2008 年 Ivey MBA/HBA 学生问答

2008-03-31 · 市场、估值、职业与人生选择 · 原文约 6467 词
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沃伦·巴菲特先生与乔治·阿萨纳萨科斯博士、毅伟商学院 MBA 及 HBA 学生的座谈 内布拉斯加州奥马哈,2008 年 3 月 31 日,上午 10:00 — 中午 12:00

A Discussion of Mr. Warren Buffett with Dr. George Athanassakos and Ivey MBA and HBA students Omaha, NB, March 31, 2008, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

提问:您对中国股市有什么看法?

Question: What are your thoughts about the Chinese Stock market?

巴菲特:

Buffett:

中国股市?我不知道股市会怎么走。我在中国的时候,他们连珠炮似的追着我问市场的问题,当然还有那些 A 股,包括当时正在中国上市的中国石油。中国石油和其他一些股票在中国境内的交易价格是境外的两倍(那时中国人还不被允许购买港股或美股)。这确实极为反常。如果你事先知道这些限制会打破,在中国做空这些股票、同时在全球其他地方买入,会是一笔绝好的交易。但中国股市有 12 亿人正开始意识到股市的存在,并怀有投资冲动或赌博冲动。我们都知道,炒股在中国变得异常狂热。中国石油一度按中国市场的股价计算,是全球市值最高的公司,市值超过 1 万亿美元,而当时埃克森美孚才值 5000 亿美元。这相当于中国石油的市值比全球最大的公司还大一倍。我完全说不出为什么会这样,也说不出这么多相对入市不久的人为何对股票如此兴奋。但你终究知道,买进东西最终必须立足于你付出的价格能换来相应的价值。这种理念在中国这样的市场似乎已变得无关紧要。20 年前科威特也出现过类似的情形。当一个社会整体,一个富裕的社会(当然比 15 年前要富得多),面前敞开了一个巨大的市场,我不知道人们是会变得更友善还是更疯狂。这不是我的游戏。我的游戏很简单:用 50 美分买进价值 1 美元的东西。然后,如果他们朝着对我有利的方向疯,那能帮到我;如果他们朝另一个方向疯,我就继续买得更多。我的职责就是利用市场的疯狂。这要追溯到本杰明·格雷厄姆《聪明的投资者》第八章。如果你打算基于价值做投资,同时有一个合伙人(我们姑且叫他“市场先生”)——假设你们各拥有一半麦当劳摊位。每天他都会报一个价,要么想……

The Chinese stock market? I don’t know what markets are going to do. When I was over in China they were bombarding me with questions about the market and of course you have these A shares, including Petro China, which was going public in China. Petro China and others were trading at twice the price within China (at that time Chinese people were not permitted to buy shares in Hong Kong or in the United States) than outside China. This was really extraordinary. If you knew these restrictions were going to break down it would have been great to short the stocks in China and buy them elsewhere around the world. But the Chinese stock market has 1.2 billion people waking up to the stock markets and having an investing or gambling urge. The stock market was becoming wildly popular as we know in China. Petro China at one time, based on the Chinese prices, was the most valuable company in the world, and was selling for over 1 trillion dollars, whereas Exxon was only worth 500 billion. This made Petro China twice as valuable as the largest company in the world. I have no idea why and where that many people were relatively new to the market and were very excited about stocks. You do know in the end you have to buy things on a basis of when you get a value for what you pay. This seemed to lose relevance in a market like China. They had a situation like that in Kuwait 20 years ago. When a whole society, and a rich society, (certainly far richer than 15 years ago), a huge market opened up for them. I have no idea whether the people get friendlier or crazier. That is not my game. My game is simply to buy something worth a dollar for 50 cents. Then if they go crazy in the right direction it helps me and if they go crazy in the other direction I just buy more. My job is to take advantage of craziness. And that goes back to Ben Graham’s Intelligent Investor chapter 8. If you are going to invest based on value with a partner (lets say Mr. Market) - let’s say you each own half of a McDonalds stand. Every day he quotes a price at which he either wants to

要么他买断我,要么他把他的股份卖给我。要是听到什么坏传闻,他就会报个低价,那我就买进。其他日子,要是他因为哪家汉堡王着了火、看到那里排起了长队就兴奋起来,决定报个高价,那我就卖出。如果要跟这样的合伙人打交道,我该找个什么样的合伙人?我想要个疯子。他越蠢,我赚得就越好。我不想要那种冷静、理性、沉稳的合伙人。我想要个情绪大起大落的人——一个躁郁症患者。基本上,这就是你在股市里时不时会碰到的。只要你明白他是来为你服务的,而不是来指导你的,你就能赚大钱。你不能听市场先生的话,还觉得他肯定是对的。你听他说话,只能放在这样的背景下:这家伙跑偏得离谱的时候,我就狠狠赚他一笔。股市基本上就是这么回事。在中国,你没法判断市场会极端到什么程度。你不知道,我也不知道明天、后天、下个月或明年市场会怎么走。但我确实知道,最终股票往往会按照它们应有的价值成交——至少是在其价值范围内。期间它们会四处乱窜——但最终还是会回归真实价值。

buy me out or sell me his interest. If he hears a bad rumour he low-balls it, so I buy. Other days he is all excited about some Burger King burning down and seeing some line ups and decides to give a high offer, so I sell. If I’m going to have a partner like that what kind of partner do I want? I want a psycho. The stupider he gets the better I am going to do. I don’t want some cool, calm rational partner. I want somebody with huge ups and downs - a manic depressive. Basically that’s what you get in the stock market some times. As long as you realize he is there to serve you, and not to instruct you, you can make a lot of money. You can’t listen to Mr. Market and think he must be right. Only listen to what he says in the context of: when this guy gets way out of line I am going to wack him. And basically that’s what you get in the stock market. In China you can’t tell how far the markets will go to extremes. You can’t tell that, I have no idea where the markets are going to go tomorrow or the next day or the next month or the next year. I do know that in the end stocks tend to sell for what they are worth. At least in the range of what they are worth. They go all over the place in between - but tend to true value in the end.

提问:如果不投入很多钱,怎么才能赚到钱?筹钱很难吗?

Question: How can you make money without investing a lot of money? Is it hard to raise money?

巴菲特:

Buffett:

是的,这个嘛,我没去筹资。我 11 岁时买了人生第一只股票,买了 3 股城市服务公司优先股。我花了 5 年时间攒下 120 美元。我从 6 岁开始存钱,一直存到 11 岁,到那时才攒够了买 3 股股票的钱。在那之前我已经读过很多投资方面的书,并且不断买卖股票。我并没有锚定在某种投资哲学上,比如,爱德华兹和麦吉写过一本关于技术分析的名著,我对那本书里的统计数字就非常感兴趣。我琢磨过许多不同的投资方法。到 20 岁从学校毕业时,我已经靠自己赚到并存下了 9800 美元。我第一只重仓买入的股票(投入了我当时净资产的四分之三),就是现在叫 GEICO 的那家公司。那家公司让我极其兴奋。我就是不停地找,而且从不为此焦虑——我一直觉得这事很好玩,到现在也这样。不管资金量小还是大,你都能从中找到乐趣,我就是喜欢玩这个游戏。我并不是非得富起来才能过上更好的生活,也不是非得这样我的孩子才能过得更好。1954 年,我为本杰明·格雷厄姆工作。1956 年我回到奥马哈,那时手里大约有 17.5 万美元,当时我觉得这点钱已经够我用一辈子了。我回来大概两个月后,有 7 个投资人不太满意。他们信不过像我这么年轻的人靠直觉做判断。一个 21 岁的年轻人能懂什么资金管理?

Yes, well I didn’t raise money. I bought my first stock when I was 11. I bought 3 shares of Citi Service Preferred. I spent 5 years saving $120 bucks. I saved money from when I was 6 until I was 11 and by that time I had enough money to buy 3 shares of a stock. I read many books about investing by that point. And I kept buying and selling stocks. I wasn’t anchored in any philosophy, for example there was a famous book by Edwards and McGee on technical analysis. I was very interested by the statistics in that book. I thought about many different ways of investing. By the time I was out of school at 20 years old I had made and saved $9,800 dollars. The first stock I bought where I invested heavily (I had invested three quarters of my net worth) is a stock now called Geico. I got very excited about that company. I just kept looking and I didn’t worry (I was always having fun - even now). You can have fun working with small sums or big sums - I like playing the game. I didn’t have to get rich in order to have a better life or for my kids to have a better life. In 1954 I went to work for Benjamin Graham. In 1956 I came back and had about $175,000, at that time I though it was enough to live the rest of my life. About 2 months after I got back my 7 investors were not happy. They would not trust the gut instinct of someone as young as I. What does a 21 year old know about managing money?

当时有一个障碍,就是人们想知道自己持有哪些股票。我对那七个人说,我们可以成立一个合伙公司,资金会以完全相同的方式运作,只是他们不会知道自己手里持有什么。我会把这笔钱当作自己的钱来打理。除非他们赚了钱,否则我不拿报酬。这就是我选择的形式。我当时以为这事就到此为止了。结果后来不断有人找上门来。到了 1961 年,我已经有十一个合伙公司了。我没有员工,就在自己卧室里办公。所有支票都是我来开,所以每一张……

It was an inhibiting factor for people to know what they own. I said to these 7 people we would form a partnership and the money would flow in the exact same way except they wouldn’t know what they owned. I would treat the money as if it were my own. I wouldn’t get paid unless they did well. That’s the form I elected. And then I thought that was the end of it. And then people started coming along. By 1961 I had 11 partnerships. I had no employees and worked out of my bedroom. I wrote all the cheques so every

那时候我要买一只股票,得开 11 张支票,分到 11 份里去,还得报 11 份税单。1962 年我们创办了公司。这就是它的历史。但这段历史不是什么宏伟蓝图。历史就是每天做你喜欢做的事,琢磨着别人愿不愿意跟你一起干,以及用什么方式去做最合逻辑。我们现在经营伯克希尔·哈撒韦也是这个路子。伯克希尔·哈撒韦就是以合伙制的方式在运营。

time I would buy a stock I would have to write 11 cheques to split it up into 11. I had to file 11 tax returns. In 1962 we started the company. That is the history of it. But the history is not of a master plan. The history is doing what you like to do every day and figuring out if people want to do it with you, what is the most logical way to do it. And that is the way we run Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire Hathaway is run as a partnership.

我拿几十亿、几百亿美元能做什么?我不觉得有六套带草坪维护工的豪宅有什么可炫耀的;也不觉得车库里停二十辆车有什么了不起。不妨想想看,你现在过的日子比约翰·D·洛克菲勒还好。你想看超级碗,打开电视就能看。他当年要想看世界大赛,得在路上折腾很久才能到现场,而且还没有空调之类的东西。问题的关键不在发财,而在于找到一项你乐在其中的游戏,过着正常人的生活。最要紧的是找个合适的配偶。要是在这件事上选错了,往后的日子里你会后悔,会伴随着很多痛苦;可要是找对了人,那真是再好不过了。找配偶要看重哪些品质?幽默感、相貌、品格、头脑,要么干脆就找个对你期望不高的人。你这一生要做的决定里,最重要的就是这一个。这个决定做对了,我保证你的人生会有个好结果。

What can I possibly do with billions and billions of dollars? I don’t see the fuss in having 6 houses with greenskeepers; I don’t see the fuss in having 20 cars in the garage. If you think about it you are living better than John D. Rockefeller. If you want to watch the Super Bowl you just turn on the TV and watch it. If he wanted to see the World Series it would take him a long time to get there, and he would not have air conditioning and that type of thing. The problem is not getting rich, but finding a game you enjoy and living a normal life. The most important thing is finding the right spouse. If you make the wrong decision on that you will regret it, there is a lot of pain involved, but if you have the right spouse it is just wonderful. What qualities do you look for in a spouse? Humour, looks, character, brains, or just someone with low expectations. The most important decision that you will make is that. If you make that one decision right I will guarantee you a good result in life.

提问:市场上的股票和公司那么多,我想知道您能不能谈谈您是怎么逐步筛选,最终锁定价值投资目标的?

Question: With the abundance of stocks and companies out there I was wondering if you could discuss the process you use to narrow it down in search of a value investment.

巴菲特:

Buffett:

就我们目前所处的情况而言,公司本身的变化没那么快。我会努力去想这些公司本身怎么样。我倒是希望它们的股价变化大一些,因为那样的话,股价相对于价值的偏离才可能变得显著。我用到的一个信息来源是 Value Line。每 13 周,他们会对数千家公司进行估值,所以我会翻阅他们的周度数据(大概花 15 到 20 分钟),希望这能唤醒我的记忆。当你进入外汇、债券之类的领域时,本质上就是通过阅读或观察来发现一些不寻常的事情。我给你举个例子。要是你相信有效市场,那下面这件事足以让你动摇。大概七八周前,你可能读到过,拍卖利率证券市场里那些每周一次的拍卖是如何有名无实的。换句话说,这些工具是货币市场基金背后的一些支撑资产(免税基金规模达 3300 亿美元)。人们把钱放在他们以为是活期存款的地方,取出来的办法是靠每周举行一次基础证券的拍卖,任何人都可以在拍卖中退出,让别人接盘。这些证券设有利率上限。从来没人想过会真的触及那些上限。而现在它们已经超出上限了。假如上限是 4%,那么发行人只愿意付 4%,可在 4% 的水平上根本没人愿意接盘。于是人们就被困在里面了。就底层信用而言,在 99% 的情况下,发行人本身并没有问题。问题在于整个金融体系处于压力之下,没人愿意进场接手。顺带说一句,你们当中很多人来自加拿大,这跟加拿大被冻结的商业票据情况相似。人们以为自己持有的东西第二天早上就能拿回来,结果拿不回来。在美国,我们有数千亿美元被锁定在这些拍卖利率证券里,人们被困住了。那后来发生了什么?六七周前,我们开始对这些东西投标。

With the situation we are in now companies don’t change that fast. I try to think about those companies. I hope their prices change a lot because then their price to value may change significantly. One source I use is Value Line. Every 13 weeks they value thousands of companies, so I go through their weekly stuff (it takes 15 or 20 minutes) and hope that it jogs my memory. When you get into currency or bonds and things like that, it’s essentially reading or seeing unusual things happening. Let me give you an example. If you believe in efficient markets I will destroy that belief. About 7 or 8 weeks ago you may have read about how in auction rate securities the weekly auctions were fake. In other words, these were instruments backing up money market funds ($330 billion of tax exempt funds). People had their money in what they believed were demand deposits and the way they could get out was that every week there was an auction of underlying securities where anyone could get out and somebody else get in. They had limits on the interest rates they would pay. Nobody ever thought they would hit those limits. They were past those limits. If the limit was 4% then the issuer would pay 4% and nobody was willing to buy at 4%. So the people were stuck in it. The underlying credits, in 99% of the cases, there were no problems with the issuer. The problem was the whole financial system was under strain and nobody wanted to come in. Incidentally, many of you are from Canada and this is similar to the commercial paper that was frozen. People thought they had something that they could get out of tomorrow morning and couldn’t. Here in the US we had hundreds of billions of dollars that people were locked into these auction rate securities. So what happened? 6 or 7 weeks ago we started bidding on these things.

这事让我开始思考起来。这笔钱搁在整个盘子里算不上多大,但我们开始买入这些品种,到今天手里大概有 40 亿美元,而就在 7 周前,这些东西的利率还只有 2%,现在已经能到 8% 了。此时短期国债的利率才 1%。所以这够疯狂的,但真正离谱的地方在于:我们每天都收到来自花旗、美林、摩根大通的这些品种的报价单,上面列出各种不同的系列。有时我们会看到,同一个发行人的品种会出现在不同的页面上,比如纽约和新泽西港务局,因为实际上它们是不同的发行批次。有时候,我们按 8% 的收益率出价,而有人仅仅因为看到的是另一页,就能按 5% 的收益率拿到;这个差距可太大了。如果市场是有效的,这种事绝不可能发生。这不是什么小的市场异象,这是一个 3000 亿美元规模的市场,同一发行人的证券上却出现了 300 个基点的利差。8 周前,我做梦也想不到竟会发生这种事——但它就是发生了。而且,它持续的时间比我想象的更久。

That caused me to start thinking about it. This doesn’t add up to lots of money, but we started buying these issues and today we have something like 4 billion in things that 7 weeks ago were paying 2% and now are paying 8%. This is when short term treasury bills are 1%. So this is crazy, but the really crazy part is that every day we get these bid lists from Citi, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan of all these different options. Sometimes we see that on different pages there will be the same issuer, lets say the New York Port Authority, because, in fact, they are different issues. Sometimes we put in bids at an 8% basis and someone else, just because they are on another page, gets them on a 5% basis; now that is huge. That can’t happen if markets are efficient. This is not some little market anomaly, this is a $300 billion market, with a 300 basis point spread on the same security. 8 weeks ago I would not have dreamt that this would happen - and then it happened. And it is lasting longer than I thought it would.

提问:对于当前市场和经济的低迷,你怎么看?

Question: What do you make of the current malaise in markets and the economy?

巴菲特:

Buffett:

我认为我们会经历一段时间的衰退。之前在许多地区的大市场上,房价在短期内翻了一倍甚至更多(公寓房更是如此)。

I think we will be in a recession for a while. You had a situation where in many parts of the country, in large markets, housing prices doubled or more (for condos) in a short period.

房价翻倍后,人们依然能借到买房款的 90% 甚至 95%,有时甚至是 100%——这对经济可没好处。回想一下 2006 年,美国发放了 4 万亿美元的抵押贷款。想想看,这给经济注入了多少资金。我们制造了这么多新债务,许多人通过证券化买下了这些债务,实际上根本不清楚自己卷进了什么。结果现在,原来有几千亿甚至更多资金流入经济,现在人人都在去杠杆。银行在去杠杆,家庭也在去杠杆。有一个办法是向民众撒钱。本·伯南克在当美联储主席之前确实写过这个。经济学里有一条要记住:你无法只做一件事,总会伴随其他效应。有些你能预见,有些你预见不了。我不知道怎么治衰退。但我知道,让经济去杠杆的过程极其痛苦。熬过去之后,你会得到一个没有通胀的经济。我们不是三个月造出的房地产泡沫,不是三个月造出的融资泡沫,也不是三个月造出去年的私募股权泡沫。银行手里堆满了票据,疯狂争抢着参与最近一轮私募股权杠杆收购。你看看花旗(Citi)或摩根大通(JP Morgan)这些大银行的 10-K 年报,上面全是债务。银行把这些东西堆得满满当当,现在正想办法甩掉。它们严重误判了风险,住房抵押贷款的放贷方也一样。那些人根本不知道自己在做什么。贷款依赖评级,评级又依赖贷款。我很钦佩本·伯南克和亨利·保尔森,因为他们干的活儿实在太棘手了。我的工作是挥棒打那些好打的球。你要是坐在公职位置上,就挑不了要打哪些球,只能去挥棒,而他们面对的是最难打的那类球。这跟我做的生意正好相反,我钦佩

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After it doubled people could still borrow 90% or 95% or even sometimes 100% of the purchase price - and that is not good for the economy. If you go back to 2006 there were 4 trillion of mortgages originating in the US. Just think about how much that was feeding the economy. We have now created this new debt, and many people had bought that debt through securitization even though they didn’t actually know what they were getting into. So now instead of having this several hundred billion or more flowing into the economy, everyone is trying to de-leverage. The banks are trying to deleverage, households are trying to deleverage. One thing that you can do is shower people with money. Ben Bernanke actually wrote about that before he was the chairman of the Fed. One thing to remember in economics is that you can’t do one thing in economics. There is always other effects that come out of it. Sometimes you can foresee them and sometimes you can’t. I don’t know how to fix the recession. I do know that if you deleverage the economy it is a very painful thing. If you get through this you will have an inflation free economy. We did not create a housing boom in 3 months, we did not create a financing boom in 3 months, we did not create the private equity boom of last year in 3 months. The banks are so loaded with paper that they were competing like crazy to be in the latest private equity leveraged buyouts. If you look at any of the major banks like Citi or JP Morgan’s 10-K’s they have loads of debt. Banks have loaded up on that sort of thing and are trying to get rid of it. They mispriced risk in a big way, as did lenders in residential mortgages. These people had no idea what they were doing. The loans were based on ratings and the ratings were based on loans. I admire Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson because they have a very tough job. I have a job swinging at easy pitches. If you are in a public position you don’t get to pick the pitches you have to swing at and they are the toughest ones. That is exactly the antithesis of what I do in my business and I admire

那些把自己的声誉押上去、每天工作 18 个小时的人。我不认为我有正确的办法来解决这个问题,但如果有,我会传达出来。这不是一个容易的问题。顺便说一句,这也不是世界末日。你看看 20 世纪,道琼斯指数从 66 点涨到了 11000 点。普通美国人的生活水平按实际价值计算提高了 7 倍。历史上有些世纪,人们在世纪末的生活方式和世纪初一模一样。而在这段时期里,你经历了大萧条、两次世界大战、冷战、越南战争,你经历了一次流感大流行,你经历了各种各样的衰退。资本主义确实会带来繁荣的浪潮,但人们在干蠢事的时候,它也会被打断。

people that put their reputations on the line and work 18 hours per day. I don’t think I have the right ideas to fix this, but if I do I will convey them. It is not an easy problem. Incidentally, it is not the end of the world either. If you look at the twentieth century the Dow went from 66 to 11,000. The standard of living of the average American went up 7 to 1 in real terms. You have had centuries where people at the end of the century are living just like people were at the beginning of the century. During that period you had the great depression, the two World Wars, the Cold War, Vietnam, you had a flu epidemic, you had all kinds of recessions. Capitalism does have a tidal wave of prosperity, but it gets interrupted when people do foolish things.

提问者:过去你谈到过人口方面的担忧。你觉得我们这代人面临的最大挑战是什么?

Question: In the past you have talked about population concerns. What do you think is the greatest challenge for our generation?

巴菲特:

Buffett:

这个挑战某种程度上是个无解的问题,所以它才叫挑战。最根本的问题是大规模杀伤性武器——我们不知道答案。我愿意把所有慈善捐款都用来成功攻克这个问题。我也可以在这方面投入一些钱,但钱在解决这个问题上作用非常有限。这就是为什么它是个巨大的难题。社会最大的问题并不是辨认不出来,而是那些让智慧也无能为力的问题。大规模杀伤性武器,在目前这个节点,压倒一切其他问题。目前我们有 65 亿人口,其中相当比例是精神病患者、狂妄自大狂或宗教狂热分子。他们在三个方面受到限制:知识、投送能力、材料。而意图——解决问题所需的第四个因素——他们已经具备。知识已经外泄,很不幸,还能传播和增长。材料是麻烦的关键点,尤其是核材料。未来 50 年内发生核事件的可能性相当高。你想想,如果人们愿意为某个事业而自杀,比如 9/11 中那 19 个自杀式袭击者,就能对社会造成巨大破坏。再想想,如果有 10 个人在周六晚上随机走进一家电影院,把自己炸死,那电影院这个行业就完了。大规模杀伤性武器,在我看来,是个无解甚至几乎不可阻挡的问题。我们能做的是降低概率,这意味着更好地管控材料。这对整个世界都将带来巨大好处。

The challenge is somewhat of an insolvable problem, which is why it is a challenge. The ultimate problem is weapons of mass destruction - and we do not know the answer. I would give all the money I had philanthropically to attack that question successfully. I could use a little money in that direction, but money is of very limited use in attacking that problem. That is why it is a huge problem. The largest problems in society are not unidentifiable. They are the ones that defy intellect. Weapons of mass destruction, at this point, overshadow everything else. At this point we have 6.5 billion humans and we have a significant percentage that are psychos, megalomaniacs, or religious fanatics. They are limited in 3 ways: knowledge, deliverability, and materials. They have the intent which is the fourth factor required. Knowledge is out there and, unfortunately, can spread and grow. The materials are the trouble point, particularly in the nuclear stuff. There is a high percentage chance that within the next 50 years something nuclear can happen. If you think about it if people are willing to kill themselves for a cause, like the 19 people who killed themselves in 9/11, it can have great damage to society. Just think about 10 people going into a random movie theatre on a Saturday night and blowing themselves up, that would be the end of the theatre business. Weapons of mass destruction, to me, seem like an unsolvable and even almost unstoppable problem. What we want to do is lower the probabilities, and that means controlling the materials better. That will have a huge advantage to the whole world.

问:你最喜欢的小说是什么?

Question: What is your favorite fiction?

沃伦·巴菲特:

Buffett:

我不读虚构小说。我喜欢读传记。查理(芒格)读过的传记可能比世界上任何人都多。赌博是人类一个巨大的天性。要是你下了注,看周日晚上的橄榄球赛会更有意思。我一直觉得,互联网出现后,里面会有两大成功的生意——赌博和色情。对相当一部分人来说,赌博是一种无法抗拒的冲动。赌博不会消失。我们越是让它唾手可得,就越多人会去赌。

I don’t read fiction. I love reading biographies. Charlie (Munger) has probably read more biographies than anyone in the world. Gambling is a huge human characteristic. It is more fun to watch a Sunday night football game if you have money on it. I always thought that when the internet came along there would be major successful businesses in it - gambling and pornography. Gambling is an overwhelming urge for a significant number of people. Gambling won’t go away. The more available we make it the more people do it.

问题:您为什么不自己从事慈善事业,为什么宁愿把钱交给别人去做?

Question: Why don’t you do philanthropy yourself and why would you rather give money to others who do?

巴菲特:

Buffett:

我所做的本质上是一种慈善活动。我会设定优先事项,比如哪些是人类面临的最重要问题,却缺乏天然的资金来源,也无法从其他地方获得资金。随着时间的推移,我在做这件事的规模越来越大,因为可动用的资金变多了。几年前,我选定了五家基金会,它们与我的想法一致。我极度信任管理这些基金会的人,相信他们会诚信地执行使命。我在做自己想做的事情、为他们创造更多可支配资金的过程中,获得了更多乐趣。这可以追溯到亚当·斯密的观点——他说过,我们希望杰克·韦尔奇去经营通用电气,让迈克·泰森去打拳击赛,而不是反过来。这套逻辑用在我身上也有一定道理。有很多事情我自己不做,是因为别人做得更好。我认为,在分配资金这件事上,别人比我更擅长。当初加入合伙企业的合伙人找到我时说:“你比我们更擅长投资。”而我对这些基金会说的是,你们比我更擅长把钱捐出去,而且我知道你们会以正确的方式花掉这些钱。在这五家基金会中,规模最大的是比尔及梅琳达·盖茨基金会,我在那里有两个人,一个 52 岁,另一个大约 43 岁。他们聪明、年轻、精力极其充沛,如饥似渴地汲取他们专注领域的信息,他们还把自己的钱也带到这个事业中来,而且他们想做的,正是我想做的事。所以,如果我能让他们来干这些活,我完全赞成。我做的正是我当初说过要做的事,去伯克希尔·哈撒韦的网站上查查那些信就知道了。我希望他们去攻克那些缺乏天然资金来源的重大问题。举个例子,一家非营利广播电台可能会得到资助,条件是把电台呼号改成资助者姓名的缩写之类。人们喜欢把自己的名字留在东西上,我完全支持。

What I do is basically a philanthropic activity. I establish priorities, like what are the most important human problems that do not have a natural funding base and do not get their money someplace else. Over time I have done it on a larger and larger scale because the funds became larger. I decided a couple years ago there were 5 foundations that were in sync with my ideas. I had enormous trust in the people who were running them to carry out the missions with integrity. I had more fun doing what I did and creating more funds for them to use. This goes back to Adam Smith when he says in effect, we want Jack Welch running General Electric and we want Mike Tyson fighting boxing matches and not the other way around. There is a certain merit to that with me. There are all kinds of things I don’t do myself because there are other people that do them better. I decided that there would be people better able to distribute the money than I would be. When people came to me originally in my partnership they said to me “you are better at investing money than we are”. I am saying to these foundations that they are better at giving away the money than I am and I know they are giving it away in a good way. Of these 5 the largest is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where I have 2 people, one of whom is 52 the other is about 43. They are smart, they are young, they are incredibly energetic, they devour information about the subjects they are working on, they bring their own money to the party, and they are looking to do the same thing that I want to do. So if I can get them to do the work I am all for that. I’m doing exactly what I said I was going to do. Just check the Berkshire Hathaway website for the letters. I want them working on big problems that do not have natural funding. For example a nonprofit radio station will get funding by someone wanting to change the call letters to their initials or something like that. People like to have their names on things and I am all for it.

问题:您对政治和投资有什么看法?有些人将您对 ISCAR 的投资视为在以巴冲突中选边站。您的投资如何影响人们对您立场的看法?

Question: What are your thoughts about politics and investing? Some people perceived your investment in ISCAR as taking positions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How do your investments impact how people perceive your positioning?

巴菲特:

Buffett:

总的来说,投资者不会发表任何政治声明。以我持有中国石油股份为例,这并不意味着我认可中国的所有政策;同样,我对美国公司的投资也与政治无关。ISCAR 可能有些特殊。它是以色列最赚钱的企业之一,就算不是最赚钱的。它几乎像是以色列的象征,代表了该国所取得的成就。我对此再满意不过了。我买它并非出于那个原因,但别人这样认为,我也觉得完全没问题。2005 年 10 月,我收到了 Eitan Wertheimer 的一封信,他和他的家族拥有 ISCAR。他说,有一些理由让他应该出售这家企业,而你是这个世界上我们唯一想把公司卖给你的人。他说,如果你有兴趣,我会从以色列过去。我给他回了一封电子邮件。我收到过很多信,但这封信意义非凡。

In general there wouldn’t be any political statements made by investors. Take for example my stake in Petro China, it is not an endorsement of all Chinese policy, similarly to my investment in American companies, they have nothing to do with politics. ISCAR probably is something special. It is one of the most, if not the most, profitable businesses in Israel. It is almost symbolic of Israel for what it has accomplished. I couldn’t be happier. I didn’t buy it for that reason, but I am very comfortable with that being attributed to it. I got a letter in October of 2005 from Eitan Wertheimer, who with his family owns ISCAR. He said there are reasons why he should sell this business and that you are the only person in the world who we want to buy it. He said if you are interested I will come over from Israel. I emailed him. I get a lot of letters, but this letter meant

这让我很动心。我让他过来聊聊。我俩一见如故,一切比我预想的还要好。他想让我在收购前去以色列看看那边的运营情况。我知道那儿肯定很棒,只是心想,真要亲眼看到有多棒,恐怕会多花钱,所以就没去。后来我们就买下了。我觉得以色列是个了不起的国家,尤其是这群人的确了不起。我答应 Eitan 之后一定去,所以几个月后就去了。整件事让我满意得不能再满意了。这是一家极为出色的公司、极为出色的家族和极为出色的管理层。能和他们合作,我深感自豪。这是我见过的最了不起的企业之一。它从零起步,距离黎巴嫩边境只有 8 到 10 英里。带到那个山顶上的,唯有精力和诚信,人的品质。我当初买它并非出于这个原因,但对此我非常欣慰。

something to me. I said for him to come over. We hit it off. It was everything I thought it would be and more. He tried to get me to go to Israel to see the operation there before I bought it. I knew it would be wonderful, I just thought I would pay more money if I saw just how wonderful it was so I didn’t go. Then we bought it. I think Israel is a remarkable country, and particularly that these people are remarkable people. I promised Eitan I would go there afterwards, so I went a few months later. I couldn’t have been more pleased with everything about it. It is a truly remarkable company, family, and management. I am very proud to be associated with them. It is one of the most remarkable businesses I have ever seen. It was built from nothing. It is only 8 or 10 miles from the Lebanese border. The only thing that was brought to that mountain top was energy and integrity, human qualities. I didn’t do it because of that, but I am very happy about it.

提问:什么是幸福?你幸福吗?

Question: Can you comment on the role of securities regulators in the market?

巴菲特:

Buffett:

证券监管机构的作用对市场及市场运行方式至关重要。我举个跟监管有关的警示例子。房利美和房地美是两家最重要的机构。你甚至可以说它们是最重要的,因为联邦政府是它们的后盾。它们在杠杆等方面做到了其他机构根本做不到的事。联邦政府不可能撒手不管房利美和房地美。正因为认识到它们归政府所有,有这个准政府性质,国会历来对它们有重大监督权——告诉它们能做什么不能做什么。为了维护这些机构的诚信,国会设立了联邦住房企业监督局(OFHEO),这个机构只有一个任务,就是盯着这两家公司。OFHEO 有 200 多名员工,年复一年每天上班,结果几年前我们发现,这两家公司都出现了美国商业史上数一数二的会计差错,而且可能还有相当数量的实际欺诈。OFHEO 随后发布了一份报告,把责任推给所有人,唯独不怪自己。那就是它们的职责。你要是去看它们的网页,就会发现那就是它们存在的理由。所以,我十分怀疑——就算我是一家大型监管机构的负责人,招来的是我能找到的最聪明的人,每天把摩根大通、花旗集团、美林证券,所有前十大机构的每一笔持仓一五一十报给我,我也说不清到底发生了什么。1998 年我们收购通用再保险时,就面临过这个问题。它们是一家中等规模的衍生品公司,账上有 23000 多份衍生品合约。当时我根本不可能理清那本账。1988 年和 1989 年,查理在所罗门兄弟公司(当时它是个大玩家)的审计委员会任职。他每次开会要花五六个小时试图搞清楚状况,说实话他也做不到。不过,比如他确实发现某份合约有 2000 万美元的错价。而当时这类合约成千上万。所以我认为,对这类机构进行监管极其艰巨。当这些机构的所有者(比如贝尔斯登)能获得巨大优势时,就会疯狂鼓励杠杆化,而且你可以用那些光看资产负债表都看不出来的工具来搞。我认为这完全是……

It is enormously important to the market and the way the market works. I will give you one cautionary illustration in terms of regulation. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are 2 of the most important institutions. You might even argue that they are the most important, because the federal government is behind them. They do things that couldn’t possibly be done in terms of leverage and other things. The federal government cannot walk away from Fannie and Freddie. Recognizing that they were owned by the government, and because of this quasi governmental character, Congress has always had significant oversight over them - telling them what they can do and what they can’t do. To maintain the integrity of these institutions they set up OFHEO, which was to only have one job. It was to look at these 2 companies. OFHEO had over 200 employees who went to work every day year after year and a few years ago we found that both of them had some of the largest accounting discrepancies in the history of American business. And probably a fair amount of actual fraud. OFHEO then released a report blaming everybody except themselves. That was their function. If you go to their webpage you will see that that was the reason for their existence. So I have great doubt if I was the head of some huge agency, with some of the smartest people I could find working for me, if every day I was sent the total positions of JP Morgan, of Citicorp, of Merrill Lynch, all the big 10, every single position, I doubt I could tell what was going on. I faced that question when we bought Gen Re in 1998. They were a medium size derivative company with 23,000 plus derivative contracts on the books. There was no way in the world I could get my mind around that book at that time. In 1988 and 1989, Charlie was on the audit committee of Salomon Brothers, which was then a big player. He would spend 5 or 6 hours a meeting trying to figure out what was going on, and the truth is he couldn’t do it. Although he did find, for example, a mis-mark of $20 million on 1 contract. This is when there were tens and tens of thousands of these things. So I think the job of regulating is extraordinarily tough in terms of these institutions. When there are these enormous advantages to these proprietors (such as Bear Sterns) it encourages leveraging like crazy, and you can do it using instruments that don’t even show up by looking at a balance sheet. I think it is a

……极其艰难的工作,但你必须得做。到最后,如果这家机构垮了,财政部长和美联储主席不过是换个地方继续干别的而已。花旗银行发现,因为资产负债表上的资本限制,它们没法再玩了,就想出了在表外操作的办法——结构性投资工具(SIVs)就是这么来的。几年前谁他妈听说过 SIV?光花旗一家就搞了 800 亿美元。它们还有种叫流动性看跌期权的玩意儿,就是靠这个让 SIV 维持下去的。什么是流动性看跌期权?我觉得 5 年前这个词根本不存在。我猜是某个首席财务官,在记者打电话问他这到底是什么鬼东西时,临时想出来的。SIV 除了是停放资产的地方,还能是什么?我们曾经有一份合约,100 年后才到期。100 年后,某个人会给对方打电话说:咱们把这个账结了吧。要么你欠我们 100 万,要么我们欠你 100 万。现在只有 4 家大型会计师事务所,它们确实在交叉审计各种各样的交易对手。我向你保证,这些审计师在认证或证明数字真实性时,衍生品合约的甲方对它的估值与乙方相差悬殊。而且甲方和乙方还是由同一家事务所审计的。我不知道有什么办法能绕过这个问题。事情变得极其复杂。我不确定监管机构能做什么。现有制度总还有改进的余地。

very tough job, but you have to do it. In the end if the institution goes down, the Secretary of the Treasury and Chairman of the Fed just go on to something else. When Citi found out that they couldn’t play because of capital restraints on the balance sheet they figured out ways to do it off the balance sheet - and that is where SIVs come from. Who the hell even heard of SIVs just a few years ago? $80 billion just with Citi. They had the sort of thing they called liquidity puts, and that’s what kept the SIVs going. What is a liquidity put? I don’t think that term existed 5 years ago. I think some CFO thought of it when some reporter called him and asked what the hell these things are. What is a SIV other than parking? We had one contract that was due in 100 years. In 100 years someone was going to call the other guy and say lets settle this thing. Either you owe us or we owe you a million. There are only 4 big accounting firms that are definitely cross auditing all kinds of counterparties. I guarantee you that these auditors are certified or attesting to, the validity of figures where party A to a derivative contract is valuing it much differently than party B. And both A and B are being audited by the same firm. I don’t know any way around it. It has gotten really complex. I’m not sure what a regulator can do. There is always some room for improvement in the present system.

提问:什么是幸福?你幸福吗?

Question: What is happiness? Are you happy?

巴菲特:

Buffett:

我真是太幸运了。我能和自己爱的人一起做自己喜欢的事。这就是幸福。我日复一日地感到幸福。我还能更幸福吗?有人说过,成功是得到你想要的,幸福是想要你得到的。环顾四周,我在人们身上看到的就是这样。这辈子我唯一不喜欢做但又不得不做的事,就是偶尔解雇员工——这种事极少发生。如果不用做这件事,我愿意付一大笔钱。但除此之外的一切我都喜欢。我在做自己喜欢的事。我本可以去打沙狐球,本可以去拉斯维加斯,但我选择做自己喜欢的事。奥马哈这里有一位波兰裔犹太女性。她曾在奥斯维辛集中营,她的家人也在那里。家人被分成不同队列,有人就没能出来。她对我说过:“沃伦,我交朋友很慢,因为我看一个人时,最根本的标准是——他会不会藏起我?”现在我认识一些像我这么大年纪的人,他们有几十个人愿意藏起他们,比如伯克希尔的汤姆·墨菲。我还能告诉你一大票其他人,他们身家数百亿,有以自己名字命名的学校,但没人愿意藏起他们。连他们自己的孩子都不肯——“他在阁楼里,他在阁楼里”。藏人只是个比喻,代表的是爱。如果你拥有你希望爱你的人,他们也确实爱你——那么,排除疾病因素——我从未见过一个人,有几十个人爱他(用我的比喻说就是愿意藏起他),却还不幸福的。我见过各种各样的人,他们痛苦不堪。他们拥有世人眼里重要的东西,但没有任何人在乎他们。得到无条件的爱,是你能获得的最大馈赠。爱最奇妙的地方在于,你甩都甩不掉。你试图把它给出去,结果会得到双倍;但你想紧紧攥住它,它反而消失了。这真是种奇特的现象:那些拼命把爱推出去的人,最终会得到十倍的回报。我前面提到我的朋友汤姆·墨菲,他为我做了 20 件事,却从不指望哪怕一次回报。

I am so blessed. I get to do what I like to do with people that I love. That is happiness. I am happy day after day after day. How could I be any happier? Someone once said success is getting what you want and happiness is wanting what you get. And that’s what I see in people as I look around. The only thing I have to do in life that I don’t like doing is fire people occasionally - very seldom. I would pay a lot of money if I didn’t have to do that. But everything else I like. I’m doing what I like doing. I could be playing shuffleboard, I could be in Vegas, but I’m doing what I like doing. There is a woman here in Omaha who is a Polish Jew. She was in Auschwitz, her family was in Auschwitz. One would be in one line, another in another line. One of them didn’t come out. She said this to me “Warren, I am very slow to make friends, because the bottom line when I look at somebody is would they hide me?” Now I know people my age that have dozens and dozens of people who would hide them, Tom Murphy for example from Berkshire. I can tell you about a whole bunch of others who are worth billions and billions of dollars, who have schools named after them, who nobody would hide them. Their own kids wouldn’t even hide them “He is in the attic, he is in the attic”. That hiding is just a metaphor for love. If you have people that you want to love you, that do love you. If you leave out illness I have never found anyone who has dozens of people who love them, or would hide them using my metaphor, who is an unhappy person. I have seen all kinds of people that they are miserable. They have what the rest of the world may think is important, but they don’t have anybody who gives a damn about them. Being given unconditional love is the greatest benefit you can ever get. The incredible thing about love is that you can’t get rid of it. If you try to give it away you end up with twice as much, but if you try to hold onto it, it disappears. It is an extraordinary situation, where the people who just absolutely push it out, get it back tenfold. My friend Tom Murphy that I mentioned before, if he does 20 things for me he doesn’t expect even one back.

还有一类人,一辈子都在想方设法从你身上索取,远超过他们给你的回报。这是一种极其糟糕的行为模式。我跟学生交流时常用一个办法:让他们想象,我给他们一个小时,在这一个小时里,他们必须从同班同学中挑出一位,拥有这个人一辈子收入的 10%。等他们写下那个名字,我会要求他们列出选中这个人的理由或品质。你不一定会选班里成绩最好的人,也不一定会选智商最高的人;你会选那个能成事的人。你找的是那些身上有某种特质,能把人吸引过来,而不是把人推开的人。然后我会让学生做更有意思的部分:做空另一位同学。你要找什么样的人?你不是找班里倒数第一的人,你找的是那种拥有一台 400 马力的发动机、可这辈子只能输出 20 马力的人,因为他会把所有跟他共事的人都得罪光。一边,你列出你想拥有其 10% 收入那个人的品质;另一边,你列出你想做空其 10% 那个人的品质。你会发现,这些品质不是你天生就有的——比如踢足球的本事或飙高音 C 的能力——而是你可以切切实实靠自己培养出来的。这些东西包括慷慨、幽默、宽容——所有你在别人身上欣赏的品质。如果你问自己,这些品质里哪些是我不能拥有的,答案是:没有一条。然后你再看看那些让你反感别人的品质。如果这些品质让你反感别人,那要是你自己身上也有,你也会让别人反感你。那些品质你本不必有,你可以丢掉它们。你在这个年纪做得到,到我这个年纪就做不到了。基本上,这些习惯会刻进你的骨子里;等到 60 岁,再想养成它们就太晚了,要改也太重了,改不掉。你要做的就是看看那张清单,对自己说:我想成为那个我想拥有其 10% 收入的人。这些品质我可以拥有,我会丢掉那些让我反感别人的品质。这不复杂。这样去做的人,我向你保证,他会是个快乐的人;而你做空其 10% 的那个人,会是个不快乐的家伙,而且时间一久,他们对此也毫无办法。他们会形成一种名声和行为模式。你在商界总能看到这种情况,但在其他地方也一样。这是个如此浅显的道理。谁不喜欢被人喜欢、希望别人愿意跟自己共事?你知道哪些品质能带来这些。谁又不想避免成为那种连自己都受不了的人?可世上确实有这种人。是因为他们智商低吗?不是,是他们主动养成了某些行为习惯,随着时间拉长,这些习惯是灾难性的。等你有了孩子,这一点就格外重要,因为你就是那个小不点儿的老师。孩子这件事,有一点是:没有倒带键。你不能重来一遍,所以你必须在第一次就做对。如果你最终让孩子爱你,我不觉得你会是个不快乐的人。如果你的家庭跟你完全疏远——我经常见到这种情况,在富裕家庭尤其常见——我真看不出你怎么能非常快乐。以前有个节目叫《富豪与名流的生活方式》,他们会展示一座座大房子,但那不是富人真正的不同之处。富人真正的不同是:他们要想刻薄,可以刻薄得多。你跟连襟闹翻了,如果你是个穷人,你不过是不去感恩节晚餐了;可如果你闹翻了又有钱,你会让律师早上 7 点就开始干活来给你找麻烦,你会雇私家侦探,折腾出各种各样的事。所以你看到的是这种被放大的行为,破坏力极强。很多年前,一个来自大型出版家族的女人给我打电话,全家都很有钱,他们……

There are other people who are just all the time trying to get more out of you than they deliver to you. It’s a terrible behavioural set to get. One of the things I use with students is I ask you to imagine that I am going to give you an hour and in that hour you have to pick one of your classmates to own 10% of for the rest of your life. And then when you write that person’s name down I will ask you to list the reasons or qualities that caused you to pick that person. You won’t necessarily pick the person who is first in your class or the one with the highest IQ; you will pick out the human being that is going to be effective. You are looking for people with qualities which pull people to them rather than push them off. And then I ask students for the real fun part, to sell short another one of your classmates. Who do you look for? You don’t look for the person who is last in your class, you look for the person that has a 400 horsepower motor, but is only going to get 20 horsepower out of it because he is going to turn off everybody that he works with for the rest of his life. On the one side you list the qualities of the person who you want to own 10% of and on the other side you list the qualities of the person who you want to short 10% of. You will find that these are not things you are born with like the ability to kick a football or sing a high C; they are qualities that you actually generate for yourself. These are things like generosity, humour, forgiveness - all of the qualities that you admire in other people. If you say to yourself which of those qualities can’t I have, the answer is none of them. Then you look at the qualities which turn you off in other people. If they turn you off of other people, if you have them you will turn people off of you. Those qualities you don’t have to have, you can get rid of them. You can do it if you are your age, you can’t do it if you are my age. Basically these habits are built into you, by the time you are 60 it is too late to form them and they are too heavy to be broken. The thing to do is look at that list and say I want to be like the one I want to own 10% of. I can have these and I will get rid of the ones that turn me off of other people. It’s not complicated. The person that does that will be someone that is happy I guarantee you and the person you short 10% of will be an unhappy individual and they can’t do anything about it after a while. They develop a reputation and a pattern of behaviour. I mean you see it in the business world all the time, but you see it in other places too. It is such an elementary proposition. Who doesn’t like to be liked and want other people to want to work with them? You know the qualities that cause that. Who does not want to avoid being a person they can’t stand. And there are people like that. Is it because they are less intelligent? No, they electively develop habits of behaviour that are disastrous over time. Particularly, this gets important when you have children, because you are the teacher for that little tiny thing. The thing about children is that there is no rewind. You can’t do it over again so you have to do it right the first time. If you end up with your children loving you, I don’t think you will be an unhappy person. If you have a family that is totally alien, and I see that all the time, often in rich families, I don’t see how you can be very happy. There used to be a program called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, where they would show you all of these big houses, but that isn’t the real way the rich are different. The real way the rich are different is that they can be so much meaner if they want to be. If you get mad at your brother in-law and you are poor you just don’t go to Thanksgiving dinner, if you get mad and you are rich you have lawyers that go to work at 7 in the morning to cause you trouble, you have private detectives, and all kinds of things. So you see this accentuated behaviour that can be so disruptive. Many years ago a woman called me from a big publishing family, they are all rich in the family, and they

当时正闹得天翻地覆。她打电话给我,我们素未谋面,她说“我想请你到这个镇上来一趟,你懂报业资产,我们信任你,能帮我们家庭解决这块非常值钱的资产引起的纠纷”。我跟她说,我只想问一个问题:你是想赢,还是只想让你弟弟输?她沉默了很长时间,然后说:不用麻烦您来了。我的意思是,她就是想让他痛苦。如果你盘算的是怎么给别人制造痛苦,而不是创造一个对你有利的局面,长远来看,你一定会得到糟糕的结果。在座的各位,除非遭受可怕的疾病或不幸离世,每个人都渴望幸福。配偶是最重要的。找一份你热爱的工作很重要,挣多少钱不重要,但重要的是,得有一件事能让你早上从床上一跃而起。我当初接受本杰明·格雷厄姆那份工作就是这样。哥伦比亚大学毕业后,我说我想为他工作,不要工资。他说,那你开价太高了。我不断缠着他,他终于在 1954 年给了我一份工作。我第一次拿到工资支票时才知道自己挣了多少。我压根儿没问过这个问题。我只知道我会受到公平对待,何况这其实无所谓,因为每天早上我都迫不及待地跳下床,为即将要做的事兴奋不已,而且我崇拜我将为之工作的人。你就应该有这种感觉。不是说完全不把薪水当回事。你需要生活充满激情。你总不能老想着以后再做点什么来扭转局面。有个哈佛的人到机场接我,他正开车带我去哈佛商学院,他是那里的学生。我开始问他的情况,他说自己是那儿的学生,已经毕业拿到了注册会计师,现在回来读 MBA。他说接下来考虑找一份管理咨询方面的工作,因为那能让他的简历迎来最完美的收尾。我问他多大了。他说 30。我说,30 岁了,你已经攒下这么厚一本履历,却还在琢磨再花两三年干一件你并不真心想干的事,就为了让简历更好看?我说,这在我听来有点像把性生活留到老了再用。你真的应该去你真心钦佩的机构,或跟着你真心钦佩的人工作。我现在做的事,对我来说已经没有任何金钱上的意义了。我之所以还在做,是因为我喜欢它,我做得还算得心应手,而且我身边都是了不起的人。我不必跟那些让我反胃的人打交道。如果有人来找我卖公司,可我觉得跟他们做合伙人不会开心,那就根本没理由去做。

were in a huge fight. She called me up and I had never met her and she said “I’d like you to come down to this town, you understand newspaper properties and we would trust you to work out a solution to our families problems with regards to this very valuable property”. I said to her I just have one question: do you want to win or do you just want your brother to lose? She paused for a long time and said don’t bother coming. I mean she wanted pain for him. If you are thinking about how to cause pain for somebody else rather than creating a situation that benefits yourself you are going to get a terrible result over time. Everybody here, absent some terrible illness or tragic death, has a passion for happiness. A spouse is the most important thing. It is important to have a job you love, its not important how much you make at it, but it is important to have something that just causes you to jump out of bed in the morning. I took that job with Ben Graham. When I finished Columbia I said I would like to work for him and I will work for nothing. He said you are overpriced. I kept pestering him and so he finally gave me a job in 1954. I found out how much money I was making when I got my first pay cheque. I never asked the question. I just knew I was going to get treated fairly, and it didn’t make a difference anyway because I wanted to jump out of bed every morning excited about what I was going to be doing, and I admired who I was going to be working for. That’s the way you should feel. Not that you shouldn’t pay any attention to salary. You want to be turned on in life. You don’t always want to think you are going to do something later on that is going to make it work. I had one guy from Harvard pick me up from the airport. He was driving me over to Harvard Business School where he was a student. I started asking him about himself and he said he was a student there who graduated and got his CPA and now is back for his MBA. He said he was thinking about getting a job in management consulting next, because that would be the perfect culmination of his resume. I asked him how old he was. He said 30. I said 30 and you already got all this stuff and you are still thinking about spending another couple years doing something you don’t really want to do because it will make your resume be even better? I said that sounds a little to me like saving up sex for your old age. You really want to go to work for an organization or a person you really admire. I am doing something that has no financial meaning to me at all. The reason I am doing it is because I enjoy it, I am reasonably good at it, and I am surrounded by people that are great. I don’t have to associate with people that cause my stomach to churn. If somebody comes along who wants to sell me a business and I wouldn’t enjoy being their partner there is no reason to do it.

提问:制药行业是一个风险极高的行业。我只是好奇,你怎么挑选一家制药公司?

Question: The pharma industry is a very risky industry. I was just wondering, how do you pick a pharma company?

巴菲特:

Buffett:

问题是,如果你对六七年之后竞争对手会推出什么药几乎一无所知,你怎么挑选一家制药公司?在这个行业里,如果你以一个合理的价格买入一篮子股票,效果会更好。五年之后,人们肯定还会使用某些药品。但从金额上看,你不知道具体谁是赢家。就我自己而言,我没法在制药行业里挑出赢家。我能判断的是,制药行业作为一个整体,是一门相当不错的生意,总体资本回报率可观。除非你真的是这个领域的专家,否则买一篮子股票要合理得多。

The question is how do you pick a pharma company when you haven’t got the faintest idea what your competitor in 6 or 7 years will be offering. You are better off in that business by buying a group, if the group is reasonably priced. They will be using some drugs for sure 5 years from now. In dollar terms you don’t know who the winners will be. I know in my own case I can’t pick winners in the pharma industry. I can decide the pharma industry as a whole is a pretty good business with good aggregate returns on capital. Purchasing a group, unless you are really an expert in the field, makes a lot more

我才不关心谁手上有热门的在研新药。这类公司的股价,很可能已经比一家一年后专利就要到期的公司贵出不少。反正价格往往已经反映了管线里的预期。我不知道具体哪家公司会胜出,但我知道五年后整个市场卖出的药品总量一定会更多。

sense. I don’t care who has a hot item in the pipeline. It will likely be selling for more than a company that is coming off a patent in a year. The price tends to account for what is in the pipeline anyway. I don’t know which company but I know there will be more drugs sold on aggregate 5 years from now.

问答环节结束。

End of Q&A

巴菲特:好了,我们吃午饭吧。

Buffett: Let’s now go have some lunch.