This is Money Fundsmith老板称提供优质产品或服务的公司是投资关键
如果要说获得良好回报的关键，最重要的就是质量。
When it comes to generating good returns, the most important thing is quality.
本周是基金史密斯股票基金（Fundsmith Equity Fund）成立五周年。我们成立时的目标，是提供你所能投资的最佳基金，并在风险调整后带来最高回报。
The Fundsmith Equity Fund celebrated its fifth anniversary this week. When we started, it was with the aim of providing the best fund you could invest in with the highest return adjusted for risk.
为了达成这一目标，我们需要只投资于优质公司。
To attain this we needed to invest only in good companies.
我指的优质公司，是那些拥有长期高盈利能力记录的企业，这些盈利源于提供优质产品或服务，以及强大的市场地位。
By this I meant businesses that have a long track record of high profitability derived from providing good products or services and strong market positions.
说“你只想持有高质量的东西”听起来显而易见，但在投资行业里并非如此。正如著名投资人约翰·邓普顿爵士（Sir John Templeton）所说：“如果你想比大众表现更好，就必须与大众的做法不同。”
It may sound blindingly obvious to say you only want to own things that are high quality, but in the investment industry it is not, and as the famous investor Sir John Templeton said: ‘If you want to have a better performance than the crowd, you must do things differently from the crowd.’
我依然感到惊讶的是，许多谈论投资的人，把大部分或全部时间花在讨论资产配置、地区配置、行业权重、经济预测、债券对股票、利率、货币、风险控制上……却从未提到需要投资于优质资产。
I remain amazed at the number of people who talk about investment and spend most or all of their time talking about asset allocation, regional allocation, sector weightings, economic forecasts, bonds vs equities, interest rates, currencies, risk controls... but never mention the need to invest in something good.
我曾天真地以为，金融危机的经历或许能让投资者吸取教训，明白从不良资产中无法获得良好回报。
I naively supposed that the experience of the financial crisis might have taught investors a lesson about the inability to generate good returns from bad assets.
无论用 CDO、CLO 以及其他所有结构化金融的字母汤进行怎样的构造，都无法把次级贷款变成可投资资产。
No amount of structuring using CDOs, CLOs and all the other alphabet soup of structured finance could turn sub-prime loans into investable assets.
当事情出错时，即便是这些次级贷款结构中的 AAA 级部分，最终也变成了三 Z 级。有一句老话叫做“丝绸钱包和猪耳朵”，正好概括了这一点。
When things went wrong, even the triple-A tranches of those sub-prime loan structures turned out to be triple-Z. There’s an old saying about silk purses and sow’s ears which encapsulates this.
同样，投资于低质量甚至平庸的企业，很难在长期获得良好回报。
Similarly, it is hard to make a good return over the long term by investing in poor-quality or even average businesses.
我并不是说投资高质量公司是赚钱的唯一途径。然而，投资低质量公司有几个劣势。
I am not suggesting that investing in high-quality companies is the only way to make money. However, investing in poor-quality companies has a couple of disadvantages.
一个是你不断面临时机问题，以及它们价值毁灭带来的逆风。
One is that you are continually faced with the problems of timing and the headwind of their value destruction.
如果投资者对这类投资有任何合理的理由，通常是分散化，和/或相信他们可以在公司命运和股价低迷、即将好转时买入，并在接近或最好在下跌前卖出。
If investors have any coherent reason for such investments, they usually are diversification and/or the belief they can buy them when their fortunes and share prices are depressed and about to improve, and sell them close to or preferably just before they turn down.
先说分散化这一点，我也很惊讶，有多少投资者认为，分散投资于低质量资产比集中投资于高质量资产更好。
Taking the diversification point first, I am also surprised how many investors assume that it is better to be diversified across low-quality investments than to be concentrated in high-quality ones.
至于时机问题，买卖低质量公司的股票——姑且不论交易成本对业绩的拖累——绝大多数主动管理人的业绩记录表明，认为自己能成功把握投资和商业/经济周期、并跑赢大盘的人，远比实际能做到的人多。
With regard to timing, the sale and purchase of shares in poor-quality companies, leaving aside the drag on performance from the dealing costs involved, the performance record of the vast majority of active managers would suggest that there are far more who think they can play the investment and business/economic cycle successfully, and outperform, than can actually do so.
我喜欢说，在所谓的市场时机把握上，有两种人：一种是不会做的人，另一种是不知道自己不会做的人。
I am fond of saying that when it comes to so-called market timing there are two types of people: those who can’t do it and those who don’t know they can’t do it.
我们表现如何？投资协会的全球板块包含 270 只基金，我的基金在五年期表现中排名第三，年化复合回报率为 17.2%，而 MSCI 世界指数为 9.9%。
How have we fared? The Investment Association’s Global Sector comprises 270 funds, and my fund is the third best performing over the five-year period, returning 17.2 per cent per annum compound return compared with 9.9 per cent per annum for the MSCI World Index.
我要指出的是，排在我们前面的两只基金是专业医疗基金。它们在一个尤其以生物技术公司并购活动繁荣为特征的时期表现出色。但它们集中于单一行业，是我们不愿承担的风险。
I would just point out that the two funds which rank ahead of us are specialist healthcare funds. They have performed well in a period which has seen a boom in M&A activity in biotech companies in particular. But their concentration on a single sector is a risk we would not be willing to take.
我们仍然坚持五年前成立时的策略。我们只买优质公司的股票，尽量不付过高价格，然后什么都不做。
We still have the same strategy that we launched with five years ago. We only buy shares in good companies, try not to overpay and then do nothing.
我们开局不错，然而，我们的投资时间跨度是无限的。
We have made a good start, however, our investment time horizon is indefinite.
我们不会偏离这种务实的方法，并努力实现长期跑赢大盘。
We will not waver from this no-nonsense approach and strive to deliver long-term outperformance.
Terry Smith
Terry Smith