Warren Buffett | Lecture | University Of Florida | 1998

发布时间 2020-11-11 15:45:00 来源

以下是翻译后的内容：在这次会议中，沃伦·巴菲特向MBA学生传授投资和生活方面的智慧。他首先强调了诚信的重要性，以及智慧和精力，在取得成功中的作用。他用一个思想实验来说明这一点：如果给你一个机会购买一位同学未来收益的10%，你会选择谁？不一定是智商最高或精力最充沛的，而是具有领导素质、慷慨和诚实的人。反之，你会想“做空”谁？不是智商最低的，而是那些自负、贪婪或不诚实的人。巴菲特强调，这些令人钦佩的品质是可以实现的，而消极的特征可以消除，尤其是在年轻的时候，因为习惯尚未根深蒂固。在谈到投资策略时，巴菲特摒弃了宏观预测，而是专注于理解企业。他寻找简单、容易理解、具有“护城河”保护其免受竞争的企业。这些护城河可以是低成本（例如，盖可保险）、品牌实力（例如，可口可乐、喜诗糖果）或心智占有率（例如，迪士尼）。他强调诚实能干的管理层以及预测企业十年后所处位置的能力。他强调购买你理解并且即使股市关闭五年也乐于拥有的企业。他强调购买的是企业的股份，而不是股票代码，成功取决于企业蓬勃发展并支付合理的价格这一基本原则。关于如何确定合理的价格，巴菲特倾向于他非常有信心的企业，为了确保不会赔钱而接受可能较低的回报。他分享了1972年收购喜诗糖果的故事。关键在于其在加州的强大品牌认知度，这使得它可以在不影响销量的情况下提高价格。他还强调了整体的客户体验和产品的重要性。巴菲特还透露了他们参与长期资本管理公司（LTCM）事件的情况。LTCM尽管拥有令人印象深刻的智力、丰富的经验和大量的个人投资，但由于杠杆融资和为了不重要的事情承担了不必要的风险而倒闭。他强调了避免为了不重要的事情而冒重要事情风险的原则，无论概率如何。他强调了一群高智商人士冒一切风险的LTCM崩溃的疯狂之处。他告诫不要过度依赖数学，以及不要相信历史数据能够准确预测未来的金融事件。此外，巴菲特提倡个人满足感和对事业的热情。他认为，人们应该追求自己热爱的工作，而不仅仅是为了改善自己的简历。他的建议是寻找那些即使你已经财富自由，也会依然选择从事的工作。他还谈到了亚洲金融危机及其对可口可乐等公司的影响，他说，虽然短期内可能会受到影响，但不会影响长期前景。可口可乐将继续主导市场，其市场将在未来几年继续增长。关于错误，巴菲特指出，他最大的错误是遗漏 – 错过了他了解但未采取行动的企业机会。他强调保持在自己的“能力圈”内，并基于独立分析而非提示或外部因素做出投资决策的重要性。他还强调，如果不是专业的投资者，多元化投资的重要性，而对于专业的投资者来说，多元化应该受到限制。最终，巴菲特强调，一个人的决定需要通过照镜子和分析来做出。

In this session, Warren Buffett addresses MBA students, imparting wisdom on investing and life. He begins by emphasizing the importance of integrity, alongside intelligence and energy, in achieving success. He illustrates this with a thought experiment: if given the chance to buy 10% of a classmate's future earnings, who would they choose? Not necessarily the smartest or most energetic, but the one with leadership qualities, generosity, and honesty. Conversely, whom would they want to "short"? Not the least intelligent, but the one with egotistical, greedy, or dishonest traits. Buffett highlights that these admirable qualities are achievable and that negative traits can be eliminated, especially at a young age, as habits are not yet deeply ingrained. Moving to investment strategies, Buffett dismisses macro predictions and instead focuses on understanding businesses. He seeks simple, easily understood businesses with "moats" that protect them from competition. These moats could be low cost (Geico), brand strength (Coca-Cola, Sees Candy), or share of mind (Disney). He emphasizes honest and able management and the ability to foresee the business's position a decade from now. He emphasizes buying a business you understand and would be happy to own even if the stock market closed for five years. He underscores the fundamental principle of buying ownership in a business, not a stock ticker, and success relies on the business thriving and paying a fair price. Regarding determining a fair price, Buffett leans toward businesses he's highly confident in, accepting potentially lower returns for the assurance of not losing money. He shares the story of Sees Candy, acquired in 1972. The key was its strong brand recognition in California, allowing price increases without affecting sales volume. He also emphasizes the overall customer experience that is delivered and the importance of the product. Buffett also reveals their involvement in the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) situation. LTCM, despite its impressive intellect, extensive experience, and substantial personal investment, collapsed due to leveraging money and risks they didn't need for something unimportant. He stresses the principle of avoiding risking something important for something unimportant, regardless of the odds. He highlights the madness of the LTCM collapse by a group of individuals with high IQs risking everything. He cautions against over-reliance on mathematics and the belief that historical data accurately predicts future financial events. Moreover, Buffett advocates for personal contentment and passion in one's career. He believes that someone ought to pursue a job because they love to do it, not just to improve their resume. His advice is to seek jobs that have the traits you would pursue even if you were independently wealthy. He also touched on the Asian crisis and its effect on companies like Coca-Cola, he said while it may hurt in the short term, it won't affect long-term prospects. Coke will continue to dominate the market and its market will continue to grow over the years. In regards to mistakes, Buffett notes that his biggest have been mistakes of omission – passing up opportunities in businesses he understood but didn't act on. He emphasizes the importance of staying within one's "circle of competence" and making investment decisions based on independent analysis, not on tips or external factors. He also underscores the importance of diversifying if someone is not a professional investor, while for professional investors, diversification should be limited. Ultimately, Buffett underscores that one's decision needs to be based by looking in the mirror and analyzing.

中英文字稿

It's my honor, as well as my privilege to welcome our Lifetime's best long-term investor, Mr. Warren Buffett. One million. Three million. Seems to be working. I'd like to just say a few words, overwhelmingly, and then the highlight for me will be getting your questions in a few minutes. I want to talk about what's on your mind. I urge you to throw hardballs. It's more fun for me if you put a little speed on the pitches as they come in. I asked about anything except the last week's Texas A&M game. That's off limits.

我很荣幸也很高兴地欢迎我们这一代最优秀的长期投资者，沃伦·巴菲特先生的到来。一百万，三百万，似乎看起来不错。我想简要说几句，然后我最期待的就是在几分钟后回答大家的问题。我想谈谈大家关心的问题。我鼓励大家向我抛出一些难题，提问的时候快一点我会更有兴趣。不过，有一个话题例外，那就是上周德克萨斯农工大学的比赛，我们不谈这个。

We have a couple of men here from Suntras. I was just off at the Koch meeting. I sent next to Jimmy Williams there who ran Suntras for many years. He wanted to be sure that I wore this Suntras shirt down here. I've tried to get sponsorship on the Senior Golf Store. I haven't had much luck, but now on the banker's store I'm doing a little bit better. He said I got a percentage of the increase in deposits and gains, though. So I'll go out for Suntras, dear old Suntras.

我们这儿有几位来自Suntras的人。我刚从Koch会议回来。在会议上，我坐在曾经多年管理Suntras的Jimmy Williams旁边。他特意叮嘱我在这里要穿上这件Suntras的衬衫。我一直想在老年高尔夫商店获得赞助，但运气不是太好。不过，现在在银行业我做得好一些。他说我能从存款和收益增长中获得一定比例。所以我会继续为亲爱的Suntras努力。

I would like to talk for just one minute to the students about your future when you leave here. Because you're going to learn a tremendous amount about investments. And you'll learn enough to do well. If all got the IQ to do well, you've all got the initiative and energy to do well, or you wouldn't be here. And most of you will succeed in meeting your aspirations. But in determining whether you succeed, there's more to it than intellect and energy.

我想花一分钟时间和在座的学生们谈谈你们离开这里后的未来。因为你们将在这里学到大量关于投资的知识，并且足以做得很好。你们都有足够的智商、主动性和精力，否则你们不会来到这里。你们中的大多数人会在实现自己志向的过程中取得成功。但决定你是否成功，不仅仅取决于智力和精力。

And I'd like to talk for just a second about that. In fact, there was a fellow that Peeke Keywood and Omaha used to say that he looked for three things. And hiring people looked for integrity, intelligence, and energy. And he said that the person didn't have the first two that the latter two would kill him. Because if they don't have integrity, you want to dumb and lazy. You don't want him smart and energetic. And I really like to talk about that first one. Because we know you've got the second two.

我想花一点时间来谈谈这个问题。事实上，有位名叫Peeke Keywood的老兄在奥马哈常说，他在招聘员工时会关注三点：诚信、智慧和活力。他还说，如果一个人没有前两者，那么后两者会害了他。因为如果他们没有诚信，你宁愿他们是愚蠢和懒惰的，而不是聪明和有活力的。我真的很想谈谈第一点，因为我们知道你具备后两者。

And to play along with me a little game for just a second, in terms of thinking about that question, you've all been here. I guess almost all of your second year MBAs, and you've gotten to know your classmates. And I think for a moment that I granted you the right to buy 10% of one of your classmates for the rest of his or her lifetime. You can't pick one with a rich father that doesn't count. You've got to pick somebody who's going to do it on their own merit.

好的，为了让大家稍微参与一下我的小游戏，并且思考这个问题，你们都在这里。我想你们几乎都是二年级的MBA学生，已经熟悉了你们的同学。假设有这样一个瞬间，我给予你们一个权利，可以购买其中一位同学未来一生10%的收益。你不能选一个有富爸爸的，因为那不算数。你得选一个靠自己本事取得成功的人。

And I gave you an hour to think about it. Which one of you got to pick among all your classmates is the one you want to own 10% of for the rest of your lifetime. And are you going to give them an IQ test? Pick the one with the highest IQ. I doubt it. Are you going to pick the one with the best grades? I doubt it. You're not even going to pick the most energetic one necessarily, or the one that displays the most in Michigan. But you're going to start looking for qualitative factors in the addition to, because everybody's got enough brain care and energy.

我给了你一个小时来考虑这个问题。在所有同学中，你可以选择一个人成为你未来一生中拥有10%股份的人。你会给他们做智商测试，然后选择智商最高的吗？我对此表示怀疑。你会选择成绩最好的吗？我对此表示怀疑。你甚至不一定会选择最有活力的那一个，或者是那些在密歇根州表现最好的人。但是你会开始寻找一些定性因素，因为每个人都有足够的智力和精力。

And I would say that if you thought about it for an hour, and decided who you're going to place that bet on, you'd probably pick the one who you responded the best to. And one that was going to have the leadership qualities. The ones who were going to be able to get other people to carry out their interests. And that would be the person who was generous and honest and gave credit to other people even for their own ideas, all kinds of qualities like that.

我会说，如果你花一个小时考虑这个问题，并决定你想押注于谁，你很可能会选择那个与你互动最融洽的人。这个人应该具备领导素质，能够让其他人追随并落实他们的目标。此外，这个人还应该慷慨、诚实，并乐于为他人给予荣誉，哪怕那些是他们自己的点子。这就是你应该选择的人，具备这些品质的人。

And you could write down those qualities that you admire, and so do everyone. Whoever you admire most in the class. And then I would throw in a hooker. I would say as part of only 10% of this person, you had to agree to go short 10% of somebody else in the class. That's more fun, isn't it? And you think, well now who do I want to go short of? And again, you wouldn't pick the person with the lowest IQ or the.

你可以写下你钦佩的那些品质，所有人都可以这样做。不论在班上你最钦佩谁。然后我会抛出一个难题：假设你只能「购买」这个人10%的优点，而为了得到这些优点，你必须选择对班上另一人的10%进行「卖空」。这是不是更有趣呢？然后你会想，那我应该「卖空」谁呢？同样的，你不会去挑选那个智商最低的人。

You would start thinking about the person really who turned you off for one reason or another. I mean, that very has various qualities. Quite apart from their academic achievement, but they had various qualities. And the engine shouldn't be around them. And other people didn't want to be around them. And what were the qualities that lead to that? Well, there'd be a whole bunch of things. But it's the person who's egotistic, all the person who's greedy, the person who's slightly dishonest, cuts corners.

你可能会开始回想起那些因为某些原因让你反感的人。我是说，那些人确实有各种特质。除了他们的学术成就外，他们还有一些其他特质。周围的人不想和他们在一起。那么，是什么特质导致了这种情况呢？这可以由很多因素造成，可能是他们自私自大，或者贪婪，或者有点不诚实，喜欢投机取巧。

All of these qualities. And you could write those down on the right-hand side of the page. And when you look at that, we'll just. I don't know which one I'm using. Can you hear me okay? With us, you have to apply. Yeah. What do I do with it? I just came with. Oh, just came with it, okay. You can see why I avoid technology. That's true.

所有这些特质。你可以把它们写在页面的右侧。当你看到这些的时候，我们只需要……我不知道我正在用哪个。你能听到我说话吗？对我们来说，你必须去应用。是的。我该怎么处理它？哦，我只是带来了它。你可以明白我为什么会避开技术。这是真的。

Chewy government's about as far as I get. As you looked at those qualities on the left and right-hand side, there's one interesting thing about them. It's not the ability to throw a football 60 yards. It's not the ability to run the 100 yard dash and 9 for 8. It's not being the best looking person in the class. There are all qualities that if you really want to have the ones on the left-hand side, you can have them. I mean, they are qualities of behavior, temperament, character that are achievable. They're not forbidden to anybody in this group.

“Chewy 政府”大概就是我能理解的所有内容了。当你看左右两边的这些品质时，有一个有趣的发现。它们并不是投掷60码橄榄球的能力，也不是在100码短跑中跑出9秒8的速度，更不是班上最好看的人。它们都是如果你真的想要，就可以拥有的品质。我是说，这些是行为、性格、品格方面的品质，是可以实现的。在这个群体中，没有人被禁止拥有这些品质。

And if you look at the qualities on the right-hand side, the ones that you find turn you off in other people. There's not a quality there that you have to have. If you have it, you can get rid of it. And you can get rid of a lot easier at your age than you can at my age, because most behaviors is habitual. And they say the chains of habit are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken.

如果你看看右边的品质，那些让你对他人感到反感的品质，其实没有一个是你必须拥有的。如果你有这些品质，你是可以改变的。而且在你这个年纪改变习惯比在我这个年纪要容易得多，因为大多数行为都是习惯性的。人们常说，习惯的枷锁在感觉不到的时候是很轻的，但当发现它们时却已经变得很难打破了。

And there's no question about, I see people with these self-destructive behavior patterns at my age or even 10 or 20 years younger. And they really are in trap by them. They go around and they do things that turn off other people right and left. And they don't need to be that way, but by a certain point they get so they can hardly change it. But at your age, you can have any habits, any patterns of behavior that you wish. It's simply a question of which you decide.

毫无疑问，我看到一些人，即便是和我同龄或年轻十几二十岁，也有着自我毁灭的行为模式。他们真的被这些模式困住了，经常做出一些让周围人反感的事情。其实他们本不必这样，但到了一定年龄，就几乎很难改变。然而，在你们这个年纪，你们可以选择任何想要的习惯或行为模式。这只是你们决定选择哪一种的问题。

And when I decide the ones that, I mean, if you like Ben Graham did this, Ben Franklin did it before him. But Ben Graham and his low teens looked around and he looked at the people he admired. And he said, you know, I want to be admired. So why don't I just behave like them? And he found there was nothing impossible about behaving like them. And similarly, he did the same thing on the reverse side in terms of getting rid of those qualities.

当我决定要怎样做的时候，我想，如果你喜欢本·格雷厄姆的做法，这与本·富兰克林以前做的事情很相似。本·格雷厄姆在十几岁的时候，观察身边他敬佩的人，他心想：“我也想被人钦佩，那为什么不试着像他们一样行为呢？” 他发现，像那些人一样去做并没有什么不可能的。同样地，他从反面入手，努力改掉身上的那些不好的品质。

So I would suggest that if you write those qualities down and think about them a little while and make them habitual, you will be the one that you want to buy 10% when you get all through. And the beauty of it is you already own 100%. You're stuck with it. You might as well be that person as somebody else. Well, that's a short little sermon. So let's get on to what you're interested in.

我建议你把这些特质写下来，仔细思考一段时间，并让这些特质变成你的习惯，那么最终你会成为你愿意购买10%股份的那个人。而妙处在于，你已经拥有自己100%的股份。你无法改变这个事实，所以最好成为这样的自己，而不是去做别人。好了，这就是我的简短建议，现在我们来谈谈你感兴趣的事情。

And like I say, you can go all over the lot. So I don't know exactly how we're going to handle this, but let's start with a hand here someplace or other. Where do we go with the first one? You know, right here. My thoughts about Japan? I'm not a macro guy. Now I say to myself, I've worked your half of Wakin' Barrow money for 10 years at 1% in Japan now, 1%. And I say to myself, gee, I took Graham's class 45 years ago and I've been working hard at this thing on my life.

像我说的，你可以到处探索。所以我也不知道我们该如何处理这个，但不妨从某个地方开始。那么我们该从哪里开始呢？就在这里吧。关于我对日本的想法？我不是一个宏观经济学者。我对自己说，我在日本以1%的利率打理Wakin' Barrow的一半资金已经10年了，仅仅1%。我心想，天哪，我45年前上过格雷厄姆的课，一辈子都在努力研究这个问题。

Maybe I can earn more than 1%. I mean, work hard at it. 1% annual. It doesn't seem impossible, does it? So I wouldn't want to get involved in currency risk. So I'd have to do it in something that was yen-denominated. So I have to be in Japanese real estate or a Japanese business or something or so on. And all I have to do is beat 1%. That's all the money's going to cost me and I can get it for 10 years.

也许我可以赚到超过1%的收益。我是说，通过努力工作，实现每年1%的收益。这看起来并不是不可能的，对吧？因此我不想涉足货币风险。所以我必须在日元计价的项目中投资。因此，我必须投资于日本的房地产或日本的企业之类的东西。我所需要做的就是超过1%的收益率。这就是我需要支付的全部成本，而且我可以获得为期10年的资金。

So far I haven't found anything. It's kind of interesting. The Japanese companies earn very low returns on equity and they have a bunch of businesses that earn 4, 5, 6% on equity. And it's very hard to earn a lot as an investor when the business you're in doesn't earn very much money. Some people do it. In fact, I've got a friend Walter Schloss who worked with Graham at the same time I did.

到目前为止，我还没有发现什么。这有点意思。日本公司获得的股本回报率非常低，他们有很多业务的股本回报率只有4%、5%、6%。当你所投资的企业赚不了多少钱时，作为投资者就很难赚到很多钱。有些人可以做到。实际上，我有个朋友叫沃尔特·施洛斯，他和我同时期在格雷厄姆手下工作。

And it was the first way I went at stocks to buy stocks selling way below working capital. Very cheap quantitative stocks. I call it the cigar butt approach to investing. You walk down the street and you look around for a cigar butt someplace. And you find that you see one and it's soggy and kind of repulsive. But there's one puff left in it. So you pick it up and the puff is free. I mean it's a cigar butt stock.

这段话可以翻译成中文这样表达：这是我最初进行股票投资的方法，就是买那些价格大大低于运营资本的股票，也就是非常便宜的定量股票。我把这种投资方法称为"烟蒂式投资法"。就像你走在街上，四处寻找烟蒂。当你发现一个烟蒂时，它可能已经湿透且不太吸引人，但仍然可以再抽一口。所以你拾起烟蒂，那一口烟是免费的。股票投资就像这个烟蒂一样。

You get one free puff out and then you throw it away and you walk down the street. I'm not wondering. I mean it's not elegant. But if you're looking for a free puff, it works. Those are low return businesses. But time is the friend of the wonderful business. It's the enemy of the lousy business. If you're in a lousy business for a long time, you're going to get a lousy result even if you buy cheap.

你可以免费试用一口，然后就把它扔掉，继续走你的路。我没有在想什么。我的意思是，这么做不算优雅。但是如果你只是想尝试一下，是可以的。这些都是回报低的生意。但时间是优秀生意的朋友，却是糟糕生意的敌人。如果你长期处于一个糟糕的生意中，即使买得便宜，最终结果也不会好。

If you're in a wonderful business for a long time, even if you pay a little too much going in, you're going to get a wonderful result if you stay in a long time. I find very few wonderful businesses in Japan at present now. They may change the culture in some way so that management is getting more stockholder responsive over there and returns are higher. But at the present time you'll find a very lot of low return businesses.

如果你长期投资一家优秀的企业，即使初始投入稍高，你最终也会获得不错的回报。然而，目前我在日本发现真正优秀的企业非常少。也许未来日本的企业文化会有所改变，管理层可能对股东的关注会增加，带来更高的回报。但是，目前大多数企业的回报率都不高。

And that was true even when the Japanese economy was booming. I mean it's amazing. They had an incredible market without incredible companies. They were incredible in terms of doing a lot of business. But they weren't incredible in terms of the return on equity that they achieved. And that's finally caught up with them. So we have so far done nothing there. But as long as money is 1% I'll keep looking.

即使在日本经济繁荣的时候，这种情况也是真的。这很惊人。他们拥有一个极棒的市场，却没有相应超凡的公司。在业务量方面，他们确实表现出色。但在股本回报率方面，他们却没有特别出色。而这一缺陷最终影响了他们的发展。所以到目前为止，我们还没有在那儿采取任何行动。但是，只要贷款利率维持在1%，我会继续关注的。

Yes. You were rumored to be one of the rescue buyers of long-term capital. What was the play there? What did you see? Well there's a story in the current Fortune magazine. One has Rupert Murdoch's picture on the cover that tells the whole story of our involvement. It's kind of an interesting story because it's a long story. So I won't go into all the background of it. But I got the really serious call about long-term capital. About four weeks ago this Friday, whenever it was.

好的。据说你是长期资本管理公司的一些救援买家之一。这其中有什么操作？你当时看到了什么？《财富》杂志当期有一篇文章。封面上是鲁珀特·默多克的照片，里面讲述了我们参与其中的整个过程。这是一个相当有趣而且很长的故事，所以我就不赘述所有的背景细节了。不过，我是在大约四周前的星期五接到关于长期资本管理公司的严肃电话的，那是一个具有重要性的时刻。

My granddaughter, I got it in the mid afternoon and my granddaughter was having her birthday party that evening. And I was flying that night to Seattle to go on a 12-day trip with Gates on a to Alaska and a private train. All kinds of things where I was really out of communication. But I got this call on a Friday afternoon saying that things were really getting serious there. I'd had some other calls before that the article gets into a few weeks earlier.

我的孙女，那天下午我得到了消息，而我的孙女当晚正在举办她的生日派对。我那晚要飞往西雅图，准备和盖茨一起乘坐私人火车去阿拉斯加进行为期12天的旅行。在这期间，我会几乎无法与外界联系。但是，一个周五的下午，我接到了一个电话，说那边的情况真的变得很严重了。几周前我已经收到了其他一些电话，文章中也提到了。

I know those people most of them pretty well. A lot of them were Solomon when I was there. And the place was imploding. And the Fed was sending people up that weekend. And so between that Friday and the following Wednesday when the New York Fed in effect orchestrated a rescue effort, but without any federal money involved, I was quite active. But I was having this terrible time because we were sailing up through these canyons which held no interest for me whatsoever in Alaska.

我认识那些人中的大多数，并且对他们相当了解。他们很多人在我在那里的时候都在所罗门公司。当时，那地方正在崩溃，美联储那个周末派人去了那里。因此，在那个星期五到接下来星期三之间，纽约联邦储备银行事实上组织了一次救援行动，但没有涉及任何联邦资金，我当时非常积极地参与其中。不过，我遇到了一个大问题，因为我们正在穿过阿拉斯加那些我完全不感兴趣的峡谷里航行。

And the captain would say, you know, if we just steer over here, we might see some bears and whales. And I said, steer where you got a good satellite connection. So it was a picture of the picture where I've got my old faith was going off behind me. And I got my back to it. I'm on the phone, which was the people in the group thought it's got a funny way of working the phone. But we put it a bit on Wednesday morning.

船长会说，你知道，如果我们往这边开，我们可能会看到一些熊和鲸鱼。我说，朝有好卫星信号的地方开。这是一幅照片的情景，我的老信任正在我身后消失。我背对着它，正在打电话，团里的人觉得我用电话的方式很滑稽。不过，我们把这件事放在周三早上解决了一下。

By then I was in Boseman, Montana. And I talked to Bill McDonough the head of the New York Fed, but about 10 o'clock they were having me in the bankers at 10 o'clock that morning in New York. And I caught him. Well, we actually delivered a message when he called me out there in my home, a little bit before 10 New York time. And we made a bid.

到那时，我已经在蒙大拿州的博兹曼。我与纽约联邦储备银行的负责人比尔·麦克唐纳进行了交谈。在纽约时间早上10点左右，他们正在召集银行家开会。我联系上了他。其实，在纽约时间上午10点之前，他打电话到我家，我们传达了一个消息，并提出了一个报价。

It was a, it was because it was being done at a long distance and everything. It was really the outline of a bid. In the end, I was a bid for 250 million essentially for the net assets of, but we would have put in three and three quarters of billion on top of that. And it would have been three billion from purchase half a way, 700 million from AIG and 300 million from Goldman Sachs. And we submitted that.

这件事是因为远距离操作等原因，所以在最终提交报价时显得有些粗略。最后，我的报价基本上是2.5亿美元用于净资产，但我们实际上会额外投入37.5亿美元。其中30亿来自伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司，7亿来自美国国际集团（AIG），还有3亿来自高盛公司。我们已经提交了这个报价。

But we put a very short time Jews on it because when you're bidding on $100 billion, which is a security that are moving around, you don't want to leave a fixed price bid out there very long. And then we were worried about it getting shopped. In the end, the bankers made the deal. But it was an interesting period. The whole one from capital management, and I hope most of you are familiar with it, but the whole story is really fascinating because if you take John Maryweather and Eric Rosenfeld, Larry Hill and Bran, Greg Hawkins, Victor Agani, the two Nobel Prize winners in Merton's Sholes, if you take the 16 of them, they probably have as high an average IQ as any 16 people working together in one business in the country, including at Microsoft or wherever you want to name.

我们对其设定了很短的时间限制，因为当你竞标价值1000亿美元、价格不断波动的证券时，并不想让固定价格的出价挂在那里太久。我们也担心这个报价被别人抢先。在最后，银行家们还是促成了这个交易。这是一段有趣的时期。整个资本管理的事件——我希望你们大多数人对此有所了解——整个故事非常引人入胜。如果你考虑到约翰·梅里韦瑟、埃里克·罗森菲尔德、拉里·希尔、布兰、格雷格·霍金斯、维克多·阿加尼，还有获得诺贝尔奖的默顿和舒尔斯，那么他们16个人的平均智商可能比这个国家中任何一个商业团队的都要高，包括微软或其他你能想到的地方。

So that incredible amount of intellect in that room. Now you combine that with the fact that those 16 had had extensive experience in the field they were operating. I mean, this was not a bunch of guys who had made their money selling men's clothing and then all of a sudden went into the securities business. They had had in aggregate the 16 and probably had 350 or 400 years of experience doing exactly what they were doing.

那个房间里充满了杰出的智慧。再加上这16个人在他们从事的领域里有着丰富的经验。我的意思是，他们并不是一些从卖男装赚到钱后突然转向证券行业的人。这16个人的总经验加起来，可能有350到400年的时间，他们一直从事着他们所擅长的工作。

And then you throw in the third factor that most of them had virtually all of their very substantial net worth in the business. So they had their own money up hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money up. Super high intellect working in a field they knew and essentially they went broke. And that to me is absolutely fascinating.

然后你再加入第三个因素，即他们中的大多数人几乎把自己所有可观的净资产都投入到了这个生意中。因此，他们投入了数亿美元的个人资金。尽管他们在自己熟悉的领域中拥有极高的智力，但最终还是破产了。我觉得这非常令人着迷。

If I were to write a book it's going to be called Why Smart People Do Dumb Things. My partner says it should be autobiographical. But this might be an interesting illustration and these are perfectly decent guys. I respect them and they helped me out when I had problems with Solomon. So they're not bad people at all. But to make money they didn't have and didn't need they risked what they did have and did need. And that's foolish. That is just plain foolish. I don't make any research or IQ is if you if you risk something that is important to you for something that is unimportant to you, it just does not make any sense.

如果我写一本书，它将被命名为《聪明人为何做傻事》。我的搭档说这应该是一本自传。但这可能是一个有趣的例子，他们都是非常不错的人。我尊重他们，他们在我与所罗门出现问题时帮助了我。所以他们一点也不坏。然而，为了赚取他们不需要的钱，他们冒了拥有并需要的钱的风险。这是愚蠢的。这就是纯粹的愚蠢。我不需要研究或高智商就能明白，如果你为了对你不重要的东西而冒对你重要的东西的风险，那是毫无意义的。

I don't care whether the odds are a hundred to one that you succeed or a thousand to one that you succeed. If you hand me a gun with a thousand chambers, a million chambers in it and there's a bullet in one chamber and you said put it up your temple. How much do you want to be paid to pull it once? I'm not going to pull it. You can name any sum you want but it doesn't do anything for me on the upside. And I think the downsides fairly clear. So I'm not interested in that kind of a game and yet people do it financially without thinking about it very much.

我不在乎你成功的几率是一百比一还是一千比一。如果你递给我一把有一千个甚至一百万个弹膛的枪，其中只有一个弹膛里有子弹，然后你让我把枪抵在太阳穴上，说给我钱让我扣动扳机一次。我是不会扣扳机的。你可以随便开个价格，但无论多少钱对我来说都没有意义，因为风险太大了，而好处却不明显。我认为风险是显而易见的，所以我对这种游戏没有兴趣。然而，人们在金融方面常常没有多加思考就做了类似的事情。

There was a great book. It was a great title. It was a lousy book written once with a great title. By Walter Gutman, the title was you only have to get rich once. Now that seems pretty fundamental, doesn't it? What is what different? If you've got a hundred million dollars at the start of the year and you're going to make ten percent if you're unleverage and twenty percent if you're leverage ninety nine times out of a hundred, what differences to make at the end of the year, whether you've got a hundred and ten million or a hundred and twenty million? Makes no difference at all.

有一本书的标题很吸引人，但内容却不怎么样。这本书的作者是沃尔特·古特曼，书名叫《你只需要变富一次》。这个标题听起来很有道理，不是吗？但实际上，有什么区别呢？如果你年初有一亿美元，按照常理，你投资不加杠杆可以赚10%，加杠杆可以赚20%。那么在大多数情况下，到年底你是有1.1亿还是1.2亿，真的有什么区别吗？其实根本没有区别。

I mean if you if you die at the end of the year, you know the guy that writes up the story may make a typo. And he may say a hundred and ten, even a hundred and twenty. So you've got nothing at all. You know what? It makes absolutely no difference. Makes no difference to your family. It makes no difference to anything. And yet the downside, particularly managing other people's money, is not only losing all your money, but it's disgrace and humiliation and facing friends whose money you've lost.

我的意思是，如果你在年底去世，撰写你故事的人可能会打个错字。他可能会写成一百一十岁，甚至一百二十岁。所以你根本就没有任何东西。你知道吗？这实际上没有任何区别。对你的家人没有影响，对任何事情都没有影响。然而，特别是对那些管理他人资金的人来说，坏处不仅是失去了自己的所有钱，还有耻辱、屈辱以及面对那些因为你失误而损失资金的朋友。

I just can't imagine an equation that that makes sense for. And yet sixteen guys with very high IQs who are very decent people entered into that game. And you know I think it's madness and it's produced by an over reliance to some extent on things. You know those guys would tell me back when I was a solemn, you know, that a six sigma event wouldn't you know, wouldn't touch us or a seven sigma event. They were wrong. I mean their history does not tell you the probabilities of future financial things happening.

我实在无法想象有什么合理的公式来解释这一切。然而，有十六个智商非常高且很正派的人参与了这个游戏。你知道吗，我认为这简直是疯狂，这种情况在某种程度上是由于过度依赖事物造成的。你知道吗，以前他们告诉我，六西格玛事件或者七西格玛事件绝对不会影响到我们。他们错了。历史并不能告诉你未来金融事件发生的概率。

And they had a great reliance on mathematics. And they felt that the bait of the stock told you something about the risk of a stock. It didn't tell you damn thing about the risk of a stock in my view. And and sigma's do not tell you about the risk of going broke in my view. And maybe an interview now too. But I don't like to even use them as an example because they are, I mean the same thing in a different way could happen to any of us probably.

他们非常依赖数学。他们认为股票的波动（bait）能够反映股票的风险。但在我看来，这根本无法揭示股票的真正风险。而且，在我看来，标准差（sigma）也无法告诉你破产的风险。可能现在的某些采访也会提到这些观点。但是我不太喜欢用这些作为例子，因为，这种类似的情况可能在不同的方式下发生在我们任何人身上。

Where we really have a blind spot about something that's crucial because we know a whole lot about something else. It's like Henry Kaufman said the other days that the people that are going broke in this situation are just two of two types. The ones who knew nothing and the ones that knew everything. It's sad in a way. I urge you in anything. We never basically borrow money. I mean we get flow through insurance business and do things.

当我们对某件重要的事情视而不见时，通常是因为我们对其他事情过于了解。就像亨利·考夫曼前几天所说的，在这种情况下破产的人只有两种：一种是什么都不知道的人，另一种是对一切都知道的人。这在某种程度上是令人遗憾的。我建议你在任何事情上都要小心。我们基本上从不借钱，就像我们在保险业务中获得现金流并处理事务一样。

But I never borrowed money. I never borrowed money when I had ten thousand bucks basically. Because what difference did it make? I was having fun as I went along. And it didn't mean it was when I had ten thousand dollars or a million dollars or ten million dollars. You know, except if I had no medical emergency or something had come along like that. But I was going to do the same things when I had a lot of money. It's when I had very little money.

但我从来没有借过钱。当我只有一万美元的时候，我也从来没有借过钱。因为有什么区别呢？我总是在享受生活中乐趣。而且这与我手头有一万美元、一百万美元或一千万美元没有关系。除非遇上了医疗紧急情况或者类似的特殊情况。但事实上，无论我有很多钱还是很少的时候，我都会做同样的事情。

If you think about the difference between me and you in terms of how we live, you know, we wear the same clothes basically. Son trust gives me mine but you don't have any. So we wear the same clothes. We all have a chance to drink the juice of the gods here. But we all go to McDonald's or better yet, dairy queen. And we live in a house that's warm and winter and cool in summer. And we watch Nebraska Texas, say, Ed, Edmonton, a big screen.

如果你考虑一下我们生活方式的差异，其实我们基本上穿着一样的衣服。我的衣服是由"儿子信托"提供的，而你没有这样的来源。所以我们穿着一样的衣服。我们都有机会享用神仙饮料，但我们都去麦当劳，或者更好的是去冰雪皇后。我们住在冬暖夏凉的房子里，看着大屏幕上的内布拉斯加对德克萨斯，或者埃德蒙顿的比赛。

You see it the same way I see it. We do everything. Our lives aren't that different. You know, you'll get decent medical care or something happens to you. And I'll get decent medical care. The only thing we do is we travel differently. I ride around this little plane. I love it. And that takes money. But if you leave that aside, if you leave that, we travel differently. But other than travel, you know, I would think about it. Think what can I do that you can't do? Now, I get to work in a job that I love. But I'm always working in a job. I love that. I love that. I love that just as much when I went up as a big deal. I made a thousand bucks and I urge you to work in jobs you love.

你和我看问题的方式一样。我们做的事情基本相同，生活也没有太大的不同。无论是你还是我，如果生病了都可以得到不错的医疗服务。唯一的区别是我们的出行方式不同。我坐小飞机旅行，我很喜欢这样，但这需要花钱。如果不考虑出行上的区别，你会发现我们其他方面都很相似。我会想，除了旅行，我还能做哪些你做不到的事情呢？我有一份我热爱的工作，但我总是在做自己喜欢的工作。我非常珍惜这种感觉，无论在职业生涯的哪个阶段，即使当初只赚了一千美元时，我依然热爱自己的工作。我也鼓励你去从事自己热爱的工作。

I mean, I think you're out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don't like because you think it'll look good on your resume. I was with the fellow at Harvard the other day who was taking me over to talk. And he was 28 and he was telling me, oh, I've already done a life. And which is terrific. And then I said, what are you going to do next? And he said, well, I said, after I get out my MBA, I think maybe I've got work for management consulting firm because it'll look good on my resume. I said, well, isn't it? I mean, maybe 28, even doing all these things. I mean, you've got a resume that's 10 times as good as I've ever seen it already.

我的意思是，如果你继续为了让简历好看而去做那些自己不喜欢的工作，我真觉得你疯了。前几天我和一个哈佛的家伙聊天，他带我去演讲。他28岁，他跟我说，他已经干了一辈子的事，这很了不起。然后我问他，接下来准备做什么？他说等拿到MBA学位后可能会去管理咨询公司工作，因为这会让他的简历好看。我说，这不是很好吗？我说，也许你28岁的时候已经做了这些事情。你的简历比我见过的都要好十倍。

I said, if you take another job you don't like just for you. I said, isn't that like, look like saving up sex for your old age? There comes a time when you ought to just start doing what you know, you know. So I think I got the point across to him. But when you get out of here, take a job you love. Don't take a job that you think is going to look good on your resume. You may change it later on, but you'll jump out a bit in the morning. When I got out of Columbia, the first thing I tried to go to work for Graham immediately, I offered to go to work for him for nothing. He said, I was overpriced.

我说过，如果你再去找一个你不喜欢的工作，那只是为了你自己。我说，那难道不是像为年老而攒着性爱吗？总有一个时候你应该开始做你真正了解的事情。所以我想我把道理说清楚了。但是，当你离开这里的时候，找一个你热爱的工作。不要选择那些只是看起来能提升简历的工作。你可能以后会换工作，不过总得有个让你早上起床充满动力的工作。当我刚从哥伦比亚大学毕业时，我第一件事就是尝试去为格雷厄姆工作，甚至提出免费为他工作。他却说我价格太高。

But I kept pestering him. I went out the all-monger, I sold securities for three years, and I kept writing him and giving him ideas. And finally, I went to work for him for a couple of years. And it was a great experience. I always really worked in a job, I've worked in a job that I would love doing. And you should really take a job that if you were independently wealthy, you would take. That's the job to take, because that's the one that you're going to have great fun. And you'll learn something, you'll be excited about it. And you can't miss. You may go do something else later on, but you'll get way more out of it. And I don't care what the starting salary is or anything of the sort.

但我一直在不停地缠着他。我到各个地方去推销，我卖了三年的证券，并不断给他写信、提建议。最终，我在他那儿工作了几年。那段经历非常棒。我总是努力找一份我热爱的工作。你应该选择一份即使你家财万贯也愿意去做的工作，因为这样的工作会带给你极大的乐趣。你会从中学到东西，你会充满激情，你肯定会受益匪浅。你也许以后会去做别的事情，但你从中获得的远超预期。我并不在乎起始薪水是多少或者其他类似的事情。

I don't know how I got off on that, but there I am. So I do think that if you think you're going to be a lot happier if you've got two X instead of X, you're probably making a mistake. I mean, you ought to find something you like that works with that. And you'll get in trouble if you think that making 10 X or 20 X is the answer to everything in life. Because then you will do things like borrow money when you shouldn't or maybe cut corners on things that your employer wants you to cut corners on. It just doesn't make any sense. You won't like it when you look back on it.

我不知道自己怎么扯到这个话题了，但情况就是这样。所以，我确实认为，如果你觉得拥有两个X会让你比只有一个X更加快乐，那你可能在犯错。也就是说，你应该找到一些你喜欢并适合的事情去做。如果你认为赚10倍或20倍的钱就是生活中所有问题的答案，你可能会遇到麻烦。因为这样的话，你可能会在不应该借钱的时候借钱，或者在工作中对雇主要求的事情有所妥协。这是没有意义的。回头看的时候，你也不会喜欢这样的选择。

Yeah. Would you talk to the students about the company you think you like? I don't mean things. I mean what makes the company. I like businesses like an understand. We'll start with that. That narrows it down about 90%. I mean, see, there's all kinds of things I don't understand, but fortunately there's enough I do understand it. You got this big wide world out there, almost every company is publicly owned. So you got all American business practically available to you now. To start with, it doesn't make sense to go with things that you think you can understand, but you can understand something.

好的。你能和学生们谈谈你喜欢的公司吗？我不是说公司里有什么东西，而是公司是什么造就了现在的样子。我喜欢那些我能理解的公司。我们先从这个开始，这样就排除了大约90%不合适的公司。我的意思是，有很多东西我不理解，但幸运的是，有一些我确实能理解。你面前有一个广阔的世界，几乎每家公司都是上市公司，所以现在你能接触到几乎所有的美国企业。一开始，选择你认为能理解的公司是无意义的，但你能够理解一些东西。

I can understand this. I mean, you can understand this. Anybody can understand this. I mean, this is a product that basically hasn't been changed much. I've had it in the cherry. But since 1886 or whatever it was, and it's a simple business. It's not an easy business. I don't want a business. It's easy for competitors. So I want a business with a motor around it. I want a very valuable castle in the middle. And then I want the Duke who's in charge of that castle to be honest and hard working and able. And then I want a big motor around the castle.

我能理解这点。我的意思是，你也能理解这点。任何人都能理解这点。也就是说，这个产品基本上没有太大变化。我有尝过樱桃口味的。但自从1886年或者不管是哪一年起，它就是个简单的生意。这不是一个容易的生意。我不希望一个竞争对手容易进入的生意。因此，我希望这个生意有一个护城河。我希望中间有一个非常有价值的城堡。我希望管理这个城堡的公爵诚实勤奋而且有能力。我还希望城堡周围有一道大的护城河。

And that moat can be various things. The moat in a business like our auto insurance business at Geico is low cost. I mean, people have to buy auto insurance. So everybody's going to have one auto insurance policy per car, basically, or per driver. And I can't sell them 20, but they have to buy one. When are they going to buy it on? They're going to buy it based on service and cost. Most people will assume the service is fairly identical among companies or close enough. So they're going to do that on cost. So I got to be the low cost producer. That's my moat. To the extent my costs get further lower than the other guy, I've thrown a couple of sharks into the moat.

这段话的大意是，商业护城河可以有多种形式。在我们像Geico这样的汽车保险业务中，护城河就是低成本。也就是说，人们必须购买汽车保险。基本上，每辆车或每个司机都会有一份汽车保险。我不能卖给他们20份，但他们必须买一份。他们会根据什么来购买保险呢？主要是基于服务和价格。大多数人会认为各家公司的服务差不多或者差别不大，所以他们更关注价格。因此，我必须成为低成本的生产者，这是我的护城河。如果我的成本比竞争对手更低，就等于是往护城河里放了几只鲨鱼，提高了竞争难度。

But all the time, if you've got a wonderful castle, there are people out there going to try and attack it and take it away from you. And I want a castle that I can understand, but I want to castle with a motor around it. 30 years ago, Eastman Codex moat was just as wide as Colossumote. I mean, if you were going to take a picture of your six-month-old baby, and you're going to want to look at that picture 20 years from now, and you're going to look at 50 years from now, and you're never going to get a chance.

然而，如果你有一座美丽的城堡，总会有人想要攻击它并从你手中夺走。我希望拥有一座我能理解的城堡，同时这座城堡四周还有护城河。30年前，伊士曼柯达的护城河就和古罗素一样宽。我是说，如果你想给你六个月大的宝宝拍张照片，并且想在20年后、甚至50年后还能看到这张照片，你是无法做到的。

I mean, you're not a professional photographer so that you can evaluate what's going to look good 20 or 50 years ago. What is in your mind about that photography company is what counts because they are promising you that the picture you take today is going to be terrific to look at 20 or 30 or 50 years from now about something that's very important to you. Maybe your own child or whatever it may be. Well, Codex had that in spades 30 years ago. They owned that. They had what I call share of mine. Forget about share of market. Share of mind.

我的意思是，你不是专业摄影师，所以无法评估出哪张照片在20或50年前看起来会很好。但是，你对那个摄影公司的看法才是关键，因为他们承诺你今天拍的照片在未来的20年、30年甚至50年后仍然会看起来很棒，纪念一些对你非常重要的事情，比如你的孩子或者其他什么。30年前，柯达公司在这方面有着得天独厚的优势。他们占据了我所谓的“心智份额”，不是市场份额，而是心智份额。

They had something in everybody's mind around the country, around the world, with a little yellow boxering that said, Codex is the best. That's priceless. They've lost some of that. They've been lost at all, and not due to George Fisher, or on the Georgia's doing a great job. But they let that moat narrow. They let Fuji come and start narrowing the moat in various ways. They let them get into the Olympics and take away that special aspect. Only Codex was fit to photograph the Olympics. So Fuji gets there and immediately in people's minds Fuji becomes more an parity with Codex.

他们在全国乃至世界的人们心中树立了一个形象，小黄盒子上写着“Codex是最好的”。这无价可比。然而，他们失去了一些，这并不是因为乔治·费舍尔导致的，他的工作做得很好。但他们让那道护城河变窄，让富士有机可乘，以各种方式缩小了差距。他们允许富士进入奥运会并夺走了那个特别的身份。只有Codex适合拍摄奥运会。而富士一旦进入后，人们心中就开始认为富士和Codex不相上下。

You haven't seen that with Codex. Coax mode is wider now than it was 30 years ago. You can't see the moat day by day. But every time the infrastructure gets built in some country that isn't yet profitable for Coke but will be 20 years from now, the mode is widening a little bit. Things are all the time changing that mode in one direction or the other. 10 years from now you can see the difference. Our managers are the businesses we run. I've got one message to them, which is to widen the moat.

你还没在Codex中看到这种情况。与30年前相比，“护城河”现在更宽了。你无法每天观察到它的变化，但每当某个国家建立起基础设施时，即便目前对可口可乐没有盈利，但20年后可能会带来收益，这时护城河就稍微拓宽了一点。而这种拓宽或缩小的变化一直在发生。10年后你就能看出其中的差别。我们的经理们就是我们经营的企业，我给他们的一个信息就是要拓宽护城河。

And we want to throw crocodiles and sharks and everything on gators, I guess, into the moat to keep away competitors. That comes from about through service. It comes about through quality of product. It comes about through cost. It comes about sometimes through patents. It comes about through real estate location. So that's the business I'm looking for. Now what kind of businesses am I going to find like that? Well I'm going to find them in simple products.

我们希望在护城河中放入鳄鱼、鲨鱼等等，来防止竞争对手侵入。这种护城河可以通过良好的服务、产品质量、成本优势、专利保护，或者优越的地理位置来建立。这就是我所寻找的商业模式。那么，我会在哪些业务中找到这样的特点呢？我会在一些简单的产品中找到。

Because I'm not going to be able to figure out what the moat is going to look like for Oracle or Lotus or Microsoft 10 years from now. I mean, it gates to the best business man I've ever run into. And you know, they've got a hell of a position. But I really don't know what that business is going to look like 10 years from now. And I certainly don't know what his competitors businesses are going to look like 10 years from now. Now I'll name one I don't own. I know what the chewing gum business is going to look like 10 years from now.

因为我无法预测未来十年后，Oracle、Lotus 或 Microsoft 的“护城河”会是什么样。我是说，它对我见过的最优秀的商人来说都是难关。毫无疑问，他们目前处于非常有利的地位。但我真的不知道十年后他们的业务会是什么样子，而我更不知道他们竞争对手的业务在十年后会如何发展。举个我没有投资的例子，我知道十年后口香糖行业会是什么样子。

I mean, the internet is not going to change how we chew gum. And nothing much else is going to change how we chew gum. And then are there going to be lots of new products? Is it really, you know, our experiment usually fruit and all those going to evaporate some is going to happen. You give me a billion dollars and tell me to go into chewing gum business and try and they could build them in reglas. I can't do it.

我的意思是，互联网不会改变我们嚼口香糖的方式。而且，几乎没有什么东西会改变我们嚼口香糖的方式。那么，会有很多新产品出现吗？你知道，这些通常是实验水果味道的产品，它们真的会消失吗？如果你给我十亿美元，让我去做口香糖生意，试图和箭牌等大公司竞争，我也做不到。

And that's the way I think about business. I say to myself, give me a billion dollars and how much can I hurt the guy? Give me 10 billion dollars. Give me 10 billion dollars and how much can I hurt Coca-Cola around the world? I can't do it. Well, those are good businesses. Now give me some money and tell me to hurt somebody in some other fields. And I can figure out how to do it. So I want a simple business easy to understand great economics now, honest and able management.

这就是我对商业的看法。我想，如果给我10亿美元，我能给对手造成多大伤害？给我100亿美元，看看我能对可口可乐在全球的业务造成多大影响？结果是我做不到。那么，这些就是好的生意。现在，如果你给我一些钱，让我在其他领域打击某家公司，我倒是可以找到办法。所以，我希望找到一个简单易懂的业务，具有良好的经济效益，并且拥有诚实且有能力的管理团队。

And then I can see about in a general way where they're going to be 10 years from now. And if I can't see where they're going to be 10 years from now, I don't want to buy it. Basically, I don't want to buy any stock where if they close the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow for five years, I won't be happy owning it. I buy a farm and I don't get a quote on it for five years and I'm happy if the farm does okay. I buy an apartment house, don't get a quote on it for five years. I'm happy if the apartment house produces the returns that I expect.

然后，我可以大概预见他们在十年后的发展状况。如果我无法预见他们十年后的状况，我就不想买。基本上，我不想买任何一种股票，如果明天纽约证券交易所关闭五年，我还不会为持有这只股票而高兴。我买一个农场，五年内没有报价，但如果农场运转良好，我也很高兴。我买一栋公寓楼，五年内没有报价，但如果公寓楼带来我预期的回报，我也很高兴。

But people buy a stock and they look at the price the next morning and they decide whether they're doing well or not doing well. It's crazy. Because they're buying a piece of a business. That's what Graham, the most fundamental part of what he taught me. You're not buying a stock, you're buying a part ownership in a business. You will do well if the business does well and if you didn't pay it totally, sell the price. And that's what it's all about. And you ought to buy businesses you understand. Just like if you're buying farms, you ought to buy farms you understand.

人们买了一只股票，然后第二天早上看一下股价，就觉得自己赚了还是亏了。这种做法很疯狂。因为他们实际上买的是一家公司的一个部分。正如格雷厄姆教导我的最基本的理念：你不是在买股票，而是在购买一家公司的部分所有权。如果这家公司表现良好，并且你的买入价并不是特别高，你就会有好的收益。这就是投资的根本。而且，你应该买那些你了解的公司。就像如果你去买农场，你应该买那些你了解的农场。

It's not complicated. It's not in calling this Graham but I mean it's just pure Graham. I was very fortunate because I picked up a book when I was 19. I got interested in stocks when I was about six or seven and I bought my first stock when I was 11 but I was playing around with all this stuff. I had charts and volume and I'm making all kinds of technical calculations and everything. And then I picked up a little book and it just said that you're not buying some little tipper symbol that bounces around every day. You're buying a part of the business.

这不复杂。这不是在说什么“格雷厄姆”，而是实实在在的“格雷厄姆”理念。我很幸运，因为我19岁时读到了一本书。我大概在六七岁时对股票产生了兴趣，11岁时买了我的第一只股票，但当时我只是胡乱玩玩。有各种图表、交易量，我在做各种技术分析。然后我读到一本小书，它告诉我，你不是在买一个每天上下波动的小股票代码，而是在买入一部分公司。

As soon as I started thinking about it that way, everything else swallowing. Very simple. So we buy businesses we think we can understand. There's no one here that can't understand the Coca-Cola company. I would say there's no one here that can understand some new internet company. I said at the annual meeting this year that if I were teaching a class in business school on the final exam, I would pass out the information on an internet company and ask each student to evaluate.

一旦我开始用这种方式思考，一切都变得豁然开朗，非常简单。所以我们只投资那些我们认为能够理解的企业。每个人都能理解可口可乐公司，但我认为没有人能理解某些新的互联网公司。今年的年度股东大会上我说过，如果我在商学院教课，在最后的考试中，我会分发一家互联网公司的资料，并要求每位学生进行评估。

Anybody that gave me an answer I'd flunk. I don't how to do it. But people do it every day. It's more exciting. If you look at it like going to races or something, that's a different thing. But if you're investing, investing is putting out money to be sure of getting more money back later in an appropriate rate. And to do that you have to understand what you're doing it in. You have to understand the business. You can understand some businesses but not all businesses.

凡是给我答案的人，我都不及格。我不知道该怎么做。但人们每天都在这样做，这更令人兴奋。如果你把它看作是去赛马场之类的，那是另一回事。但如果你在投资，投资就是投入资金，以确保以后能以适当的回报率获得更多资金。要做到这一点，你必须了解自己在做什么。你可以了解一些生意，但不可能了解所有生意。

Warren, you covered half of it which is trying to understand the business and buying the business. But you also alluded to getting a return on the amount of capital you invest in the business as an investor. And that comes back to what are you paying for the business. How do you determine what you think is fair price to pay for the business? It's a tough thing to decide. But I don't want to buy any business that I'm not terribly sure of.

沃伦，你提到了其中一半内容，即了解企业并购买企业。但你也提到了作为投资者在投资的企业中获得回报。这又回到了你为这个企业支付了多少钱的问题。你是如何确定认为合理的购买价格的呢？这确实是很难决定的事情。但我不想购买任何我没有十足把握的企业。

So if I'm terribly sure of it, it probably isn't going to offer incredible returns. I mean why should something that is essentially a cinch to do well, offer you 40% a year or something like that? So we don't have huge returns in mind. But we do have in mind never losing anything. And I mean we bought C's candy in 1972. C's candy was selling $16 million of candy at $1.95 a pound. And it was making two bits a pound or four million pre-tax. We paid $25 million for it.

所以，如果我非常确定某件事情，那它可能不会带来惊人的回报。我的意思是，为什么一件基本上十拿九稳的事情会给你每年40%的回报呢？所以我们并不期待巨额回报。但我们确实希望永远不会损失任何东西。比如，我们在1972年买了C's糖果公司。当时C's糖果的销售额是1600万美元，每磅售价1.95美元，每磅利润是50美分，也就是说税前利润是400万美元。我们花了2500万美元买下了它。

It took no capital to speak of. When we looked at that business, basically my partner Charlie and I really decided that there was a little untapped pricing power there. In other words, whether that $1.95 box of candy could just as easily sell for two or two in a quarter. For itself, for two and a quarter, another 30 cents a pound was $4 million eight on 16 million pounds, which on a 25 million purchase price was fine.

这几乎不需要额外的资金。当我们考察这项业务时，我和我的合伙人查理发现，它拥有一些尚未被利用的定价权。换句话说，那盒售价 $1.95 的糖果完全可以卖到 $2 或 $2.25。每磅价格增加30美分，意味着16百万磅可以带来480万美元的额外收入，而购买价格是2500万美元，这样的收入是非常可观的。

We didn't do any, we never hired a consultant in our lives. Our idea of consulting has gotten by a box of candy. Well, what we didn't know was that they had share of mine in California. There was something special. Every person in California had something in their mind about C's candy. And overwhelmingly was favorable. They had taken a box Valentine's Day and given it to some girl, she'd kissed them. If she'd slapped them, we'd have no business.

我们从来没有聘请过顾问，一辈子都没请过。我们的“顾问”就是买一盒糖果。我们不知道的是，他们在加利福尼亚有人在关注我们。这里有些特别的东西。每个加州人心里都有关于 C's 糖果的特别印象。而且大多数都是正面的。他们曾在情人节买了一盒送给女孩，如果女孩亲了他，我们的生意就做成了。如果女孩打了他，我们也就没生意可做了。

But as long as she kisses them, that's what we wanted their mind. C's candy getting kissed. And if we can get that in the minds of people, we can raise prices. And I bought that and I brought it in 1972. Every year, I raised the price on December 26th. I raised it the day after Christmas so that everybody could we sell a lot of Christmas. In fact, we'll make $60 million this year.

只要她亲吻他们，这就是我们希望留在他们脑海中的记忆。C的糖果被亲吻了。如果我们能让人们记住这一点，我们就可以提高价格。我在1972年买下了这个公司。从那以后，我每年都在12月26日涨价，我选择在圣诞节后的第二天提价，因为这样能让大家为圣诞节购买大量的糖果。事实上，今年我们将赚到6000万美元。

We'll sell 30 million pounds, make $2 a pound. Same business, same formulas, same everything. 60 million bucks still doesn't take any capital. And we'll make more money 10 years from now. But at that 60 million, we make about 55 million in the three weeks before Christmas. And our company song is What a Friend, we haven't Jesus. I mean, here it is. It is a good business. But the important thing about that business is that think about it a little. People don't buy, most people don't buy boxed chocolates to consume them. So they buy them as gifts. And if you know somebody, somebody's birthday, more likely it's a holiday. It's a Valentine's Day single biggest day of the year. Christmas is the biggest season by far. But women buy for Christmas and they kind of had and buy over two or three big curiots. Men buy on Valentine's Day. They're driving home. We run ads on a radio. Guilt, guilt, guilt. You know the guys are gearing off the freeway right? And they won't dare go home without a box of candy when we get through with them on our radio ads.

我们将销售3000万磅货物，每磅赚2美元。同样的业务，同样的公式，一切都一样。仍然不需要任何资本，就能赚到6000万美元。而且，我们将在十年后赚到更多。然而，在这6000万中，有大约5500万是在圣诞节前的三周赚到的。我们的公司歌曲是《何等恩友》。这确实是一个不错的生意。但这个生意重要的一点是大家需要思考一下，大多数人买盒装巧克力并不是为了自己吃，而是为了送礼。比如，如果你知道某人的生日，或者更有可能是在节日期间。情人节是一年中销量最高的一天，而圣诞节则是全年最大的销售季节。但是，女性通常会在圣诞节之前开始慢慢购买，而男性则倾向于在情人节购买巧克力。他们在下班回家的路上，我们在广播上做广告，激起他们的愧疚感。我们的广告做完后，那些男性根本不敢不带一盒糖果回家。

Valentine's Day is the biggest day. But can you imagine going home on Valentine's Day? And our seized candy is now 11 bucks a pound thanks to my brilliance. And let's say there's candy available at $6 a pound. But you really want to walk in on Valentine's Day and hand. I mean, you like that always favorable images of the seized candy over the years. And she sees you. And that's the way she thinks of you during the rest of the year. You've got a badly and you walk in and say, honey, this year I took the little bit and then hand her a box of candy. I mean, it just isn't our work. So in a sense, it's it's there's untapped prices price. It's it's not price dependent basically. Think of Disney. I mean, Disney is selling. We'll say home videos for I don't know what 16 95 18 95 or whatever. All over the world.

情人节是个重要的节日。但是你能想象在情人节当天回家吗？由于我的聪明才智，我们的Sees糖果现在每磅要卖到11美元。假设有每磅6美元的糖果可以买到。但你真的想在情人节那天带上一盒Sees糖果回家。我是说，多年来你一直以来都喜欢这些总是带来美好印象的Sees糖果，她看到你带来的糖果，并因此在一年中的其他时间里这样想你。你手头拮据，走进家门却说，亲爱的，今年我精打细算，然后递给她一盒糖果。我是说，这样做不合适。因此，从某种意义上说，这是一种无法估量的价值，它基本上不依赖于价格。想想迪士尼，他们在全球销售家庭录像带，定价可能是16.95美元或者18.95美元。

People and we'll say particularly mothers in this case have something in their mind about Disney. I mean, every person is room when you say Disney has something in their mind about it. I say universal pictures. You don't have anything in your mind. You know, if I say 20th century Fox, you don't have anything special in your mind. If I say Disney, you've got something in your mind. And that's true around the world. Now picture yourself with a couple young kids. You know, who you want to put away for a couple hours every day. You know, peace of mind. And you know, if you get a one video, they'll watch it 20 times. So you go to the video store, wherever you buy the video. Are you going to sit there and premiere? You know, 10 different videos and watch them each for an hour and a half to decide which one your kid should watch? No, I mean, let's say there's one there for 16 95 in the Disney's there for 17 95. You know, if you take the Disney video, you can be okay.

在这段话中，作者提到人们，尤其是母亲，对迪士尼有一种特殊的印象。每个人在听到“迪士尼”这个词时，脑海中都会浮现一些特别的想法，这是放之四海而皆准的。比如说，如果我提到环球影业，或者20世纪福克斯公司，你可能不会有特别的感受。但提到迪士尼，你一定能想到一些特别的东西。接着，作者让你想象自己有几个年幼的孩子，希望每天能有几小时的安静时间。孩子们会反复观看同一个视频，因此你可能去视频店或其他地方购买视频。面对众多选择，你不太可能每个视频都试播一个半小时来决定哪个适合你的孩子。如果有一个视频标价16.95美元，而迪士尼的视频是17.95美元，大多数情况下，你会选择迪士尼的视频，因为这样你会感到放心。

So you buy it and you don't have to make a quality decision on something that you don't want to spend the time to do. You can get a little bit more money if you're if you're Disney and you'll sell a lot more videos. It makes it a wonderful business. Makes it very tough for the other guy. How would you try to create a brand dream works is trying, but how would you try to create a brand that competes with Disney around the world and to replace the concept that people have in their minds about Disney with something that says universal pictures? You know, so that the mother's going to walk in and pick out a universal pictures video and preference to a Disney. It's not going to happen. Coca-Cola is associated with people being happy around the world where every place they're happy where Disney world or Disneyland with the world cup will be at the Olympics where every place where people are happy.

你买下它后，就不需要花时间去判断某个你不想费心思考的事情的质量了。如果你是迪士尼，你可以赚更多的钱，还能销售更多的视频，这使得业务非常出色，却使得竞争对手很难受。DreamWorks 正在努力打造品牌，但你要如何在全球范围内与迪士尼竞争，并用环球影业这样的概念取代人们心目中的迪士尼呢？比如，妈妈走进来，拿起一张环球影业的视频而不是迪士尼的，这种情况几乎不会发生。可口可乐在全球范围内都与快乐相联系，无论是在迪士尼乐园，还是世界杯或奥运会上，无论哪里快乐的地方都有它的身影。

Happiness and cocoa together. Now, you give me, I don't care how much money and tell me that I'm going to do that with RC Cola around the world and have five billion people that have a favorable image in their mind about RC Cola can't get done. You know, and you can fool around with the, you can do anything you want to do. You don't have price discounts on weekends and everything, but you're not going to touch it. And that's what you want to have in a business. That's the most. And you want that most to widen. And if you're C's candy, you want to do everything in the world to make sure that the experience basically of giving that gift leads to a favorable reaction. That means, that means what's in the box. It means the person that sells it to you because all our business is done when we're terribly busy.

幸福与可可相伴。现在，如果你给我多少钱，并告诉我我将在全球范围内用RC Cola做到这一点，让五十亿人对RC Cola保有良好印象，我都认为这是不可能实现的。你知道，你可以随心所欲地尝试，一周七天都打折也好，但你无法动摇它的地位。这就是一个企业的成功之道。而你希望这种优势不断扩大。如果你是C's糖果公司，你需要竭尽所能确保送出这个礼物的体验能带来积极的反应。这意味着盒子里的内容，也意味着卖给你的人，因为我们所有的业务都在极忙的时候进行。

I mean, people come in in those weeks before Christmas or Valentine's Day, they're long lines. So at five o'clock in the afternoon, some woman is selling the last person, the last box of candy. And that person's been waiting in line for maybe 20 or 30 customers. And if the salesperson smiles at that last customer, our mode is widened. And if she snarls at them, our mode is narrowed. And we can't see it going on every day, but that's the key to it. I mean, it's the total part of the product delivery is having everything associated with it. Say C's candy and something pleasant happening. And that's what business is all about.

我的意思是，在圣诞节或情人节前几周，人们会纷纷涌入商店，排起长队。所以在下午五点的时候，一位女士正在将最后一盒糖果卖给最后一个顾客。这个顾客可能已经在等待了二三十个人之后。而如果销售员对这位最后的顾客微笑，我们的心情就会变得愉悦；如果她冷冷地对待顾客，我们的心情就会变得糟糕。虽然我们每天都看不到这种情况，但这就是关键所在。整个产品的交付中包含了所有相关因素。就拿C's糖果店来说，重要的是让顾客感受到愉快的经历。这就是商业的本质所在。

Yeah. The best buys the questions whether I ever bought a company where the numbers told me not to and how much is qualitative and how much is quantitative. The best buys have been when the numbers almost tell you not to. I mean, because then you then you feel so strongly about the product and not just the fact that you're getting a use to garb at cheap. And I know that it's compelling. I mean, I owned a windmill company at one time. So I, you know, windmills are cigar butts believe me.

好的。我曾遇到一些投资，数字看上去不太支持我的决策，但这类投资往往是最好的。最好的投资往往发生在当数字几乎阻止你投资的时候。因为那时候，你对产品本身的信心非常强，而不仅仅是因为以低价买入“烟蒂”。我曾经拥有一家风车公司，所以我知道风车其实就是“烟蒂”，相信我。

I bought a very cheap. I bought it at a third of working capital and we make money out of it. But there's no repetitive money to be earned. I mean, there's a one time profit and something like that. And it's just not it's not the thing to be doing. I went through that phase. I mean, I bought street curd companies and all kinds of things. But in terms of the qualitative, I probably understand the qualitative the moment I get the phone call. I mean, almost every business we bought has taken five or 10 minutes.

我买了一家公司，价格非常便宜，只花了我三分之一的流动资金，并且我们从中赚到了钱。但这笔钱是一次性的，没有持续的盈利空间。换句话说，只能赚一次性利润，而不是长期的。这种做法并不是理想的。当然，我也经历过这样的阶段。我买过街边小摊公司以及其他各种各样的生意。但从质量上来说，我可能在刚接到电话的那一刻就明白公司的好坏。几乎我们买下的每一家生意，只花了五到十分钟就做出决定。

I mean, in terms of analysis. And we bought two businesses this year. General re is, you know, 18 billion or something deal. I've never been to their home office. I hope it's there. There could be just a few guys and say, well, what number should we send but this month? I can see it coming in once a month. Well, we've got 20 billion in the bank this month instead of 18 billion or something. But I've never been there. And before I bought executive jet, which is fractional ownership of of of jets.

我的意思是，从分析的角度来看。我们今年收购了两家公司。其中一家是General Re，这是一个价值180亿的交易。我从来没有去过他们的总部，我希望它的确在那儿。也许只是几个人在那儿，然后说，我们这个月应该报告什么数字呢？我可以想象，他们每个月呈现一次数字，比如，我们这个月银行里有200亿，而不是180亿。但实际上，我从来没有去过那里。在收购Executive Jet之前，这家公司是专门做飞机分时共享的。

And before I bought it, I'd never been there. I bought my family a quarter interest in the program three years earlier. And I've seen the service and seen the develop. And I got the numbers. But if you don't know enough to know about the business instantly, you won't know enough in a month or two months. I mean, you have to have sort of the background of understanding and knowing what you do understand and don't understand. And that that is the key. It's defining what I call your circle of competence.

在我购买它之前，我从未去过那里。三年前，我为我的家人购买了该项目的四分之一权益。我见过他们的服务，也见过发展的情况。我掌握了这些数据。但如果你不能马上了解这个业务，那么一个月或两个月后你也未必能了解。我的意思是，你需要具备某种背景知识，知道自己懂什么、不懂什么。这点很关键，这就是我所说的你的“能力圈”。

And everybody's got a different circle of competence. The important thing is not how big the circle is. The important thing is staying inside the circle. And if that circle has only got 30 companies in it out of thousands on the big board, why should I, which 30 they are? You're okay. And you should know those businesses well enough so that you don't need to read lots of work. Now, I did a lot of work in the earlier years just in getting familiar with businesses.

每个人都有自己不同的能力圈。重要的不是能力圈有多大，而是要坚守在这个圈子里。如果在股市几千家公司中，你的能力圈只有30家，那也没关系。关键是你知道这30家公司是哪一些，你就没问题。你应该对这些公司了解得足够透彻，这样就不需要花大量时间去阅读资料。早些年，我花了很多时间来熟悉这些公司。

And the way I would do that is I would go out and use what Phil Fisher called the scuttle butt approach. I'd go out. I talked to customers. I talked to to to maybe ex employees. In some cases, I talked to suppliers. Everybody. Every time I'd see somebody in an industry, let's say I was interested in the cold industry, I go around and see every coal company. And I'd ask every, every CEO, if you've got only by stock in one coal company that wasn't your own, which one would it be? And why?

我会采用菲尔·费雪所称的“闲聊法”来进行调查。我会出去和一些客户交谈，可能还会和前员工交流。在某些情况下，我还会与供应商沟通。每当我对某个行业感兴趣时，比如煤炭行业，我会去拜访每一家煤炭公司。我会问每位CEO，如果你只能买一家不是你自己的煤炭公司的股票，你会选哪一家？为什么？

And you piece those things together and you learn a lot about the business after a while. And finding is you get very similar answers as long as you ask about competitors. And I would say if you got a silver bullet, and you put it through, they had a one competitor, which competitor and why? You'll find out who the best guy in the industry is in that case or the one that's coming up. And there's a lot of things you can learn about a business.

当你把这些信息拼凑在一起时，经过一段时间后，你会对这个行业了解很多。而且，只要你询问关于竞争对手的信息，你会发现得到的答案都很相似。我会说，如果你有一个绝招，可以用来对付一个竞争对手，你会选择哪个竞争对手，为什么？这样你就能知道谁是行业中最厉害的人，或者谁正在崛起。关于一家公司有很多可以学习的东西。

I've done that in the past on the businesses that I feel I could understand. So I don't have to do much of that anymore. It's a nice thing about investing is you're not going to learn anything very new. I mean, you can do it if you want to. But if you learned about regularly showing them 40 years ago, you still understand regularly showing them. It's not that not a lot of great insights together and the sort as you go on. So you do get a database in your head.

我过去常常在我觉得能够理解的业务上这样做，所以现在不需要再花太多精力了。投资的一大好处就是，你不需要学到什么全新的东西。当然，如果你愿意，也可以继续学习。但如果你在40年前学会了某些基本的东西，你现在仍然可以理解它。随着时间的推移，不会出现很多新的重大见解。所以，你脑海中已经积累了一个数据库。

I had a guy Frank Rooney who ran Melville for many years. His father-in-law died on company called HH Brown, a shoe company. And he put it up with Goldman Sachs, but he was playing golf with a friend of mine here in Florida. And mentioned to this friend, the guy said, why don't you call Warren? He called me at the end of the golf match. In five minutes, I basically had a deal. But I knew Frank and I knew the kind of business. I sort of knew the basic economics of a shoe business. And so I could buy it. And quantitatively, I got to decide what the price is. But you know, that's either yes or no. I mean, I don't fool around a lot when negotiation. So if they name a price that makes sense to me, I buy it. If they don't, I was happy that day before. So I'll be happy that day after without owning it.

我认识一个叫弗兰克·鲁尼的家伙，他经营梅尔维尔公司很多年。他岳父去世后留下了一家名为HH布朗的鞋业公司。他把这家公司交给高盛处理，但在佛罗里达和我的一个朋友打高尔夫时提到了这件事。我的朋友说，为什么不打电话给沃伦？于是他在高尔夫球赛结束时给我打了电话。五分钟内，我基本上就决定了这笔交易。因为我认识弗兰克，也了解这种生意，我对鞋业的基本经济情况也有一定了解，所以我能够买下它。然后，我就按数据来决定价格，这没有太多复杂的地方。谈判过程中，我不会拖泥带水。如果他们给的价格合理，我就买下；如果不合理，我在这之前过得不错，所以即使不拥有它，我也会过得很好。

Yeah. And co-evolves, and also the drop-and-atch vacations in terms of current future earnings like for quarter-earnings. And one of the fact that co-cats a lot of their profits coming up outside the United States, I think the Asian crisis is going to take that co-cats a lot of business. The question is about the Asian crisis and how it affects the company like Coat that recently announced that the earnings, actually they just announced their third quarter earnings. A few weeks ago, they tip people off that they were going to be lower than the fourth quarter. Well, basically I love it, but because the market for co-cola products is going to grow far faster over the next 20 years internationally than at well in the United States.

好的。在当前和未来的收入方面，这个公司（以下简称为“公司A”）正在共同发展，特别是在季度收益方面。其中一个事实是，公司A的大部分利润来自美国以外。我认为亚洲危机将对公司A的业务产生重大影响。问题在于亚洲危机如何影响像公司A这样的企业。该公司最近宣布了第三季度的财报，几周前，他们就已经提醒大家说这次收益会低于第四季度。总的来说，我对此还是很乐观的，因为在接下来的20年里，国际市场对可乐产品的需求增长速度将远远超过美国市场。

It'll go in the United States, not a per capita base. That's going to grow faster elsewhere. So the fact that it's going to be a tough period for who knows, three months or three years. But it won't be tough for 20 years. I mean, people are still going to, you know, they're going to work productively around the world. And they're going to find that this is a bargain product in terms of the portion of their working day that they have to give up in order to have one of these or better yet five of them a day like I do. It's a, you know, this is a product in 1936 when I first bought six of those for a quarter and sold them for a nickel each. It was in a six and a half ounce bottle and you paid a two percent deposit on the bottle.

这段话翻译成中文是：这将在美国展开，但不是按人均计算。其他地方的增长速度会更快。因此，尽管接下来可能会有三个月或三年的困难时期，但不可能会难熬二十年。我的意思是，人们依然会在全球范围内高效工作。而且他们会发现，这种产品在考虑到他们一天工作时间中所需付出的部分来获得一个，或者像我一样每天获得五个时，其实是一种划算的选择。在1936年时，我第一次以25美分买了六个这种产品，并以每个5美分卖掉。当时这是一个六个半盎司的瓶子，你需要为瓶子支付2%的押金。

That was a six and a half ounce bottle for a nickel at that time. It's now a 12 ounce can, which if you buy it on weekends or if you buy it in bigger quantities, so much money doesn't go to the packaging. You essentially can buy the 12 ounces for not much more than 20 cents. So you're paying not much more than twice the per ounce price of 1936. It is a product that's gotten cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and relative to people's earning power over the years and which people love in 200 countries. You have the per capita use going up every year for products with over a hundred years old and the dominates the market.

那时候，一瓶六盎司半的售价是五美分。现在是一罐12盎司的饮料，如果你在周末购买或是大量购买，包装的成本相对减少。你实际上可以用不到20美分买到这12盎司。所以，你所支付的单盎司价格实际上只比1936年高出不多。随着时间的推移，这个产品变得越来越便宜，相对于人们的购买力也是如此，并且在全球200多个国家受到喜爱。对于这个已有超过一百年历史的产品，人均消费量每年都在增长，并在市场中占据主导地位。

I mean, that is unbelievable. One thing that people don't understand is one thing that makes this product is where tens and tens of billions of dollars is one simple fact about, about really all colas, but we'll call it Coca-Cola to the moment. I have to be in any way I like. Cola has no taste memory. You can drink one of these at nine o'clock, eleven o'clock, three or five o'clock. The one at five o'clock will taste just as good to you as the one you drank early in the morning. You can't do that with cream soda, root beer, orange, great. You name it. All of those things accumulate on you. Most foods and beverages accumulate on you. You get sick of them after a while.

这简直让人难以置信。有一点常被人忽视，而这正是让可口可乐等饮料价值数百亿美元的一个简单事实。我们就以可口可乐为例。可乐没有味觉记忆。你可以在早上九点、中午十一点、下午三点或五点喝可乐。你会发现，下午五点的那瓶可乐味道和早上那瓶一样好。奶油汽水、根汁汽水、橙味汽水或者其他任何饮料都做不到这一点。大部分食物和饮料都会让人味觉疲劳，让人喝腻。

And if you, if you eat, I mean, we get these people go to work for us and see these candy and we tell them you don't have a candy they want. The first day they go crazy. But after a week, they're eating about the same amount they need if they're buying it because chocolate accumulates on everything accumulates on there is no taste memory to Cola. And that means that you get people around the world that are heavy users that will drink five a day or die a coat maybe seven or eight a day or something this or they'll never do that with other products. So you get this incredible per capita consumption, the average person in this part of the world.

如果你吃东西，我们会请人来为我们工作，他们看到这些糖果，我们告诉他们没有他们想要的糖果。第一天他们会抓狂，但一个星期后，他们会吃到差不多他们想买的量，因为巧克力会积累，而可乐不会留下味道记忆。这意味着全世界有些人重度饮用可乐，一天能喝五瓶，也可能是七八瓶，但他们不会对其他产品这样。所以在这个地区，你会发现有难以置信的人均消费量。

Well, maybe a little north here drinks about 64 ounces of liquid a day and you can have all 64 ounces of that. The coke and you will not get set up with coke if you like it to start with and the least, but if you get with almost anything else, you eat just one product all day. You'll tend to get a little sick of that after a while and it's a huge factor. So today over one billion eight ounce servings of Coca-Cola products will be sold in the world. And that will grow year by year. It'll grow in every country virtually and it'll grow on a per capita basis and 20 years from now it'll grow in a lot faster internationally than in the US.

好吧，这里的人可能每天喝大约64盎司的液体，你可以把这64盎司全部用来喝可乐。如果你一开始就喜欢可乐，那么就不会腻，但如果你整天只吃单一产品，就会慢慢感到腻，这就是关键所在。因此，今天全世界将销售超过十亿份8盎司的可口可乐产品，并且每年都会增长。它几乎会在每个国家增长，而且人均消费量也将增加。20年后，国际市场的增长速度将比美国更快。

So I really like that market market better because there is more growth there over time. But it will hurt them and it is hurting them in the short term right now. But that doesn't mean anything. I mean that Coca-Cola, public and I think it's 1919. It's not sold for $40 a share. It went back before that as a candor family and they went back. They bought it for $2,000 the whole business as a candor back in the late 1880s and a couple of purchases. So now it goes public in 1919. $40 a share. One year later it's selling for $19. Go on down 50% of one year. And you might think that's some kind of disaster. And you might think that sugar prices increased and the bottles were rebellious and a whole bunch of things. You could always find a few reasons why that wasn't the ideal moment to buy it. Years later you'd have seen the Great Depression and you'd have seen World War II and you'd seen sugar rationing and you'd seen thermonuclear weapons. And the whole thing, there's always a reason.

我更喜欢那个市场，因为从长远来看，它有更大的增长潜力。然而，目前来看这对他们是有影响的，短期内确实造成了一些伤害。但这并不意味着什么。我是说可口可乐公司在1919年上市，股票价格是每股40美元。而在此之前，这家公司是坎德勒家族的产业，他们在19世纪80年代末花了2000美元买下了整个生意。1919年可口可乐上市后，一年内股价跌到了每股19美元，相当于下跌了50%。你可能会认为这是一个灾难，或许因为糖价上涨，瓶子不够用等等，理由很多。你总能找到一些理由来解释为什么当时不是买入的最佳时机。多年后，你会看到大萧条、二战、糖的配给以及核武器等各种情况。总会有各种各样的原因。

But in the end if you'd bought one share for $40 and reinvested the dividends it'd be worth about $5 million now. And that factor so overrides anything else. I mean if you're right about the business you'll make a lot of money. And the timing part of it is very, is a very tricky thing. So I don't worry about any given event if I've got a wonderful business, you know, whether what it does to the next year or something of this sort. You know, price controls have been in this country at various times and that's, that's followed up even the best of businesses. I mean I wouldn't be able to raise the price on December 26th of the season. He's candy if we had price controls and we've had them in this country. But that doesn't make it a lousy business if that happens to happen because you're not going to have price controls forever. We had them in the early 70s.

但最后，如果你以 40 美元买了一股，并将股息进行再投资，现在它大概价值 500 万美元。这种因素远远胜过其他任何方面。我的意思是，如果你对这项生意的判断正确，你就会赚很多钱。时机上的把握非常棘手，所以如果我拥有一个优秀的生意，我并不担心某个具体事件对下一年的影响。比如，在这个国家曾经出现过价格管制，这甚至影响到最好的企业。我不能在赛季的12月26日对喜斯糖果提价，如果我们有价格管制的时候。但如果这种情况发生，这并不意味着这是一桩糟糕的生意，因为价格管制不会永远持续。我们在70年代初也遇到过这种情况。

So it, the wonderful business. You know, you can figure out what will happen. You can't figure out when it will happen. You don't want to focus too much on when you want to focus on what. If you're right about what you don't have to worry about one very much. Is there an area I'm missing back there any place? I'm not focusing all of them on one place. I may get this gentleman over here. The question is about my business mistakes. How much time do you have? The interesting thing about the mistakes is that investments, at least for me and for my partner, Shirley Munger, the biggest mistakes have not been mistakes of commission. They've been mistakes of omission. We knew enough about the business to do something and for one reason or another we set their sucking our thumbs instead of doing something.

这确实是个很棒的生意。你可以预测会发生什么事情，但无法预测它何时会发生。你不应该过于专注于时间点，而是要聚焦于事情本身。如果你对事情的判断是正确的，那时间点就不用太担心。有地方我可能没注意到吗？我不会只关注一个地方。可能我会让这位先生来提问。他的问题是关于我在生意上的失误。你有多少时间呢？关于错误，有趣的是，对于我和我的合伙人查理·芒格来说，最大的错误并不是操作失误，而是忽略失误。我们本来对这个业务了解得足够多，可以采取行动，但因为某种原因，我们只是在那儿犹豫不决，却没有采取行动。

We've passed up things where we could have made billions and billions of dollars. From things we understood, we don't understand. In fact, I could make billions out of Microsoft. There's meaning because I never understand Microsoft. If I can make billions out of healthcare stocks, I should make it. I didn't. When the Clinton healthcare program was proposed and they all went into tank, we should have made a ton of money out of that. I could understand it. I should have made a ton of money out of Fannie Mae back in the mid 80s. I understood it and I didn't do it. Those are billion dollar mistakes or multi billion dollar mistakes that generally accept the counting principles don't pick up.

我们曾错失过一些能赚数十亿美元的机会。有些事情我们了解，有些则不太清楚。事实上，我本可以从微软中赚到数十亿，因为我从来没真正理解过微软。如果我能从医疗保健股票中赚到数十亿，我应该去做。但我没有。当克林顿的医疗改革计划提出来时，相关股票暴跌，我们本来可以大赚一笔，我是能理解这些的。我还应该在80年代中期从房利美（Fannie Mae）赚很多钱，因为我理解它，但我没有去做。这些都是损失数十亿或数百亿美元的错误，一般的会计原则并不会记录这些。

The mistakes you see, we made a mistake buying US air preferred some years ago. I had a lot of money around. I make mistakes when I get cash. Charlie tells me to go to a bar instead. I hang around the office and I got money in my pocket. I do something dumb. It happens every time. I bought this thing. Nobody made me buy it. I now have an 800 number I call every time I think I'll have buying stock in an airline and they talk me down. I say, I'm worn, I'm an aeraholic. Keep talking, don't hang up. Don't do anything rash. Finally, I get over it. I bought it. It looked like we were going to lose all our money in that. We came very close to losing all our money. We said we deserved the loss of our money.

这个文本的大意是：我们曾经犯过错误，比如几年前购买了美国航空的优先股。当我手头有很多现金时，我就容易犯错。我的搭档查理建议我去酒吧，而不是待在办公室里，因为这样我就不会带着现金做傻事。每次都是这样，这次我买了股份，没有人逼我。这之后，我为此专门准备了一个800开头的电话，每当我想买航空公司股票时我就拨这个电话，与对方交谈以阻止自己做出冲动决定。我会说，我上瘾了，请继续说话，不要挂断电话，我不想做出冲动的决定。最后，我才冷静下来。然而，这次投资的情况非常糟糕，我们几乎损失了所有的钱。我们认为这次损失是我们应得的。

We bought it because it was an attractive security but it was not an attractive business. I did the same thing with Solomon. I bought an attractive security in a business that I wouldn't have bought the equity in. You can say that that's one form of mistake. Buying something because you like the terms when you don't like the business that well. I've done that in the past. Probably do it again. The bigger mistakes though were the ones of omission. I did. Back when I had the 10,000 bucks I put 2000 dollars of it into a Sinclair server station which I lost. My opportunity cost now is about 6 billion right now. Probably a big mistake. It makes me feel that my Berkshire goes down then because the cost of my Sinclair station goes down too. My 20% opportunity cost.

我们买下它是因为它作为一个证券很有吸引力，但它本身不是一个有吸引力的生意。我在收购所罗门公司的时候也犯了同样的错误。我买下了在这家公司中的有吸引力的证券，但我不会买下它的股票。你可以说这是一种错误——因为喜欢投资条款而投资于自己并不十分看好的生意。在过去，我确实这样做过，可能以后也还会这样做。不过，更大的错误是那些错失的机会。在我只有1万美元的时候，我把其中的2000美元投资在了一家辛克莱加油站上，结果亏掉了。现在想起来让我损失的机会成本大约有60亿美元左右，可能是个很大的错误。这让我觉得如果我在伯克希尔的股份下跌，那么辛克莱加油站当初的亏损也会增加，因为那是我20%的机会成本。

I will say this. You talk about learning from mistakes. I really believe it's better to learn from other people's mistakes as much as possible. We don't spend any time looking back at Berkshire. I've got a partner, Charlie Munger. We've been pals for 40 years. We never had an argument. We disagree on things a lot. But we don't have arguments about it. We never look back. We just figure there's so much to look forward to that there's just no sense thinking about what we might have. It just doesn't make any difference. You can only live life forward. You can learn something from the mistakes.

我要说的是，你提到从错误中学习。我确实相信，从他人的错误中学习更好。我们从不花时间回顾伯克希尔。我有一个合伙人，查理·芒格，我们已经是40年的朋友。我们从未争吵过。我们在很多事情上意见不一，但不会因此而争论。我们从不回头看，只是觉得未来有很多东西值得期待，想以前的事情没有意义，过去的事情已经无法改变。生活只能向前过，从错误中可以学到一些东西。

The big thing to do is stick with the businesses you understand. If there's a generic mistake of getting outside of your short-go components and buying something to somebody, tips you on it or something in an area you don't know anything about, you should learn something from that. You stay with what you can figure out yourself. You really want your decision making to be by looking in the mirror and saying yourself, I'm buying 100 shares of General Motors at 55 because. It's your responsibility if you're buying it. There's got to be a reason. If you can't state the reason, you shouldn't buy it.

重要的是坚持投资你所理解的业务。如果你不小心跨越了自身的短期能力范围，去买入一个你并不了解领域的东西，仅仅因为有人向你推荐了它，那么你应该从中学到一些教训。你要坚持自己能够理解的东西。你真正需要做的是，对着镜子告诉自己：“我以每股55元的价格买入了通用汽车的100股，因为......”。如果你要买入，那就是你的责任。一定要有一个购买的理由，如果你说不出理由，你就不应该买入。

Because somebody told you about it at a cocktail party, not good enough. It's got to be something. It can't be because of the volume. The chart looks good on it or anything like that. It's got to be a reason you'd buy the business. That we stick to pretty carefully. That's one of the things Ben Graham taught me. The question about what's going to happen to interest rates, where are we going to work? I don't think about the macro stuff. What you really want to do in investments is figure out what's important and knowable. If it's unimportant or unknowable, you forget about it.

因为有人在鸡尾酒会上跟你提起这件事，这不是一个足够好的理由。必须有真正的原因，不能仅仅因为交易量大或者图表看起来不错。这必须是一个让你愿意购买这家企业的理由。我们对此非常谨慎。这是本·格雷厄姆教给我的一件事。至于利率会如何变化或者我们在哪里工作，我不太考虑宏观层面的东西。在投资中，你真正需要做的是搞清楚哪些是重要且可知的。如果它不重要或者不可知，那你就别去管它。

What you talk about is important, but in my view, it's not knowable. Understanding Coca-Cola is knowable or wriggly or Eastman code actor. I mean, you can understand those business. That's knowable. And whether it turns out to be important depends on where your valuation leads you in the current price and all of that. But we have never either bought a business or not bought a business because of any macro feeling of any kind. We don't read things about predictions about interest rates or business or anything like that because it doesn't make any difference.

你所谈论的事情很重要，但在我看来这是无法知道的。了解可口可乐是可以知道的，或者去研究那些复杂的行业或者东曼这样的公司。我是说，你是可以理解那些企业的，这是可以知道的。而它的重要性取决于你的估值方向、当前价格等因素。但我们从来没有因为任何宏观经济的感觉而买入或不买入一家企业。我们不看关于利率预测或商业趋势的东西，因为这些不会对我们的决策产生影响。

I mean, let's say in 1972 when we bought C's candy, I think maybe Nixon put on the price controls a little bit later. Let's say we'd seen that. But so what we missed the chance to buy something for 25 million, that's earning 60 million, pre-tax now. We don't want to pass up the chance to do something intelligent because of some prediction about something that we're no good at anyway. So we just don't we don't read or listen to or do anything in relation to macro factors at all. Zero.

我的意思是，比如说在1972年，当我们购买C's Candy的时候，我想尼克松可能在稍后实施了价格管制。假设我们当时看到了这些。但即便如此，我们也不想因为对我们根本不擅长的宏观经济预测而错过用2500万美元买下一个现在税前收入为6000万美元的机会。我们不想因为这些预测而错失进行明智投资的机会。因此，我们根本不看、也不听、也不做任何与宏观经济因素相关的事情。完全没有。

And the typical investment counseling organization goes out and they bring out their economist, they try to make this big macro picture and then they start working from there on down. In our view, that's nonsense. And if Alan Greenspan was on one side of me and Bob Rubin on the other side, they're both whispering in my ear exactly what they're going to do the next 12 months would make any difference to me in what I pay for executive jet or general insurance or anything else I do.

典型的投资咨询公司通常会找来经济学家，试图先构建出一个宏观经济的大图景，然后再逐步深入分析。但在我们看来，这样的方法毫无意义。即使艾伦·格林斯潘在我左边，鲍勃·鲁宾在我右边，两个人都在我耳边低语告诉我他们未来12个月的具体计划，这对我购买公务机、办理普通保险或其他任何决定都不会有影响。

Yep. Well, what's the benefit of being an outer counter as opposed to being in Wall Street? I worked in Wall Street for a couple of years and I like, I've got my best friends actually on both coasts and I like seeing them and I get ideas when I go there. But the best way to get the think about investments is to be in a room with no one else and just think. And if that doesn't work, nothing else is going to work.

好的。那么，成为外围观察者而不是待在华尔街有什么好处呢？我曾在华尔街工作过几年，我有很多好朋友都在东西海岸，我喜欢见到他们，也在那边获得一些灵感。不过，思考投资的最佳方式是一个人待在房间里独自思考。如果这样都行不通，其他方法也没用。

And the disadvantage of being in any kind of a market type environment in Wall Street would be the extremes that you get over stimulating. You think you have to do something every day. I mean, a Canberra family paid $2,000 for this company and you don't have to do much else if you pick one of those and the trick then is not to do anything else, even not the sell it in 1919, which they the family did later on it.

在华尔街的市场环境中操作有一个劣势，那就是过度激励导致的极端情况。你可能觉得每天都必须做点什么。比如，一个堪培拉家庭花了2,000美元买了这家公司的股票，如果你选中了像这样的公司，其实不需要做太多别的事情。关键在于不要再做其他动作，甚至不要在1919年卖掉它，但是这个家庭后来就卖掉了。

So what you're looking for is some way to get one good idea a year and then write it to its full potential. And that's very hard to do in an environment where people are shouting prices back and forth every five minutes and shoving reports under your nose and all that. Because Wall Street makes its money on activity. You make your money on inactivity. I mean, if everybody in this room trades their portfolio around every day with every other person, you know, you're all going to end up broke and the intermediaries going to end up with all the money.

你需要找到一种方法，每年获得一个好主意，并充分发挥其潜力。而在一个人们每五分钟就大声喊价、不断将各种报告摆在你面前的环境中，这样做是很困难的。因为华尔街靠活动赚钱，而你靠不活动赚钱。换句话说，如果在座的每一个人每天都在不停地交易自己的投资组合，最终你们都会亏得一分钱不剩，而中间商会赚走所有的钱。

On the other hand, if you all on stock and in a group of average businesses and just sit here for the next 50 years, you'll end up with a fair amount of money and your broker will be broke. So his activity is he's like a doctor who gets paid out how often it gets you to change pills. I mean, basically, I mean, he gives you one pill and it cures you the rest of your life. And he's got one sale, one transaction and that's it. But if he can convince you that changing pills every day is the way the great health. It'll be great for him and the prescriptionists and you'll be out of a lot of money and you won't be any healthier. A lot worse off financially. So you want to stay away from any environment that stimulates activity and Wall Street would have the effect of doing that.

另一方面，如果你把所有钱都投资在股票上，并且只挑选一些普通的公司，然后坐等五十年，你会积累不少财富，而你的经纪人却会面临破产的境地。他的做法就像一个医生，通过不断让你换药来赚钱。也就是说，如果他给你一种能治愈一生的药，那他只能卖出一种药，做成一笔交易，仅此而已。但如果他能说服你每天换药是保持健康的秘诀，那么这对他和药剂师来说是好事，而你则会因此花很多钱，却没有更健康，反而在经济上损失惨重。所以你需要避免任何刺激频繁操作的环境，而华尔街就很容易导致这样的局面。

I would I used one I want to go back about once every six months and I'd go back a whole list of things I wanted to check out one way or another companies I wanted to see and I would I would get my money's worth out of those trips. But then I go back to one thing about it. Yeah. So you invest your value way only sure if the virtual pathway or Microsoft don't paint it. Yeah, well, the question but Berkshire halfway because it wasn't about evaluating Berkshire went doesn't pay any difference and it won't pay any difference either. It's a promise I can keep.

我曾习惯于每六个月回去一次，我会去查看一个完整的清单，看看一些我想了解的公司，并努力让每次旅行都值回票价。但我总是回到同一个问题。是的，如果只是进行价值投资评估，两者并没有本质区别，无论是虚拟方式还是通过微软等平台。关于伯克希尔·哈撒韦，我并不是在评估它，因为无论怎样评估，对它都没有影响。这是一个我可以兑现的承诺。

The all you get with Berkshire, you stick it in your safe deposit box and then every year you're going to found a one. You know, you take it out and you put it back and I mean, there's enormous psychic reward in that you don't underestimate it. But the real question is whether we can keep retaining dollar bills and turning them into more than a dollar at a decent rate and and that's what we try to do and and and surely I have our our money in it to do that. That's all we'll get paid for doing. We won't take any options. We won't take any salaries to the big up or anything.

把这段英文翻译成中文：拥有伯克希尔的全部权益，你把它放在保险箱里，然后每年你都会发现它有所增长。你知道的，你把它拿出来再放回去，在这过程中你会获得巨大的心理满足感，不要低估这一点。但真正的问题是，我们是否能继续将手中的美元以合理的速度转化为更多的美元，这就是我们努力想要做到的。毫无疑问，我和查理将我们的资金投入其中就是为了做到这一点。这也是我们唯一会因所做的事情而获得的报酬。我们不会拿任何期权或高额薪水，也没有其他额外的报酬。

We'll ride around in the plate. But that's what we're trying to do. It gets harder all the time. The more money we manage the harder it is to do that and we would do way better percentage wise with Berkshire. It was one one hundredth the present size. But it is it is run for its owners. But it isn't run to give them dividends because so far every dollar that we've earned and could have paid out. We've turned into more than a dollar. It's worth more than dollar to keep it and therefore be silly to pay it out. Even if everybody was tax-free that owned it it would have been a mistake to pay dividends at Berkshire because so far the dollar bills retained have turned into more than a dollar.

我们会尽量努力，但这越来越难。管理的钱越多，难度越大。如果伯克希尔的规模只有现在的一百分之一，我们的表现可能会更好。不过，这家公司是为了股东而运营的，但不是为了给他们分红。因为到目前为止，我们赚到的每一美元与其说是拿来分红，不如说是再投资变成了超过一美元的价值。因此，即使所有股东都免税，伯克希尔也不应该分红，因为保留的资金都获得了更高的回报。

But there's no guarantee that that happens in the future and at some point the game runs out on that. But it is the goal of I mean that is what the business is about. We're not nothing else about the business. Do we judge ourselves by we don't judge it by the size of its home office building or you know anything of the number of people working around it. We got twelve people at headquarters. We got 45,000 employees at Berkshire and twelve people at headquarters thirty five hundred square feet and we won't change it.

但这并不能保证未来会发生这样的事情，总有一天游戏会结束。但这确实是我们的目标，我的意思是这就是业务的核心。除此之外，我们不以其他标准来评价自己。我们不会根据总部大楼的大小或员工数量来评判公司。我们在总部有12名员工，整个伯克希尔公司有45000名员工，总部占地3500平方英尺，我们不会改变这一点。

So we will judge ourselves by the performance of the company and that's the only way we'll get paid. But believe me it's a lot harder than it used to be. There's anything way in the back because I want to make sure I'm not missing people back there that I haven't called. Okay then we'll go to the well how about way over there on the aisle. What makes me decide to invest what? One of your investments has reached its full potential as you said earlier that you missed the last part of it.

我们将通过公司业绩来评判自己，这是我们获得报酬的唯一方式。但请相信我，现在比过去要难得多。让我确认后面有没有被我遗漏的人。我看到过道那边有人提问。好的，让我们看看过道那边的人。是什么让我决定投资呢？当您之前提到的某项投资已经达到了它的最大潜力时，我好像错过了最后一部分。

Oh, rich and full potential. Well ideally you buy in business is where you feel that will never happen in terms of. I mean I don't think I don't buy coke with the idea that it's going to be out of gas in ten years you know or fifteen years it. I mean there could be something happen but I would think the chances are almost nil. So what we really want to do is buy businesses that we would be happy to own forever. It's the same way I feel about people buy Berkshire.

哦，丰富且充满潜力。理想情况下，你投资于那些你觉得不会轻易失败的生意。我的意思是，我不会考虑买可乐公司是因为它可能在十年或十五年后没落。我认为这种可能性几乎为零。因此，我们真正想做的是购买那些我们乐意永远持有的企业。我对购买伯克希尔公司的态度也是一样的。

I want people to buy Berkshire to plan the whole of forever. They may not for one reason or another but I want them at the time they buy it to think they are buying a business that they're going to own forever. And I don't say that's the only way to buy things it's just that that's the group I want to have joined me because I don't want to have a changing group all the time. I measure Berkshire by how little activity there is in it.

我希望人们购买伯克希尔的时候是为了长期持有，也就是打算永久持有。虽然由于种种原因，他们可能不会这么做，但我希望在他们购买的时候，认为自己是在买一个会永远拥有的企业。我并不是说这是一种唯一合理的购买方式，只是这是我希望能与我一起走下去的投资者群体，因为我不想频繁更换投资者。我衡量伯克希尔的标准之一就是其交易活动有多少。

If I had a church and I was the preacher and half the congregation left every Sunday I wouldn't say oh this is marvelous because I have all this liquidity among my members. There's terrific turnover you know. I would rather get a church where all the seats are filled you know every Sunday by the same people. We look at the businesses we buy we want to buy something that we're really happy to own virtually forever and we can't find a lot of those.

如果我有一座教堂，并且我是牧师，而每个星期天有一半的会众离开，我不会说这太好了，因为我的会众中有很多流动性。你知道，换人很频繁。我更愿意有一座教堂，每个星期天都由同样的人把座位坐满。我们在选择企业时，也是希望买到那些我们愿意长期持有的企业，但这样的机会并不多。

And back when I started I had way more ideas than money so I was just constantly having to sell what I thought was the least attractive stock in order to buy something that I just discovered that looked even cheaper. But that's not our problem really now and so we hope we're buying businesses that we're just as happy with five years from now as now. And if we ever found some huge acquisition you know then we'd have to sell something maybe to make that acquisition but that would be a very pleasant. Puzzle problem that have we never buy something with a price target in mind. I mean we never buy something at 30 saying if it goes to 40 will sell it or 50 or 60 or 100. We just don't do it that way anymore than when we buy a private business like Sees Candy for 25 million we don't say ourselves if it ever if we ever got an offer 50 million for this business we'd sell that.

当初我开始投资时，我有很多想法，但资金有限，所以我不得不不断出售我认为最没吸引力的股票，以便购买那些我新发现的、看起来更便宜的股票。但这已经不是我们现在面临的问题了，所以我们希望购买的企业能在五年后和现在一样让我们满意。如果我们发现了一个巨大的收购机会，我们可能需要出售一些东西来完成这个收购，但这对我们来说是一个愉快的难题。我们从来不会在购买某项资产时设定价格目标。也就是说，我们不会以30元买入一项资产，只是想着等它涨到40元、50元、60元或100元时就卖掉。就像当我们以2500万购买一家私人企业，比如Sees Candy，我们不会对自己说，如果有人出价5000万，我们就会卖掉它。

That's just not the way to look at the business. The way to look at the businesses is this going to keep producing more and more and more money over time. And the answer to that is yes you don't need to ask any more questions. There is yeah way back there. So what do you think of the same thing with mine? Who's the database and where I think you saw it and similarly the long term capital? And how did you go up and down?

这并不是看待这个生意的正确方式。正确的方式是看这个生意是否会随着时间的推移产生越来越多的利润。答案是肯定的，你不需要再问其他问题。就是这样，从过去到现在都是如此。所以，你对我的想法有什么看法？谁在管理数据库，我觉得你见过。同样的，关于长期资本的问题，你怎么看待它的波动变化？

Well Solomon like I say I went into that because it was a 9% security in 1987 September 1987. The Dow was up 35% that year we sold a lot of stuff and I had a lot of money around it. It looked to me like we were never going to do a chance to do anything. So I took an attractive security form in the business I would never buy the common stock of. And I went in because of that and I think that's generally a mistake. It worked out okay finally on that but it's not what I should have been doing.

好的，所罗门，就像我说的那样，我在1987年9月投资了一个有9%收益率的证券。那年道琼斯指数上涨了35%，我们卖掉了很多东西，我手头有不少资金。当时我觉得似乎再也没有机会采取行动了。所以，我投资了一家我原本不会买其普通股的公司的有吸引力的证券。正因为这个原因，我选择了投资，不过我认为一般来说这不是个好决定。尽管最后效果还不错，但这并不是我应该做的。

I either should have waited in which case I could have bought more Coca-Cola a year later or thereabouts. Or I should have even bought Coke at the prices it was selling at then even though it was selling at a pretty good price at the time. So that was a mistake. I'm long-term capital that's we have learned other businesses that are associated with securities over the years. And I mean one of them is arbitrage. I've done arbitrage for 45 years and grammed it for probably 30 years before that. And that's a business unfortunately I have to be near a phone for and I have to really run out of them or the office myself because it requires being more sort of market attuned.

我本应该等一等，这样的话，我大约在一年后就能以更好的价格买到更多的可口可乐。或者我当时就应该以市场上不错的价格直接买下可口可乐。那是一个错误。我们是长期资本投资者，经过这些年我们从与证券相关的其他业务中学到了很多经验。其中之一就是套利。我做了45年的套利，而在我之前，格雷厄姆可能做了30年。不幸的是，这项业务要求我时刻待在电话旁边，并且需要我亲自管理办公室，因为它需要对市场更敏感。

And I don't want to do that anymore so unless a really big arbitrage situation came along that I understood I won't be doing much of that. But I've probably been in 300 arbitrage situations at least in my life maybe more. And it was a good business, perfectly good business. Long-term capital has a bunch of positions. They got tons of positions but the top 10 are probably 90% of the money that's at risk. And I know something about those 10 positions. I don't know everything about them by a long shot.

我不想再做这种事情了，除非出现一个我能理解的特别大的套利机会，否则我不会再参与太多这种活动。不过，我人生中至少参与过300起套利机会，甚至可能更多。那是一门很好的生意，非常不错的生意。长期资本有很多持仓，其中前10个持仓可能占据了90%的风险资金。我对那10个持仓有所了解，但离全面了解还有很大差距。

But I know enough where I would feel okay at a big discount going in and we would have the staying power to hold it out. We might lose money on something like that. But the odds are with us. That's a game that I understand. There's a few other positions we have that aren't that big because they can't get that big. But they involve, they could involve yield curve relationships or on the run off the run governments or things like that. There are just things you learn over time if you're around securities markets.

但我自认为了解足够多，如果能以大折扣进入市场，我会觉得可以接受，而且我们有能力持有下去。在这种情况下，我们可能会亏钱，但胜算在我们这边。这是一种我理解的游戏。我们的其他一些仓位并不大，因为它们无法变得更大。但这些仓位可能涉及收益率曲线关系，或与新发行和非新发行的政府债券等相关。这些都是你如果在证券市场待久了自然会学到的东西。

They're not the base of our business. Probably on average they've accounted for a half a percentage point of our return a year or three quarters of a percentage point of a year of our return. They're little pluses that you get for actually having just been around a long time and learning a little bit about. First arbitrage, not the first arbitrage I did, but one of the first arbitrage I did involved the company where you they were offering cocoa beans in exchange for their stock.

他们并不是我们业务的基础。平均来说，他们每年大约只占我们回报的0.5%到0.75%。这些只是我们因为长时间坚持并学习到的一些小小的收益。我进行的第一次套利交易并不是涉及这个，但我最初的几次套利之一涉及到一个公司，该公司提供可可豆来换取他们的股票。

That was in 1955. I bought the stock, turned to the stock, got warehouse certificates for cocoa beans and they happened to be a different type they were trading their cocoa change. But there was a basis differential in my favor and I sold them. That's just something that I was around at the time so I learned about. Hasn't that cocoa bean deal since? 40 odd years. I've been waiting for another cocoa bean deal. I haven't seen it. But it's there in my memory if it ever comes along.

那是1955年的事。我买了股票，随后转向股票，得到了一些可可豆的仓库凭证，正好它们是当时交易的另一种类型的可可豆。然而，这个差价对我有利，所以我卖掉了它们。这只是当时我身边的一个机会，于是我学习到了相关知识。自那次可可豆交易以来已经过了40多年。我一直在等待另一次类似的可可豆交易，但至今未见。然而，如果类似的机会再出现，我仍然记得如何处理。

And that long term capital is that on a big scale. Yep. The question is about diversification and I've got to do a answer to that. If you are not a professional investor, if your goal is not to manage money in such a way as you get a significantly better return than the world, then I believe in extreme diversification. I believe 98 or 99% may be more than 99% of people who invest should extensively diversify and not trade. That leads them to an index fund type of decision with very low cost. All they are going to do is own a part of America and they made a decision and only part of America is worthwhile. I don't call it without at all. That is the way they should approach it unless they want to bring an intensity to the game to make a decision and start evaluating businesses.

从长远来看，资本规模是很大的。嗯，问题是关于多样化投资的，我要对此进行回答。如果你不是专业投资者，也不是为了获得比全球市场显著更高的回报来管理资金，那么我建议进行极度多样化投资。我认为，98%或99%甚至超过99%的投资者应该广泛地多样化投资，而不是频繁交易。这会引导他们选择低成本的指数基金。他们要做的只是拥有美国的一部分，这个选择是值得的。我认为这样的方法是合理的，除非他们希望投入更大精力来做出决定并开始评估企业。

But once you are in the business of evaluating businesses and you decide that you are going to bring the effort and intensity and time involved to get that job done, then I think that diversification is a terrible mistake and to any degree. And I've got to ask that question when I was at Suntrust the other day. And if you really know businesses, you probably shouldn't know more than six of them. I mean, if you can identify six wonderful businesses, that is all the diversification you need. And you're going to make a lot of money and I will guarantee you that going into a seventh one is going to, rather than putting more money in your first one, it's got to be a terrible mistake. Very few people have gotten rich on their seventh best idea. But a lot of people have gotten rich on their best idea.

一旦你开始评估企业，并决定投入精力、专注和时间来完成这项工作，我认为分散投资就是一个严重的错误。在前几天我在Suntrust时被问到了这个问题。如果你真正了解企业，你大概不需要了解超过六家企业。换句话说，如果你能发现六家出色的企业，这就是你所需的全部分散。这样你会赚很多钱，我可以保证，进入第七家企业而不是在第一家企业投入更多资金，是一个严重的错误。很少有人是靠他们的第七个最佳主意发财的，但很多人靠他们的最佳主意致富。

So I would say that for anybody working with normal capital who really knows the businesses they've gone into, a sixth is funny. And I'd probably have half of it in what I like the best. I don't diversify personally. All the people I know that have done well, we mentioned Walter Schloss here, and Walter diversifies a lot. He owns a little of everything. I call him Noah. He's got two of everything. Yeah. I differentiate the color of the colors of the world from the Proctor Gamble. Well, Proctor Gamble is a very, very good, does a strong distribution capability. Lots of brand names and everything. But if you ask me, are going to go away for 20 years, to put all my families net worth in one business.

所以我会说，对于那些使用普通资本并真正了解他们所投资业务的人来说，六分之一是有趣的。我可能会把其中一半投入我最喜欢的东西。我个人不分散投资。我认识的所有做得很好的人中，我们提到了沃尔特·施洛斯，他是非常多元化投资的。他持有一点各种不同的东西。我称他为诺亚，他有两份各种东西。是的，我区分世界的色彩与宝洁的色彩。嗯，宝洁是一家非常出色的公司，拥有强大的分销能力，很多品牌和其他东西。但如果你问我，将要离开20年，会把我整个家庭的净资产放在一个企业里吗？

But I would have Proctor Gamble or Coke. Actually, Proctor Gamble is a little more diversified among product line. But I would feel sure of Coke than Proctor Gamble. I wouldn't be unhappy if somebody told me I had to own Proctor Gamble during that 20-year period. I mean, that would be in my top 5% because they are not going to get killed. But I would feel better about the unit growth and the pricing power of a Coke over 20 or 30 years than I would about a Proctor Gamble. Right now, the pricing power might be tough. But you think a billion servings a day. It's an extra penny. $10 million a day. We own 8% of it. That's $800,000 a day for Berkshire Hathaway.

但如果要我选择，我会选宝洁或者可口可乐。其实，宝洁在产品线上的多样化程度更高。不过，我对可口可乐的信心会比宝洁更大。如果有人告诉我，我在未来20年里必须持有宝洁的股票，我也不会不开心。我的意思是，在我的选择中，它绝对算得上前5%的好选择，因为宝洁不会轻易失败。但对于20或30年的长期表现，我对可口可乐的销量增长和定价能力更有信心。虽然现在定价能力可能有些挑战，但你想想看，每天十亿次的饮用量，如果每次只是多收一分钱，那就是每天多赚1000万美元。我们持有其中的8%，这对伯克希尔·哈撒韦来说，每天就是80万美元的收益。

Another penny out of the stuff. Doesn't seem impossible, does it? I mean, it's worth another penny. It doesn't, right now, it's a mistake you're trying to get in most markets. But over time, Coke will make more preserving than it does now. 20 years from now, guarantee it will make more preserving. It will be selling a whole lot more servings. I don't know how many. I don't know how much more, but I know that. PNG's main products. I don't think they have the kind of dominance. And they don't have the kind of unit growth, but they're good businesses. I would not be unhappy if you told me that I had to put my family's net worth in PNG.

再多赚一分钱，不太可能吗？我的意思是，它至少值得再多赚一分钱。现在的情况是，大多数市场上你可能得不到这样的机会，这是个错误。但随着时间推移，像可口可乐这样的公司将会赚更多的钱，尤其是在卖出更多饮料份数上面。这一点在未来20年内是有保证的。我不知道具体会增加多少销售量和利润，但我确信这一点。至于宝洁公司（P&G）的主要产品，我认为它们没有类似的市场主导地位，也没有同样的单位增长率，但它们仍是很好的业务。如果你告诉我必须把我家族的全部资产投在宝洁公司，我也会很满意。

And that was the only stock I could own. I would, you know, I might prefer some other names, but there aren't a hundred other names I would prefer. Yeah. McDonald's, the question is about McDonald's and going away for 20 years. McDonald's has got a lot of things going for it, and particularly abroad again. I mean, their position in abroad in many countries is stronger relatively than here. It's a tougher business over time. People do not want to eat, I'm, the exception of the kids when they're giving away any banking or something.

那是我唯一能拥有的股票。虽然我可能会更喜欢一些其他公司，但这样的公司并不多。关于麦当劳的问题是，如果我消失20年再回来会怎么样。麦当劳有很多优势，特别是在国外 —— 在许多国家的地位比在这里更强。不过，长期来看这是一项艰难的生意。除了儿童愿意去麦当劳领取玩具，很多人并不想经常吃快餐。

People do not want to eat at McDonald's every day. I mean, if people are drinking Coke today, they drink five of them today. They'll probably drink five tomorrow. The fast food business is tougher than that. But if you had to pick one hand to have in the fast food business, which is going to be a huge business world wide, you'd pick McDonald's. I mean, it has the strongest position. It doesn't win taste tests, you know, with adults. I mean, it doesn't very well with children. And it does fine with adults, but I mean, it is not, it's not like it's a clear winner.

人们并不想每天都吃麦当劳。我的意思是，如果今天人们喝可乐，他们可能会喝五瓶。明天他们可能也会喝五瓶。但快餐业没那么简单。不过，如果你要在快餐行业中选一家，那家将成为一个全球性的庞大业务，你会选择麦当劳。因为它在市场上占据着最强的地位。尽管在品尝测试中它并不总是能赢得成年人的青睐，当然它在小孩子中表现不错。对成年人来说，麦当劳还可以，但并不是明显的赢家。

And it's gotten into the game in recent years of being more price promotional, and, you know, you remember the experiment a year ago or so. And so it's gotten more dependent on that rather than just selling the product by itself. I like the product by itself, so I feel better about Gillette if people buy the mock free because they like the mock free than if they got a beanie baby with it, you know, I mean, and so I just think it's fundamentally just stronger product if that's the case. And, and, you know, it probably is. We own, we own a lot of Gillette and, and you can sleep pretty well at night if you think of a couple of billion men with their hair growing under faces. You go to, you know, they're going all night while you sleep, you know.

近年来，这家公司在价格促销方面投入了更多精力，你可能还记得一年前左右的那个实验。他们现在更依赖这种方式，而不是仅仅依靠产品本身来销售。我个人比较喜欢产品本身的质量，所以我对吉列（Gillette）的印象会更好，如果消费者是因为喜欢他们的刮胡刀而购买，而不是因为额外赠送的玩偶之类的东西。我认为这样的话，产品的基础就更扎实。我们持有大量吉列的股份，而且，如果你想到有数十亿的男性每天都需要刮胡子，这种产品需求是持续存在的，你晚上应该可以睡得很安稳。

And women have two legs, I think it's even better. So it's, it's these county sheep. And those are the kind of business. But if you think, you know, what promotion am I going to put out there against Burger King next month? You know, and what if they sign up Disney and I don't get Disney? And, I mean, that is, I like the, I like the products that stand alone, absent promotion or price appeals, although you can build a very good business based on that.

女士们有两条腿，我觉得这甚至更好。所以，就是这些县级别的羊。这就是那些生意类型。但如果你在想，我下个月要推出什么样的促销活动来对抗汉堡王呢？如果他们与迪士尼签约，而我没有签约迪士尼呢？我的意思是，我喜欢那些即使没有促销或价格吸引力也能独立存在的产品，尽管你也可以基于促销和价格建立一个非常好的生意。

And McDonald's is a terrific business. It's not as good a business as, as cold, but that, you know, they're really hard or hardly any. It's a very good business. And if you bet on one company in that field aside from Dairy Queen, of course, we bought Dairy Queen here a while back this way, plugging it shamelessly here.

麦当劳是一家非常出色的企业。虽然它不如冰淇淋行业那么好，但那是因为冰淇淋行业几乎没有竞争。这的确是一个非常不错的企业。如果要在这个领域选择一家企业进行投资，我会选择麦当劳，当然，除了冰雪皇后（Dairy Queen），因为我们之前收购了冰雪皇后，所以在这里毫不避讳地推荐一下。

Yeah, way back there. What do I think of what? The electric utility industry? Well, I've thought about that a lot because you can put big money in it. And, and I've even thought of buying entire businesses. There's a fellow in Omaha, actually, that's done a little bit through Cal energy. But I don't quite understand the game in terms of how it's going to develop with the regulation. I mean, it's, it's got, I can see how it destroys a lot of value for the high cost producer.

好的，很久以前的事了。我对电力行业怎么看？嗯，我对此考虑了很多，因为可以在这个行业投入大量资金。我甚至想过收购整个企业。事实上，奥马哈有个人通过Cal Energy做了一些这样的事。不过，我不太理解这个行业的走向，尤其是在监管方面的发展。我能看出，对于高成本生产商来说，这个行业似乎会损失很多价值。

You know, once they're not protected by monopoly territory. And I don't for sure see how, who benefits and how much. I mean, obviously the guy was very low cost power. Some guys got hydro power, you know, a two cents a kilowatt or something like that. It's got a huge advantage, but how much of that he's going to get to keep and everything or how extensively he can, he can send that outside his natural territory. I haven't been able to figure that out with a, so that I really think I know what the industry is going to look like in 10 years.

你知道，一旦他们不再受垄断地区的保护。我不太确定谁会受益以及受益多少。显然，有些人手里有非常低成本的电力，比如水力发电，每千瓦时只要两分钱左右，这确实是个巨大的优势。但他能保留多少这样的优势，以及他能在多大程度上将这些电力销往他所在地区以外的地方，我一直没能弄明白。所以，我真的不确定这个行业在十年后会是什么样子。

But it is something I think about and if I ever develop any insights, you know, the call for action, I'll, you know, I will act on it. But it because I think I can understand the attractiveness of the product and it's all that all the aspects of certainty of, of user need and, and, and the fact that it's a bargain and all of that. I understand I just don't understand who's going to make the money in 10 years from now on. And that keeps me away.

但这是我时常思考的问题，如果我能发现任何见解或行动的时机，我会立刻付诸行动。这是因为我觉得我能理解这个产品的吸引力，以及用户需求的确定性，还有它的物超所值。我明白这些，但我不明白十年后谁会从中获利。这让我感到犹豫。

Yeah. Do you think that the market is capable of the large cap to chip stocks over small caps? The question is large caps versus small caps and why large caps over one. I don't know the answer to that. We don't think we don't we don't care whether somebody's large cap giant cap, middle cap, small cap, micro cap, and doesn't make any difference.

好的。你觉得股市是否会偏向大盘股而不是小盘股吗？问题是大盘股与小盘股的对比，以及为什么偏向大盘股。我不知道这个问题的答案。我们不认为大盘、中盘、小盘、微盘有什么区别，对我们来说，这些大小并不重要。

I mean, the only question is, is can we understand the business? Do we like the people running it and does itself replace the attractive from our mic? My personal standpoint, running Berkshire now because we've got pro forma for Jen Rave. I don't know what we have maybe 75 or 80 billion dollars to invest in. I only want to invest in about five things. So I'm really limited to very big companies.

我的意思是，唯一的问题是，我们能理解这个业务吗？我们喜欢管理这个公司的团队吗？这个业务本身能否替代我们在稳妥投资选项中的吸引力？从我的个人观点来说，现在管理伯克希尔公司，我们大概有750亿到800亿美元可供投资。我只想投资五个左右的项目，所以我实际上只能选择那些非常大的公司。

But if I were investing a hundred thousand dollars, I wouldn't care whether something was large cap or small cap for anything. I would just look for businesses I understood.

但如果我要投资十万美元，我不会在意某个公司是大盘股还是小盘股。我只会关注那些我能理解的业务。

Now, I think that on balance large cap companies as businesses have done extraordinarily well the last ten years and way better than people anticipated they would do. I mean, you really have American business earning close to 20% on equity and that's something nobody dreamed of and that's being produced by very large companies and aggregates.

我认为，总体来看，大型企业在过去十年中表现极为出色，远超人们的预期。举个例子，美国大型企业的股本回报率接近20%，这是过去没人能想到的成就，而且这些成绩是由非常大的公司和整体经济表现推动的。

I mean, I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that

我的意思是，我认为这就是原因。

because I think that's why I am. I haven't started be کی think that I can do that if I don't.速 that if I're trying to deploy a couple of stories series about talking about something not really so, really Teisha, Justice, and the parting by Ben Banexcito was it was really pretty nice and I don't think that's what I used to do today, and I did nothingmontress. the first thing you know, so if you don't—my point of view would be depends on how it looks, how you look for things that are going to beAH, and what are real estate is primarily private, without any break. Securitization of real estate and what is your insight into the industry?

因为我觉得那就是我的原因。我没有开始，因为我认为如果不尝试的话，我可能无法做到。有时我试图发表一些关于某个话题的系列故事，谈论的内容并不是特别明确，真的很难理解。Ben Banexcito写的《Teisha, Justice, and the Parting》真的很不错，这不是我今天习惯做的事情，我也没有做任何令人敬畏的事情。我的意思是，一切取决于你的看法，以及你如何看待即将发生的事情。房地产主要是私有的，没有中断。房地产的证券化是什么？你对这个行业有什么见解？

Yeah, you know, I'm really saying, I've been in securitization, enormous securitization of the debt to a real estate. And that is one of the items right now that is really clogging up the capital markets. I mean, the mortgage-backed securities are, they're just not moving. In commercial mortgage-back, not residential mortgage-backed. So that's, but I think you're directing your question at equities, probably. And the equities, if you leave out, the corporate form has been a lousy way to own equities. I mean, you've interjected a corporate income tax into something that people individually have been able to own with a single tax. And by having the normal corporate form, you got a double taxation in there.

好的，我的意思是，我曾参与过巨大的房地产债务证券化。现在，这确实是阻碍资本市场的因素之一。就是说，抵押贷款支持证券，它们的流动性不佳。我指的是商业抵押贷款支持证券，而不是住宅抵押贷款支持证券。但我想你问的问题可能是关于股票的。如果不考虑企业形式，股票这种方式持有就不太理想。因为你在其中增加了公司所得税，而个人持有时只需缴纳单一税款。而采用了普通的公司形式，你就面临双重征税的问题。

You really don't need with a estate. And it takes away too much of the return. Reeds have an effect created a conduit so that you don't get the double taxation. But they also generally have fairly high operating expenses. And if you get real estate, let's just say you can buy fairly simple types of real estate, on an 8% yield, or thereabouts. And you take away maybe close to one or one, maybe even one and a half percent by the time you come stock options and everything. It's not a terribly attractive way, don't it? Maybe the only way a guy with $1,000 or $5,000 can own it. But if you have $10 million, you're better off owning the real estate properties yourself and seeking some intermediary in between that will get a sizable piece of the return for himself. So we have found very little in that field.

您真的不需要进行房地产投资。房地产会占用过多的回报。而房地产投资信托基金（REITs）虽然能够避免双重征税，但通常运营成本相对较高。如果您购买房地产，比如说，您可以以大约8%的收益率购买一些相对简单的房地产类型，而股票期权等可能会让您损失一到一个半百分点的回报。这并不是一个非常有吸引力的方式。也许对于只有1000美元或5000美元的人来说，这是唯一可以拥有房地产的方式。但如果您拥有1000万美元，自己持有房地产会更有利，而不是通过一些中介机构，让他们占据相当大的一部分回报。因此，我们在这方面的投资机会非常有限。

You'll see an announcement in the next couple of weeks that may be live, whatever. Telling you're on one thing. So I want you to think I was double crossing you up here, but generally speaking, we've seen very, very little in that field that gets us excited. There are people, sometimes get very confused about, they'll look at some huge land company. I'll take one that's, that won't evoke any emotional reactions on the part of anybody. Like Texas Pacific Land Trust, which has been around over 100 years, and got a couple of million acres in Texas. And they'll take the, they'll sell 1% of their land every year and they'll take that as a pie and everything and come up with some huge value compared to the market value.

在接下来的几周内，你会看到一个公告，可能会是一个直播或者其他内容。这个公告会告诉你一些事情。所以我希望你不要以为我在这里两面三刀，但总的来说，我们在这个领域几乎没有看到什么让我们兴奋的东西。有时候人们会非常困惑，他们会看到某个大型土地公司，比如说一个不会引起任何情绪反应的例子，比如德克萨斯太平洋土地信托，这家公司已经成立超过100年，并在德克萨斯拥有几百万英亩的土地。他们每年会卖掉1%的土地，把它当成一个整体来看，相信它的价值会比市场价值要高很多。

But that's nonsense if you really own the property. I mean, you can't move. You can't move 50% of the properties or 20% of the properties. It's way worse than a no-look with stock. So you get these, I think you get some very silly valuations placed on a lot of real estate companies by people that don't really understand what it's like to own one and try to move large quantities of property. It reads the behave terribly in the market this year, as you know. And it's not at all inconceivable. They would become a class that would get so unpopular that they would sell a significant discounts from what you could sell the properties for. And they could, they could get interesting as the class then.

但如果你真的拥有这些物业，这种说法就是无稽之谈。我的意思是，你不能够移动这些物业。你不可能搬走50%或者20%的物业。这比股票的流动性要差得多。很多对房地产公司进行估值的人实际上并不了解拥有和处理大量物业的难处，因而做出了一些很荒谬的估价。正如你所知，今年房地产公司的市场表现糟糕透了。而且，完全有可能它们会变得不受欢迎，以至于按低于实际物业价值的价格现象出售。然而，从那时起，它们作为一个类别可能会变得有趣。

And then the question is whether the management would fight you in that process because they would be giving up their income stream for managing things and their interests might run counter to the shareholders on that. I've always wondered about the REITs that say, you know, our assets are so wonderful and they're so cheap and then they got themselves stock. I mean, there's a contradiction in that. If they say our stock at 28 is very cheap and then they sell a lot of stock at 28 less than underwriting commission, doesn't, you know, they're either, there's a disconnect there. And so, but it's a feel we look at. I mean, Charlie and I can understand real estate. And we would be open for very good transactions periodically.

然后问题在于管理层是否会在这个过程中与你对抗，因为他们将失去管理事务所带来的收入流，而他们的利益可能与股东产生冲突。我一直对那些说他们的资产既好又便宜的房地产投资信托公司感到困惑，然后他们卖掉自己的股票。我觉得这其中有矛盾。如果他们说每股28美元的股票非常便宜，然后以扣除承销佣金后的价格大量出售股票，那么这中间有脱节之处。不过这个领域我们会关注。查理和我能理解房地产，我们会不时关注非常好的交易机会。

And if there was a long-term capital management situation and translated to real estate, you know, we would be open to that trouble to so many other people would be too that it would be unlikely to go at a price that would really get us excited. Way back there. Let us stand in your theory that sort of a down market is good for net saver. You can sort of give us your thoughts as to where the market feels like it's down with trend and just all the rough and the loss of the hand robbers.

如果有一个类似长期资本管理的问题发生在房地产领域，大家都卷入其中，就会造成麻烦，因此我们不太可能以一个让我们兴奋的价格进入市场。这个情况让我们想起你的理论，即市场低迷对净储蓄者是有利的。你能不能谈谈你对当前市场趋势的看法，以及市场似乎处于低谷状态的原因，还有各种动荡和损失的影响。

Well, yeah, I've got no idea where the market's going to go. I prefer it going down, but I haven't, you know, my preferences have nothing to do with it. The market knows nothing about my feelings. That's one of the first things you have to learn with a stock. You buy 100 shares of general motor. Now, all of a sudden you have this feeling about general motors. I mean, if it goes down, you may be mad at it and you may say, well, if it's just up to what I paid for, you know, my life will be wonderful again. Or if it goes up, you may say, how smart you were and how you and general motors have this love affair in them. You've got all these feelings. Stock doesn't know you on it. Stock just sits there. It doesn't care what you paid. It doesn't care that you're older or anything. So any feeling I have about the market is not reciprocated.

嗯，是的，我完全不知道市场会怎么走。我更希望市场下跌，但实际上，我的喜好和市场无关。市场对我的感受一无所知。这是你投资股票时首先要学会的事情之一。假设你买了100股通用汽车的股票，结果你突然对通用汽车有了种种感受。如果股价下跌，你可能会对此感到生气，并想，如果股价回到我买入的价格，我的生活就会再次美好了。相反，如果股价上涨，你可能会觉得自己非常聪明，甚至觉得自己和通用汽车有某种特殊的关系。你会有很多这样的感觉。但事实上，股票并不认识你。股票只是一种资产，它不在乎你付了多少，也不在乎你的年龄。所以，无论我对市场有什么感觉，市场都不会回应。

I mean, it is the old one. Yeah. Yeah. It is very cold shoulder we're talking about here. And anybody that is going to be in that set of, probably everybody in this room is more likely to be a net buyer of stocks over the next 10 years and they are in that seller. So every one of you should prefer lower prices. I mean, if you're going to be a net eater of hamburger in the next 10 years, you want hamburger to get on unless you're a cattle producer. And if you're going to be a buyer of Coca-Cola and you don't own Coke stock, you hope Coke to the price of Coke goes down. I mean, you're looking for it to be on sale this weekend at your supermarket. You want it to be down on the weekends, not up on the weekends when you're going to tend the supermarket. Your stock exchange is a big supermarket of companies. And you're going to be buying stocks. What do you want to have happen? You want those stocks to go down, way down.

这段话的大意是：我指的是那个老的观点。是的，是的。我们在说的是一个冷淡的态度。在座的各位，可能大家在未来十年中都更可能成为股票的净买家而不是卖家。所以你们每个人都应该希望股票价格更低。就像如果你在未来十年中会成为一个汉堡消耗者，你当然希望汉堡降价，除非你是个养牛户。如果你想买可口可乐但是没有持有可乐的股票，你当然希望可乐的价格下降。就像你去超市时，希望看到商品在打折一样。你的股票交易所就像一个大型公司的超市，而你将在其中买入股票。你希望发生什么？你当然希望这些股票下跌，大幅下跌。

And you know, you will make better buys then. And later on, 20 years from now, 30 years from now when you're in a period when you're dissipating or when your air is dissipating for you, to your bought. I mean, then you may care about higher prices. But I find people, that was one of the, there's a chapter eight in Ben Graham's Intelligent Fester about the attitude towards stock market fluctuation. And that and the chapter 20 on the margin of safety are the two most important essays ever written on investing as far as I'm concerned. Because when I read chapter eight, when I was 19, I figured, you know, I mean, what I just figured out what I just said, but it's obvious. I didn't figure it out myself though. It was, it was exciting to me. I've probably gone another hundred years if I hadn't written. Still thought it was good when my stocks were going up.

你知道吗，未来你会做出更好的购买决策。20年或30年后，当你处于一个消耗的阶段时，你可能会在意更高的价格。但我发现人们常常忽略这一点。关于股票市场波动的态度，本·格雷厄姆在《聪明的投资者》中的第八章有详细论述。在我看来，这一章和关于安全边际的第二十章是投资领域中最重要的两篇文章。当我19岁读到第八章的时候，我领悟到了这些道理，这对我来说是显而易见的，但其实这些道理不是我自己总结出来的，对我来说却很激动人心。如果我没读到这些内容，我可能要花上百年的时间才能领悟这些道理。在股票上涨的时候，我仍然觉得这些道理很好。

Now, we want, we want things to go down. But I have no idea what the stock market's going to do. I never do, never will. It's not something that I think about at all. When it goes down, I feel, I look harder at what I might buy that day. Because I know there's more likely to be some merchandise there that I can use my money effectively. OK, Warren, we'll take one more question from the audience. OK, I'll let you pick who gets it. You can be the guy. Yeah. OK. Thank you. One second. One second. All right, back there. OK. If you leave your game, starting your life again, then what would you like to do with the world to have your life?

现在，我们希望，希望市场下跌。但是我完全不知道股市会怎么走。我从来不知道，也永远不会知道。这不是我会去考虑的事情。市场下跌时，我会更加认真地考虑那天可以买些什么。因为我知道有可能会有一些商品可以让我更有效地使用资金。好的，沃伦，我们再接受来自观众的一个问题。好的，我让你选谁来提问。你来当决定的人。好的，谢谢。一秒钟。一秒钟。好，后面那位。如果你重新开始人生，你希望如何利用人生去影响这个世界？

Yeah, I would say, and this is going to sound disgusting. The question is, what would I do if I were going to live over again and have a happier life? Well, I don't think I might do a selected gene pool where people lived to be 120 or something that I came from. But I've been extraordinarily lucky. I mean, I use this example. I'll take a minute or two because I think it's worth thinking about a little bit. Let's just assume that it was 24 hours before you were born. And a genie came to you. And he said, he said, herb. You look very promising. And I've got a big problem. I've got to design the world in which you're going to live. And he said, I've decided hell with it. It's too tough.

当然，这听起来可能有点恶心。问题是，如果我能够重新生活并过上更幸福的生活，我会怎么做？我想我不会选择一个基因库，来自那里的人可以活到120岁或更长。但我实在是太幸运了。我用这个例子来说明，我认为值得花一点时间来思考一下。假设你出生前的24小时，有一个精灵来找你。他说：“嘿，你看起来很有潜力。我有个大问题，我需要设计一个你将生活的世界。”然后他说：“算了吧，这太难了。”

You designed it. So you've got 24 hours. You figure out what the social rules should be, the economic rules, the governmental rules. And you're going to live under those. And your kids are going to live under. Their kids are going to live under. And you say, I can design anything. And genie said, yeah, you can do it. And you say, well, there must be a catch. He says, well, there is a catch. You don't know whether you're going to be born black or white, rich or poor, male or female, infirm or able body, brighter, retarded. All you know is you're going to take one ball out of a barrel that's got 5.8 billion. You're going to participate in what I call the Ovarian Model. You're going to get one ball out of there.

你设计了这个系统。所以你有24小时来决定社会规则、经济规则和政府规则。这些规则将会影响你自己、你的孩子和你的子孙后代的生活。你说：“我可以设计任何东西。”而精灵回答：“是的，你可以做到。”然后你又问：“那么一定有什么条件限制吧。”精灵说：“确实有一个限制，那就是：你不知道自己的出身。你可能是黑人或白人，富人或穷人，男性或女性，健康或患病，聪明或迟钝。你所知道的只是，你将在一个装有58亿个球的桶里抽取一个球。这就像我所说的 '卵巢模式'，你将从中抽取一个属于你的球。”

And that is the most important things that are going to happen to you in your life. Because that is going to control whether you're born here in Afghanistan or whether you're born with IQ 130 or an IQ of 70. It's going to determine a whole lot. And you're going to go out of the world, and you're going to have that ball. What kind of a world do you want it to design? Well, I think that's a good way to look at social questions. Because not knowing which ball you're going to hit, you're going to want a ball that you're going to want a system, design a system that's going to produce lots of goods and services. Because you're going to want people on balance to live well. And you're going to want it that produces more and more. So your kids live better than you do. And your grandchildren are better than the kids. But you're also going to want a system that if it does produce lots of goods and services, does not leave behind a person that accidentally got the wrong ball and is not well-wired for this particular system.

这些是你生命中会发生的最重要的事情。因为它会决定你是出生在阿富汗，还是拥有130的智商或是70的智商。它将决定许多事情。你会走向世界，拿到属于你的那颗球。你想要设计一个怎样的世界呢？我认为这是考虑社会问题的一个好方法。因为你不知道自己会拿到哪颗球，你会希望一个系统，可以生产许多的商品和服务。因为你希望人们能够生活得好，并且希望它能生产越来越多，让你的孩子比你过得好，你的孙辈能比你的孩子过得更好。但你也希望这个系统即便在生产大量商品和服务时，不会让那些意外拿到错误球且在这个系统中表现不佳的人被抛在后面。

See, I'm ideally wired for the system I fell into here. I mean, I came out and I've got something that enables me to allocate capital. Nothing so wonderful about that. If all of us were stranded on the Desert Island, we all landed there. We're never going to get off of it. The most valuable person would be the one that could raise the most rice over time. And I could say, why can't I allocate capital? How about paying me a bill? And you wouldn't get very excited about that. So I am in the right place. But Gates says, if I've been born a few million years ago, I've been some animals lunch. He says you can't run very fast. You can't climb trees. You're not doing anything. Just been chewed up in the first day. So he says, you're lucky. You're born today. And I am.

你看，我非常适合我现在所处的这个体系。我是说，我生来就有一种能力，可以分配资金。没什么了不起的。如果所有人都被困在一个荒岛上，谁也不能离开，那个能长时间种出最多大米的人才是最有价值的。而我若是说，我会分配资金，要不你们付我账单，你们绝对不会觉得有多兴奋。所以我现在的确是在一个合适的地方。但是盖茨说，如果我出生在几百万年前，我早就变成动物的午餐了。他说，你跑不快，也不会爬树，根本不会干任何事，第一天就会被吃掉。所以他说，你很幸运生在今天。我也是。

But the question, getting back, one question you can ask yourself incidentally, here is this barrel with 5.8 billion balls. Everybody in the world. If you could put your ball back. And then they took out at random 100 other balls. And you had to pick one of those. Would you put your ball back in? Now, those 100 balls that you're going to get out, roughly five of them will be American. So there's 95 versus 5. So you only have five balls. If you want to be in this country, you only have five balls now left. Half of them are going to be women. Half of them are going to be men. I'll let you all decide how you vote on that one. Half of them are going to be below average intelligence. Half are going to be above. You want to put your ball back? Most of you, I think, will not want to put that ball back to get 100.

但是，回到这个问题上，你可以问自己一个问题：这里有一个装着58亿个球的桶，代表世界上的每一个人。如果你可以把你的球放回去，然后随机抽出另外100个球，并且你必须从中选择一个球。你会选择把你的球放回去吗？在这些抽出的100个球中，大约有5个是美国人。也就是说，有95个不是美国人，只有5个是。如果你想待在这个国家，现在你只能从这5个球中选择。再者，其中一半是女性，一半是男性；再者，一半智力低于平均水平，一半高于平均水平。对此，你要怎么选，就看你自己了。你会想把你的球放回去吗？我想，大多数人可能不愿意把球放回去抽那100个中的一个。

So what you're saying is I'm in the luckiest 1% of the world right now. Sitting in this room, top 1% of the world. Well, that's the way I feel. And I've been lucky to be born where I was because it was 50 to 1 against me in the United States when I was born. Lucky with parents, lucky with all kinds of things, then lucky to be wired in a way that in a market economy pays off like crazy for me. Doesn't pay off for somebody. It's absolutely as good a citizen as I am. Leading Boy Scout troops, teaching Sunday school, whatever, raising fine families. But it just doesn't happen to be wired in the same way I am. So I've been extremely lucky.

所以你的意思是，我现在在世界上最幸运的1%的人之中。坐在这个房间里，我属于世界的前1%。嗯，我确实是这么觉得的。我很幸运能出生在我出生的地方，因为在我出生时，美国的机会是50比1。我有幸运的父母，各种事情都很幸运，还幸运地拥有适合市场经济的思维模式，这对我来说回报极大。但并不是每个人都有这样的回报。有些人可能是优秀的公民，比如带领童子军、教主日学校，或者养育优秀的家庭。但他们并不是像我一样有这种适应市场经济的思维方式。所以，我真的非常幸运。

So I would like to be lucky again. And if I'm lucky, then the way to do it is to play out that game and do something and enjoy all your life and be associated with people you like. I only work with people I like. I don't, if I could make $100 million by buying a business with some guy that caused my stomach to turn, I'd say no. Because I say that's just like marrying for money, which probably isn't a very good idea in any circumstances. But if you're already rich, it's crazy, right? I am not going to marry for money. So I would really do almost exactly what I've done except I don't want to get a bought the US Air. Thanks.

所以我想再次幸运。如果我幸运，那么做到这一点的方法就是投入那场比赛，做一些事情，享受你的一生，并与自己喜欢的人交往。我只与我喜欢的人一起工作。如果让我通过和一个让我感到不舒服的人合作来赚一亿美元，我会拒绝。因为那就像为了钱而结婚，这在任何情况下都可能不是一个好主意。而且如果你已经很富有，那就更不可理喻了，对吧？我不会为了钱结婚。所以我会继续做我一直在做的事情，只是我不想买下美国航空。谢谢。