44. “You need a large margin of safety”
“你需要一个很大的安全边际”
WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 4?
沃伦·巴菲特: 第四区?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. My name is (inaudible). I’m from New Mexico. And I’m a shareholder. I have two questions.
听众: 是的,我叫(听不清),来自新墨西哥州。我是伯克希尔的股东。我有两个问题。
First, in your ’91 letter, you wrote about investors eventually repeat their mistakes. So what do you do to keep you from making the same mistake twice?
第一个问题,在您1991年的信中,您写到投资者最终会重复他们的错误。那么,您如何避免自己两次犯同样的错误?
And the second question is, in your ’92 letter, you wrote that you tend to deal with a problem of future earning in two ways. The first way is the business you understand. And the second is the margin of safety. And you say they are equally important. But if you — (loud noise) — but if you cannot find the happy combination of faster growth at a low key, which one do you think is more important, faster growth or low key? That’s my two questions.
第二个问题,在您1992年的信中,您提到您倾向于通过两种方式处理未来收益问题。第一是理解的业务,第二是安全边际。您说它们同样重要。但是如果——(噪音)——如果您找不到高增长和低风险的完美结合,您认为更重要的是高增长还是低风险?这是我的两个问题。
WARREN BUFFETT: I think we were told by — (loud noise) — we were told by some higher authority which one was more important there for a second. (Laughter)
沃伦·巴菲特: 我想我们刚刚听到了——(噪音)——某个更高的权威在告诉我们哪个更重要。(笑声)
Well, they’re bound together. Obviously, if you understood a business perfectly — the future of a business — you would need very little in the way of a margin of safety.
实际上,它们是紧密相连的。显然,如果你完全理解一家企业及其未来,你需要的安全边际就会很少。
So the more volatile the business is — or possibility is — but assuming you still want to invest in it, the larger the margin of safety.
因此,业务或前景越不确定——假设你仍然想投资——你需要的安全边际就越大。
I think in that first edition of [Benjamin] Graham — I doubt if I’m right — was it (inaudible) and said, you know, maybe it was worth somewhere between 30 or 110, or some number. He said, “Well, that sounds — how much good does that do you to know that it’s worth between 30 and 110?” Well, it does you some good if it’s selling below 30 or above 110.”
我记得在本杰明·格雷厄姆的第一版著作中——我不确定是否记得准确——他说,也许某个东西的价值在30到110之间。他说,“好吧,知道它的价值在30到110之间有什么用?”嗯,如果它的价格低于30或高于110,这就对你有帮助。
That’s — you need a large margin of safety.
这就是——你需要一个大的安全边际。
Well, if you’re driving a truck across a bridge that holds — it says it holds 10,000 pounds — and you’ve got a 9,800 pound vehicle, you know, if the bridge is about six inches above the crevice that it covers, you may feel OK.
比如,如果你开着一辆9800磅重的卡车通过一座标称承重为10,000磅的桥梁,如果桥下只有6英寸深的裂缝,你可能会觉得没问题。
But if it’s, you know, over the Grand Canyon, you may feel you want a little larger margin of safety, in terms of only driving a 4,000 pound truck, or something, across. So it depends on the nature of the underlying risk.
但如果它横跨大峡谷,你可能会希望有更大的安全边际,比如只开一辆4000磅的卡车过去。因此,这取决于潜在风险的性质。
We don’t get the margin of safety now that we got in a 1973-4 period, for example.
比如说,我们现在的安全边际不像1973-74年那样高了。
The biggest thing to do is understand the business. If you understand the business, and get into the kind of the businesses where surprises — by their nature — surprises are few. And we think we’re largely in that type of business.
最重要的是理解企业。如果你理解企业,并选择进入那些本质上意外较少的企业,我们认为我们基本上就在这种类型的业务中。