴趣，并运用你认为行之有效的方法做些尝试。但你可以在尽量减少或消除风险的前提下这么做。这样就能做得很好。

Chloe:Hi, Pabrai. I am Chloe from Singapore. Thanks so much for all the YouTube videos that you shared. They have taught me so much about investing. I have two questions. Question number one is, since you talk about the importance of the downside and recently China has been dropping so much, what is your view toward investing in China, despite all this political uncertainty, particularly in terms of index investing in China? The second question is, what is your view on companies like Starbucks and McDonald's which borrow a lot of money buying back their shares, and which results in negative equity? Are you concerned about that? Thank you.

克洛伊：你好，我是来自新加坡的Chloe。非常感谢你分享的YouTube视频，教会了我很多投资知识。我有两个问题：第一个问题是，既然你谈到下行风险的重要性，而最近中国的跌幅是如此之大，那么尽管存在种种政治不确定性，你对投资中国有什么看法，尤其是中国的指数投资？第二个问题是，星巴克和麦当劳等公司借了很多钱用来回购股票，导致其净资产为负，你对此有何看法？这会让你担心吗？谢谢。

Mohnish: Those are great questions. Thank you. Regarding China, most of it would be outside my circle of competence. I cannot do much about that. To the extent that things are within the circle of competence, I can look at them. I used to have an investment a few years back in Moutai, which I should never have sold, but you know, that is the way it is. I also had investments in Alibaba and Tencent, which we do not have, but it did not work for us at the time we invested. Most of China is outside of what I can do just because of the range of understanding that I have on that. The best businesses are ones that have no debt. I actually think there is a lot to be said for businesses that operate with zero debt. I am not a proponent of a company borrowing money and doing buybacks. Many companies do that, but I would say that probably the gold standard is Berkshire Hathaway. Warren and Charlie have said many times that they could have introduced modest leverage, and it would have increased their results even more than they have been, but they never went there. In fact, if you look at Berkshire, it is overloaded with cash. Businesses are very fragile. Very few businesses that are around today, even large dominant businesses that are around today will be around 50 years from now, or 30 years from now. One of the reasons that businesses do not last is they cannot withstand heavy storms. All businesses are going to run into headwinds. Most management teams do not fully think that way. If they study Berkshire Hathaway, they study some truly great businesses. One of the hallmarks of a great business is high returns on equity with no use of leverage. That is a classic definition of a great business. I am not a proponent of borrowing money to buy back shares. That is not good.

莫尼什：这些问题都很好。谢谢。关于中国，大部分问题都不在我的职权范围内。我对此无能为力。只要是在我能力范围内的事情，我都可以关注。几年前我曾投资茅台，我本不该卖掉它，但你知道，事情就是这样。我还投资了阿里巴巴和腾讯，我们没有这些投资，但在我们投资的时候，这些投资并不适合我们。中国大部分地区都不在我的投资范围之内，这是因为我对这些地区的了解范围有限。

没有债务的企业才是最好的企业。事实上，我认为零负债经营的企业大有可为。我不赞成公司借钱回购。许多公司都这样做，但我认为伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司（Berkshire Hathaway）可能是黄金标准。沃伦和查理曾多次表示，他们本可以引入适度的杠杆，这将使他们的业绩比现在更上一层楼，但他们从未这样做。事实上，如果你看看伯克希尔，它的现金已经超载。

企业是非常脆弱的，即使今天还存在的大型、主导型企业，30或50年后仍然存在的也寥寥无几。企业无法长久的原因之一，是它们没有能力度过大风大浪，而所有企业都会遇到逆风。你在建立抗逆力（resilience）方面做得越多，就能活得越长。大多数管理团队不会完全以这种方式思考。如果他们研究伯克希尔哈撒韦，研究一些真正的好生意，一个好生意的标志之一，就是不用杠杆就能获得很高的净资产回报率（high returns on equity with no use of leverage）。这是一个好生意的经典定义。因此我不赞成借钱回购股票，这么做不好。

Speaker 3: Hello. My question is, if I get approached by somebody like you in this meeting, how do I know it is not just luck? What are five good questions I should ask that person to see if it is a repeatable framework that will help me? Can I retire?

发言人 3：你好。我的问题是，如果我在这次会议上遇到像您这样的人，我怎么知道这不是运气？有哪些好问题是我应该问他的，能帮我看清他是否有一个可重复的框架，能让我安心退休？

Mohnish:Well, I would say that the identification of a good investment manager is much harder than the identification of a good investment. The default should be an index fund, and then if something shows up on the radar where seven moons are aligning, you can look into that. Peter Kaufman talks about the 5 aces. I do not know if I can rattle off the 5 aces here, but God Google can rattle them off for you. You are looking for things like an alignment of interest, for a track record, for how that track record was developed, for ethos, for a certain kind of character, and for someone who is fishing where the fish are. These are some of the things you would want to look for, but I would say that even looking for all of those, it would not be a tragedy to be indexed all the time. That would be fine. Hi, my name is Tony. I am from Seattle. You answered "Consol energy," and it sort of seems obvious. But not everybody did it. Not every investor bought Consol. Somehow you had an edge to see that, and everybody else that stood on the sidelines did not buy Consol. Why didn't they buy Consol? The math is the same.

莫尼什：恩，我会说：辨别一个好的投资经理要比辨别一个好的投资项目难得多。所以默认的选择应该是指数基金。在此基础上，如果你发现了天时地利人和的情况，你可以看一看。

彼得·考夫曼谈到过“5张王牌”（5 Aces），我不确定我能详尽说出这5张王牌，你可以谷歌搜一搜。基本上，你要寻找利益一致的情况，寻找好的业绩记录并检视业绩是如何形成的，你要寻找特定的精神特质、品格，以及他是否在有鱼的地方钓鱼。这些都是你会想要寻找的东西。但我还是要说，即便你找到所有这些东西，如果你一直投资指数，也不会是个悲剧。那样也不错。

Speaker 4: The question is about cryptocurrency. What is your take on cryptocurrency? Is it a conspiracy? What is the intrinsic value of cryptocurrency?

发言人 4：这个问题是关于加密货币的。你如何看待加密货币？它是一个阴谋吗？加密货币的内在价值是什么？

Mohnish: I would say, first of all, this is outside my circle of competence. The second is, that I would echo Charlie's rat poison, not my words, Charlie's words. I would tell myself, "It does not matter what is happening with crypto because it is not something I understand or would invest in anything. If it ends up being a bubble that blows up, that will not surprise me at all." Blockchain technology has a lot of positives, but the crypto world attracts just certain types of characters in the realm. From my point of view, it is an easy pass.

莫尼什：首先，这超出了我的能力圈。其次，我赞同查理“老鼠药”的评价，不是我说的，是查理说的。我会告诉自己：“加密货币发生了什么不重要，因为我不了解它，也不会投资它。如果最终它被证明是泡沫而破灭，我一点也不会感到惊讶。”

区块链技术有很多积极面，但加密货币只是吸引了这一领域某些特定类型的人物。在我看来，它是个轻易就能略过的东西。

Tony:Hi, my name is Tony. I am from Seattle. You answered “Consol energy,” and it sort of seems obvious. But not everybody did it. Not every investor bought Consol. Somehow you had an edge to see that, and everybody else that stood on the sidelines did not buy Consol. Why didn't they buy Consol? The math is the same.

托尼：你好，我叫托尼，来自西雅图。你说Consol Energy的机会似乎很明显，但并非每个人都这么看，不是每个投资者都买了Consol。不知何故，你有某种优势，看到了这个机会，而其他人站在一旁，没有买Consol。他们为什么不买呢？算数都是一样的。

Mohnish:That is a great question. One of the things about investing is that all knowledge is cumulative. When we go through different investments and experiences, it helps us. For me, the reason I bought Consol is very different from the reason David Einhorn bought it, even though I took the idea from David. David complains about exactly what we talked about. He complains about the over-indexing of the market, which leads to under-valuations for a very extended period of these companies. He believes it is a negative. He believes that these companies that never get to intrinsic value are negative. I believe that if a company never gets to intrinsic value, that is a huge positive for you because it means that you could be collecting dividends and you could be buying back shares. The company gets through many other things that would not be possible if it was appropriately priced. You end up in a situation where you can have higher returns when the market misprices things for extended periods. For me, the reason why most investors would not be able to go into something like Consol is, first of all, coal is a fourlettered word, so right there, a lot of people will be halted in their tracks. The second is that they may not understand the framework of IPSCO. For me, the Consol investment would not have happened if the IPSCO investment had not happened. That framework was very important, and Consol is interesting because it is a good investment, but it led me to look at even better things, which was moving from thermal coal to metallurgical coal, and many of the same dynamics apply on both sides. That is classically what Charlie talks about, which is that everything needs to be looked at from the lens of opportunity cost. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Most things that most people will get excited about may not appeal to a lot of other people, because their life experience is so different. Just because I invested in Consol or I liked it, does not mean that it is going to resonate with a lot of people. It is just the nature of humans.

莫尼什：这个问题问得好。投资的特点之一，就是所有知识都是累积的。当我们经历了不同投资，获得很多经验时，它会帮到我们。对我来说，我买Consol的原因与大卫·艾因霍恩买入的原因截然不同，尽管这个想法是我从大卫那里汲取的。

大卫所抱怨的事情，正是我们之前讨论过的：他抱怨市场过度指数化了，导致这些公司的估值长期偏低。他相信这是一种负面影响。他认为，这些公司始终无法达到其内在价值，是负面的。我则认为，如果一家公司始终无法达到其内在价值，这对你来说是一个巨大的利好。因为这意味着你可以收取股息，可以回购股份，还有很多公司在合理定价情况下所无法完成的事情。当市场对某个东西长期错误定价，最终的情形是，你会获得更高的回报。

在我看来，大多数投资者不愿投资Consol这样的公司，原因在于：首先，“煤炭”是个低俗的字眼，很多人一开始就望而却步了。其次，他们可能不理解我投资IPSCO时所用的框架。对我来说，如果没有IPSCO的投资，就不会有Consol的投资。这个框架非常重要。Consol很有意思，不仅因为它是一个很好的投资，它也让我看到了更好的东西，即从动力煤转向冶金煤，许多相同的原理在这两方面都适用。这就是查理所谈到的经典观点，即一切事物都需要从机会成本的角度来看待。

美存在于观察者的眼中。那些让大多数人感到兴奋的东西，对另外一些人来说可能并不具有吸引力，因为他们的人生经历是如此不同。我投资Consol，或者说我喜欢它，并不意味着它会引起很多人的共鸣，这只是人类的天性。

Crystal: Hi, I am Crystal Jane. I am from Stanford Business School, and I am a computer scientist, so engineering - roots like you. You talked a lot about cloning. My question is, if you could build a digital twin of yourself or clone yourself, what aspect of yourself would you clone and would you do it to preserve value for future generations?

Crystal: 你好，我是 Crystal Jane。我来自斯坦福商学院，是一名计算机科学家，和你一样是工程学出身。你谈到了很多关于克隆的问题。我的问题是，如果你能建立一个自己的数字孪生体或克隆自己，你会克隆自己的哪一方面，你这样做是为了给后代保留价值吗？

Mohnish: It might be above my pay grade to be able to answer the question, so I do not know if I can even answer it. One of the things that we are investing in is what makes it so much fun; it is a mix of art and science. One of the things I find myself wondering is that almost every week we are seeing breakthroughs with Al, which we did not think was possible. Almost every week I get surprised. I see a lot of creativity coming out of AI that I would not have thought would be easy to get to. There is a site I ran into recently, suno.ai, which creates any song you want with a prompt of seven words or something and the music is exceptional. I was really blown away. I have thought about the issue of creating Al models with things like Warren Buffett's template, or Charlie Munger's template, and I am still skeptical about that. I do not know whether we can get to Al on that to that extent, but certainly, it can be a great tool to cut down the universe to a few companies that are worth drilling down. It may work that creating a Berkshire index, or a Buffett index could do better than the S&P, so those are possibilities. But again, as I said, things are changing so fast that we do not know yet. Thank you everyone. It was great to be with all of you.

Mohnish：这个问题可能超出我的能力范围了，我不确定能否回答它。但我想说，在投资一行，让投资充满乐趣的一件事，就是它是艺术与科学的结合。我发现我对一件事充满好奇，那就是几乎每周，我们都能看到AI取得突破性进展，而且是此前认为不太可能的突破。几乎每周，我都会感到惊讶，看到AI产生了许多我认为不容易实现的创造力。最近，我发现了一个叫suno.ai的网站，它可以根据7个单词之类的提示，创作出你想要的任何歌曲，而且音乐非常出色，让我大受震撼。

我曾思考过，你能否利用沃伦·巴菲特的模板，或是查理·芒格的模板，来创建AI模型，对此我仍持怀疑态度，我不知道我们是否能达到那种程度的AI。但显然，我认为它可以成为一个很好的工具，（例如）将（投资）领域缩小到几家值得深入研究的公司。它或许能创建一个伯克希尔指数或巴菲特指数，表现得比标准普尔指数更好，这些都是有可能的。但是，正如我所说，事情变化太快，我们还不得而知。

谢谢大家，很高兴与大家在一起。

The contents of this transcript are for educational and entertainment purposes only, and do not purport to be, and are not intended to be financial, legal, accounting, tax, or investment advice. Investments or strategies that are discussed may not be suitable for you, do not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation, or needs, and are not intended to provide investment advice or recommendations appropriate for you. Before making any investment or trade, consider whether it is suitable for you and consider seeking advice from your own financial or investment adviser.

本转录的内容仅用于教育和娱乐目的，并不声称是，也不打算作为财务、法律、会计、税务或投资建议。讨论的投资或策略可能不适合您，未考虑您的特定投资目标、财务状况或需求，也不打算提供适合您的投资建议或推荐。在进行任何投资或交易之前，请考虑其是否适合您，并考虑寻求您自己的财务或投资顾问的建议。