I.H.000.Warren Buffett.How to Start Investing
投资需要合适的性格和合适的智力框架，两者结合才能做出理性的决策，性格的重要性占到90%。如果有合适的性格，那么应该尽可能早的开始，尽可能早的建立记录。实际上符合常识的是后者可以学习前者很难改变，性格不是模糊不清的问题，一个人喜欢把简单问题复杂化，还是复杂问题简单化？这种性格上的倾向性是非常稳定的。
巴菲特一直推荐《聪明的投资者》的两个章结：第8章，市场先生；第20章，安全边际，本质上是两种都会自我强化但方向相反的力量，市场先生代表了碎片化，喜欢简单问题复杂化，目标是想方设法逃避问题；安全边际所追求的是统一的、简洁优雅的知识结构，喜欢复杂问题简单化，目标是解决问题。
There are two requirements for success in Wall Street. One, you have to think correctly; and secondly, you have to think independently.
在华尔街取得成功有两个条件：第一，你必须正确思考；第二，你必须独立思考。
To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a strato-spheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What’s needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. This book precisely and clearly prescribes the proper framework. You must supply the emotional discipline.
一生中成功的投资并不需要超凡的智商、非凡的商业洞察力或内幕信息。你需要的是一个健全的决策思维框架，以及防止情绪侵蚀该框架的能力。本书精准清晰地阐述了正确的框架。你必须具备情绪自律的能力。
市场大幅度下跌的情况下做多、坚持自己的看法≈跟全世界持不同的看法，这种心理上的素质跟平庸隔着十万八千里的距离，能做到的早有迹象。
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But over forty years after publication of the book that brought structure and logic to a disorderly and confused activity, it is difficult to think of possible candidates for even the runner-up position in the field of security analysis.
然而，在他为混乱无序的学术活动注入结构和逻辑的著作出版四十多年后，我们却很难想象在证券分析领域，哪怕是屈居亚军的候选人也寥寥无几。
We wouldn’t have liked those 99:1 odds - and never will. A small chance of distress or disgrace cannot, in our view, be offset by a large chance of extra returns. If your actions are sensible, you are certain to get good results; in most such cases, leverage just moves things along faster. Charlie and I have never been in a big hurry: We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds - though we have learned to live with those also.
我们不喜欢99:1这样的赔率——将来也不会。我们认为，小概率的困境或羞辱，不能被高概率的额外回报所抵消。只要你的行动是理性的，结果自然会不错；在大多数这种情形中，杠杆只是加速器。Charlie 和我从不着急：我们更享受过程，胜过收益——尽管我们也学会了与后者愉快相处。
这是巴菲特对于杠杆的描述：“never risk what we have and need for what we don’t have and don’t need.”，“we have and need”不能拿去冒险的，“we have and don’t need”或许可以拿去冒险，那么什么是你“have and don’t need”？这一句是经不起推敲的，你为什么会有“have and don’t need”？显然这种情况大概率是用不上的垃圾，有大量垃圾的人又怎么可能是理性的人？
4、《1991 Warren Buffett.Three Lectures to Notre Dame Faculty》
... Incidentally, I would say that almost everybody I know in Wall Street has had as many good ideas as I have, they just had a lot of \[bad] ideas too. And I’m serious about that. I mean when I bought Western Insurance Security selling at \$16 and earning \$20 per share, I put half my net worth into it. I checked it out first – I went down to the insurance commission and got out the convention statements, I read Best’s, and I did a lot of things first. But, I mean, my dad wasn’t in it, I’d only had one insurance class at Columbia – but it was not beyond my capabilities to do that, and it isn’t beyond your capabilities.
……顺便说一句，我想说的是，在华尔街我认识的几乎所有人都有和我一样多的好主意，他们只不过也有很多[糟糕的]主意。我是认真的。比如当我以每股16美元买入、而每股赚20美元的Western Insurance Security时，我把自己一半的净资产都投了进去。我事先做过调查——我去了保险监管机构，调出了年会报告，我查阅了《贝斯特年鉴》，还做了很多其他功课。但我的父亲并没有参与，我在哥伦比亚大学也只上过一门保险课——然而做这件事并未超出我的能力范围，也不会超出你们的能力范围。
运气是不确定的，没有自己的脑子是确定的，不确定的运气+确定性的没有脑子。如果一个人对世界没有基本的信任，那么他的注意力从一开始就有问题：
（1）满脑子都是自己，第一反应是「我要怎么自保、怎么不被伤害」；
（2）时间久了，和现实世界的距离越来越远；
（3）习惯性地回避难题、推卸责任，甚至在关键时刻牺牲别人来保护自己。
Now if I had some rare insight about software, or something like that – I would say that, maybe, other people couldn’t do that – or biotechnology, or something. And I’m not saying that every insight that I have is an insight that somebody else could have, but there were all kinds of people that could have understood American Express Company as well as I understood it in ‘62. They may have been...they may have had a different temperament than I did, so that they were paralyzed by fear, or that they wanted the crowd to be with them, or something like that, but I didn’t know anything about credit cards that they didn’t know, or about travelers checks. Those are not hard products to understand. But what I did have was an intense interest and I was willing, when I saw something I wanted to do, to do it. And if I couldn’t see something to do, to not do anything. By far, the most important quality is not how much IQ you’ve got. IQ is not the scarce factor. You need a reasonable amount of intelligence, but the temperament is 90% of it.
如果我对软件之类的领域有某种罕见的洞见——那我会说，也许别人就做不到——比如生物技术。但我并不是说我拥有的每一个洞见别人都可以拥有，不过在1962年，有很多人本可以像我一样理解美国运通公司。他们也许……他们也许与我有着不同的性情，以至于被恐惧麻痹，或者想要随大流，诸如此类；但关于信用卡或旅行支票，我并不比他们了解更多。这些产品并不难理解。但我拥有的是强烈的兴趣，并且当我发现想做的事情时，我愿意去做；而当我找不到可做之事时，就什么也不做。最重要的品质绝不是你的智商有多高。智商并不是稀缺因素。你需要适量的智力，但性格（气质）占了90%。
That’s why Graham is so important. Graham’s book [The Intelligent Investor] talks about the qualities of temperament you have to bring to the game, and that is the game.
这就是格雷厄姆如此重要的原因。格雷厄姆的书《聪明的投资者》讨论了你在投资游戏中必须具备的性格特质，而那正是游戏本身。
5、《1993-10-18 Warren Buffett's Idea Of Heaven: "I Don't Have To Work With People I Don't Like"》
He credits Graham with giving him “an intellectual framework for investing and a temperamental model, the ability to stand back and not be influenced by a crowd, not be fearful if stocks go down.” He sums up Graham’s teaching: “When proper temperament joins with proper intellectual framework, then you get rational behavior.”
他把本·格雷厄姆的贡献归结为“为投资提供了一个智力框架和一种性格模型——能够超然旁观、不受大众影响，股价下跌也不恐惧。”他用一句话概括格雷厄姆的教诲：“当合适的性格与合适的智力框架结合时，你就会表现得理性。”
Think Independently+Think Correctly，两股循环递进的力量，最初设定的方向非常关键，越往后越难调整方向。
6、《1994-04-25 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
39. “You don’t have to do exceptional things to get exceptional results”
你不必做非凡的事情来获得非凡的成果
WARREN BUFFETT: Some businesses are a lot easier to understand than others. And Charlie and I don’t like difficult problems. I mean, we — if something is hard to figure, you know, we’d rather multiply by three than by pi. I mean it’s just easier for us. (Laughter) Charlie, you have any —?
WARREN BUFFETT：有些生意比另一些更容易理解。我和 Charlie 不喜欢难题。我的意思是——如果某件事很难搞明白，你知道的，我们宁可乘以 3，也不愿乘以 π。对我们来说就是更容易。（笑）Charlie，你有——？
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, that is such an obvious point. And yet so many people think if they just hire somebody with the appropriate labels they can do something very difficult. That is one of the most dangerous ideas a human being can have. All kinds of things just intrinsically create problems. The other day I was dealing with a problem and I said, this thing — it’s a new building — and I said this thing has three things I’ve learned to fear: an architect, a contractor, and a hill. (Laughter) And — if you go at life like that, I think you, at least, make fewer mistakes than people who think they can do anything by just hiring somebody with a label.
CHARLIE MUNGER：嗯，这一点太显而易见了。可还是有太多人以为只要雇来“标签对口”的人，就能搞定非常困难的事。这是人类能有的最危险的念头之一。很多事情本身就“自带麻烦”。前几天我处理一个问题时说到——那是栋新楼——我说这玩意儿集齐了三样让我学会害怕的东西：建筑师、承包商和一座山。（笑）如果你以这种方式面对人生，至少会比那些以为“找个对口标签的人就能搞定一切”的人犯更少的错。
WARREN BUFFETT: We don’t comment — excuse me, go ahead.
WARREN BUFFETT：我们不评论——打扰一下，你继续。
CHARLIE MUNGER: You don’t have to hire out your thinking if you keep it simple.
CHARLIE MUNGER：只要把事情保持简单，你就不必把“思考”外包出去。
WARREN BUFFETT: You don’t have to do — we’ve said this before — but you don’t have to do exceptional things to get exceptional results. And some people think that if you jump over a seven-foot bar that the ribbon they pin on you is going to be worth more money than if you step over a one-foot bar. And it just isn’t true in the investment world, at all. So, you can do very ordinary things. I mean, what is complicated about this? But, you know, we’re $3 billion pretax better off than we were a few years ago because of it. There’s nothing that I know about that product, or its distribution system, its finances, or anything, that, really, hundreds of thousands — or millions — of people aren’t capable of, that they don’t already know. They just don’t do anything about it. And similarly, if you get into some complicated business, you can get a report that’s a thousand pages thick and you got Ph.D.s working on it, but it doesn’t mean anything.
WARREN BUFFETT：你不必去做——我们以前说过——你不必做“非凡之事”才能得到“非凡之果”。有些人以为，跳过 7 英尺横杆所获的绶带，会比跨过 1 英尺横杆的更值钱。而在投资世界里，这根本不成立。所以，你可以做非常普通的事。我的意思是，这有什么复杂的？但你知道，因为这样做，我们如今税前比几年前好上了 30 亿美元。关于那个产品、它的分销体系、财务等等，我所知道的，没有哪一项是成千上万——甚至上百万人——做不到、或不是早已知道的。他们只是不去行动。同样地，如果你卷进一门复杂的生意，你能拿到一份上千页的报告，还有一堆博士在上面忙活，但那并不意味着什么。
You know, what you’ve got is a report but you don’t — it — you won’t understand that business, what it’s going to look like in 10 or 15 years. The big thing to do is avoid being wrong. (Laughter)
你知道，你拿到的是份报告，但你并不会——并不能——理解那门生意，或它在 10 到 15 年后会是什么样。最重要的是避免犯错。（笑）
简单问题复杂化的源头就是为了回避问题，甚至可以怀疑这个世界上到底有没有复杂的问题。
CHARLIE MUNGER: There are some things that are so intrinsically dangerous. Another of my heroes is Mark Twain, who looked at the promoters of his day and he said, “A mine is a hole in the ground owned by a liar.” (Laughter) And that’s the way I’ve come to look at projections. I mean, basically, I can remember, Warren and I were offered $2 million worth of projections once in the course of buying a business and the book was this thick.
CHARLIE MUNGER：有些东西从本质上就很危险。我另一个偶像是 Mark Twain，他看着他那时代的推销者说过：“矿就是地里一个洞，洞的主人是个骗子。”（笑）我如今看“预测”基本也是这种眼光。还记得吗，有次我们收购一家公司时，对方给了我们价值 200 万美元的“预测资料”，书这么厚。
WARREN BUFFETT: For nothing.
WARREN BUFFETT：白送的。
CHARLIE MUNGER: And, if we were given it for nothing, and we wouldn’t open it.
CHARLIE MUNGER：就算白送，我们也懒得翻开。
WARREN BUFFETT: We almost paid 2 million not to look at it. (Laughter) It’s ridiculous. I do not understand why any buyer of a business looks at a bunch of projections put together by a seller or —
WARREN BUFFETT：我们几乎愿意付 200 万就为不看它。（笑）太可笑了。我不理解为什么任何买方要去看卖方拼凑的一堆预测，或者——
CHARLIE MUNGER: Or his agent.
CHARLIE MUNGER：或者他的代理人。
WARREN BUFFETT: — or his agent. I mean, it — you can almost say that it’s naive to think that that has any utility whatsoever. We just are not interested. If we don’t have some idea ourselves of what we think the future is, to sit there and listen to some other guy who’s trying to sell us the business or get a commission on it tell us what the future’s going to be — it — like I say, it’s very naïve.
WARREN BUFFETT：——或者他的代理人。我的意思是——认为那玩意儿有什么用，几乎可以说是天真。我们根本不感兴趣。如果我们对“自己认为的未来”没有点主意，却坐在那里听另一个想把生意卖给我们或想赚佣金的人来告诉我们“未来会怎样”——这就像我说的，非常天真。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, and five years out.
CHARLIE MUNGER：是啊，还一讲就是五年后的事。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. We had a line in the report one time, “Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut.” And — (laughter) — it’s quite applicable to projections of — by sellers — of businesses.
WARREN BUFFETT：没错。我们在年报里有句话：“别问理发师你要不要理发。”而——（笑）——这特别适用于由卖方提供的“业务预测”。
7、《1994-10-10 Warren Buffett.University of Nebraska-Lincoln》
The only thing I’ve instructed them to do is try and do something big. I don’t believe in lots of little things.
我仅有的指示是：尽量做“大事”。我不相信把钱拆成一堆小事。
价值投资的基本逻辑：市场大幅度下跌的情况下做多、坚持自己的看法≈跟全世界持不同的看法，这种强度的对抗下有太多的想法是不可想象的。
8、《1998-02-27 Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders》
How We Think About Market Fluctuations
我们如何看待市场波动
A short quiz: If you plan to eat hamburgers throughout your life and are not a cattle producer, should you wish for higher or lower prices for beef? Likewise, if you are going to buy a car from time to time but are not an auto manufacturer, should you prefer higher or lower car prices? These questions, of course, answer themselves.
来个小测验：如果你一辈子都要吃汉堡、但并非养牛人，你该希望牛肉价格更高还是更低？同理，如果你不时要买车、却不是汽车制造商，你该偏好更高还是更低的车价？这些问题当然不言自明。
But now for the final exam: If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period? Many investors get this one wrong. Even though they are going to be net buyers of stocks for many years to come, they are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall. In effect, they rejoice because prices have risen for the "hamburgers" they will soon be buying. This reaction makes no sense. Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices.
但现在来一道期末题：如果你预期未来五年是净储蓄者，你该希望这段时间里股市更高还是更低？许多投资者答错了。尽管他们在很多年里都会是股票的净买方，但股价上涨时他们欣喜若狂，下跌时却沮丧不已。实质上，他们是在为即将买到的“汉堡”涨价而高兴。这种反应毫无道理。只有近期将卖出股票的人，才该在股价上涨时高兴；有购入计划的人更应偏好价格回落。
对齐是检验情绪自健的方法，AI关于对齐（alignment）的思路是：“同一套压缩出来的原则，对“结构相同但表述不同”的两个句子，能不能给出同样的答案？”，这个方法对AI适用对人也适用。
9、《1999-05-03 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
15. Investing advice: start early and think for yourself
投资建议：要尽早开始，也要学会自己动脑子想
WARREN BUFFETT: OK. Zone 5, please.
WARREN BUFFETT：好，5区请提问。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good afternoon, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger. My name is Grant Morgan (PH), I’m here from New York City. Earlier, you had acknowledged that it is a more difficult investment and business environment today than it was when you first started out. My question is, if you are starting out again today in your early 30s, what would you do differently or the same in today’s environment to replicate your success? In short, Mr. Buffett, how can I make $30 billion? (Laughter)
AUDIENCE MEMBER：下午好，Buffett 先生、Munger 先生。我叫 Grant Morgan (PH)，来自 New York City。之前您提到，现在的投资和商业环境比您刚开始时要难得多。我的问题是：如果您现在又回到三十出头、重新起步，在今天这样的环境里，您会怎么做（有什么不一样或一样的地方），才能重现今天这样的成功？简单说，Buffett 先生，我怎样才能挣到 300 亿美元？（笑声）
WARREN BUFFETT: Start young. (Laughter) Charlie’s always said that the big thing about it is we started building this little snowball on top of a very long hill. So we started at a very early age in rolling the snowball down. And, of course, the snowball — the nature of compound interest is it behaves like a snowball of sticky snow. And the trick is to have a very long hill, which means either starting very young or living very — to be very old. The — you know, I would do it exactly the same way if I were doing it in the investment world. I mean, if I were getting out of school today and I had $10,000 to invest, I’d start with the As. I would start going right through companies. And I probably would focus on smaller companies, because that would be working with smaller sums and there’s more chance that something is overlooked in that arena. And, as Charlie has said earlier, it won’t be like doing that in 1951 when you could leaf through and find all kinds of things that just leapt off the page at you. But that’s the only way to do it.
WARREN BUFFETT：早点开始。（笑）Charlie 总说，我们最大的优势就是在一座非常长的山坡顶上，滚了一颗很小的雪球。我们从很小的时候就开始往山下滚雪球。当然，这个雪球——也就是复利的本质——就像一团很黏的雪，越滚越大。诀窍是要有一座“很长的山坡”，要么就是特别早开始，要么就是活得特别久。你知道，如果让我在今天的投资世界里重新来一次，我还是会照原来的做法来。如果我今天刚从学校毕业，手里有 1 万美元要投资，我会从“A”字头的公司开始看起，一家公司一家公司地往下翻。我大概会重点盯着小公司，因为那样可以用比较小的资金做事，而且在小公司这个区域里，被别人忽略的机会更多。正如 Charlie 刚才说的，这么干不会像 1951 年那样简单——那时候你翻一翻手册，很多机会都会自己跳到你面前。但这依然是唯一该做的事。
I mean, you have to buy businesses and you — or little pieces of businesses called stocks — and you have to buy them at attractive prices, and you have to buy into good businesses. And that advice will be the same a hundred years from now, in terms of investing. That’s what it’s all about. And you can’t expect anybody else to do it for you. I mean, people will not tell — they will not tell you about wonderful little investments. There’s — it’s not the way the investment business is set up. When I first visited GEICO in January of 1951, I went back to Columbia. And I — that rest of that year, I subsequently went down to Blythe and Company and, actually, to one other firm that was a leading — Geyer & Co. — that was a leading analyst in insurance. And, you know, I thought I’d discovered this wonderful thing and I’d see what these great investment houses that specialized in insurance stocks said. And they said I didn’t know what I was talking about. You know, they — it wasn’t of any interest to them.
我的意思是，你必须买“生意”——或者说买生意的一小块，叫股票——而且要用有吸引力的价格去买，要买进好生意。这条建议一百年后在投资这件事上都一样适用，投资的本质就是如此。你不能指望别人替你做这件事。不会有人跑来告诉你那些特别棒的小投资机会——投资这个行业从来不是那样运作的。我 1951 年 1 月第一次去拜访 GEICO，回到 Columbia 之后，在那一整年里，我又跑去 Blythe and Company，还有当时保险研究领域里另一家很领先的公司——Geyer & Co.——去找他们聊。我以为自己发现了一个了不起的机会，就想看看这些专门研究保险股的大投行是怎么评价的。结果他们告诉我：我根本不知道自己在说什么。对他们来说，这玩意儿完全不值得一提、毫无兴趣。
大部分人习惯于简单问题复杂化，其实就是想方设法的回避问题，这些人对什么事都一无所知，21岁的巴菲特还不知道这个事的本质。
You’ve got to follow your own — you know, you’ve got to learn what you know and what you don’t know. Within the arena of what you know, you have to just — you have to pursue it very vigorously and act on it when you find it. And you can’t look around for people to agree with you. You can’t look around for people to even know what you’re talking about. You know, you have to think for yourself. And if you do, you’ll find things. Charlie?
你得遵从你自己的判断——你要弄清楚自己知道什么、不知道什么。在你“知道”的那个圈子里，你就得非常用力地去追踪、去研究，一旦发现机会就要付诸行动。你不能指望身边的人都同意你，也不能指望他们甚至听得懂你在说什么。你必须自己思考。如果你真这么做，你就会找到机会。Charlie？
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. The hard part of the process for most people is the first $100,000. If you have a standing start at zero, getting together $100,000 is a long struggle for most people. And I would argue that the people who get there relatively quickly are helped if they’re passionate about being rational, very eager and opportunistic, and steadily underspend their income grossly. I think those three factors are very helpful.
CHARLIE MUNGER：对大多数人来说，整个过程里最难的一段是攒到第一笔 100,000 美元。如果你是从零开始，要凑出这 100,000 美元，对大部分人来说都是一段很长的拉锯战。我的看法是，那些相对较快做到这一点的人，通常有三个共同点：第一，他们对“保持理性”这件事本身充满热情；第二，他们非常主动、善于把握机会；第三，他们长期、显著地低于自己的收入水平去花钱。我认为这三点都非常有帮助。
31. “Journalistic process” good for learning about companies
“新闻式研究过程”有助于了解公司
WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 1.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Eric Tweedie from Shavertown, Pennsylvania. I just wanted to express our appreciation of — regarding all the operating businesses that we’ve visited. They’ve been very warm and hospitable. In fact, when we visited Executive Jets at the airport, the tour was so impressive my wife wanted to buy an airplane. (Laughter)
AUDIENCE MEMBER：我叫 Eric Tweedie，来自 Shavertown, Pennsylvania。我只是想对我们参观过的所有实业公司表达一下感谢。他们都非常热情、好客。事实上，当我们在机场参观 Executive Jets 时，那次参观太震撼了，以至于我太太都想买一架飞机。（笑声）
WARREN BUFFETT: What’s her name? What’s her name? (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT：她叫什么名字？她叫什么名字？（笑声）
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, I won’t say that —
AUDIENCE MEMBER：这个嘛，我就不说了——
CHARLIE MUNGER: Spell it out!
CHARLIE MUNGER：把名字一个字一个字拼出来！
AUDIENCE MEMBER: American Express declined the $500,000 we tried to put on my card. (Buffett laughs) But you can thank the chairman for me next time you see him. Just kidding, but — My question regards, basically, approach to investing. I’ve been investing my own money in equities for about 10 years. And my results, overall, have been relatively good. In the process, however, I’ve taught myself some very painful and costly lessons. For instance, my first equity ever purchased was a share of Berkshire Hathaway for $5,500 in 1990 and I sold it 3 months later for something over $8,000 and congratulated myself for the rapid and shrewd profit. (Laughter) And earlier this year, I repurchased the same share for $70,000. (Laughter) And I intend to own it for the rest of my life. (Laughter) So you can see I’m growing. (Laughter) My question is, I have no formal education in accounting and finance. And I would just like some advice from you regarding an approach to educate myself and a reading list of basic texts, obviously, starting with the Berkshire Hathaway annual reports.
AUDIENCE MEMBER：American Express 拒绝了我们试图往我卡上刷的那 500,000 美元。（Buffett 大笑）不过，下次你见到他们的 chairman，可以替我谢谢他。只是开玩笑而已，但是——我的问题主要是关于投资方法这件事。我用自己的钱投资股票已经大概有 10 年了，总体回报还算不错。但在这个过程中，我也给自己上了很多非常痛苦、代价高昂的课。举例来说，我当年买的第一只股票就是一股 Berkshire Hathaway，当时是 1990 年，买价是 5,500 美元，3 个月后我以 8,000 多一点的价格卖掉了，还为这笔又快又精明的利润好好表扬了自己一番。（笑声）到了今年年初，我又把同样的一股在 70,000 美元的价位买了回来。（笑声）这次我打算余生都不再卖掉它。（笑声）所以你可以看出，我确实在“成长”。（笑声）我的问题是，我在 accounting 和 finance 上没有任何正规的学校教育。我想请你给点建议：我应该用什么样的方法来自学？以及，能否给一份入门书单，最基本的书，从 Berkshire Hathaway 的 annual reports 开始是显而易见的。
Thank you.
谢谢。
WARREN BUFFETT: Thank you, particularly for your comments about the people from our operating companies, because they have just been terrific. They come out here — (Applause) They are here at five in the morning. They — I mean, they do a tremendous amount of work over this weekend. They’re cheerful. I’ve met with them all on Saturday at lunch and, I mean, they’re just one sensational group of people, and — You know, I’m very proud of them. And the managers should be very proud of the people they brought with us. And I hope you get a chance to thank as many of them as possible personally. Incidentally, at the See’s counter you’ll find Angelica Stoner, who’s been with us for 50 years and, you know — here she comes from California to help us out and sell peanut brittle, and she’s having a good time doing it. (Applause) And the question you ask is a very good one about — you know, in terms of accounting and finance — what’s the best way to teach yourself?
WARREN BUFFETT：谢谢你，尤其是刚才对我们各家实业公司员工的评价，他们真的非常出色。他们一大早就到这里来——（掌声）早上五点人就到齐了——在整个周末干了大量的活儿。大家都很有精神。周六中午我跟他们全部一起吃了顿午饭，我的意思是，他们真的是一群非常了不起的人。你知道，我为他们感到很自豪，各个子公司的经理也应该为自己带来的人感到骄傲。我也希望你们尽量能亲自向他们中的尽可能多的人表示感谢。顺便说一句，在 See’s 的柜台你会看到 Angelica Stoner，她已经跟我们一起工作 50 年了，你看——她特地从 California 过来帮我们卖花生酥糖，而且她自己也乐在其中。（掌声）你提的问题本身也非常好——就是从 accounting 和 finance 的角度看，怎样是最好的自学方式？
I was always so interested in it from such a young age, that I — my approach was go to the Omaha — originally, was to go to the Omaha Public Library and just take out every book there was on the subject. And I learned a lot — (laughs) — I learned a lot that wasn’t true in the process, too. I got very interested in charting and all that sort of thing and buying stocks. But I did it by just a tremendous amount of reading, but it was easy for me because, you know, it was like going to baseball games or something of the sort. And in terms of naming specific texts in accounting, you know, I think you may want to read some of the better, even, magazine articles that have appeared. I mean, there’ve been - or newspaper articles. There have been some good commentary about accounting there. I don’t have — can you think, Charlie, of any specific texts or anything that we could recommend?
我从很小的时候就对这方面特别感兴趣，所以——我的做法就是去 Omaha 的……一开始，是跑到 Omaha Public Library，把书架上关于这个主题的书统统借出来看一遍。然后我学到了很多东西——（笑）当然也学到了不少后来证明是错的东西。我一度对图表之类的东西很感兴趣，研究各种图表、买股票这些。但我的途径基本就是疯狂阅读，不过对我来说这很轻松，因为你知道，那就像去看 baseball 比赛之类的娱乐一样自然。至于点名推荐具体的 accounting 教科书，其实我觉得你也许更应该去读一些写得比较好的 magazine 文章，或者 newspaper 上的好稿子。这些地方对 accounting 有不少不错的评论。我自己倒是没有——Charlie，你能想到什么具体的教材或书，我们可以推荐给他吗？
大部分书，实际情况是绝大部分都是强烈回避现实的脑残写的，即便是脑残写的，零碎的主题下更容易有片刻的清醒，相比于一本厚厚的书，但通常情况下写成厚厚一本书的Value Function肯定会对Compression造成干扰，甚至该清楚的事实也会搞的不清不楚。
CHARLIE MUNGER: I think both of us learned more from the great business magazines than we do anywhere else. It’s such an easy, shorthand way of getting a vast variety of business experience, just to riffle through issue after issue after issue, covering a great variety of businesses. And if you get the mental habit of relating what you’re reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom about investing. I don’t think you can get to be a really good investor over a broad range without doing a massive amount of reading. I don’t think there’s any one book that will do it for you.
CHARLIE MUNGER：我觉得我们两个人，从优秀的 business magazines 上学到的东西，比从任何别的地方都多。要快速接触到各种各样的商业经验，最简单的办法，就是一期期、一卷卷地翻那些杂志，里面覆盖了形形色色的企业。如果你养成一个习惯：把你读到的东西，不断去对应、抽象到背后所体现的那些基本原理，你在这过程中就会一点一点积累起投资方面的智慧。我不认为，一个人在没有进行大量阅读的前提下，能在很宽的范围内成为真正出色的投资者。我也不认为有哪一本书能单枪匹马帮你做到这一点。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. You might think about picking out five or 10 companies where you feel quite familiar with their products, maybe but not necessarily so familiar with their financials and all of that. But pick out something, so at least you understand what — if you understand their products, you know what’s going on in the business itself. And then, you know, get lots of annual reports. And, through the internet or something else, get all the magazine articles that have been written on it — on those companies for five or 10 years. Just sort of immerse yourself as if you were either going to work for the company, or they’d hired you as the CEO, or you’re going to buy the whole business. I mean, you could look at it in any those ways. And when you get all through, ask yourself, “What do I not know that I need to know?” And back many years ago, I would go around and I would talk to — I would talk to competitors, always. Talk to employees of the company, and ask those kinds of questions.
WARREN BUFFETT: 你可以考虑先挑出五到十家公司，这些公司最好是你对它们的产品已经相当熟悉的——至于财务报表之类的东西，一开始不一定要熟。先选那些至少你知道它们卖的是什么、它们的产品如何，这样你就多少知道这门生意在发生什么。然后，多去拿它们的 annual reports，把能找到的都找来；再通过 internet 或其他渠道，把过去五到十年所有关于这些公司的 magazine 文章都翻出来看一遍。把自己“泡”进去，就好像你要去这家公司上班，或者你已经被聘为 CEO，或者你正打算把整个公司都买下来。你可以从任何一个这样的视角去看。等你都看完之后，问自己一句话：“有什么是我还不知道、但必须要知道的？”很多年以前，我会到处跑，永远会去找竞争对手谈，和公司里的员工聊，围绕这些问题一个个去问。
That’s, in effect, what I did with my friend Lorimer Davidson when I first met him at GEICO, except I started from ground zero. But I just kept asking him questions. And that’s what it really is. You know, one of the questions I would ask if I were interested in the ABC Company, I would go to the XYZ Company and try and learn a lot about it. Now, you know, there’s spin on what you get, but you learn to discern it. Essentially, you’re being a reporter. I mean, it’s very much like journalism. And if you ask enough questions — Andy Grove has in his book — he talks about the silver bullet, you know. You talk to the competitor and you say, “If you had a silver bullet and you could only put it through the head of one of your competitors, which one would it be and why?” Well, you learn a lot if you ask questions like that over time.
这实际上就是我当初在 GEICO 第一次见到我的朋友 Lorimer Davidson 时所做的事，只不过当时我是从零开始。但我就是不停地问他问题。而投资本质上就是这么回事。举个例子，如果我对 ABC Company 感兴趣，我会跑去找 XYZ Company，努力多了解点这门生意。当然，你拿到的信息都会带着立场和“旋转”，但你会慢慢学会辨别和过滤。从本质上讲，你是在做一名记者，这跟做新闻非常像。如果你问的问题够多——Andy Grove 在他的书里提到过 silver bullet 这个说法——你去问竞争对手：“如果你有一颗银弹，只能打向一个竞争对手的脑袋，你会选谁？为什么？”如果你长期问这样的问题，你会学到很多东西。
And you ask somebody in the XYZ industry and you say, “If you were going to go away for 10 years and you had to put all of your money into one of your competitors — the stock of one of your competitors, not your own — which one would it be and why?” Just keep asking, and asking, and asking. And you’ll have to discount the answers you get in certain ways, but you will be getting things poured into your head that then you can use to reformulate and do your own thinking about why you evaluate this business at this or that. The accounting, you know, you just sort of have to labor your way through that. Might — I mean, you may be able to take some courses, even, in that. But the biggest thing is to find out how businesses operate. And, you know, who am I afraid of? If we’re running GEICO, you know, who do we worry about? Why do we worry about them? Who would we like to put that silver bullet through? I’m not going to tell you. (Laughter) That the — You know, it’s — you keep asking those questions.
你也可以去问 XYZ 行业里的人：“如果你接下来要离开十年，在这一走十年之前，你必须把所有的钱都买成你某一个竞争对手的股票（不是你自己的公司），你会选哪一家？为什么？”就这样不停地问、反复地问。拿到的回答，你当然要按一定方式打折、过滤，但会有大量的信息被输入到你脑子里，你随后就可以自己重新整理、重新思考，形成你对这家公司的独立判断：这门生意值多少、为什么值这个数。至于 accounting，你只能一点一点啃过去，老老实实下苦功。也许你还可以去上几门相关的课程。但最关键的是搞清楚生意是怎么运转的。比如说，如果我们在经营 GEICO，那我们最担心谁？我们为什么担心他？如果我们手里真有那颗银弹，我们最想对着谁开枪？这点我可不会告诉你。（笑声）但是，你就是要不停地问这些问题。
知识压缩、泛化的过程。
And then you go to the guy they want to put the silver bullet through and find out who he wants to put the silver bullet through. It’s like who wakes up the bugler, you know, in the Irving Berlin song? And that’s the way you approach it. You — and you’ll be learning all the time. You can talk to current employees, ex-employees, vendors, supplies, distributors, retailers, I mean, there’s customers, all kinds of people and you’ll learn. But it is a — it’s an investigative process. It’s a journalistic process. And in the end, you want to write the story. I mean, you’re doing a journalistic enterprise. And six months later, you want to say the XYZ Company is worth this amount because, and you just start in and write the story. And some companies are easy to write stories about, and other companies are much tougher to write stories about. We try to look for the ones that are easy. Charlie?
然后你再去找那个“被他们想用银弹打掉”的人，看看他最想把银弹用在谁身上。这就像 Irving Berlin 那首歌里问的，“谁把吹号的人叫醒？”——你就是用这种方式去接近问题。你会一直在学习。你可以去跟在职员工聊、跟前员工聊、跟 vendors、suppliers、distributors、retailers 聊，和 customers 聊，各种各样的人都可以打听，你总会学到东西。不过，这整个过程本质上是一种“调查式”的过程，是一种 journalistic process。到最后，你的目标是把这个故事写出来。你做的就是一项新闻采访工作。大概六个月之后，你要能坐下来写出一篇东西：“XYZ Company 值多少钱，因为……”，然后你就从头开始写这个故事。有些公司很容易写成一篇清楚的故事，有些公司则难得多。我们尽量去找那些“容易写故事”的公司。Charlie？
几乎是巴菲特的一个习惯：用一小段文字说清楚整个故事。最重要的是抓住关键变量（聪明的假设），后面是事实和推理，关键变量清楚了，事实和推理连在一起肯定是一篇清楚的故事，如果做不到就接着去找些“容易写故事”的公司。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. For the histories of the thousand biggest corporations laid out in digest form, I think Value Line is in a class by itself. That one volume really tells a lot about the histories of our best companies.
CHARLIE MUNGER：是的。如果你想看前一千家最大公司的历史，并且是高度压缩过的版本，我认为 Value Line 是独一档的。那一卷书就已经把美国最优秀公司的发展史讲得非常清楚了。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. If you just look, there’s 1,700 of them. If you look at each page and you look at sort of what’s happened in terms of return on equity, in terms of sales growth, (inaudible), all kinds of things. And then you say, “Why did this happen? Who let it happen?” You know, “What’s that chart going to look the next 10 years?” Because that’s what you’re really trying to figure out, not the price chart, but the chart about business operation. You’re trying to print the next 10 years of Value Line in your head. And there’s some companies that you can do a reasonable job with, and there’s others that are just too tough. But that’s what the game is about. And it can be a lot of — I mean, if you have some predilection toward it, it can be a lot of fun. I mean, the process is as much fun as the conclusion that you come to.
WARREN BUFFETT：是啊，你看里面大概有 1,700 家公司。你一页一页翻，看一看这些公司在 return on equity、sales growth（销售增长）、以及其他各种指标上，这些年究竟发生了什么变化。然后你再去问：“为什么会这样？是谁让这些事情发生的？接下来的 10 年，这张图会变成什么样？”——因为你真正想弄明白的不是股价走势图，而是“经营结果”的走势图。你是在试着在自己脑子里，把接下来 10 年的 Value Line 预先“打印”出来。对有些公司，你可以做出还算靠谱的判断；对另一些公司，这件事就难到几乎做不到了。但这就是这场游戏真正的内容。如果你对这种事有一点偏好，这个过程会非常有乐趣。我的意思是，这整个过程本身就跟你最后得出的结论一样好玩。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Of course, what he’s saying there, when he talks about why — that’s the most important question of all. And it doesn’t apply just to investment. It applies to the whole human experience. If you want to get smart, the question you’ve got to keep asking is: Why? Why? Why? Why? And you have to relate the answers to a structure of deep theory. And you’ve got to know the main theories. And it’s mildly laborious, but it’s also a lot of fun.
CHARLIE MUNGER：当然，他刚才说的重点里，“为什么”这个问题是最重要的。而且这不只适用于投资，它适用于整个人类经验。如果你想变聪明，你必须不停地问自己：为什么？为什么？为什么？为什么？然后，你要把得到的答案放回到一套“深层理论结构”里去对照和归类。你必须知道那些最重要的基本理论。这件事稍微有点费力，但同样也非常有趣。
10、《2007-05-05 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
14. How to be a better investor
如何成为一个更好的投资者
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 10, please.
WARREN BUFFETT：第十位，请。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. I’m Thomas Gamay (PH) from San Francisco. I’m 17-years old and this is my tenth consecutive annual meeting. (Applause)
AUDIENCE MEMBER：早上好。我是来自 San Francisco 的 Thomas Gamay（PH），我今年 17 岁了，这是我连续第十次参加股东大会。（掌声）
WARREN BUFFETT: You must be a Ph.D. by now at least.
WARREN BUFFETT：那你现在起码也该拿到一个博士学位了。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger, I’m curious about what you think is the best way to become a better investor. Should I get an MBA? Get more work experience? Read more Charlie Munger almanacs or merely is it genetic and out of my hands?
AUDIENCE MEMBER：Mr. Buffett 和 Mr. Munger，我很好奇，在你们看来，成为一名更好的投资者，最好的路径是什么？我应该去读一个 MBA？还是多积累一些工作经验？或者多读一些 Charlie Munger 的“年鉴”？又或者这主要是天赋问题，不在我掌控之中？
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I think you should read everything you can. I can tell you in my own case, I think by the time I was — well, I know by the time I was ten — I’d read every book in the Omaha Public Library that had anything to do with investing, and many of them I’d read twice. So I don’t think there’s anything like reading, and not just as limited to investing at all. But you’ve just got to fill up your mind with various competing thoughts and sort them out as to what really makes sense over time. And then once you’ve done a lot of that, I think you have to jump in the water, because investing on paper and doing — you know, and investing with real money, you know, is like the difference between reading a romance novel and doing something else. (Laughter) There is nothing like actually having a little experience in investing. And you soon find out whether you like it. If you like it, if it turns you on, you know, you’re probably going to do well on it. And the earlier you start, the better, in terms of reading.
WARREN BUFFETT：嗯，我认为你应该尽可能多读书。就拿我自己来说吧，到我——嗯，我清楚记得，到我十岁的时候，Omaha 公共图书馆里所有和投资有关的书，我都已经读完了，其中很多本我还读了两遍。所以在我看来，没有什么东西能替代阅读，而且阅读也绝不仅限于投资类的书。你需要做的是，让自己的头脑里充满各种彼此“竞争”的想法，然后随着时间推移，把它们慢慢整理出来，分辨出哪些真正讲得通。等你做了大量这样的积累之后，我觉得你必须“下水”——纸面投资，和真正拿真金白银去投，你知道的，就好比“看一本爱情小说”和“做点别的事”之间的区别。（笑声）在投资这件事上，没有什么能替代亲身实践的实际经验。很快你就会发现自己到底喜不喜欢它。如果你喜欢它，如果它能点燃你的兴趣，你大概率就会在这件事上做得不错。而就阅读本身而言，你开始得越早越好。
But, you know, I read a book at age 19 that formed my framework for thinking about investments ever since. I mean, what I’m doing today at 76 is running things through the same thought pattern that I got from a book I read when I was 19. And I read all the other books, too, but if you — and you have to read a lot of them to know which ones really do jump out at you and which ideas jump out at you over time. So I would say that read and then, on a small scale in a way that can’t hurt you financially, do some of it yourself. Charlie?
不过，你知道，我在 19 岁的时候读过一本书，从那以后，它就奠定了我对投资思考的基本框架。我的意思是，我今天在 76 岁时做事情的思考路径，依然是在沿用那本我 19 岁时读到的书里所形成的那套思维方式。当然，我后来也读了其他所有的书，但是只有在你读了很多很多书之后，你才能分辨出，哪些书、哪些想法会在时间的检验下真正“跳出来”，一直留在你的脑子里。所以，我会总结成：多读，然后在一个不会对你财务状况造成伤害的小规模范围内，亲自去做一点投资实践。Charlie？
Think Correctly：
（1）正确的思维框架，先有一个正确的方向；
（2）竞争性的想法，没有竞争如何提炼出更好的想法？
（3）亲身体验增加想法的置信度，置信度=敢用程度。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, Sandy Gottesman, who is a Berkshire director, runs a large and successful investment operation, and you can tell what he thinks causes people to learn to be good investors by noticing his employment practices. When a young man comes to Sandy, he asks a very simple question, no matter how young the man is. He says, “What do you own and why do you own it?” And if you haven’t been interested enough in the subject to have that involvement already, why, he’d rather you go somewhere else.
CHARLIE MUNGER：嗯，Sandy Gottesman 是 Berkshire 的董事，他自己经营着一个规模很大、运作成功的投资机构，而你只要观察他的用人做法，就能看出在他看来“人是怎么学会成为好投资者的”。当有年轻人来找 Sandy 时，他无论对方多年轻，都会问一个非常简单的问题：“你现在持有哪些资产？你为什么持有它们？”如果你对这个领域压根没有足够兴趣，以至于事先根本没有这种实际投入，那他宁可让你去别的地方。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. It’s very — that whole idea that you own a business, you know, is vital to the investment process. If you were going to buy a farm, you’d say, I’m buying this 160-acre farm because I expect that the farm will produce 120 bushels an acre of corn or 45 bushels an acre of soybeans and I can buy — you know, you go through the whole process. It’d be a quantitative decision and it would be based on pretty solid stuff. It would not be based on, you know, what you saw on television that day. It would not be based on, you know, what your neighbor said to you or anything of the sort. It’s the same thing with stocks. I used to always recommend to my students that they take a yellow pad like this and if they’re buying a hundred shares of General Motors at 30 and General Motors has whatever it has out, 600 million shares or a little less, that they say, “I’m going to buy the General Motors company for $18 billion, and here’s why.”
WARREN BUFFETT：是的。这整个“你是在拥有一门生意”的观念，对投资过程至关重要。打个比方，如果你要买一块农场，你会说：我要买下这块 160 英亩的农场，因为我预期这块地每英亩能产出 120 蒲式耳的玉米，或者每英亩 45 蒲式耳的大豆，然后我可以以多少价格买进——你会把整个计算过程走一遍。这个决策会是一个定量的决策，而且是建立在相当扎实的依据之上。它不会建立在你那天在电视上看到些什么，也不会建立在你邻居随口对你说了些什么或类似那一类东西上。股票也是同样道理。我过去常常建议我的学生拿一张像这样的黄色记事本，如果他们打算以 30 美元买进 100 股 General Motors，而 General Motors 的流通股本是，比如说 6 亿股或者略少一些，那他们就应该在纸上写下：“我要以 180 亿美元买下整个 General Motors 公司，原因如下。”
And if they can’t give a good essay on that subject, they’ve got no business buying 100 shares or ten shares or one share at $30 per share because they are not subjecting it to business tests. And to get in the habit of thinking that way, you know, Sandy would have followed it up with the questions, based on how you answered the first two questions, that made you defend exactly why you thought that business was cheap at the price at which you are buying it. And any other answer, you’d flunk.
如果他们没法就这个问题写出一篇像样的“小论文”，那他们就根本没资格以 30 美元的价格去买 100 股、10 股，甚至 1 股，因为他们压根没有把这件事当成一门生意来检验。要养成这种思考习惯，你知道，Sandy 会在前两个问题的基础上继续追问，让你进一步自圆其说：为什么你认为在这个买入价格下，这门生意是便宜的？如果你的回答不是这一路的思路，那在他那儿，你就算不及格。
11、《2008-05-03 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
29. “Diversification is for the know-nothing investor”
多元化是给一无所知的投资者准备的
WARREN BUFFETT: Let’s go to 13.
WARREN BUFFETT：我们来第13位。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m Isaac Dimitrovski (PH) from New York City. Mr. Buffett, it’s great to be here. I’ve read that there were several times in your investing career when you were confident enough in one idea to put a lot of your money into it — say, 25 percent or more. I believe a couple of those cases were American Express and the Washington Post in the ’70s. And I’ve heard you discuss your thinking on those. But could you talk about any of the other times you’ve been confident enough to make such a big investment and what your thinking was in those cases?
AUDIENCE MEMBER：我是来自 New York City 的 Isaac Dimitrovski（音）。Buffett 先生，很高兴来到这里。我读到过，在您的投资生涯中有几次对某一个想法有足够的把握，以至于把大量资金投进去——比如说25%或更多。我相信其中有几次是上世纪70年代的 American Express 和 The Washington Post。我也听过您谈论过当时的想法。但您能否再讲讲其他那些让您有信心下如此重注的时刻，以及当时的思考？
WARREN BUFFETT: Charlie and I have been confident enough — if we were only running our own net worth — I’m certain a very significant number of times, if you go over 50 years, there have been a lot of times when you would have put at least 75 percent of your net worth into an idea. Wouldn’t there, Charlie?
WARREN BUFFETT：Charlie 和我如果只是在打理我们自己的净资产——我肯定在过去50多年里，有相当多的时刻会把至少75%的净资产押在一个想法上。是吧，Charlie？
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, but 75 percent of your worth outside Berkshire has never been a very significant amount.
CHARLIE MUNGER：嗯，可是你在 Berkshire 之外的净资产的75%从来不是一个“很大”的数目。
WARREN BUFFETT: No. Well, I’m going back — let’s just assume it was. (Laughter) Let’s just assume you didn’t have Berkshire in the picture. There have been times — I mean, we’ve seen all kinds of ideas we would have put 75 percent of our net worth in.
WARREN BUFFETT：不。好吧，我回到——我们就假设它是吧。（笑声）就假设你的人生里没有 Berkshire 这回事。确实有过那样的时刻——我的意思是，我们见过各种各样的点子，足以让我们把净资产的75%押上去。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Warren, there have been times in my life when I’ve had more than a hundred percent of my net worth invested in things.
CHARLIE MUNGER：Warren，我人生中有一段时间，在一些事情上投进去的，超过了我净资产的一百%。
WARREN BUFFETT: That’s because you had a friendly banker; I didn’t. (Laughter) That — there have been times — well, initially, I had 70 — several times I had 75 percent of my net worth in one situation. There are situations you will see over a long period of time. I mean, you will see things that it would be a mistake — if you’re working with smaller sums — it would be a mistake not to have half your net worth in. I mean, there — you really do, sometimes in securities, see things that are lead-pipe cinches. And you’re not going to see them often and they’re not going to be talking about them on television or anything of the sort, but there will be some extraordinary things happen in a lifetime where you can put 75 percent of your net worth or something like that in a given situation. The problem has been the guys that have put 500 percent of their net worth in. You know, I mean, if you look at — just take LTCM. Very smart guys. Very decent guys. Some friends of mine. High grade. Knew their business.
WARREN BUFFETT：那是因为你有一家“友好的银行”，而我没有。（笑声）确实——我一开始的时候也有过好几次把净资产的75%压在同一件事上的情况。在很长的投资生涯里你会碰到一些情形。我的意思是，你会看到一些机会——如果你的资金规模还不大——不把至少一半净资产投进去反而是错误。有时候，在证券市场里，你确实会遇到那种“十拿九稳”的事。这样的机会不会常见，也不会在电视上被人到处谈论，但一辈子总会有那么几次非同寻常的时刻，你可以把净资产的75%之类的比例押在某个情形上。真正的问题出在那些把净资产的500%都押上去的人。你看——就拿 LTCM 来说吧。那是一群非常聪明的人，非常正派的人，也是我的一些朋友，水平很高，懂自己的生意。
价值投资=重点主义。
But they put, you know, maybe 25 times their net worth into things that were a cinch, if they hadn’t have gone in that heavily. I mean, they were in things that had to converge, but they didn’t get to play out the hand. But if they’d have had a hundred percent of their net worth in them, it would have worked out fine. If they would have had 200 percent of their net worth in it, it would have worked out fine. But they instead went to, you know, maybe 2500 percent or something like that. So there are stocks — I mean, actually, there’s quite a few people in this room that have close to a hundred percent of their net worth in Berkshire, and some of them have had it for 40 or more years. Berkshire was not in a cinch category. It was in the strong probability category, I think. But I saw things in 2002 in the junk bond field. I saw things in the equity markets.
但他们把大约净资产的25倍都押在那些“十拿九稳”的事情上，如果他们没有这么重注的话。我是说，他们参与的是必然要“收敛”的交易，但却没能把牌打到最后。可如果他们只是把净资产的100%押进去，结果会很好；即使是200%也会很好。但他们却押到了，大概2500%之类的水平。所以有些股票——我的意思是，其实在这个会场里就有不少人把接近100%的净资产都放在了 Berkshire 上，而且其中一些人已经这样持有了40多年。Berkshire 并不属于“十拿九稳”的类别。我认为它属于“强概率”的那一类。不过，在2002年的垃圾债领域我看到了机会；在股票市场里我也看到了机会。
If you could have bought Cap Cities with Tom Murphy running it in the early — in 1974, it was selling at a third or a fourth what the properties were worth and you had the best manager in the world running the place and you had a business that was pretty damn good even if the manager wasn’t. You could have put a hundred percent of your net worth in there and not worry. You could put a hundred percent of your net worth in Coca-Cola, earlier than when we bought it, but certainly around the time we bought it, and that would not have been a dangerous position. It would be far more dangerous to do a whole bunch of other things that brokers were recommending to people. Charlie, do you want to —?
如果你能在1974年买下由 Tom Murphy 经营的 Cap Cities，当时它的交易价格只有资产价值的三分之一或四分之一，而你拥有的是世界上最好的经理人来掌舵；即使没有这样一位经理，那也是一家相当出色的企业。你完全可以把净资产的100%投进去而不用担心。你也可以把净资产的100%投到 Coca-Cola 上，比我们买入更早也行，但至少在我们买入的那个阶段，这都不是一个危险的仓位。相反，去做一大堆券商向人们推荐的其他事情，危险得多。Charlie，你要不要——？
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. If you — students of America go to these elite business schools and law schools and they learn corporate finance the way it’s now taught and investment management the way it’s now taught. And some of these people write articles in the newspaper and other places and they say, “Well, the whole secret of investment is diversification.” That’s the mantra. They’ve got it exactly back-ass-ward. The whole secret of investment is to find places where it’s safe and wise to non-diversify. It’s just that simple. Diversification is for the know-nothing investor; it’s not for the professional.
CHARLIE MUNGER：是的。如果你——美国的学生进入那些精英商学院和法学院，他们按如今的方式学习公司金融、按如今的方式学习投资管理。这些人里有些会在报纸和别处写文章，说“投资的全部秘密就是分散化”。那成了口头禅。可他们把事情完全“反着来”了。投资的真正秘诀，是找到那些可以“安全且明智地不分散”的地方。就这么简单。分散化是给“啥也不懂”的投资者用的；不是给专业人士用的。
WARREN BUFFETT: And there’s nothing wrong with the know-nothing investor practicing it. It’s exactly what they should practice. It’s exactly what a good professional investor should not practice. But that’s — you know, there’s no contradiction in that. It — a know-nothing investor will get decent results as long as they know they’re a knownothing investor, diversify as to time they purchase their equities, and as to the equities they purchase. That’s crazy for somebody that really knows what they’re doing. And you will find opportunities that, if you put 20 percent of your net worth in it, you’ll have wasted the opportunity of a lifetime, you know, in terms of not really loading up. And we’ve had the chance to do that, way, way in our past, when we were working with small sums of money. We’ll never get a chance to do that working with the kinds of money that Berkshire does. We try to load up on things.
WARREN BUFFETT：对于“啥也不懂”的投资者去实行分散化并没有任何问题；这正是他们应该做的。可这恰恰不是一位优秀的职业投资者应当做的。但这并不矛盾——只要一个“啥也不懂”的投资者意识到自己“啥也不懂”，在买入股票的时间上分散、在所买股票的品种上分散，他就能获得像样的结果。对真正知道自己在做什么的人来说，那样做却是疯狂的。你会遇到一些机会，如果你只投上净资产的20%，那就是浪费了“该满仓却没满”的一生一次的机会。我们在很久以前、资金很小的时候，的确有过那样“重仓装满”的机会。以 Berkshire 现在的资金体量，我们再也不可能那样做了。我们总是尽量在有把握的事情上“装到满格”。
人的精力有限，人脑的运算能力有限，并且要在极端情况下对抗全世界的想法，极简的重点主义是最好的策略。
And there will be markets when we get a chance to from time to time, but very seldom do we get to buy as much of any good idea as we would like to.
而市场偶尔也会给我们机会，但我们很少能像自己所愿那样，把任何一个好主意买到足够多。
12、《2009-05-02 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I had 49 — mostly universities, a few colleges — that came to Omaha this year. We do them in clumps of six. And then the last one, we had an added university. So we had eight sessions, full-day sessions. And they asked me what — sometimes they asked me what I’d do if I was running a business school, teaching investments. And I’d tell them I’d only have two courses. One would be how to value a business, and the second would be how to think about markets. And there wouldn’t be anything about modern portfolio theory or beta or efficient markets or anything like that. We’d get rid of that in the first 10 minutes. The — But if you know how to value a business — and you don’t have to know how to value all businesses. On the New York Stock Exchange, I don’t know, there’s 4- or 5,000, probably, businesses and a whole lot more on NASDAQ. You don’t have to be right on 4,000 or 5,000. You don’t have to be right on 400.
WARREN BUFFETT：今年有 49 所学校——主要是大学，少数是学院——来 Omaha 看我。我们通常一次接待 6 所学校，最后一批又多加了一所，一共办了 8 次全天的交流。他们有时会问我：如果你来办一所商学院、专门教投资，你会怎么设计课程？我跟他们说，我只会开两门课：一门叫“如何给企业估值”，另一门叫“如何思考市场”。不会讲现代投资组合理论、beta、有效市场这些内容，这些东西前 10 分钟就会被清理出课程表。但是，如果你懂得如何给企业估值——而且你并不需要会给所有企业估值。纽约证交所大概有四五千家公司，NASDAQ 上还有更多。你不需要在四五千家公司上都判断正确，也不需要在 400 家上都正确。
You don’t have to be right on 40. You just have to stay within the circle of competence, the things that you can understand. And look for things that are selling for less than they’re worth, of the ones you can value. And you can start out with a fairly small circle of competence and learn more about businesses as you go along. But you’ll learn that there are a whole bunch of them that simply don’t lend themselves to valuations and you forget about those. And I think if — accounting helps you in that, you need to understand accounting to know the language of business, but accounting also has enormous limitations. And you have to learn enough to know what accounting is meaningful and when you have to ignore certain aspects of accounting. You have to understand when competitive advantages are durable and when they’re fleeting. I mean, you have to learn the difference between a hula hoop company, you know, and CocaCola. But that isn’t too hard to do. And then you have to know how to think about market fluctuations and really learn that the market is there to serve you rather than to instruct you. And to a great extent, that is not a matter of IQ.
你甚至不需要在 40 家上都正确。你只需要待在自己的“能力圈”里，做那些你能看懂的生意。在那些你能估得上价值的公司里，去寻找“价格低于价值”的标的。你可以从一个很小的能力圈起步，然后边走边学，逐渐了解更多的业务。但在这个过程中，你会发现，有一大堆业务根本不适合做估值，这些就应该直接放弃。在这里，会计对你是有帮助的，你需要懂会计，因为那是商业的语言。但会计也有巨大的局限性，你必须学到足够的东西，知道哪些会计信息是有意义的、什么时候必须刻意忽略账面上的某些项目。你要明白竞争优势什么时候是可持续的、什么时候是转瞬即逝的。换句话说，你得学会分辨“呼啦圈公司”和 CocaCola 这样的公司有什么不同——这并不算难。此外，你必须学会如何看待市场波动，并真正理解：市场的存在是为了“服务你”，而不是为了“指导你”。而在很大程度上，这并不是一个“IQ 高低”的问题。
必须有坚实的起点，从自己的能力圈起步，无脑复制一开始就是从想象中起步，这种心理上的锚点很难改变。
If you have — if you’re in the investment business and you have a IQ of 150, sell 30 points to somebody else, ’cause you don’t need it. I mean, it — (laughter) — you need to be reasonably intelligent. But you do not need to be a genius, you know. At all. In fact, it can hurt. But you do have to have an emotional stability. You have to have sort of an inner peace about your decisions. Because it is a game where you get subjected to minute-by-minute stimuli, where people are offering opinions all the time. You have to be able to think for yourself. And, I don’t know whether — I don’t know how much of that’s innate and how much can be taught. But if you have that quality, you’ll do very well in investing if you spend some time at it. Learn something about valuing businesses. It’s not a complicated game. As I say — said many times — it’s simple, but not easy. It is not a complicated game. You don’t have to understand higher math.
如果你——如果你在投资这个行当里，IQ 有 150，那就把 30 分卖给别人算了，因为你根本用不上。（笑声）你需要的只是“足够聪明”，但完全不需要当天才。事实上，天才反而可能会带来麻烦。但你必须具备情绪上的稳定性，对自己的决策要有一种内在的平静。因为这是一场游戏，你每分钟都在被各种刺激轰炸，周围的人不停地在发表意见。你必须能够自己思考。至于这种能力有多少是天生的、有多少可以教出来，我也说不清。但如果你具备这种特质，再在这件事上花点时间，学一点企业估值，你在投资上会做得很好。这不是一个复杂的游戏。我已经说过很多次：它“很简单，但不容易”。它真的不是一个复杂的游戏，你不需要懂高等数学。
情绪自律是先决条件，我们借鉴了Erik Erikson的Basic trust / Basic mistrust。
（1）有基本信任的把复杂问题简单化，目标是解决问题；
（2）基本不信任的把简单问题复杂化，目标是想方设法逃避问题。
You don’t — you know, you don’t have to understand law. There’s all kinds of things that you don’t have to be good at. There’s all kinds of jobs in this world that are much tougher. But you do have to have sort of an emotional stability that will take you through almost anything. And then you’ll make good investment decisions over time. Charlie?
你也——你知道的，你也不需要懂法律。世界上有一大堆东西你都不必精通，世界上还有各种比投资难得多的工作。但你确实需要一种情绪上的稳定性，它能带你穿越几乎任何环境的变化。只要这一点在，时间长了，你整体的投资决策就会不错。Charlie？
Warren Buffet: Well, I was lucky that I got started early. Always helps when you to get started early. And my dad happened to be in the investment business. So I would go down to his office on Saturdays. And so at age, probably seven or something, I started reading these books that were around the place. And so I had a 15-year jump on many people in a sense, and that helped a lot, and I was always fascinated by them. I knew what I wanted to do early. And I think that's a huge advantage too. And then, you don't need a lot of brains in this business. I've always said, If you got an IQ of 160, give away 30 points to somebody else, because you don't need it in investments. What you do need is emotional stability. You have to be able to think independently and when you come to a conclusion, you have to really not care what other people say, and just follow the facts and follow your reasoning. And that's tough for a lot of people. That part, I think I was just lucky with, I was born that way.
Warren Buffet：嗯，我很幸运起步很早。越早开始越有帮助。我的父亲恰好从事投资业务，所以我会在周六去他的办公室。大概在七岁左右，我就开始阅读那儿摆着的那些书。从某种意义上说，我比很多人早了大约十五年，这帮了我很大的忙，而且我一直对这些书着迷。我很早就知道自己想做什么，我觉得这也是一个巨大的优势。再者，这个行当并不需要太多“聪明才智”。我总说，如果你的 IQ 有 160，送 30 分给别人吧，因为在投资中用不上。你真正需要的是情绪稳定。你必须能够独立思考，当你得出结论时，真的不要在乎别人怎么说，只要遵循事实、遵循你的推理即可。这对很多人很难。而在这方面，我想自己也算幸运，是天生如此。
情绪自律的本质是对世界有没有基本的信任？对世界基本不信任的对自己也不信任，巴菲特是极度坦诚的个性，他说的是天生，表述的很温和但也非常的一致，从来没有说过这是可以后天习得的能力。
Steve Forbes: In terms of emotions, it's a truism that in investing, emotions are your enemy.
Steve Forbes：就情绪而言，在投资中情绪是你的敌人，这是句老生常谈的真理。
Warren Buffet: Absolutely.
Warren Buffet：完全正确。
Steve Forbes: That when the market's good, if you feel good, don't. If you feel bad, you should probably do it.
Steve Forbes：也就是说，当市场很好、你感觉良好的时候，别动手；当你感觉糟糕时，反而可能应该出手。
Warren Buffet: Right.
Warren Buffet：对。
Steve Forbes: But how did you... What was that extra thing where so many will acknowledge that, and yet we saw in the current crisis, they panicked while you went into seemingly potential disasters like GE and Goldman Sachs.
Steve Forbes：但你是怎么做到的……那个“额外的东西”是什么？很多人都承认这些道理，可是在这场危机中，我们看到他们恐慌了，而你却走进了像 GE 和 Goldman Sachs 这样看似可能灾难的交易里。
Warren Buffet: I can't really tell you the answer--I didn't learn it in school or anything. I just, it never bothered me if people disagreed with what I thought, as long as I felt I knew the facts. There's a whole bunch of things I don't know a think about, and I just stay away from those. So I stay within what I call my circle of competence. Tom Watson said it best, he said, "I'm no genius, but I'm smart in spots, and I stay around those spots." Well, I try and stay around those spots. And I just don't have a problem if somebody says you're wrong on something. I go back and look at the facts. And I think that really is much more important, frankly, than having a few points of IQ or having an extra course or two in in school or anything of the sort. You need emotional stability.
Warren Buffet：我说不出一个标准答案——我不是在学校里学到的。我只是这样：只要我觉得自己掌握了事实，别人不同意我的看法也不会困扰我。有一大堆我不懂、不想懂的东西，我就远离它们。所以我待在我称之为“能力圈”的范围内。Tom Watson 讲得最好，他说：“我不是天才，但我在某些方面很聪明，而且我一直呆在那些方面。”我也尽量只呆在那些方面。有人说你在某件事上错了，我也不在意，我会回去再核对事实。坦白说，我认为这比智商多几分、或者多上几门课之类的要重要得多。你需要的是情绪稳定。
Steve Forbes: Now, in terms of that, many times, a foundation gets set up. And...
Steve Forbes：不过在实际操作中，很多时候，基金会设立之后，会……
Warren Buffet: Goes off in a different direction.
Warren Buffet：跑偏，朝着不同的方向去了。
Steve Forbes: And there's this thing called Parkinson's Law, that an organization becomes self-centered, in for itself, and forgets its purpose that it was created for.
Steve Forbes：还有所谓的 Parkinson's Law：组织会变得以自我为中心，为自身而存在，忘了最初的使命。
Warren Buffet: I see it all the time.
Warren Buffet：我经常见到这种情况。
Steve Forbes: You see it in business--that's why they go broke oftentimes. But in foundations, you see it. So you made a provision that that was not going to happen with your funds, and they had to be... those monies had to be deployed what, within 10 years?
Steve Forbes：商业里也是如此——这往往就是他们破产的原因之一。基金会也不例外。所以你设了条款，避免你的资金出现这种情况，要求这些钱必须在——多久之内花完？十年？
Warren Buffet: 10 years after my estate's completed. Yeah, and the money has to all be spent--it can't go to institutions which in turn put it in there endowment or anything like that. I want people that I know, and I know are in sync with me, and I know will be true to certain ideals. I want them to dispense it because who the hell knows, 50 years from now, when the place becomes some large institution, what will happen. People will rationalize then that what's good for the institution is exactly what old Warren thought 40 years ago on his deathbed. So I've seen that happen too often. And I... foundations are not tested by a market system. If you've got a business idea, and he's got music, it's being tested by a market system. People will make a decision was whether that next album is good, and they'll make a decision whether Coca Cola still keeps them happy, and all that sort of thing. A foundation has no market tests. So it's very easy, if there's not a market test, as people will find out in government and other places, it's very easy to start rationalizing things that are a long way from what you originally--people thought you were setting out to do.
Warren Buffet：在我的遗产清算完成后的10年内。对，而且这些钱必须全部花掉——不能给那些再把钱放进自己捐赠的机构。我希望把钱交给我认识、与我理念一致、忠于特定理想的人去使用。因为谁也不知道50年后，当某个机构变成庞然大物时会变成什么样。到那时人们会自圆其说，把“对机构有利”的事，解释成“老 Warren 在四十年前临终时的本意”。这种事我见得太多了。再者……基金会没有“市场检验”。你有商业点子，他有音乐作品——都会被市场检验。人们会用脚投票：下一张专辑好不好、Coca Cola 是否还能令他们满足，等等。而基金会没有市场检验。没有市场检验，就很容易——政府和其他领域的人也会发现——很容易开始把事情合理化，离最初的使命越来越远。
大脑可以把任何痛苦合理化了，比如，吸毒、家暴、啃老，没什么不能合理化的，如果没有一个强大的、能抵御各种噪音的精神内核，任何事物都会慢慢生锈、腐烂，非常简单的道理。
14、《2012-05-05 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
23. What Buffett would have done differently
我会有哪些不同的做法
WARREN BUFFETT: OK. Station 6.
WARREN BUFFETT：好的。Station 6。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning, Warren and Charlie. Glad you’re feeling well. My name is Ryan Boyle, and I’m 26 and working for a private equity firm in Chicago. If you were me and had the chance to start over, what areas would you look to get into? And do you think that my generation will have the same number of opportunities as yours? And if not, would you look to focus on emerging markets?
AUDIENCE MEMBER：早上好，Warren 和 Charlie。很高兴你们都气色不错。我叫 Ryan Boyle，今年26岁，在 Chicago 的一家私募股权（private equity）公司工作。如果你们是我，并且有机会重新开始，你们会选择进入哪些领域？你们认为我们这一代人的机会是否会和你们那一代一样多？如果不一样，你们会考虑把重心放在新兴市场吗？
WARREN BUFFETT: Oh, I think you have all kinds of opportunities. I would probably do very much what I have done in life, except I’d do it — I’d try and do it a little earlier, and I would have tried to be a little bit better when I was running a partnership, in terms of aggregating the money faster. I used to work with $5,000 contributions from partners and, you know, I would try to develop an audited record of performance as early as I could. I would try to attract some money, and then when I’d build up a fair amount of money out of investing, I would try to get into something much more interesting, which would be buying businesses to keep. You mentioned private equity, which very often is buying businesses to sell. I don’t want to be buying and selling businesses. I mean, if I establish relationships with people that come to me with their business, and they want to join Berkshire, I want it to be for keeps. And that’s been enormously satisfying.
WARREN BUFFETT：哦，我认为你会有各种各样的机会。我大概率还是会做我这一生所做的事，只是我会——我会尽量更早一点开始；并且在我经营合伙基金时，会在“更快汇集资金”这方面做得更好一些。过去我与合伙人合作时，每位的出资是5000美元；你知道的，我会尽早建立起一份经过审计的业绩记录。我会努力吸引一些资金，然后当通过投资积累到相当数量的资金后，我会尝试进入一件更有意思的事：买下企业并长期持有。你提到 private equity，往往是“买企业然后转手卖”。我不想做“买了又卖”的生意。我的意思是，如果有人带着他们的企业来找我，而我与他们建立了关系、他们也想加入 Berkshire，那我希望这是“永久”的。这一直让我极其满足。
But it takes some capital to get into that business, and I didn’t have any capital when I started out, so I built it through managing money for myself and other people, combined. And like I say, I would get us through that process as fast as I could and then into a game where I could buy businesses of significance and interest to me. And I’d spend the rest of my life doing it, just as I’ve done. Charlie?
不过，进入那样的业务需要一些资本。而我一开始时没有任何资本，所以我是通过为我自己和他人共同管理资金，把这条路走出来的。就像我刚才说的，我会尽可能快地跨过那个阶段，然后进入一场我可以购买对我来说“重要且有趣”的企业的“游戏”。我会把余生都用来做这件事，正如我已经做过的那样。Charlie？
以自己的方式解决现实世界的问题，目标是“Make something wonderful, Put Something Back”。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I’ve got nothing to add to that, either.
CHARLIE MUNGER：嗯，我对此也没有什么要补充的。
WARREN BUFFETT: And I’d do it with Charlie, incidentally. (Laughs)
WARREN BUFFETT：而且顺便说一句，我会和 Charlie 一起做这件事。（笑声）
15、《2013-05-04 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
18. How should a young money manager attract investors?
一位年轻的资金管理人应该如何吸引投资人？
WARREN BUFFETT: OK. Station 6.
WARREN BUFFETT：好的，6号麦。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. Brandon from Los Angeles. I’m in my 20s and I’m starting a partnership. What advice do you have about getting people to put in money before I have a track record as a solo investor? (Laughter)
观众：你好，我是来自 Los Angeles 的 Brandon。我二十多岁，正在成立一个 partnership。在我还没有作为独立投资人的业绩记录之前，你对如何让别人愿意投钱进来有什么建议？（笑声）
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, you haven’t sold me. (Laughter) No, I think people should be quite cautious about investing money with other people, even when they have a track record, incidentally. There are a lot of track records that don’t mean much. But overall, I would advise any young person that wants to manage money, and wants to attract money later on, to start developing an audited track record as early as they can. I mean, it was far from the sole reason, far from the sole reason, that we hired Todd and Ted, but we certainly looked at their record, and we looked at a record that we both believed and could understand, because we see a lot of records that we don’t really think mean much. I mean, if you get — you know, if you have a coin flipping contest, as I wrote, you know, some years ago, and you get 310 million orangutans out there and they all flip coins and they flip them 10 times, you know, you will — instead of having 300 million left, you’ll have 300,000, roughly, left that’ll flip ten times in a row successfully.
WARREN BUFFETT：嗯，你还没说服我呢。（笑声）不，我认为人们把钱交给别人投资时应该非常谨慎，顺便说一句，即使对方已经有业绩记录也一样。很多业绩记录其实没什么意义。但总体来说，我会建议任何想管钱、并且将来想吸引资金的年轻人，尽早开始建立一个经过审计的业绩记录。举例说，我们聘用 Todd 和 Ted，业绩记录远远不是唯一原因，远远不是，但我们当然会看他们的业绩，而且要看那种我们双方都相信、也看得懂的记录，因为我们见过很多我们认为意义不大的“业绩”。我的意思是，如果你搞一个抛硬币比赛，就像我多年前写过的那样，你找来3.1亿只猩猩，让它们一起抛硬币，连续抛10次，那么结果是——不是还剩3亿，而是大约会剩下30万只连续10次都抛对的“赢家”。
And those orangutans will probably go around trying to attract a lot of money to back them in future coin flipping contests. So it’s our job when we hire somebody to manage money to figure out whether they’ve been lucky coin flippers or whether they really know what they’re —
而那些猩猩很可能会到处去试图吸引大量资金来支持它们继续参加未来的抛硬币比赛。所以，当我们雇人来管钱时，我们的工作就是判断：他们到底只是运气好的“抛硬币者”，还是他们真的懂自己在干什么——
CHARLIE MUNGER: When you had his problem, didn’t you scrape together about $100,000 from a loving family?
CHARLIE MUNGER：当年你遇到他这种问题时，不就是从“充满爱的”家人那里东拼西凑了大概 100,000 美元吗？
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. Well, I hope they kept loving me after they gave me the money. That was — Well, it was very slow, and it should have been very slow. As Charlie has pointed out, some people thought I was running a Ponzi scheme, probably, there. And other people may not have thought it, but it was to their advantage to sort of scare people because they were selling investments in Omaha. But you — to attract money, you should deserve money, and you should develop a record over time that — and then you should be able to explain to people why that record is a product of sound thinking rather than simply being in tune with a trend or simply just being lucky. Charlie? You’re starting today and you’re 25 years old. How do you attract money?
WARREN BUFFETT：对。我也希望他们在把钱给我之后还能继续爱我。那时候——进展非常慢，而且本来就应该很慢。正如 Charlie 提到过的，有些人可能觉得我在搞庞氏骗局。还有些人也许并不是真的这么想，但出于自身利益，会故意吓唬别人，因为他们自己在 Omaha 卖投资产品。不过，你要是想吸引资金，前提是你**配得上**这些资金，你需要随着时间积累起一份业绩记录——然后你必须能向别人解释，这份业绩是**理性思考**的结果，而不是踩中了某个风口，或者只是运气好。Charlie？如果你今天 25 岁、刚起步，你怎么吸引资金？
从一份记录查看对方的脑回路，也可以从一次对话查看对方的脑回路，问题是怎么做？普通人都是一些模凌两可的感觉，少数人有些判断上的天赋但也不见得非常有把握，要有性格上的天赋再加正确的思维框架。
CHARLIE MUNGER: I think most people start with friends and family, or people whose trust they’ve already earned in some other way. So it’s hard to do when you’re young, and that’s why people start so small.
CHARLIE MUNGER：我认为大多数人都是从亲戚朋友开始，或者从那些在其他事情上已经取得信任的人开始。所以你年纪轻的时候要做到这一点确实很难，这也是为什么一开始规模都很小。
WARREN BUFFETT: And a relatively few will be successful.
WARREN BUFFETT：而且真正能成功的，只是其中相对少数。
CHARLIE MUNGER: That’s right, too.
CHARLIE MUNGER：这点也对。
WARREN BUFFETT: Some of them — a great many will be successful and make — I mean, you know, we have the hedge fund record here. And during that time, the hedge fund managers have probably made a very considerable amount of money. As I pointed out, Todd and Ted, working under a 2 and 20 arrangement, if they put the money in a hole in the ground, would make $120 million each this year. So it’s not exactly an arrangement that you don’t want to think about a little bit before you engage in it.
WARREN BUFFETT：他们当中有些——不，应该说相当多的人——会“成功”，而且挣到——我的意思是，你看对冲基金这块的历史记录，在那段时期里，对冲基金经理们自己大概赚了非常可观的钱。正如我之前说过的，Todd 和 Ted 假如按“2 and 20”的收费模式来做，即便把钱埋在地里不干事，今年每个人也能拿到 1.2 亿美元。所以在加入这种安排之前，好好想想，绝不是多余的。
CHARLIE MUNGER: The arithmetic attracts many of the wrong sort of people.
CHARLIE MUNGER：这种“算术”会吸引来很多**不合适的人**。
WARREN BUFFETT: Naturally, we thought we were exceptions.
WARREN BUFFETT：当然，我们当年觉得自己是“例外”。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes.
CHARLIE MUNGER：没错。
Some Thoughts About Investing
一些关于投资的思考
Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.
当投资最像经商时，它才是最明智的。
— The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
It is fitting to have a Ben Graham quote open this discussion because I owe so much of what I know about investing to him. I will talk more about Ben a bit later, and I will even sooner talk about common stocks. But let me first tell you about two small non-stock investments that I made long ago. Though neither changed my net worth by much, they are instructive.
用 Ben Graham 的名言作为开场恰如其分，因为我在投资方面所知甚多皆承他所赐。稍后我会更多谈谈 Ben，更早我会谈到普通股。但让我先讲两笔我很久以前做过的小型“非股票”投资。它们对我的净资产影响不大，却颇具启示。
This tale begins in Nebraska. From 1973 to 1981, the Midwest experienced an explosion in farm prices, caused by a widespread belief that runaway inflation was coming and fueled by the lending policies of small rural banks. Then the bubble burst, bringing price declines of 50% or more that devastated both leveraged farmers and their lenders. Five times as many Iowa and Nebraska banks failed in that bubble’s aftermath than in our recent Great Recession.
故事始于 Nebraska。1973 至 1981 年间，中西部农地价格暴涨，导火索是广泛流行的“即将失控通胀”的预期，以及小型乡村银行的放贷政策推波助澜。随后泡沫破裂，价格下跌 50% 甚至更多，重创了加杠杆的农场主及其贷款人。在泡沫后的收拾残局阶段，Iowa 和 Nebraska 倒闭的银行数量，是最近“大衰退”期间的五倍。
In 1986, I purchased a 400-acre farm, located 50 miles north of Omaha, from the FDIC. It cost me $280,000, considerably less than what a failed bank had lent against the farm a few years earlier. I knew nothing about operating a farm. But I have a son who loves farming and I learned from him both how many bushels of corn and soybeans the farm would produce and what the operating expenses would be. From these estimates, I calculated the normalized return from the farm to then be about 10%. I also thought it was likely that productivity would improve over time and that crop prices would move higher as well. Both expectations proved out.
1986 年，我从 FDIC 手中购得一块位于 Omaha 以北 50 英里的 400 英亩农场。购价 28 万美元，远低于几年前某家倒闭银行以该农场作抵押所发放的贷款。我对农业经营一窍不通。但我有个热爱务农的儿子，我从他那儿了解到农场能产多少蒲式耳的玉米与大豆，以及运营成本是多少。基于这些估算，我得出的“正常化回报率”约为 10%。我也认为，随着时间推移，生产率很可能会提升，作物价格也会走高。这两点期待都兑现了。
I needed no unusual knowledge or intelligence to conclude that the investment had no downside and potentially had substantial upside. There would, of course, be the occasional bad crop and prices would sometimes disappoint. But so what? There would be some unusually good years as well, and I would never be under any pressure to sell the property. Now, 28 years later, the farm has tripled its earnings and is worth five times or more what I paid. I still know nothing about farming and recently made just my second visit to the farm.
我无需任何非常识的知识或智力就能判断，这笔投资几乎没有下行风险，却有相当的上行潜力。固然，偶尔会有歉收之年，价格有时也会令人失望。但那又如何？也会有出奇地好的年份，而且我从不面临出售这处地产的压力。如今，28 年过去了，这块农场的收益已增长到三倍，市值至少是我当年买价的五倍。我仍对务农一无所知，最近才第二次去那块农场看看。
In 1993, I made another small investment. Larry Silverstein, Salomon’s landlord when I was the company’s CEO, told me about a New York retail property adjacent to NYU that the Resolution Trust Corp. was selling. Again, a bubble had popped – this one involving commercial real estate – and the RTC had been created to dispose of the assets of failed savings institutions whose optimistic lending practices had fueled the folly.
1993 年，我又做了一笔小投资。Larry Silverstein——我担任 Salomon CEO 期间公司的房东——告诉我，Resolution Trust Corp. 正在出售一处紧邻 NYU 的 New York 零售物业。又一次，泡沫破裂——这回是商业地产——RTC 的职责是处置那些因过度乐观放贷而酿祸的倒闭储贷机构的资产。
Here, too, the analysis was simple. As had been the case with the farm, the unleveraged current yield from the property was about 10%. But the property had been undermanaged by the RTC, and its income would increase when several vacant stores were leased. Even more important, the largest tenant – who occupied around 20% of the project’s space – was paying rent of about $5 per foot, whereas other tenants averaged $70. The expiration of this bargain lease in nine years was certain to provide a major boost to earnings. The property’s location was also superb: NYU wasn’t going anywhere.
同样，分析很简单。就像那块农场一样，该物业“未加杠杆的当期收益率”约为 10%。但该物业在 RTC 管理下长期“照看不周”，几处空置店面一旦出租，收入就会增加。更重要的是，最大的租户——占项目面积约 20%——所付租金约为每平方英尺 5 美元，而其他租户平均为 70 美元。九年后这份“低价租约”到期，必然会为收益带来大幅提振。该物业的位置也极佳：NYU 不会搬走的。
I joined a small group, including Larry and my friend Fred Rose, that purchased the parcel. Fred was an experienced, high-grade real estate investor who, with his family, would manage the property. And manage it they did. As old leases expired, earnings tripled. Annual distributions now exceed 35% of our original equity investment. Moreover, our original mortgage was refinanced in 1996 and again in 1999, moves that allowed several special distributions totaling more than 150% of what we had invested. I’ve yet to view the property.
我与一个小团队共同购买了这处不动产，成员包括 Larry 和我的朋友 Fred Rose。Fred 是一位经验丰富、水平很高的房地产投资人，由他与其家人负责管理这处资产。他们确实做到了。随着旧租约陆续到期，收益增长到原来的三倍。现在，年度分派已超过我们初始股本投资的 35%。此外，我们最初的按揭在 1996 年与 1999 年两次再融资，从而促成了若干次特别分派，合计超过我们投资额的 150%。至于我本人，至今还没去看过这处物业。
Income from both the farm and the NYU real estate will probably increase in the decades to come. Though the gains won’t be dramatic, the two investments will be solid and satisfactory holdings for my lifetime and, subsequently, for my children and grandchildren.
来自农场与 NYU 那处房地产的收入在未来几十年很可能都会提高。尽管增幅不会惊人，这两笔投资将在我有生之年乃至之后对我的子孙而言，都是稳健且令人满意的持有资产。
I tell these tales to illustrate certain fundamentals of investing:
我讲这些故事，是为了阐明一些投资的基本原则：
+ You don’t need to be an expert in order to achieve satisfactory investment returns. But if you aren’t, you must recognize your limitations and follow a course certain to work reasonably well. Keep things simple and don’t swing for the fences. When promised quick profits, respond with a quick “no.”
你不必是专家也能获得令人满意的投资回报。但如果你不是专家，就必须认清自己的边界，并遵循一条大概率行之有效的路径。保持简单，不要一味追求一击致胜（全垒打）。当有人承诺“快速获利”时，请迅速回答“拒绝”。
+ Focus on the future productivity of the asset you are considering. If you don’t feel comfortable making a rough estimate of the asset’s future earnings, just forget it and move on. No one has the ability to evaluate every investment possibility. But omniscience isn’t necessary; you only need to understand the actions you undertake.
把注意力放在你所考量资产的“未来产出能力”上。如果你连其未来收益的粗略估算都没把握，那就忘了它，继续向前。没有人有能力评估所有投资机会。但你也不必无所不知；你只需理解自己所要采取的行动。
+ If you instead focus on the prospective price change of a contemplated purchase, you are speculating. There is nothing improper about that. I know, however, that I am unable to speculate successfully, and I am skeptical of those who claim sustained success at doing so. Half of all coin-flippers will win their first toss; none of those winners has an expectation of profit if he continues to play the game. And the fact that a given asset has appreciated in the recent past is never a reason to buy it.
如果你把关注点放在拟购资产的“未来价格变动”上，你就是在投机。投机并非不正当。然而我知道自己无法在投机上长期成功，对那些声称能持续成功投机的人我持怀疑态度。抛硬币的人里，一半会在第一次“赢”。但若继续玩下去，这些“赢家”没有任何可期的利润。某项资产最近涨过，从来不是买入的理由。
+ With my two small investments, I thought only of what the properties would produce and cared not at all about their daily valuations. Games are won by players who focus on the playing field – not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard. If you can enjoy Saturdays and Sundays without looking at stock prices, give it a try on weekdays.
在我的两项小投资中，我只考虑这些资产会产出什么，从不在意它们的每日估值。比赛是由专注于赛场的人赢得的——不是由只盯记分板的人赢得的。如果你能在周六、周日不看股价也过得很好，不妨在工作日也试试。
+ Forming macro opinions or listening to the macro or market predictions of others is a waste of time. Indeed, it is dangerous because it may blur your vision of the facts that are truly important. (When I hear TV commentators glibly opine on what the market will do next, I am reminded of Mickey Mantle’s scathing comment: “You don’t know how easy this game is until you get into that broadcasting booth.”)
自己构建宏观观点，或聆听他人的宏观/市场预测，都是浪费时间。实际上，这还很危险，因为它可能模糊你对真正重要事实的把握。（当我听到电视评论员轻描淡写地断言市场下一步怎么走时，我会想起 Mickey Mantle 那句犀利的话：“只有当你坐进播音室，才会觉得这场比赛有多容易。”）
这样的Attention本身就是闯祸的根源，在整个人生的无数选择中，每次都保持这种稳定的Attention，最终一定会实现的。
+ My two purchases were made in 1986 and 1993. What the economy, interest rates, or the stock market might do in the years immediately following – 1987 and 1994 – was of no importance to me in making those investments. I can’t remember what the headlines or pundits were saying at the time. Whatever the chatter, corn would keep growing in Nebraska and students would flock to NYU.
我那两笔买入发生在 1986 年与 1993 年。至于之后紧接着的几年——1987 年与 1994 年——经济、利率或股市会如何，与我做出这些投资并无关系。我也记不得当时的头条或名嘴们在说什么。无论噪音如何，Nebraska 的玉米还会继续生长，学生们还会涌向 NYU。
There is one major difference between my two small investments and an investment in stocks. Stocks provide you minute-to-minute valuations for your holdings whereas I have yet to see a quotation for either my farm or the New York real estate.
我的这两项小投资与股票投资有一个重大差别：股票会为你的持仓提供分分秒秒的估值，而我的农场和那处 New York 房地产却从来没有“报价牌”。
It should be an enormous advantage for investors in stocks to have those wildly fluctuating valuations placed on their holdings – and for some investors, it is. After all, if a moody fellow with a farm bordering my property yelled out a price every day to me at which he would either buy my farm or sell me his – and those prices varied widely over short periods of time depending on his mental state – how in the world could I be other than benefited by his erratic behavior? If his daily shout-out was ridiculously low, and I had some spare cash, I would buy his farm. If the number he yelled was absurdly high, I could either sell to him or just go on farming.
对股票投资者而言，持仓每天被赋予大幅波动的报价本应是巨大优势——对一些投资者而言确实如此。毕竟，倘若我家农场旁边那位情绪多变的邻居每天都朝我喊价，或要买我的农场，或要把他的农场卖给我——而且这些价格会随着他短期的心情巨幅波动——我怎么可能不从他这种反复无常的行为中获益？如果他每日喊出的价格低得可笑，而我手头又有闲钱，我就买他的农场；如果他喊出的价格高得离谱，我要么卖给他，要么继续种我的地。
Owners of stocks, however, too often let the capricious and often irrational behavior of their fellow owners cause them to behave irrationally as well. Because there is so much chatter about markets, the economy, interest rates, price behavior of stocks, etc., some investors believe it is important to listen to pundits – and, worse yet, important to consider acting upon their comments.
然而，股票持有人却常常让其他持有人的反复无常、甚至非理性行为带动自己也变得非理性。由于有关市场、经济、利率、股价表现等的噪音铺天盖地，一些投资者以为倾听专家评论很重要——更糟的是，还觉得“照着评论行动”也很重要。
Those people who can sit quietly for decades when they own a farm or apartment house too often become frenetic when they are exposed to a stream of stock quotations and accompanying commentators delivering an implied message of “Don’t just sit there, do something.” For these investors, liquidity is transformed from the unqualified benefit it should be to a curse.
那些在拥有农场或公寓时可以安静持有数十年的人，一旦暴露在持续不断的股票报价与评论之下（其潜台词是“别坐着不动，赶紧干点啥”），往往会变得焦躁不安。对这类投资者而言，流动性本应是不带任何负面含义的好处，却被扭曲成了一种诅咒。
性格、情绪，这些都是模糊的说法，或者是故意模糊的说法，我自己的总结是“有基本信任的把复杂问题简单化，目标是解决问题；基本不信任的把简单问题复杂化，目标是想方设法逃避问题”，想方设法逃避问题的是一无所知的人（不可能有另外的结果），各种非理性的行为本来就是一种稳定的心理倾向，如果有一个更简单的词来描述可能会更好，但也可能引起很多人的不适。
A “flash crash” or some other extreme market fluctuation can’t hurt an investor any more than an erratic and mouthy neighbor can hurt my farm investment. Indeed, tumbling markets can be helpful to the true investor if he has cash available when prices get far out of line with values. A climate of fear is your friend when investing; a euphoric world is your enemy.
一次“闪崩”或其他极端市场波动，对投资者造成的伤害，不会比那位反复无常、喋喋不休的邻居对我的农场投资造成的伤害更大。事实上，只要在价格远离价值时手上有现金，真正的投资者会从下跌的市场中受益。恐惧的氛围是你投资时的朋友；亢奋的世界则是你的敌人。
During the extraordinary financial panic that occurred late in 2008, I never gave a thought to selling my farm or New York real estate, even though a severe recession was clearly brewing. And, if I had owned 100% of a solid business with good long-term prospects, it would have been foolish for me to even consider dumping it. So why would I have sold my stocks that were small participations in wonderful businesses? True, any one of them might eventually disappoint, but as a group they were certain to do well. Could anyone really believe the earth was going to swallow up the incredible productive assets and unlimited human ingenuity existing in America?
在 2008 年末那场罕见的金融恐慌期间，尽管严重衰退显而易见，我从未动念卖出我的农场或 New York 的那处不动产。再说，如果我当时 100% 拥有一家基本面稳健、长期前景良好的企业，那么哪怕只是“考虑抛掉它”也是愚蠢的。那么，为什么我要卖出那些仅占少量股权但对应优质企业的股票呢？诚然，单只个股最终可能令我失望，但作为一个组合，它们一定会表现良好。难道真的有人相信，这个星球会把美国所拥有的惊人生产性资产与无限的人类创造力一口吞下去吗？
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When Charlie and I buy stocks – which we think of as small portions of businesses – our analysis is very similar to that which we use in buying entire businesses. We first have to decide whether we can sensibly estimate an earnings range for five years out, or more. If the answer is yes, we will buy the stock (or business) if it sells at a reasonable price in relation to the bottom boundary of our estimate. If, however, we lack the ability to estimate future earnings – which is usually the case – we simply move on to other prospects. In the 54 years we have worked together, we have never foregone an attractive purchase because of the macro or political environment, or the views of other people. In fact, these subjects never come up when we make decisions.
当Charlie和我买股票时——我们把它们看作企业的一小部分——我们的分析与收购整家公司时非常相似。我们首先要决定能否对五年甚至更久之后的盈利区间作出合理估计。若答案为是，只要价格相对于我们估计区间的下沿合理，我们就会买入该股票（或企业）。反之，若我们缺乏估计未来盈利的能力——这通常是事实——我们就干脆转向别的机会。在我们合作的54年里，从未因为宏观或政治环境，或他人的观点而放弃有吸引力的买入。事实上，这些话题在我们决策时根本不会出现。
有一个标准化的流程。
It’s vital, however, that we recognize the perimeter of our “circle of competence” and stay well inside of it. Even then, we will make some mistakes, both with stocks and businesses. But they will not be the disasters that occur, for example, when a long-rising market induces purchases that are based on anticipated price behavior and a desire to be where the action is.
然而，识别并坚守我们的“能力圈”边界至关重要。即便如此，我们在股票与企业上仍会犯错。但这些错误不会是那种灾难性的错误——例如，长期上涨的市场诱使人们基于预期价格走势和“身处热闹之地”的欲望去买入所造成的那类错误。
Most investors, of course, have not made the study of business prospects a priority in their lives. If wise, they will conclude that they do not know enough about specific businesses to predict their future earning power.
当然，多数投资者并未把研究企业前景当作人生要务。明智的话，他们会得出结论：自己对具体企业了解不足，无法预测其未来盈利能力。
I have good news for these non-professionals: The typical investor doesn’t need this skill. In aggregate, American business has done wonderfully over time and will continue to do so (though, most assuredly, in unpredictable fits and starts). In the 20th Century, the Dow Jones Industrials index advanced from 66 to 11,497, paying a rising stream of dividends to boot. The 21st Century will witness further gains, almost certain to be substantial. The goal of the non-professional should not be to pick winners – neither he nor his “helpers” can do that – but should rather be to own a cross-section of businesses that in aggregate are bound to do well. A low-cost S&P 500 index fund will achieve this goal.
对于这些非职业投资者，我有个好消息：典型的投资者并不需要这项技能。从整体看，美国企业长期表现卓越，未来也会继续如此（尽管肯定会起伏不定）。在20世纪，Dow Jones Industrials指数从66涨至11,497，同时派发不断增长的股息。21世纪还将见证进一步、且几乎可以肯定相当可观的涨幅。非职业投资者的目标不应是挑出赢家——他和他的“帮手”都做不到——而应拥有一篮子整体上注定会表现良好的企业。低成本的S&P 500指数基金能实现这个目标。
That’s the “what” of investing for the non-professional. The “when” is also important. The main danger is that the timid or beginning investor will enter the market at a time of extreme exuberance and then become disillusioned when paper losses occur. (Remember the late Barton Biggs’ observation: “A bull market is like sex. It feels best just before it ends.”) The antidote to that kind of mistiming is for an investor to accumulate shares over a long period and never to sell when the news is bad and stocks are well off their highs. Following those rules, the “know-nothing” investor who both diversifies and keeps his costs minimal is virtually certain to get satisfactory results. Indeed, the unsophisticated investor who is realistic about his shortcomings is likely to obtain better longterm results than the knowledgeable professional who is blind to even a single weakness.
以上是非职业投资者“投什么”。“何时投”同样重要。主要风险在于：胆怯或新手投资者会在市场极度亢奋时入场，一旦出现账面亏损就幻灭。（记住已故Barton Biggs的话：“牛市像性爱，在结束前那一刻感觉最好。”）对这种择时失误的解药，是长期分批买入，并且在坏消息频出、股价远离高位时绝不卖出。遵循这些规则，同时分散投资并将成本降至极低的“什么都不懂”的投资者，几乎必然会取得令人满意的结果。事实上，能坦然面对自身短板的朴素型投资者，很可能比那些学识渊博却对自身哪怕一个缺点都视而不见的职业投资者，获得更好的长期回报。
If “investors” frenetically bought and sold farmland to each other, neither the yields nor prices of their crops would be increased. The only consequence of such behavior would be decreases in the overall earnings realized by the farm-owning population because of the substantial costs it would incur as it sought advice and switched properties.
如果“投资者”疯狂地相互买卖农田，作物的产量和价格都不会因此提高。唯一的结果，是农场主群体的整体收益下降——因为他们在寻求建议与频繁置换资产时会产生大量成本。
Nevertheless, both individuals and institutions will constantly be urged to be active by those who profit from giving advice or effecting transactions. The resulting frictional costs can be huge and, for investors in aggregate, devoid of benefit. So ignore the chatter, keep your costs minimal, and invest in stocks as you would in a farm.
尽管如此，个人与机构仍会被那些靠提供建议或撮合交易获利的人不断怂恿去“频繁行动”。由此产生的摩擦成本可能极大，而从整体上看，对投资者毫无益处。所以，忽略噪音，把成本压到最低，把股票当作农场那样去投资。
从给出建议到各种形式的教育，在大部分情况下都是伪命题，有主动意识的在垃圾桶里找几页纸就能学到有用的知识。
My money, I should add, is where my mouth is: What I advise here is essentially identical to certain instructions I’ve laid out in my will. One bequest provides that cash will be delivered to a trustee for my wife’s benefit. (I have to use cash for individual bequests, because all of my Berkshire shares will be fully distributed to certain philanthropic organizations over the ten years following the closing of my estate.) My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard’s.) I believe the trust’s long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors – whether pension funds, institutions or individuals – who employ high-fee managers.
我还要补充一句：我言行一致。我在此的建议，与我在遗嘱中写下的某些指示本质一致。其一项遗赠条款规定，将现金交由受托人，以惠及我的妻子。（个别遗赠我必须以现金形式，因为我全部的Berkshire股票会在遗产清算后的十年内，全部分配给若干公益机构。）我给受托人的建议再简单不过：10%的现金投短期国债，90%投超低成本的S&P 500指数基金。（我建议Vanguard’s。）我相信，这一策略带来的信托长期结果将优于大多数投资者——无论是养老金、机构还是个人——那些雇佣高收费经理人所取得的结果。
* * * * * * * * * * * *
And now back to Ben Graham. I learned most of the thoughts in this investment discussion from Ben’s book The Intelligent Investor, which I bought in 1949. My financial life changed with that purchase.
现在回到Ben Graham。我在本节投资讨论中的大部分思想，来自我1949年购买的Ben的著作《The Intelligent Investor》。那次购买改变了我的财务人生。
Before reading Ben’s book, I had wandered around the investing landscape, devouring everything written on the subject. Much of what I read fascinated me: I tried my hand at charting and at using market indicia to predict stock movements. I sat in brokerage offices watching the tape roll by, and I listened to commentators. All of this was fun, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t getting anywhere.
在读Ben的书之前，我在投资世界里四处游走，凡与之相关的文字都如饥似渴地阅读。很多内容让我着迷：我尝试画图，用市场指标预测股价走势；我坐在券商营业部看行情带滚动，听评论员说法。这一切很有趣，但我总挥之不去：自己并没有真正进步。
In contrast, Ben’s ideas were explained logically in elegant, easy-to-understand prose (without Greek letters or complicated formulas). For me, the key points were laid out in what later editions labeled Chapters 8 and 20. (The original 1949 edition numbered its chapters differently.) These points guide my investing decisions today.
相较之下，Ben的思想以逻辑严谨、优雅易懂的文字阐述（没有希腊字母或复杂公式）。对我而言，关键要点体现在后来版本标注的第8章与第20章中。（1949年初版的章节编号不同。）这些要点至今仍指导着我的投资决策。
市场先生和安全边际是两股方向相反但都会自我强化的力量，心理学家写一大堆乱七八糟的分析都没什么用，简单问题复杂了不是更清楚而是错了，巴菲特用这两个章结是回答上面的种种问题。
A couple of interesting sidelights about the book: Later editions included a postscript describing an unnamed investment that was a bonanza for Ben. Ben made the purchase in 1948 when he was writing the first edition and – brace yourself – the mystery company was GEICO. If Ben had not recognized the special qualities of GEICO when it was still in its infancy, my future and Berkshire’s would have been far different.
这本书还有两个有趣的侧影：后续版本附录里提到了一笔未点名的投资，给Ben带来了丰厚回报。Ben在1948年撰写初版时完成了那笔买入——准备好——这家神秘公司就是GEICO。若非Ben在GEICO襁褓之时就识别出其特殊之处，我与Berkshire的未来将截然不同。
The 1949 edition of the book also recommended a railroad stock that was then selling for $17 and earning about $10 per share. (One of the reasons I admired Ben was that he had the guts to use current examples, leaving himself open to sneers if he stumbled.) In part, that low valuation resulted from an accounting rule of the time that required the railroad to exclude from its reported earnings the substantial retained earnings of affiliates.
该书1949年版还推荐了一只铁路股，当时股价17美元，每股盈利约10美元。（我敬佩Ben的理由之一，是他敢用当下的例子，哪怕稍有闪失就会被人讥笑。）部分低估值源于当时的一条会计规则：铁路公司在报告利润时必须剔除关联公司大量留存收益。
The recommended stock was Northern Pacific, and its most important affiliate was Chicago, Burlington and Quincy. These railroads are now important parts of BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe), which is today fully owned by Berkshire. When I read the book, Northern Pacific had a market value of about $40 million. Now its successor (having added a great many properties, to be sure) earns that amount every four days.
这只被推荐的股票是Northern Pacific，其最重要的关联公司是Chicago, Burlington and Quincy。这些铁路如今都是BNSF（Burlington Northern Santa Fe）的重要组成部分，而BNSF目前由Berkshire全资拥有。我读这本书时，Northern Pacific的市值约为4,000万美元。如今其继任者（当然已增加了大量资产）每四天就赚到这个数。
I can’t remember what I paid for that first copy of The Intelligent Investor. Whatever the cost, it would underscore the truth of Ben’s adage: Price is what you pay, value is what you get. Of all the investments I ever made, buying Ben’s book was the best (except for my purchase of two marriage licenses).
我已记不清第一本《The Intelligent Investor》的购书价。无论价钱几何，它都印证了Ben那句格言的真理：“价格是你付出的，价值是你得到的。”在我做过的所有投资中，买Ben的这本书是最好的（除了我买下的两张结婚证）。
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Local and state financial problems are accelerating, in large part because public entities promised pensions they couldn’t afford. Citizens and public officials typically under-appreciated the gigantic financial tapeworm that was born when promises were made that conflicted with a willingness to fund them. Unfortunately, pension mathematics today remain a mystery to most Americans.
地方与州级财政问题正在加速恶化，主要原因在于公共部门许下了自己承担不起的养老金承诺。公民与公职人员往往低估了这一“巨型财务绦虫”：当承诺与筹资意愿相冲突时，它便应运而生。遗憾的是，如今的养老金数学对大多数美国人而言仍是谜题。
Investment policies, as well, play an important role in these problems. In 1975, I wrote a memo to Katharine Graham, then chairman of The Washington Post Company, about the pitfalls of pension promises and the importance of investment policy. That memo is reproduced on pages 118 - 136.
投资政策同样在这些问题中扮演重要角色。1975年，我写了一份备忘录给当时的 The Washington Post Company 董事长 Katharine Graham，讨论养老金承诺的陷阱及投资政策的重要性。该备忘录重印于第118—136页。
During the next decade, you will read a lot of news – bad news – about public pension plans. I hope my memo is helpful to you in understanding the necessity for prompt remedial action where problems exist.
在未来十年里，你会看到大量关于公共养老金计划的新闻——坏消息。我希望这份备忘录能帮助你理解：在问题存在之处，及时采取补救措施是必要的。
17、《2015-02-27 Berkshire - Past Present and Future》
All told, Berkshire is ideally positioned for life after Charlie and I leave the scene. We have the right people in place -- the right directors, managers and prospective successors to those managers. Our culture, furthermore, is embedded throughout their ranks. Our system is also regenerative. To a large degree, both good and bad cultures self-select to perpetuate themselves. For very good reasons, business owners and operating managers with values similar to ours will continue to be attracted to Berkshire as a one-of-a-kind and permanent home.
总之，在查理和我离开舞台之后，伯克希尔将被完美地安置。我们有正确的人选，正确的董事们，经理人们以及这些经理人们潜在的继任者。另外，我们的文化深深地根植于他们队伍之中。我们的系统也是可再生的。在很大程度上，好和坏的文化都是自我选择使自己永存。出于很好的理由，那些拥有与我们类似价值观的企业所有者和运营经理人，将继续被伯克希尔作为独一无二的和永远的家所吸引。
好的、坏的都先适应着活下来再说，自我解释的能力是非常强大的，任何扭曲的逻辑都解释成正常，有一种解释是所有生物都是基因的载体，适度的保留多样性可以在后续的演变中拼凑出更好的基因组合，但总的方向是好的越来越多。
2. Buffett: I’m lucky that I can “control my own time”
巴菲特：我很幸运能够“掌控自己的时间”
WARREN BUFFETT: Station 9.
WARREN BUFFETT：9 号麦克风。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, Warren and Charlie. My name is Rob Lee (PH) from Vancouver, Canada. Could you please share with us what you value the most in life now? Thank you.
观众：你好，Warren，你好，Charlie。我叫 Rob Lee，来自加拿大 Vancouver。请问你们现在在人生中最看重的是什么？谢谢。
WARREN BUFFETT: Well —
WARREN BUFFETT：嗯——
CHARLIE MUNGER: I’d like to have a little more of it. (Laughter and applause)
CHARLIE MUNGER：我希望能多一点时间。（笑声与掌声）
WARREN BUFFETT: It’s the two things you can’t buy, time and love. And that, I value those for a long time. And I’ve been very, very, very lucky in life, in being able to control my own time to an extreme degree. Charlie’s always valued that, too. That’s why we really wanted to have money, was so we could do what we damn pleased, basically — (laughs) — in our life. It wasn’t six houses or boats or anything. Well, Charlie’s got a boat. But it doesn’t do us that much good. But time is valuable. And we are very, very lucky to be in jobs where physical ability doesn’t make any difference. And, you know, we’ve got the perfect job for a couple of guys with aging bodies. And we get to do what we love to do every day. I mean, I literally could do anything that money could buy, pretty much. And I’m having more fun doing what I do than doing anything else, and Charlie is designing dormitories.
WARREN BUFFETT：那就是两样你用钱买不到的东西：时间和爱。这两样东西，我已经珍视了很长时间。而且我这一生非常非常非常幸运的一点，是我在极大程度上能掌控自己的时间。Charlie 一直也很看重这一点。这也是我们当初真正想要有钱的原因——归根到底，就是为了在这一生里可以随心所欲地做自己想做的事（笑）。我们要的不是六套房子、几条船之类的东西。好吧，Charlie 是有一条船，但那对我们也没多大用处。真正宝贵的是时间。而且我们非常非常幸运，干的是一种对体力要求几乎无关紧要的工作。对于两个身体都在老去的家伙来说，这简直是完美的工作。而且我们每天都在做自己热爱的事情。说实话，只要是钱能买到的东西，我几乎都可以去做，但我现在做的这份事，比其他任何选择都更让我开心，而 Charlie 则在设计宿舍楼。
信任在传递中很有力量：
（1）如果一个人有 Basic trust，他遇到事情时会先看到问题：先问「怎么把事做好」，而不是「我会不会吃亏」；时间久了，和现实世界的交互越来越顺；总是愿意把功劳多归于他人、不走捷径、兑现所有承诺——还额外多给一点；
（2）让自己更好的过程中也让世界变的更好，“Make something wonderful, Put Something Back.”。
And I mean, he’s got an interesting life, and he brings a lot to it. He still reads, you know, more books in a week than I get done in a month, and he remembers what he reads. So, we’ve got it very good, but we don’t have unlimited time. And whatever we do to free up the time to do what we like to do — and we both maximize that in our lives — we do.
我的意思是，他的生活非常有趣，而且他为此投入了很多。他现在每个星期读的书，仍然比我一个月读的还多，而且他还能记住自己读过的内容。所以，从各方面来看，我们过得都很好，但我们并没有无限的时间。任何能够帮我们腾出更多时间去做自己喜欢的事的安排——在这一点上，我们俩都尽可能做到“最大化”——我们都会去做。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Anybody’s lucky if he so that what he spends his time at, he really likes doing. That’s a blessing.
CHARLIE MUNGER：如果一个人能把自己的时间用在他真正喜欢做的事情上，那他就是幸运的。这是一种福气。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, we’ve had so much good luck in life. It sort of blows your mind. Starting with being born in the United States. And Canada would be fine too, incidentally. I don’t want to offend anybody. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT：是的，我们这一生的好运实在太多，多到让人觉得不可思议。先从一出生在美国这件事就已经是巨大幸运了。当然，加拿大也很好，我可不想得罪谁。（笑声）
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