1. Lowcost producer
   

Lowcost producer的关键词：Need（必需品），Commodity businesses（商品化的业务），As a low-cost operator for a much longer time（长期、结构化的成本优势），can be killed by poor management（不能经受糟糕的管理）。

1. Need
   

2. Commodity businesses
   

商品化的特点是缺少差异化，比如，Wells Fargo（银行）、GEICO（保险）、Costco（零售），这些企业有成本优势但也很难垄断整个市场（政府不允许，消费者也不允许）。

1. As a low-cost operator for a much longer time
   

长期、结构化的成本优势，这是护城河的关键变量。

1. Can be killed by poor management
   

不能经受糟糕的管理。

商品化的业务充满了竞争，因为成本低就能加入竞争，乔布斯说：“Make something wonderful, Put Something Back.”，相比于“Make something wonderful”，“Make something cheaper”显然更容易做到。

1. World-wide brand
   

World-wide brand的关键词：Desired、Share of mind、Pricing power、“少变化、少杠杆、长期高ROE”。

1. Desired

不是必需品，必需品很难达到渴望的程度。

1. Share of mind
   

share of mind是巴菲特的说法，他认为心智份额约等于市场份额，什么样的产品能在客户的心智中长期保持？巴菲特经常举的例子是see's candy、Coca-Cola，这些品牌在用户心智中留下的都是正面、美好的感觉。

1. Pricing power
   

如果能提价而不把生意拱手让给竞争对手，那就是一家非常好的企业。

2. 少变化、少杠杆、长期高ROE
   

好生意自然展现好的生存状态，这一段描述出现在1987年的股东信。

若护城河必须不断重建，最终就等同于没有护城河，除此以外，快速且持续的变化还有一连串的问题，包括眼睛盯着快速变富本身就是风险；快速变化在企业经营中会造成天然的紧张，人在紧张状态下更容易做出不理性的决策，等等。

内在价值是企业未来现金流的折现，“名帅”也许能暂时获得超额且增长的收益，但这对其未来并无太多说明。“名帅”属于极端的假设条件，极端假设条件下才成立的事情更像是赌博。

1. PE（FWD）是不是低于15倍？
   

巴菲特的目标收益率是15%，r=c/DCF+g，PE即DCF/c，15倍约等于7%，其余的8%需要由增长（g）来实现，PE值过高=完全寄希望于增长（g），未来很难预测，更危险的是“脚不着地”的思维方式，最终的影响是无孔不入，侵蚀和影响脑子里的每一个想法。

1. 未来五年有90%的信心成为更赚钱的公司（EPS是增长的）？
   

用于巩固上一步的成果，不要买入一家既没有增长空间又没有增长能力、处于衰退中的企业。

1. 至少50%信心实现每年7%的增长？
   

可以期盼但不能强求的结果，5个选择中有4个成绩平平（比如能跟S&P500持平），其中1个“一飞冲天”，中间有运气的成分但也跟严谨细致的工作有很大的关系。

We tend to go into businesses that inherently are low-risk, and are capitalized in a way that that low risk of the business is transformed into a low risk to the enterprise. The risk beyond that is that even though you buy — identify — such businesses, that you pay too much for them. That risk is usually a risk of time rather than loss of principal, unless you get into a really extravagant situation. But then the risk becomes the risk of you yourself.I mean, whether you can retain your belief in the real fundamentals of the business and not get too concerned about the stock market. The stock market is there to serve you, and not to instruct you.

我们倾向于进入那些“天生低风险”的业务，并用恰当的资本结构把“业务的低风险”转化为“企业层面的低风险”。在这之后的风险在于：即便你识别并买入了此类业务，你也可能付出过高的价格。这种风险通常是“时间风险”，而非“本金损失风险”，除非你把价格抬得极其离谱。到那时，风险其实就变成了“你自己的风险”。我的意思是，看你能不能坚持对企业真实基本面的信念，而不过分在意股市本身。股市的存在是为了“为你服务”，而不是为了“教训你”。

1. Margin

“capitalized in a way that that low risk of the business is transformed into a low risk to the enterprise”，这一句的意思是Margin，降低财务上的杠杆，不要让杠杆影响企业的长期经营。

1. Margin of safety/Mr. Market
   

Margin of safety/Mr. Market所指向的是“自己的风险”，如果有这方面的偏差，造成偏差的原因可以追溯到最初Basic Mistrust。

1、《1946 On Being Right in Security Analysis》

If this is a sound recommendation, not only must it work out well in the market, but it must be based on sound reasoning also.

如果这是一个合理的建议，它不仅必须在市场上取得良好的效果，而且还必须基于合理的推理。

2、《1949 The Intelligent Investor-Chapter 7 “Portfolio Policy for the Enterprising Investor: The Positive Side》

To obtain better than average investment results over a long pull requires a policy of selection or operation possessing a twofold merit: (1) It must meet objective or rational tests of underlying soundness; and (2) it must be different from the policy followed by most investors or speculators.

要在长期内获得高于平均水平的投资回报，必须采用一种具有双重优点的选择或操作策略： (1) 它必须通过对基本面稳健性的客观或理性检验；(2) 它必须有别于大多数投资者或投机者所遵循的策略。

3、《1962-01-24 Warren Buffett's Letters to Limited Partners》

Our Method of Operation

我们的投资方法

Our avenues of investment break down into three categories. These categories have different behavior characteristics, and the way our money is divided among them will have an important effect on our results, relative to the Dow in any given year. The actual percentage division among categories is to some degree planned, but to a great extent, accidental, based upon availability factors.

我们的投资可以分为三个类型：这三个类型的投资各有各的特性，我们的资金在这几类投资中的分配情况，会对我们每年相对道指的业绩产生重要影响。每类投资的占比是按计划来的，但实际分配要见机行事，主要视投资机会情况而定。

The first section consists of generally undervalued securities (hereinafter called "generals") where we have nothing to say about corporate policies and no timetable as to when the undervaluation may correct itself. Over the years, this has been our largest category of investment, and more money has been made here than in either of the other categories. We usually have fairly large positions (5% to 10% of our total assets) in each of five or six generals, with smaller positions in another ten or fifteen.

第一类是低估的股票。在此类投资中，我们对公司决策没话语权，也掌控不了估值修复所需时间。这些年来，在我们的投资中，低估的股票是占比最大的一类，这类投资赚的钱比其他两类都多。我们一般以较大仓位（每只占我们总资产的 5% 到 10%）持有 5、6 只低估的股票，以较小的仓位持有其他 10 或 15 只低估的股票。

没有重点=没有脑子。

Sometimes these work out very fast; many times they take years. It is difficult at the time of purchase to know any specific reason why they should appreciate in price. However, because of this lack of glamour or anything pending which might create immediate favorable market action, they are available at very cheap prices. A lot of value can be obtained for the price paid. This substantial excess of value creates a comfortable margin of safety in each transaction. This individual margin of safety, coupled with a diversity of commitments creates a most attractive package of safety and appreciation potential. Over the years our timing of purchases has been considerably better than our timing of sales. We do not go into these generals with the idea of getting the last nickel, but are usually quite content selling out at some intermediate level between our purchase price and what we regard as fair value to a private owner.

此类投资有时候很快就能获利，很多时候要用几年时间。在买入时，基本不知道这些低估的股票怎么能涨，但是正因为黯淡无光，正因为短期内看不到任何利好因素带来上涨，才能有这么便宜的价格。付出的价格低，得到的价值高。在低估类中，我们买入的每只股票价值都远远高于价格，都存在相当大的安全边际。每只都有安全边际，分散买入多只，就形成了一个既有足够安全保障，又有上涨潜力的投资组合。这些年来，在时机掌控方面，我们总是在买的时候比卖的时候做的好很多。对于低估类，我们本来就没打算赚到最后一分钱，能在买入价与产业资本评估的合理价值中间的位置附近卖出，我们就很满意了。

三种类型的投资策略在《1963-01-18 Warren Buffett's Letters to Limited Partners》又写了遍，少许改动，增加一些新的感受，比如，对“generals”的描述。

Many times generals represent a form of "coattail riding" where we feel the dominating stockholder group has plans for the conversion of unprofitable or under-utilized assets to a better use. We have done that ourselves in Sanborn and Dempster, but everything else equal we would rather let others do the work. Obviously, not only do the values have to be ample in a case like this, but we also have to be careful whose coat we are holding.

很多时候，我们买低估的股票是跟着大股东吃肉喝汤，我们觉得大股东有计划优化资源，转化没盈利能力或利用率低的资产，我们就跟着买。在桑伯恩和登普斯特这两笔投资中，我们亲自动手优化资源，但是在其他条件一样的情况下，我们更愿意让别人做这个工作。做这样的投资，不但价值要足够高，而且跟谁也要选好。

The generals tend to behave market-wise very much in sympathy with the Dow. Just because something is cheap does not mean it is not going to go down. During abrupt downward movements in the market, this segment may very well go down percentage-wise just as much as the Dow. Over a period of years, I believe the generals will outperform the Dow, and during sharply advancing years like 1961, this is the section of our portfolio that turns in the best results. It is, of course, also the most vulnerable in a declining market.

低估类的涨跌受大盘影响很大，就算便宜，也一样会下跌。当市场暴跌时，低估类的跌幅可能不亚于道指。长期来看，我相信低估类会跑赢道指，在像 1961 年这样大涨的行情中，我们的投资组合里的低估类表现最佳。在市场下跌时，这类投资也最脆弱。

Our second category consists of “work-outs.” These are securities whose financial results depend on corporate action rather than supply and demand factors created by buyers and sellers of securities. In other words, they are securities with a timetable where we can predict, within reasonable error limits, when we will get how much and what might upset the applecart. Corporate events such as mergers, liquidations, reorganizations, spin-offs, etc., lead to work-outs. An important source in recent years has been sell-outs by oil producers to major integrated oil companies.

我们的第二类投资是“套利”(work-outs)。在套利类投资中，投资结果取决于公司行为，而不是股票买卖双方之间的供给和需求关系。换言之，此类股票有具体的时间表，我们可以在很小的误差范围内，事先知道在多长时间内可以获得多少回报，可能出现什么意外，打乱原有计划。套利机会出现在并购、清算、重组、分拆等公司活动中。近些年，套利机会主要来自大型综合石油公司收购石油生产商。

This category will produce reasonably stable earnings from year to year, to a large extent irrespective of the course of the Dow. Obviously, if we operate throughout a year with a large portion of our portfolio in work-outs, we will look extremely good if it turns out to be a declining year for the Dow or quite bad if it is a strongly advancing year. Over the years, work-outs have provided our second largest category. At any given time, we may be in ten to fifteen of these; some just beginning and others in the late stage of their development. I believe in using borrowed money to offset a portion of our work-out portfolio since there is a high degree of safety in this category in terms of both eventual results and intermediate market behavior. Results, excluding the benefits derived from the use of borrowed money, usually fall in the 10% to 20% range. My self-imposed limit regarding borrowing is 25% of partnership net worth. Oftentimes we owe no money and when we do borrow, it is only as an offset against work-outs.

在很大程度上，无论道指涨跌如何，套利投资每年都能带来相当稳定的收益。在某一年，如果我们把投资组合中大部分资金用于套利，这年大市下跌，我们的相对业绩会很好；这年大市上涨，我们的相对业绩会很差。多年以来，套利是我们第二大投资类别。我们总是同时进行 10 到 15 个套利操作，有的处于初期阶段，有的处于末期阶段。无论是从最终结果，还是过程中的市场表现来讲，套利类投资具有高度安全性，我相信完全可以借钱作为套利类投资组合的部分资金来源。不考虑借钱对收益的放大作用，套利类的收益率一般在 10% 到 20% 之间。我自己规定了一个限制条件，借来的钱不能超过合伙基金净值的 25%。我们一般不借钱，借钱的话，都是用于套利。

The final category is "control" situations where we either control the company or take a very large position and attempt to influence policies of the company. Such operations should definitely be measured on the basis of several years. In a given year, they may produce nothing as it is usually to our advantage to have the stock be stagnant market-wise for a long period while we are acquiring it. These situations, too, have relatively little in common with the behavior of the Dow. Sometimes, of course, we buy into a general with the thought in mind that it might develop into a control situation. If the price remains low enough for a long period, this might very well happen. If it moves up before we have a substantial percentage of the company's stock, we sell at higher levels and complete a successful general operation. We are presently acquiring stock in what may turn out to be control situations several years hence.

最后一类是“控制类”。在此类投资中，我们或是拥有控股权或者是大股东，对公司决策有话语权。衡量此类投资肯定要看几年时间。当我们看好一只股票，在收集筹码时，它的股价最好长期呆滞不动，所以在一年中，控制类投资可能不会贡献任何收益。此类投资同样受大盘影响相对较小。有时候，一只股票，我们是当做低估类买入的，但是考虑可能把它发展成控制类。如果股价长期低迷，很可能出现这种情况。如果我们还没买到足够的货，这只股票就涨起来了，我们就在涨起来的价格卖掉，成功完成一笔低估类投资。我们现在正在买入的一些股票，再过几年可能发展成控制类。

三个策略加在一起是一个闭环，这种策略是对信息的高度压缩，乔布斯回归苹果后对产品线的重新规划也是如此，可以把这些脑袋比作图片的压缩，在保留图片质量的同时又能把文件压的非常小。

---

You will not be right simply because a large number of people momentarily agree with you. You will not be right simply because important people agree with you. In many quarters the simultaneous occurrence of the two above factors is enough to make a course of action meet the test of conservatism.

不是因为很多人暂时和你意见一致，你就是对的。不是因为重要人物和你意见一致，你就是对的。当所有人都意见一致时，正是考验你的行为是否保守的时候。

You will be right, over the course of many transactions, if your hypotheses are correct, your facts are correct, and your reasoning is correct. True conservatism is only possible through knowledge and reason.

在很多笔投资的过程中，只要你的假设正确、事实正确、逻辑正确，你就是对的。只有凭借知识和理智，才能实现真正的保守。

4、《1976-11 Warren Buffett’s Forward to The Intelligent Investor》

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。

*****

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。

5、《1976-03-26 Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders》

When such criteria are maintained, our intention is to hold for a long time; indeed, our largest equity investment is 467,150 shares of Washington Post “B” stock with a cost of $10.6 million, which we expect to hold permanently.

我们股权投资主要集中于少数几家此种类型的公司：有着良好的经济护城河，称职且诚实的管理层，并且以私人所有者的价值尺度来衡量，购买价格很有吸引力。当这些要素都具备了，我们就打算长期持有；实际上，我们最大的股权投资是投资了 467,150 股 Washington Post 华盛顿邮报 B 股，成本约 1063 万美元，我们期望永久持有。

“Right Business、Right People、Right Price”，没有“我们能够理解的生意”。

6、《1977-03-21 Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders》

You will notice that our major equity holdings are relatively few. We select such investments on a long-term basis, weighing the same factors as would be involved in the purchase of 100% of an operating business: (1) favorable long-term economic characteristics; (2) competent and honest management; (3) purchase price attractive when measured against the yardstick of value to a private owner; and (4) an industry with which we are familiar and whose long-term business characteristics we feel competent to judge. It is difficult to find investments meeting such a test, and that is one reason for our concentration of holdings. We simply can't find one hundred different securities that conform to our investment requirements. However, we feel quite comfortable concentrating our holdings in the much smaller number that we do identify as attractive.

你会发现，我们的主要持股相对较少。我们基于公司的长期表现进行投资，并会仔细考虑如果 100% 收购整个公司所要考虑的因素： (1) 良好的长期经济特性； (2) 能干且诚实的管理层； (3) 以私有化的标准来衡量，价格具有吸引力； (4) 我们熟悉且自认为能判断其长期业务特性的行业。寻找到符合我们标准的公司很困难，这也是我们喜欢集中持股的原因之一。我们无法找到一百只满足我们投资标准的股票。然而，我们觉得集中持有少量我们已确认有吸引力的股票是非常舒适的。

“Right Business、Right People、Right Price”，“我们能够理解的生意”放在最后的第（4）点。

7、《1978-03-14 Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders》

We select our marketable equity securities in much the same way we would evaluate a business for acquisition in its entirety.W e want the business to be (1) one that we can understand, (2) with favorable long-term prospects, (3) operated by honest and competent people, and (4) available at a very attractive price. We ordinarily make no attempt to buy equities for anticipated favorable stock price behavior in the short term. In fact, fi their business experience continues to satisfy us, we welcome lower market prices of stocks we own as an opportunity to acquire even more of a good thing at a better price.

我们投资股票的选择方式与买进整家企业的模式很相近，我们想要的企业必须是： (1) 我们能够理解的生意。 (2) 具有良好的长期前景。 (3) 由才德兼具的人士所经营。 (4) 非常吸引人的价格。我们从来不会去买那些短期股价预期有所表现的股票，事实上，如果其企业的表现符合我们的预期，我们反而希望他们的股价不要太高，这样我们才有机会以更理想的价格买进更多的股份。

“Right Business、Right People、Right Price”，“我们能够理解的生意”改成第（1）点，这个版本在随后的几十年里没有变过，有一些细微变化的是第（4）点，1992年是“an attractive price”，2007年是“a sensible price”。

8、《1993-04-26 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

Warren Buffett: How do we go about reading annual reports and proxy statements? Frist, we read a lot of them. It’s very helpful to read a lot of annual reports and trade publications to get a better fix on certain businesses. A good many I just skim. But if I’m really interested in a company, I probably read every word – although some of the general descriptions lose me a little bit. But we start at the front and read to the back if we’re really interested in it. And we will be interested not only in any business that we own or are thinking of owning, but we’ll be interested in reading their competitors’. I get the Bic annual report. I get the Warner Lambert annual report to read about Schick. I get the PepsiCo annual report. I get the Cott Beverage report. Cott Beverage makes more of the generic colas than anybody – at least in this hemisphere. I want to know what competitors are doing and talking about, what results they are getting and what strategies seem logical to them. So I spend a lot of time reading annual reports.

Warren Buffett：我们如何阅读年报和代理声明（proxy statements）？首先，我们会读很多。大量阅读年报和行业刊物，有助于更准确地把握某些企业。我会把许多材料略读；但如果我对一家公司真正感兴趣，我大概会逐字细读——尽管有些概述性段落对我来说略显枯燥。如果我们真的感兴趣，就从头读到尾。而且我们不仅关注自己持有或考虑持有的企业，也会去读它们竞争对手的资料。我会看 Bic 的年报；我会看 Warner Lambert 的年报了解 Schick；我会看 PepsiCo 的年报；我也会看 Cott Beverage 的年报。Cott Beverage 至少在这一半球生产的通用可乐（generic colas）比任何公司都多。我想知道竞争对手在做什么、在谈什么，他们得到什么样的结果，以及他们觉得哪些战略是合理的。所以我花很多时间读年报。

Charlie Munger: If you just started reading annual reports at random, you wouldn’t learn as much. You have to have some body of theory in your head before you approach such a mass of data.

Charlie Munger：如果你只是随机地阅读年报，你学到的东西不会太多。在面对海量数据之前，你脑子里必须先有一套理论框架。

Warren Buffett: That’s a very good point. Unless you have an investment framework from which you are coming at the report, it will be essentially gibberish. If you are fitting in what you see to find out whether it is in your circle of competency, and whether it’s interesting if it is within it, it becomes a terribly useful document. I’ve learned a lot over the years just reading annual reports. Aside from this general body of knowledge that we may have – this is our main source material in terms of making investments. We don’t buy that many securities. But among the securities we buy, we often have made our decisions just by reading annual reports – not by visiting management. We usually do that afterwards. And some reports have been terribly helpful to us.

Warren Buffett：这是个非常好的观点。除非你带着一个投资框架去解读报告，否则它基本上就是天书。如果你把所见所闻往自己的能力圈里去匹配，判断它是否属于其中、若属于其中是否值得兴趣，那年报就会变成极有用的文件。多年来我仅靠阅读年报就学到了很多。撇开我们积累的一般性知识——在做投资上，年报是我们的主要信息来源。我们买的证券并不多，但在那些我们买入的证券里，很多决策就是靠读年报做出的——而不是拜访管理层。通常拜访是之后的事。而有些年报对我们非常有帮助。

没有正确的知识框架所有信息都是天书，不仅仅是投资，生活中的种种也是天书。

9、《1997-05-05 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

38. We don’t want to “hear stories” or buy from “jerks”

我们不想听“故事”，也不会和“混蛋”做生意

WARREN BUFFETT: Area 3.

WARREN BUFFETT：3号区。

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, Mr. Munger and Mr. Buffett. My name is Liza Rema (PH) from Burbank, California. I wanted to find out — earlier, you mentioned you looked at — you used filters to look at a company. So could you elaborate on what those filters are?

观众：你好，Munger 先生、Buffett 先生。我是来自 California Burbank 的 Liza Rema（音）。我想请教一下——之前你们提到会用“过滤器”来审视一家公司。能否详细说明这些过滤器究竟是什么？

WARREN BUFFETT: Charlie, you want to —?

WARREN BUFFETT：Charlie，你要不要——？

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, we’ve tried to do a good deal of that, and — Opportunity cost is a huge filter in life. If you’ve got two suitors who are really eager to have you, and one is way the hell better than the other, you do not have to spend much time with the other. And that’s the way we filter stock buying opportunities. Our ideas are so simple, people keep asking us for mysteries, when all we have is the most elementary idea.

CHARLIE MUNGER：嗯，我们确实在这方面做了不少——机会成本是人生中一个巨大的过滤器。假如有两个追求者都非常想要你，而其中一个远远优于另一个，你就没必要在那个次要者身上花多少时间。我们筛选买股机会也是这样做的。我们的思想很简单，但人们总追着我们要“秘诀”，而我们能给的只是最基础的观念。

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. The first filter we probably put it through is whether we think — and we know instantly — whether it’s a business we’re going to understand, and whether it’s a business that — if it passes through that, it’s whether a company can have a sustainable edge, you know. And that gets rid of a very significant percentage of the things people have — They always want to tell you some story or anything. And I’m sure they regard me and Charlie as very arbitrary, in terms of, you know, in the middle of the first sentence saying, “Well, you know, we appreciate the call, but we’re not interested.” I mean, you know, they just think if they explain something — and I get letters on this all the time. But we really can tell, in the middle of the first sentence, usually, whether those two factors exist. And if we can’t understand it, obviously, it’s not going to have — we can’t make a decision as to whether it has a sustainable edge.

WARREN BUFFETT：对。我们通常放上的第一个过滤器是：我们是否认为——而且我们会立刻知道——这是不是一个我们能够理解的生意；如果通过这一关，再看这家公司是否具备可持续的优势。这样就能把别人拿来的大量东西剔除掉——他们总想给你讲故事之类。我可以肯定，在他们看来我和 Charlie 很“武断”，比如在对方第一句话还没说完就表示：“感谢来电，但我们没兴趣。”他们的想法是，只要把故事讲清楚——我也经常收到这类来信。但实际上，我们通常在对方第一句话的中途，就能判断那两个条件是否成立。而如果我们都搞不懂它，显然我们也就无法判断它是否有可持续优势。

And if we can’t understand it, we, very often, can come to the conclusion that it’s not the kind of the business where it will have a sustainable edge. So 98 percent of the conversations we can end, you know, in the middle of somebody’s first sentence, which, of course, goes over very big with the caller, but — (Laughter) And then, sometimes if you’re talking about an entire business, we can tell by who we’re dealing with whether a deal’s ever going to work out or not. I mean, it — if there’s an auction going on, we don’t want to — we have no interest in talking about it. And it just isn’t going, you know, it isn’t going to work. If someone is interested in, essentially, doing that with their business, you know, they’re going to sit down and want to renegotiate everything with us all over again after the deal is done. And we’re going to have to buy the business two or three times before we get through. You just see all these things coming.

如果我们搞不懂它，我们往往就能得出结论：这不是一种会拥有可持续优势的生意。所以我们能在别人第一句话说到一半时，就结束掉98%的对话——当然，这对来电者来说“感受相当强烈”（笑）。另外，如果谈的是整家公司，我们常常能从“对手是谁”判断这笔交易会不会有结果。也就是说——一旦有“拍卖”，我们就不想——也没兴趣再谈了。你知道，那样是行不通的。如果某人基本上想把自己的企业“拍卖”出去，那么交易完成后，他们还会坐下来，把一切和我们重新谈一遍。我们等于要把这家企业“买两三次”才能完事。这些征兆，你事先就能看见。

Right Business、Right People、Right Price就是过滤器，每一项都有非常清晰的定义。

And on the other hand, we’ve had, you know, terrific experience, basically, with the people we have associated with. So it works. It’s efficient. You know, we don’t want to listen to stories all day. And we don’t read brokerage reports of anything of the sort. It’s just — there’s other things to do with your time. Charlie?

另一方面，我们和真正合作的那些人，基本上都有很棒的体验。所以这种筛选是有效率的。你知道，我们不想整天听“故事”。我们也不看券商报告或类似的东西。很简单——时间更该花在别处。Charlie？

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. Another filter that Warren was eluding to is this concept of the “quality person.” And, of course, most people define “quality person” as somebody very much like themselves. (Laughter) But —

CHARLIE MUNGER：对。Warren 刚才还在暗示的另一个过滤器，是所谓“quality person（优质的人）”。当然，大多数人对“quality person”的定义，就是“跟自己非常像的人”。（笑）但是——

WARREN BUFFETT: Identical, actually, is the word you’re searching for. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT：准确地说，你想找的词是“identical（完全一样）”。（笑）

CHARLIE MUNGER: But there’s so many wonderful people out there. And there’s so many awful people out there. And there’s signs frequently, like flags, particularly over the awful people. And generally speaking, those people are to be avoided. It just — the amount of misery you bring into your life by trusting some awful person and the amount of felicity that you can bring in by making the right business associations — look around this room. And there’s some wonderful people who have created some wonderful businesses. And their customers can trust them. The employees can trust them. The problems can trust them to be fairly faced and reasonably solved. And those are the kind of people you want. And people who take their promises seriously. I had some experience, recently, with a company. And they have their brand on a particular product. And somebody invented a better product in the same field. And they’re taking their brand off their product. (Laughs) If it isn’t the best, they don’t want their brand on it. People who think like that frequently do very well in business. And the flags are flying.

CHARLIE MUNGER：但世界上有那么多优秀的人，也有那么多糟糕的人。而且糟糕的人身上往往挂着“旗帜般”的信号。一般而言，这样的人要尽量回避。相信糟糕之人会给你的人生带来多少痛苦；而选对商业伙伴会给你带来多少喜悦——看看这个会场就知道。有些优秀的人创造了出色的企业：他们值得客户信任；值得员工信任；连问题“本身”都可以信任他们会公平面对并合理解决。这才是你要找的人——把承诺当回事的人。我最近碰到一家公司的例子：他们的品牌贴在某个产品上，后来同领域有人做出了更好的产品，他们决定把自家品牌从那个产品上撤下来（笑）。如果不是最好的，就不配贴上他们的品牌。这样思考的人，做生意往往很成功。而那些“旗帜”信号会一直高高飘扬。

WARREN BUFFETT: It’s like they got a sign on their chest that just says, “Jerk. Jerk. Jerk.” (Laughter) And then you think you’re going to buy the business and they aren’t going to be a jerk, you know, anymore. I mean, it’s — (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT：有些人胸口就像挂着一块牌子，上面写着：“Jerk. Jerk. Jerk.”（混蛋、混蛋、混蛋）（笑）而你却指望把他的生意买下来后，他就不再是混蛋了？我的意思是——（笑）

10、《1998-05-04 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

42. How Phil Fisher’s “scuttlebutt” method changed Buffett’s life

Phil Fisher 的“scuttlebutt（打探法）”如何改变了 Buffett 的一生

WARREN BUFFETT: Area 5?

WARREN BUFFETT：第 5 区？

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Travis Heath (PH). I’m from Dallas, Texas. And my question regards what Phil Fisher referred to as “scuttlebutt.” When you’ve identified a business that you consider to warrant further investigation — more intense investigation — how much time do you spend commonly, both in terms of total hours and in terms of the span in weeks or months that you perform that investigation over?

AUDIENCE MEMBER：我叫 Travis Heath（音），来自德州达拉斯。我的问题与 Phil Fisher 所说的“scuttlebutt（打探法）”有关。当你确定某个企业值得进一步、乃至更深入地研究时，通常会投入多少时间？既包括总小时数，也包括以周或月计的研究周期。

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, the answer to that question is that now I spend practically none because I’ve done it in the past. And the one advantage of allocating capital is that an awful lot of what you do is cumulative in nature, so that you do get continuing benefits out of things that you’d done earlier. So by now, I’m probably fairly familiar with most of the businesses that might qualify for investment at Berkshire. But when I started out, and for a long time I used to do a lot of what Phil Fisher described — I followed his scuttlebutt method. And I don’t think you can do too much of it. Now, the general premise of why you’re interested in something should be 80 percent of it or thereabouts. I mean, you don’t want to be chasing down every idea that way, so you should have a strong presumption. You should be like a basketball coach who runs into a seven-footer on the street. I mean, you’re interested to start with; now you have to find out if you can keep him in school, if he’s coordinated, and all that sort of thing.

WARREN BUFFETT：嗯，这个问题的答案是，现在我几乎不再花时间，因为过去已经做过了。资本配置有一个优势：大量工作具有“累积性”，你会不断从此前做过的事中受益。所以到现在，我对大多数可能适合 Berkshire 投资的业务都相当熟悉了。但在我起步时，以及相当长的一段时间里，我确实按照 Phil Fisher 描述的方法去做——也就是他的 scuttlebutt（打探法）。而且我认为，这方面做得再多也不过分。不过，促使你最初对某个标的感兴趣的“总体前提”应当占到 80% 左右。也就是说，你不应该对每个点子都用这种方式穷追不舍；你需要一个强有力的先验假设。就像一位篮球教练在街上遇到一个身高七英尺的人——你一开始当然会感兴趣；接下来就要弄清楚能否把他留在学校、他是否协调、诸如此类的事情。

That’s the scuttlebutt aspect of it. But I believe that as you’re acquiring knowledge about industries in general, companies specifically, that there really isn’t anything like first doing some reading about them, and then getting out and talking to competitors, and customers, and suppliers, and ex-employees, and current employees, and whatever it may be. And you will learn a lot. But it should be the last 20 percent or 10 percent. I mean, you don’t want to get too impressed by that, because you really want to start with a business where you think the economics are good, where they look like seven-footers, and then you want to go out with a scuttlebutt approach to possibly reject your original hypothesis. Or maybe, if you confirm it, maybe do it even more strongly. I did that with American Express back in the ’60s and essentially the scuttlebutt approach so reinforced my feeling about it that I kept buying more and more and more as I went along. And if you talk to a bunch of people on an industry and you ask them what competitor they fear the most, and why they fear them, and all of that sort of thing.

这就是 scuttlebutt（打探法）的部分。但我相信，在你积累对行业（总体）与公司（具体）的认知时，没有什么能替代：先阅读，再走出去与竞争对手、客户、供应商、前员工、在职员工等聊一圈。你会学到很多。不过这应当是“最后的 20% 或 10%”。也就是说，不要被这些信息迷住双眼；你真正要做的是从“经济特性良好、看起来像七英尺中锋”的企业开始，然后再用 scuttlebutt 的方式去尝试“否定你的原始假设”。如果被证实，你可以更有力地行动。上世纪 60 年代我在 American Express 身上就是这么做的；打探法极大强化了我的判断，于是我一路越买越多。另外，如果你在一个行业里和很多人交谈，去问他们最害怕哪位竞争者、为什么害怕，以及类似的一切问题。

不能让10-20%的部分过度干扰80%的部分，有一个好的前提假设非常关键，关键变量或者看问题的角度在很大程度上决定了能不能看对。

You know, who would they use the silver bullet of Andy Grove’s on and so on, you’re going to learn a lot about it. You’ll probably know more about the industry than most of the people in it when you get through, because you’ll bring an independent perspective to it, and you’ll be listening to everything everyone says rather than coming in with these preconceived notions and just sort of listening to your own truths after a while. I advise it. I don’t really do it much anymore. I do it a little bit, and I talked in the annual report about how when we made the decision on keeping the American Express when we exchanged our Percs for common stock in 1994, I was using the scuttlebutt approach when I talked to Frank Olson. I couldn’t have talked to a better guy than Frank Olson. Frank Olson, running Hertz Corporation, lots of experience at United Airlines, and a consumer marketing guy by nature. I mean, he understands business.

你知道，比如问他们：“如果有一颗 Andy Grove 说的那种 silver bullet（银弹），你会用在谁身上？”通过这样的问题，你会学到很多。等你做完这一圈打探之后，你对这个行业的了解，很可能会超过大多数身在其中的人，因为你带着独立的视角去看问题，而且你会认真听每个人说的话，而不是带着先入为主的成见进去，过一阵子就只是在反复听自己认定的“真理”。我非常建议大家这么做。只是我现在自己做得已经不多了，只是偶尔还会做一点。我在年度报告里讲过，我们在 1994 年决定继续长期持有 American Express，并把手里的 Percs 换成普通股时，我就是在用 scuttlebutt（打探法）——那时我去找 Frank Olson 谈。我不可能找到比 Frank Olson 更合适的人了。Frank Olson 经营 Hertz Corporation，在 United Airlines 有丰富的经历，本性上就是做消费者营销出身的人。换句话说，他非常懂生意。

And when I asked him how strong the American Express card was and what were the strengths and the weaknesses of it, and who was coming along after it, and so on, I mean, he could give me an answer in five minutes that would be better than I could accomplish in hours and hours and hours or weeks of roaming around and doing other things. So you can learn from people. And Frank was a user of it. I mean, Frank was paying X percent to American Express for his Hertz cars. And Frank doesn’t like to pay out money, so why was he paying that? And if he was paying more than he was paying on Master Charge or Visa, why was he paying more? And then what could he do about it? I mean, you just keep asking questions. And I guess Davy [Lorimer Davidson] explained that in that video we had ahead of time. I’m very grateful to him for doing that, because that was a real effort for him.

当我问他 American Express 的卡到底有多强、它的优势和劣势分别是什么、有哪些后来者在追赶等等这些问题时，他在五分钟内给出的答案，比我自己花好几个小时、好几个星期四处打听所能得到的东西都要好。所以你完全可以向人学习。Frank 自己也是用户——他为 Hertz 车队刷 American Express，要付给 American Express X% 的费用。而 Frank 本人是不爱花钱的，那他为什么愿意付这笔钱？如果他付给 American Express 的费率高于 Master Charge 或 Visa，那为什么还愿意多付？那他又能拿这件事怎么办？你就是不断地追问下去就行了。我想 Davy（Lorimer Davidson）在我们会前放的那个视频里已经解释过这一点了。我非常感激他愿意那样做，因为对他来说那确实是下了很大一番功夫。

But that was really what I was doing back in 1951 when I visited him down in Washington, because I was trying to figure out why people would insure with GEICO rather than with the companies that they were already insuring with, and how permanent that advantage was. You know, what other things could you do with that advantage? And you know, there were just a lot of questions I wanted to ask him, and he was terrific in giving me the answer. It, you know, changed my life in a major way. So I have nobody to thank but Davy on that. But that’s the scuttlebutt method and I do advise it. Charlie?

事实上，这正是我早在 1951 年去华盛顿拜访他时所做的事。当时我想搞清楚：为什么人们会选择跟 GEICO 投保，而不是继续跟原来那家保险公司投保？这种优势的持久性有多强？你还能围绕这种优势做些什么？我有一大堆这样的问题想问他，而他给出的回答都非常出色。这在很大程度上改变了我的人生。所以在这件事上，我只需要感谢 Davy 一个人。这就是所谓的 scuttlebutt（打探法），而且我确实极力提倡这种方法。Charlie？

CHARLIE MUNGER: Nothing to add.

CHARLIE MUNGER：没什么要补充的。

---

I would worry, frankly, if I sold a bunch of things right at the top, because that would indicate that, in effect, I was practicing the bigger fool-type approach to investing, and I don’t think that can be practiced successfully over time.

坦率地说，如果我在市场高点时卖出一堆东西，我会感到担忧，因为那会表明我实际上是在践行一种“更大的傻瓜”投资法，而我认为这种方法无法长久成功。

在市场高点时卖出一堆东西，非常严谨的说法，Attention Is All You Need.

I think the most successful investors, if they sell at all, will be selling things that end up going a lot higher, because it means that they’ve been buying into good businesses as they’ve gone along.

我认为，最成功的投资者即使会卖出一些资产，最终那些资产也可能会涨得更高。这表明他们一直在购买优质的企业。

11、《1999-05-03 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

76. “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。

12、《2001-04-28 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

65. Having “your head screwed on right in the first place”

首先要“思路正确”

WARREN BUFFETT: Second question — (laughs) — I gather is, sort of, how much does our actual business experience versus book experience help us?

WARREN BUFFETT：第二个问题——（笑）——我理解大致是在问：我们在实际商业中的经验，相对于书本上的经验，到底能帮上多大的忙？

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, it’s, you know, if you look at a person who has just made two years of being in the business of investing, versus a person who has been for 10 years in the business of investing. And say the person who has been for two years, you know, has read a lot about, you know, Ben Graham’s techniques, and your techniques, and, say, Peter Lynch’s techniques. So would you say that the person who has only two years of experience may do much better than the second person?

AUDIENCE MEMBER：嗯，就是说，如果你看这样两个人：一个人在投资这个行当里只干了两年，另一个人已经干了十年。假设这个干了两年的呢，读了很多关于 Ben Graham 的方法、你们的方法，还有 Peter Lynch 的方法。那么你会不会认为，这个只有两年经验的人，可能会比那个有十年经验的人做得更好吗？

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, if everything else is equal, I mean, everything else is equal, except the amount of experience you have, I think the experience is probably useful. But it isn’t going to be equal. And I don’t think that — I don’t think that the — I think it’s way more important what you’ve thought about for two years than what you’ve practiced for 10 years. If you’re — if the direction — if there’s a divergence in techniques applied, I would rather be with the one that I’m philosophically in sync with. If I’m philosophically in sync with both and one’s had 10 years of experience, the chances are they will know a little bit more about more businesses if they’ve been around for 10 years, looking at them, than if they’ve been around for two years. But the biggest thing is that, you know, basically they’ve got their head screwed on right in the first place, in terms of how they value businesses and how they look at stocks.

WARREN BUFFETT：如果其他一切条件都相同——我的意思是，除了经验年限之外，其他条件都一样——那我觉得，多一点经验大概是有用的。但现实情况是，条件不会完全一样。我并不认为——并不认为——我觉得，比起你“实践了十年”，你“认真思考了两年”要重要得多。如果两个人在方法路径上出现分叉，我更愿意跟那个在理念上跟我一致的人在一边。如果我在理念上和两个人都能对得上号，而其中一个有十年经验，那他在十年里看过更多的企业，大概率会比那个只看了两年的，对更多业务了解得稍微多一点。但最关键的一点是，从一开始，他的脑子是不是就“拧对了”，也就是说：他是怎么给企业估值、怎么看待股票的，这个基本出发点是不是正确。

先要有正确的思维框架，人类思维轨迹的空间太大了，绕来绕去不见得能找到正确的路径。

Whether they look at them as pieces of businesses or whether they look at them as little things that move around, and that you can tell a lot by looking at charts or listening to strategists on or something of the sort. We have — Charlie and I have learned a lot about a lot of businesses over 40 or 50 years. But I would say that, in terms of the new things that would come to us, at the end of the second year, we were probably about as good judges of them as we would be today. But I think there’s a little plus to having seen — more in terms of human behavior and that sort of thing — than knowing about the specifics of a given business model. Charlie?

不管他是把股票看成“企业的一部分”，还是把它们当成一些会上下乱晃的小票，觉得多看看图表、听听策略师就能知道很多东西。在过去四五十年里，Charlie 和我确实对很多企业学到了很多东西。但如果说到“新冒出来的东西”该怎么判断，我会说，在我们做投资的第二年末，我们对这些新东西的判断能力，大概就已经和今天差不多了。我觉得，额外的收获主要是在于：你看到了更多“人性层面”的东西，这方面的见识比你对某个具体商业模式细枝末节了解多少，要重要一点。Charlie？

人性的规律会反映在商业上的规律。

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, I think that — I’ve watched Warren for a long time now, and I would say he’s actually getting better as he gets older. Not at golf or — (Buffett laughs) — many other activities, but —

CHARLIE MUNGER：是的，我觉得——我观察 Warren 很长时间了，我会说，随着他年纪变大，他作为投资人其实是在变得更好。不是在打高尔夫上——（Buffett 大笑）——也不是在很多别的活动上，而是——

WARREN BUFFETT: Stay with generalities.

WARREN BUFFETT：就说点笼统一般的就行了。

CHARLIE MUNGER: — as an investor, he’s better — (laughter) — which I think’s remarkable. It shows that scale of experience matters.

CHARLIE MUNGER：——作为一个投资人，他变得更好了——（笑声）——我觉得这点非常不寻常。这说明“经验的规模”确实是有意义的。

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, it helps somewhat to have seen a lot of business situation — I mean, Charlie talks about models and you construct your models as you go along based on observation. And your models will — if you’re paying attention, your models will be somewhat better the more years you’ve spent really observing and not just trying to make everything fit into what you saw the first few years.

WARREN BUFFETT：是的，看过很多商业情景确实多少有点帮助。我的意思是，Charlie 总在谈“模型”，而你是在一路观察的过程中，把这些模型一点点搭建起来。如果你真的在用心观察，而不是总想把后面遇到的一切，都硬塞进你头两年看到的那点东西里，你的这些模型会——随着你花更多的年份在认真观察上——会变得更好一些。

重新压缩而不是无从生有的硬解释。

13、《2003-05-03 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

30. From “cigar butts” to high-quality companies

从“烟蒂”到高质量公司

WARREN BUFFETT: The — Charlie explained, I had learned investment, and got enormous benefit out of that learning, from a fellow who concentrated on the quantitative aspects, Ben Graham. And who didn’t dismiss the qualitative aspects, but he said you could make enough money focusing on quantitative aspects, which were a more sure way of going at things and would enable you to identify the cigar butts. He would say that the qualitative is harder to teach, it’s harder to write about, it may require more insight than the quantitative. And besides, the quantitative works fine, so why try harder? And on a small scale, you know, there was a very good point to that. But Charlie really did — it wasn’t just Ira Marshall — but Charlie emphasized the qualitative much more than I did when I started. He had a different background to some extent than did, and I was enormously impressed by a terrific teacher, and for good reason. But it makes more sense, as we pointed out, to buy a wonderful business at a fair price, than a fair business at a wonderful price.

WARREN BUFFETT：正如 Charlie 解释的那样，我当初是跟一位主要关注“量化”方面的人学投资的，这个人就是 Ben Graham，而我从这种学习里获益巨大。Ben Graham 并不是否定“质化”分析，他的看法是：只要专注于量化方面，你就足够能赚到很多钱；量化是一种更稳妥的做法，可以帮你找出那些“cigar butts”。他会说，定性分析更难教，更难写清楚，可能比量化需要更多洞见。再说了，量化这一套用得很好，既然如此，为什么要把事情搞得更难呢？在小资金规模下，从这个角度看确实非常有道理。但 Charlie 确实——不只是 Ira Marshall 的影响——Charlie 一开始就比我更强调“定性”因素。他在某种程度上有着不同于我的背景，而我则是被一位了不起的老师深深打动，这也是很有道理的。不过，正如我们后来指出的，更有意义的做法，是以一个合理的价格买入一家“优秀企业”，而不是以一个非常便宜的价格买入一家“普通企业”。

泛化的目标是更简洁优雅、更高效率的方式解释世界，这个功能存在高度的不确定性：（1）能不能泛化不确定，确实存在可泛化的规律；（2）有没有能力泛化是不确定的，因人而异。

And we’ve changed our — or I’ve changed my focus anyway, and Charlie already had it — over the years in that direction. And then of course, we have learned by what we’ve seen. I mean, we — it’s not hard when you watch businesses for 50 years, you know, to learn a few things about them, as to where the big money can be made. Now, you say when did it happen? It’s very interesting on that. Because what happens, even when you’re getting a new, important idea, is that the old ideas are still there. So there’s this flickering in and out of things. I mean, there was not a strong, bright red line of demarcation where we went from cigar butts to wonderful companies. And it — but we moved in that direction, occasionally moved back, because there is money made in cigar butts. But overall, we’ve kept moving in the direction of better and better companies, and now we’ve got a collection of wonderful companies.

而这些年来，我们确实改变了我们的——或者说，至少我改变了我的关注重点，而 Charlie 早就走在那条路上了。然后，当然，我们也在“见多识广”的过程中不断学习。我的意思是，如果你看企业看了五十年，要从中学到一些关于“哪里能赚大钱”的道理，其实并不难。现在你问，这个转变是什么时候发生的？这点非常有意思。因为现实情况是：即便你正在接受一个崭新而重要的理念，旧观念其实仍然待在你脑子里。所以，会出现一种“忽明忽暗”的状态。也就是说，我们并没有在某一天画出一道清清楚楚、鲜红亮眼的分界线，说：从今天起，我们从“cigar butts”彻底转向“优秀公司”了。事实是，我们整体上朝那个方向移动，但偶尔也会回头，因为在“cigar butts”里也是能赚钱的。但从整体来看，我们始终在往“越来越好的公司”这个方向推进，而现在，我们确实已经拥有了一篮子很优秀的公司。

关于旧观念的描述非常准确：（1）旧观念已经内化成为自己的一部分，不可能清除；（2）改变注意力的方向是自己可以掌握的，在设定的关注方向上看个50年有一些好的泛化并不难；（3）长时间改变注意力的方向非常难。

14、《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。

15、《2010-11-07 The Forging of a Skeptic - From Accountant to Buffett’s Voice on Wall St.》

Alice: History was one of Warren’s best subjects even when he was very young (in school). He has a liking for it. But at the same time pattern recognition is one of his primary skills and perhaps his greatest skill. So in terms of data points, unlike many people who learn by seeking information on an as-needed basis, Warren is always looking for fuel for pattern recognition before he needs it.

爱丽丝：历史一直是沃伦从小就擅长的科目之一。他对历史有很大的兴趣。但与此同时，模式识别是他最主要的能力之一，甚至可能是他最强的能力。因此，谈到数据点，不像许多人在需要时才寻求信息，沃伦总是在提前为模式识别寻找“燃料”，在他还没有需要它的时候就开始准备。

更准确的说法是有一个正确的思维框架，对世界有一个非常简洁有效的知识结构。

He’s always looking for context. Having an interest in a broad sweep of history provides vast context for making many decisions because it enables analogies. And that I think has been very helpful for him in avoiding fallacies such as “This time it’s different.”

他总是寻找背景信息，对历史的广泛兴趣为做出许多决策提供了丰富的背景，因为它能够启发类比。我认为这对他避免“这次不同”的谬论非常有帮助。

It allows him to make analogies between industries, for example between the internet/dotcom stocks and early auto stocks, as in the speech he gave at Sun Valley that is described in The Snowball.

这使他能够在行业之间进行类比，例如在他在《雪球》一书中描述的太阳谷演讲中，将互联网/点com股票与早期的汽车股票进行比较。

Miguel: Tell me more about his pattern recognition skills? How is this one of his greatest skills?

米格尔：告诉我更多关于他的模式识别技能？为什么这是他最重要的技能之一？

Alice: Take this example. If you look at the dotcom stocks, the meta-message of that era was world-changing innovation. He went back and more patterns of history when there was a similar meta-message, great bursts of technological innovation in canals, airplanes, steamboats, automobiles, television, and radio. Then he looked for sub-patterns and asked what the outcome was in terms of financial results.

爱丽丝： 以这个例子为例。如果你看看点com股票，当时那个时代的元信息是改变世界的创新。他回顾了更多历史上的模式，当时也有类似的元信息，即在运河、飞机、蒸汽船、汽车、电视和广播等领域的伟大技术创新浪潮。然后他寻找子模式，问这些技术创新在财务结果方面的结局是什么。

With the dotcoms, people were looking to see what was different and unique about them. Warren is always thinking what’s the same between this specific situation and every other situation.

随着互联网公司的兴起，人们在寻找它们与众不同和独特之处。沃伦总是在思考这个特定情况与其他所有情况之间有什么相同之处。

That is the nature of pattern recognition, asking “What can I infer about this situation based on similarities to what I already know and trust that I understand?” There is less emphasis on trying to reason out things on the basis that they are special because they are unique, which in a financial context is perhaps the definition of a speculation. (Warren is not averse to speculation, by the way, as long as it’s what he calls “intelligent speculation,” meaning he’s got long odds in his favor.) But pattern recognition is his default way of thinking. It creates an impulse always to connect new knowledge to old and to primarily be interested in new knowledge that genuinely builds on the old.

这就是模式识别的本质，问自己“根据我已经了解并信任的情况，我能从这个情况中推断出什么？” 他更少强调试图基于它们的独特性来推理，这在金融背景下或许可以定义为投机行为。（顺便说一下，沃伦并不反对投机，只要它是他所称的“明智的投机”，意思是他在这场赌局中有极大的胜算。）但模式识别是他默认的思维方式。这种思维方式促使他总是将新知识与旧知识联系起来，并主要对能够真正建立在旧知识基础上的新知识感兴趣。

---

Other interesting situations: I have seen him make his famous 5-minute decisions on the phone. Five minutes is the outside amount of time it takes him to make a decision. If the person can be succinct and convey the salient points in 60 seconds he’ll say, “Yes” or “No” in 60 seconds.

其他有趣的情况：我见过他在电话上做出他著名的五分钟决策。五分钟是他做出决策所需的最长时间。如果对方能够简明扼要地在 60 秒内传达要点，他会在 60 秒内说“是”或“否”。

The time is determined by how long it takes the person to convey the salient points, not how long it takes him to think about it. It’s virtually instant once he has grasped the 2 or 3 variables or points that are important to him.

时间是由一个人传达要点所需的时间来决定的，而不是他思考所需的时间。一旦他掌握了对他重要的 2 或 3 个变量或要点，这几乎是瞬间的。

Typically, and this is not well understood, his way of thinking is that there are disqualifying features to an investment. So he rifles through and as soon as you hit one of those it’s done. Doesn’t like the CEO, forget it. Too much tail risk, forget it. Low-margin business, forget it. Many people would try to see whether a balance of other factors made up for these things. He doesn’t analyze from A to Z; it’s a time-waster.

通常，这一点并不被很好地理解，他的思维方式是，投资有一些不合格的特征。因此，他会快速浏览，一旦遇到其中一个，就结束了。不喜欢首席执行官，算了。尾部风险太大，算了。低利润业务，算了。许多人会尝试看看其他因素是否能弥补这些问题。他不从头到尾分析；这浪费时间。

16、《2011-04-01 Warren Buffett.Meeting with Business students》

Q4：请您从定性层面谈谈您是如何计算估值？你如何得出估值的数字的，是用 excel 表做定量的估值计算吗？

巴菲特：我从来不用 excel 表进行计算，但不代表我脑袋里面没有类似 excel 计算的框架。比如说我不动笔做笔记，不代表我头脑中不记忆，这些是读书的时候就形成的学习习惯。我从来就没有开始用过 excel，而且我过去的 60 年也没有学什么新的工具，除非我开始学，否则我不会用 excel 来计算，但我也能算出你通过 excel 进行的计算结果。我不喜欢任何可能传达虚假假设的计算。通过在 excel 表中列出详细的数据表格，人们会获得一种虚假的安全感，让人们认为未来会更加的有规律，但是事实并不是这样。

我曾经在所罗门投行待过一段时间，根据一个客户的股票研究要求，研究部门的人花了几周时间，打出来了一个很长的报告，预测了一个制造业公司未来 20 年的利润情况，另一方面，当我问所罗门公司未来一周能够产生多少利润的时候，他们说这怎么可能算的出来。真正的原因是做 20 年后的预测，这些人都不一定在这里了，而要做出下一周的预测，我们下一周马上知道预测是对的还是错的，所以我从来不看这些预测。在路博润公司 Lubrizol（注：2011 年 3 月 14 日伯克希尔完成的收购）交易中，公司 CEO 要给我看他们对于生意未来业绩的预测，我说我不用看了，每一个公司都会预测说明年要赚的更多，如果我对于未来的生意没有形成自己的判断，我也不想别人告诉我。如果我不知道该怎么做，别人没有放自己钱的人，又怎会告诉你该如何做呢。我不关注他们做的预测，但是我头脑中自有对于公司的经济前景有预测，然后基于这个预测进行估值。

巴菲特表达的很温和，这里隐含的观点是比较强烈的：（1）必须有自己的判断；（2）必须强大到不为任何人所动，除独立思考以外，如果所秉持的思维框架不足够好、或者不是最好的话很可能来来回回摆动。

17、《2012-05-05 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

18. How Todd Combs and Ted Weschler are compensated — and taxed

Todd Combs 和 Ted Weschler 的薪酬与税负

WARREN BUFFETT: OK. Andrew?

WARREN BUFFETT：好的。Andrew？

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: OK, here’s the question: “Please tell us more about your experience this past year with Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. What did they do well, and did they make any mistakes? And please discuss how you compensate them a bit more. In an interview, you said that Todd Combs was well compensated for the performance of his stock picks last year. Should we be worried about a short-term horizon for compensation? How do you ensure that Todd and Ted don’t chase high-flying stocks for the sake of compensation?

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN：好的，问题是：“请进一步谈谈过去一年你与 Todd Combs 和 Ted Weschler 的合作体会。他们做得好的地方是什么？是否有犯错？也请更详细地谈谈你们如何给他们定薪。在一次采访中，你说 Todd Combs 因其去年选股表现而获得了良好的薪酬。我们是否该担心薪酬会带来短期化导向？你如何确保 Todd 和 Ted 不会为了薪酬去追逐高飞股？”

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we’ve always been more concerned about how our record is achieved than the precise record itself. And with both Todd and Ted, Charlie and I were struck by, not only a good record, but intellectual integrity and qualities of character, a real commitment to Berkshire, a lifelong-type commitment. And we’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of good records in our lifetimes; we haven’t seen very many people we want to have join Berkshire. But these two are perfect, and we pay them each a salary of a million dollars a year, and we give them 10 percent of the amount by which their portfolios beat the S&P. So that if they beat the S&P by 10 points, they get one point, for example, and we get nine points. But we do it on a three-year rolling basis so you don’t get the seesaw effect. And each one gets paid 80 percent based on their own efforts and 20 percent based on the other person’s, so that they have every incentive to operate in a collaborative way rather than sit there jealously guarding their own ideas and hoping the other guy doesn’t do very well.

WARREN BUFFETT：嗯，我们一直更在意“业绩是如何取得的”，而不是孤立的业绩数字本身。就 Todd 和 Ted 而言，Charlie 和我看重的不仅是他们的业绩记录，更是他们的智识诚信与品格，以及对 Berkshire 的真正承诺——一种终身型的承诺。我们这一生见过成百上千份漂亮的业绩，但真正让我们愿意邀请其加入 Berkshire 的人并不多。这两位非常合适。我们分别给他们每人每年100万美元的固定薪水，并按其投资组合跑赢 S&P 的超额部分提取10%的分成。也就是说，如果他们跑赢 S&P 10个点，他们拿其中1个点的分成，我们拿9个点。但结算是以“三年滚动”的方式进行，以避免跷跷板效应。另外，两人的分成构成为：各自业绩占80%，对方业绩占20%，这样他们就有充分动机以合作的方式工作，而不是坐在那里嫉妒地守着自己的点子、希望对方表现不佳。

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。

So it’s a — I don’t think we could have a better — it’s the same structure on pay, basically, that we had with Lou Simpson for 20-some years, except he did not have a partner. To the extent that they employ people underneath them, that comes out of their performance record, and it’s worked far better than either Charlie and I had hoped, and we had pretty high hopes. We had 1 3/4 billion with each of them at year end, but we’ve added another billion each on March 31, so they’re running 2 3/4 billion apiece. I don’t look at what they do. I see it eventually when I look at a GEICO portfolio at the end of the month or something of the sort. But they operate through their own brokers.

所以，这——我不认为我们还能设计出更好的方案——基本上与我们和 Lou Simpson 合作二十多年的薪酬结构相同，只不过他当时没有搭档。如果他们之下雇用了人手，相应成本会计入他们的业绩记录中。事实证明，这套安排比我和 Charlie 期望的还要好，而我们的期望本来就不低。到年末时，我们分别给他们每人管理17.5亿美元；3月31日我们又各加了10亿美元，因此他们目前各自管理27.5亿美元。我不会盯着他们在做什么；通常我要到月末查看 GEICO 的投资组合之类的报表时，才会最终看到。但他们都是通过各自的券商来操作的。

They don’t — I’ve told them that the only thing I want to know is, if they’re getting into a new name, I just want to know the name so I’m certain that it isn’t something that I am familiar with some inside information on, or something, so that there’s no inadvertent appearance that we would be — or that their purchase would have been influenced by something that I knew about. That’s never come up. They can’t — they can’t — if there’s something we would have to file a 13D on, they would have to check with me. But basically none of that’s going to happen. Never happened with Lou, either. They operate in different stocks. They’ve got a much bigger universe than I have because they’re working with 2 3/4 billion instead of 150 billion, so they can look at a lot more things. And they’ve cheerfully pitched in for other duties that they don’t really get compensated directly on, but that are helpful to Berkshire.

他们不会——我已经告诉他们，我唯一想知道的是：如果他们要买入一个全新的标的，我只需要知道这个名字，好让我确认我本人没有掌握与之相关的任何内幕信息之类的东西，从而避免产生我们——或者他们的买入——受到我所知情事项影响的任何无意的观感。这种情况从未发生过。他们不能——他们不能——如果是需要我们提交 13D 的事情，他们必须先和我沟通。但基本上这些都不会发生。与 Lou 的合作中也从未发生过。他们操作的股票不同。因为他们管理的是 27.5 亿而不是 1500 亿，他们所能覆盖的标的范围比我大得多，所以可以看更多的东西。而且他们也很乐意承担一些并不能直接拿到报酬、但对 Berkshire 有帮助的其他职责。

And they will — they’ll do a great job for Berkshire when they’re running a whole lot more money than they are now. Ted only joined us this year. Todd did substantially better than the S&P last year, so he racked up a big performance gain, a third of which was paid to him in the first year, but the two years is deferred and he could lose that back if he were to underperform. So I think we’ve got a good system and terrific people. Charlie?

并且当他们管理的资金规模远高于现在时，他们会为 Berkshire 做得非常出色。Ted 是今年才加入我们的。Todd 去年显著跑赢 S&P，所以累计了很大的业绩收益，其中三分之一在第一年支付，但另外两年是递延的，如果之后表现不佳，他可能会把那部分吐回去。所以我认为我们有一套好的机制，也有很棒的人。Charlie？

CHARLIE MUNGER: What’s interesting about it is that at least 90 percent of the investment management business of the United States would starve to death on our formula. I think — and I think these people will do pretty well with it. So —

CHARLIE MUNGER：有趣的是，在我们的这种计酬公式下，美国至少 90% 的投资管理行业会被“饿死”。我认为——而且我认为这两位在这套机制下会做得相当不错。所以——

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah.

WARREN BUFFETT：是的。

CHARLIE MUNGER: And not only that, they’ll be terrific for the long pull for Berkshire. They’re the kind of people we like having around headquarters.

CHARLIE MUNGER：不止如此，从长期来看，他们对 Berkshire 会非常出色。他们就是我们喜欢在总部身边共事的那种人。

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. I hope they get into that — those 400 taxpayers I mentioned, but if they do, even under the present haul, they’ll be paying taxes in the mid-30s. They are doing what they did before which — they ran hedge funds — but they’re going to work every day thinking about the same things, and they get taxed at 35 percent-plus. And if they were running hedge funds, they’d get taxed at 15 percent. And for all of those in the audience who can reconcile that, there’ll be a free Dilly Bar. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT：是的。我希望他们能“挤进”——我提到过的那 400 位纳税人之列，但即便如此，在现行制度下，他们也要缴纳 30% 多一点的税。他们在做的事和过去一样——过去他们运营 hedge funds——现在每天上班思考的还是同样的事情，但要按 35% 以上的税率缴税。而如果他们还是在运营 hedge funds，就只需按 15% 缴税。对于在座能把这个差异“自洽”起来的朋友，我们会送一支免费的 Dilly Bar。（笑声）

CHARLIE MUNGER: I think each of them could earn more money in a different format but with a less desirable lifestyle.

CHARLIE MUNGER：我认为，他们换一种“业态”会赚到更多钱，但生活方式会更糟。

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. We have a little free Coke machine at our office. (Laughter)

WARREN BUFFETT：是的。我们办公室里有一台免费的 Coke 自动售卖机。（笑声）

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, they get to hang around with a fellow eccentric of the same type as Warren.

CHARLIE MUNGER：嗯，他们还能整天跟 Warren 这种“同类怪人”待在一起。