这个视频是1998年巴菲特在佛罗里达大学给MBA学生做的一个讲座，不知为何在网上又被转载起来，视频因为录制得比较早，视频效果不好，但希望中英文对照的文稿能弥补这一缺点。巴菲特其实口才非常不错，并不是说他能讲出多少“硬货”，而是他能够把最重要的投资哲理用非常通俗易懂的比喻来告诉大家，让即使对财务分析、市盈率等黑话一窍不通的人，所以读巴菲特写的东西一点都不累。半瓶子才能晃出声响，真正大师的话是非常简单却富有哲理的。在这片篇超级长的演讲稿里，不但讲了投资理念，还包括了面对工作机做人的态度，耐心读完的朋友，相信一定收获颇丰。

中英对照文本：

Buffett: (holds mike) Testing: One million $, two million $….three million $. I would like to say a few words primarily and then the highlight for me will be getting your questions. I want to talk about what is on your mind.
巴菲特：话筒测试，100万美元，200万美元.....300万美元。我想先讲几分钟的套话，然后我就主要来接受你们的提问。我想谈的是你们的所思所想。我鼓励你们给我出难题，畅所欲言，言无不尽。

I urge you to throw hard balls, it’s more fun for me if you follow speed and speeches come in end. You can ask anything about except football game last week in A&M, that’s out of limits. We have come here for some from Sun Trust, I have just attend the top meeting and I sat next to Jim·Williams who runs Sun Trust for many years and he wanted to be sure that I wear this Sun Trust shirt down here.
我希望你们扔些高难度的球，如果你们的投球带些速度的话，我回答起来会更有兴致.你们几乎可以问任何问题，除了上个礼拜的Texas A & M的大学橄榄球赛，那超出我所能接受的极限了。我们这里来了几个SunTrust（译者注：美国一家大型商业银行）的人。我刚刚参加完Coca Cola的股东大会（译者注：Warren Buffet的投资公司是Coca Cola的长期大股东之一），我坐在吉米.威廉姆斯边上。吉米领导了SunTrust多年。吉米一定让我穿上这件SunTrust的T恤到这来。

I tried to get the sponsorship from the Senior Gulf and I was sluggish and now on the back of the store I am doing much better .He said I get 1% of increase in deposit ,profits ,so all I gets for Sun Trust, yell for Sun Trust.
我一直试着让老年高尔夫联盟给我赞助，但是都无功而返。没想到我在SunTrust这，却做的不错。吉米说，基于SunTrust存款的增长，我会得到一定比例的酬劳。所以我为SunTrust鼓劲。（译者注：巴菲特在开玩笑）

Your Future
你的未来

I would like to talk for just one minute to the students about your future when you leave here. Because you will learn a tremendous amount about investments, you all have the ability to do well; you all have the IQ to do well. You all have the energy and initiative to do well or you wouldn't be here. Most of you will succeed in meeting your aspirations. But in determining whether you succeed there is more to it than intellect and energy. I would like to talk just a second about that. In fact, there was a guy, Pete Kiewit in Omaha, who used to say, he looked for three things in hiring people: integrity, intelligence and energy. And he said if the person did not have the first two, the later two would kill him, because if they don't have integrity, you want them dumb and lazy. We want to talk about the first two because we know you have the last two. You are all second-year MBA students, so you have gotten to know your classmates. Think for a moment that I granted you the right--you can buy 10% of one of your classmate’s earnings for the rest of their lifetime. You can't pick someone with a rich father; you have to pick someone who is going to do it on his or her own merit. And I gave you an hour to think about it.
关于你们走出校门后的前程，我在这里只想讲一分钟。你们在这里已经学了很多关于投资方面的知识，你们学会如何做好事情，你们有足够的IQ能做好，你们也有动力和精力来做好，否则你们就不会在这里了。你们中的许多人都将最终实现你们的理想。但是在智能和能量之外，还有更多的东西来决定你是否成功，我想谈谈那些东西。实际上，在我们Omaha（译者注：Berkshire Hathaway公司的总部所在地）有一位先生说，当他雇人时，他会看三个方面：诚信，智能，和精力。雇一个只有智能和精力，却没有诚信的人会毁了雇者。一个没有诚信的人，你只能希望他愚蠢和懒惰，而不是聪明和精力充沛。我想谈的是第一点，因为我知道你们都具备后两点。在考虑这个问题时，请你们和我一起玩玩这个游戏。你们现在都是在MBA的第二年，所以你们对自己的同学也应该都了解了。现在我给你们一个来买进10％的你的一个同学的权利，一直到他的生命结束。你不能选那些有着富有老爸的同学，每个人的成果都要靠他自己的努力。我给你一个小时来想这个问题，你愿意买进哪一个同学余生的10％。

Will you give them an IQ test and pick the one with the highest IQ? I doubt it. Will you pick the one with the best grades? The most energetic? You will start looking for qualitative factors, in addition to (the quantitative) because everyone has enough brains and energy. You would probably pick the one you responded the best to, the one who has the leadership qualities, the one who is able to get other people to carry out their interests. That would be the person who is generous, honest and who gave credit to other people for their own ideas. All types of qualities. Whomever you admire the most in the class. Then I would throw in a hooker. In addition to this person you had to go short one of your classmates.
你会给他们做一个IQ测试吗，选那个IQ值最高的？我很怀疑。你会挑那个学习成绩最好的吗，我也怀疑。你也不一定会选那个最精力充沛的，因为你自己本身就已经动力十足了。你可能会去寻找那些质化的因素，因为这里的每个人都是很有脑筋的。你想了一个小时之后，当你下赌注时，可能会选择那个你最有认同感的人，那个最有领导才能的人，那个能实现他人利益的人，那个慷慨，诚实，即使是他自己的主意，也会把功劳分予他人的人。所有这些素质，你可以把这些你所钦佩的素质都写下来。（你会选择）那个你最钦佩的人。然后，我这里再给你们下个跘儿。在你买进10％你的同学时，你还要卖出10％的另外一个人。

That is more fun. Who do I want to go short? You wouldn't pick the person with the lowest IQ, you would think about the person who turned you off, the person who is egotistical, who is greedy, who cuts corners, who is slightly dishonest. As you look at those qualities on the left and right hand side, there is one interesting thing about them, it is not the ability to throw a football 60 yards, it is not the ability the run the 100 yard dash in 9.3 seconds, it is not being the best looking person in the class, they are all qualities that if you really want to have the ones on the left hand side, you can have them.
这不是很有趣吗？你会想我到底卖谁呢？你可能还是不会找IQ最低的。你可能会选那个让你厌恶的同学，以及那些令你讨厌的品质。那个你不愿打交道的人，其他人也不愿意与之打交道的人。是什么品质导致了那一点呢？你能想出一堆来，比如不够诚实，爱占小便宜等等这些，你可以把它们写在纸的右栏。当你端详纸的左栏和右栏时，会发现有意思的一点。能否将橄榄球扔出60码之外并不重要，是否能在9秒3之内跑100码也不重要，是否是班上最好看的也无关大局。真正重要的是那些在纸上左栏里的品质。如果你愿意的话，你可以拥有所有那些品质。

They are qualities of behavior, temperament, character that are achievable, they are not forbidden to anybody in this group. And if you look at the qualities on the right hand side the ones that turn you off in other people, there is not a quality there that you have to have. You can get rid of it. You can get rid of it a lot easier at your age than at my age, because most behaviors are habitual. The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. There is no question about it. I see people with these self- destructive behavior patterns at my age or even twenty years younger and they really are entrapped by them.
那些行动，脾气，和性格的品质，都是可以做到的。它们不是我们在座的每一位力所不能及的。再看看那些右栏里那些让你厌恶的品质，没有一项是你不得不要的。如果你有的话，你也可以改掉。在你们这个年纪，改起来比在我这个年纪容易得多，因为大多数这些行为都是逐渐固定下来的。人们都说习惯的枷锁开始轻得让人感受不到，一旦你感觉到的时候，已经是沉重得无法去掉了。我认为说得很对。我见过很多我这个年纪或者比我还年轻10岁，20岁的人，有着自我破坏性习惯而又难以自拔。

They go around and do things that turn off other people right and left. 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 is simply a question of which you decide.
他们走到哪里都招人厌恶。他们不需要那样，但是他们已经无可救药。但是，在你们这个年纪，任何习惯和行为模式都可以有，只要你们愿意，就只是一个选择的问题。

If you did this… Ben Graham looked around at the people he admired and Ben Franklin did this before him. Ben Graham did this in his low teens and he looked around at the people he admired and he said, "I want to be admired, so why don't I behave like them?" And he found out that there was nothing impossible about behaving like them. Similarly he did the same thing on the reverse side in terms of getting rid of those qualities. I would suggest is that if you write those qualities down and think about them a while and make them habitual, you will be the one you want to buy 10% of when you are all through. And the beauty of it is that you already own 100% of yourself and you are stuck with it. So you might as well be that person, that somebody else.
就象本杰明.格拉姆（上个世纪中叶著名的金融投资家）一样，在他还是十几岁的少年时，他四顾看看那些令人尊敬的人，他想我也要做一个被人尊敬的人，为什么我不象那些人一样行事呢？他发现那样去做并不是不可能的。他对那些令人讨厌的品质采取了与此相反的方式而加以摒弃。所以我说，如果你把那些品质都写下来，好好思量一下，择善而从，你自己可能就是那个你愿意买入10％的人！更好的是你自己本就100％的拥有你自己了。这就是我今天要讲的。

Well that is a short little sermon. So let's get on with what you are interested in. Let's start with questions………..
下面就让我们开始谈谈你们所感兴趣的。我们可以从这儿或那儿举起的手开始。

Question: What about Japan? Your thoughts about Japan?
问题：你对日本的看法？

Buffett: My thoughts about Japan? I am not a macro guy. Now I say to myself Berkshire Hathaway can borrow money in Japan for 10 years at one percent. One percent! I say gee, I took Graham's class 45 years ago and I have been working hard at this all my life maybe I can earn more than 1% annually, it doesn't seem impossible. I wouldn't want to get involved in currency risk, so it would have to be Yen-denominated. I would have to be in Japanese Real Estate or Japanese companies or something of the sort and all I have to do is beat one percent. That is all the money is going to cost me and I can get it for 10 years. So far I haven't found anything. It is kind of interesting. The Japanese businesses earn very low returns on equity - 4% to 5% - 6% on equity and it is very hard to earn a lot as an investor when the business you are in doesn't earn very much money.
巴菲特：我对日本的看法？我不是一个太宏观的人。现在日本10年期的贷款利息只有1％。我对自己说，45年前，我上了本杰明.格拉姆的课程，然后我就一直勤勤恳恳，努力工作，也许我应该比1％挣的多点吧？看上去那不是不可能的。我不想卷入任何汇率波动的风险，所以我会选择以日元为基准的资产，如地产或企业，必须是日本国内的。我唯一需要做的就是挣得比1％多，因为那是我资金的成本。可直到现在，我还没有发现一家可以投资的生意。这真的很有趣。日本企业的资产回报率都很低。他们有少数企业会有4％，5％，或6％的回报。如果日本企业本身赚不了多少钱的话，那么其资产投资者是很难获得好的回报的。

Now some people do it. In fact, I have a friend, Walter Schloss, who worked at Graham at the same time I did. And it was the first way I went at stocks to buy stocks selling way below working capital. A very cheap, quantitative approach to stocks. I call it the cigar butt approach to investing. You walk down the street and you look around for a cigar butt someplace. Finally you see one and it is soggy and kind of repulsive, but there is one puff left in it. So you pick it up and the puff is free--it is a cigar butt stock. You get one free puff on it and then you throw it away and try another one. It is not elegant. But it works. Those are low return businesses.
当然，有一些人也赚了钱。我有一个同期为本杰明.格拉姆工作过的朋友。那是我第一次买股票的方法，即寻找那些股票价格远低于流动资本的公司，非常便宜但又有一点素质的公司。我管那方法叫雪茄烟蒂投资法。你满地找雪茄烟蒂，终于你找到一个湿透了的，令人讨厌的烟蒂，看上去还能抽上一口。那一口可是免费的。你把它捡起来，抽上最后一口，然后扔了，接着找下一个。这听上去一点都不优雅，但是如果你找的是一口免费的雪茄烟，这方法还值得做。不要做低回报率的生意。

But time is the friend of the wonderful business; it is the enemy of the lousy business. If you are in a lousy business for a long time, you will get a lousy result even if you buy it cheap. If you are in a wonderful business for a long time, even if you pay a little bit too much going in you will get a wonderful result if you stay in a long time. I find very few wonderful businesses in Japan at present. They may change the culture in some way so that management gets more share holder responsive over there and stock returns are higher. At the present time you will find a lot of low return businesses and that was true even when the Japanese economy was booming. It is amazing; they had an incredible market without incredible companies. They were incredible in terms of doing a lot of business, but they were not incredible in terms of the return on equity that they achieved and that has finally caught up with them. So we have so far done nothing there. But as long as money is 1% there, we will keep looking.
时间是好生意的朋友，却是坏生意的敌人。如果你陷在糟糕的生意里太久的话，你的结果也一定会糟糕，即使你的买入价很便宜。如果你在一桩好生意里，即使你开始多付了一点额外的成本，如果你做的足够久的话，你的回报一定是可观的。我现在从日本没发现什么好生意。也可能日本的文化会作某些改变，比如他们的管理层可能会对公司股票的责任多一些，这样回报率会高些。但目前来看，我看到的都是一些低回报率的公司，即使是在日本经济高速发展的时候。说来也令人惊奇，因为日本这样一个完善巨大的市场却不能产生一些优秀的高回报的公司。日本的优秀只体现在经济总量上，而不是涌现一些优质的公司（译者注：对中国而言，这样的问题何止严重10倍！）。这个问题已经给日本带来麻烦了。我们到现在为止对日本还是没什么兴趣。只要那的利息还是1％，我们会继续持观望态度。

Question: You were rumored to be one of the rescue buyers of Long Term Capital, what was the play there, what did you see?
问题：有传闻说，你成为长期资金管理基金的救场买家？你在那里做了什么？你看到了什么机会？（译者注：长期资金管理基金是一家著名的对冲基金。1994年创立。创立后的头些年盈利可观，年均40％以上。但是，在1998年，这家基金在4个月里损失了46个亿，震惊世界）

Buffett: The Fortune Magazine that has Rupert Murdoch on the cover. It tells the whole story of our involvement; it is kind of an interesting story.t’s a long story so I wouldn’t go through all background. But I got the really serious call about LTCM  about four weeks ago ,my granddaughter, I got it at the mid afternoon ,my granddaughter was having her birthday party at evening and I was flying to Seatle go on the 12day trip with Gates on Alaska on our private plane and I was really out of communication. But I got this call on a Friday afternoon that things were getting serious. I got the other calls before the article go published.  I know those people most of them pretty well--most of them at Salomon when I was there. And the place was imploding and the FED was sending people up that weekend. Between that Friday and the following Wed. when the NY Fed, in effect, orchestrated a rescue effort but without any Federal money involved.  I was quite active but I was having a terrible time because we were sailing up through these canyons which I have no interest in even though we were in Alaska. And the captain was saying we just stay over here and we might see some bears. I would say stay where we could get satellite signals.
巴菲特：在最近的一篇财富杂志（封面是鲁本.默多克）上的文章里讲了事情的始末。有点意思。是一个冗长的故事，我这里就不介绍来龙去脉了。我接了一个非常慎重的关于长期资金管理基金的电话。那是4个星期前的一个星期五的下午吧。我孙女的生日Party在那个傍晚。在之后的晚上，我会飞到西雅图，参加比尔.盖茨的一个12天的阿拉斯加的私人旅程。所以我那时是一点准备都没有的。于是星期五我接了这个电话，整个事情变得严重起来。在财富的文章发表之前，我还通了其他一些相关电话。我认识他们（译者注：长期资金管理基金的人），他们中的一些人我还很熟。很多人都在所罗门兄弟公司工作过。事情很关键。美联储周末派了人过去（译者注：纽约）。在星期五到接下来的周三这段时间里，纽约储备局导演了没有联邦政府资金卷入的长期资金管理基金的救赎行动。我很活跃。但是我那时的身体状况很不好，因为我们那时正在阿拉斯加的一些峡谷里航行，而我对那些峡谷毫无兴趣。船长说我们朝着可以看到北极熊的方向航行，我告诉船长朝着可以稳定接收到卫星信号的方向航行（才是重要的）（译者注：巴菲特在开玩笑，意思是他在船上，却一直心系手边的工作）。

We put in a bid on Wednesday morning.  By then I was in Montana. I talked to Bill McDonough at the NY Fed.  But they have a meeting with bankers at 10 o’clock that morning at NY time. I called them, actually, deliberate measures, he called me before 10 NY time. We made a bid ,because I was in Canada, long distance things were really an outline for the bid, but in the end, the bid was for 250 million for the net assets but we would have put in 3 and 3/4 billion on top of that. $3 billion from Berkshire, $700 mil. from AIG and $300 million. from Goldman Sachs. And we submitted that but we put a very short time limit on that because when you are bidding on 100 billion worth of securities that are moving around, you don't want to leave a fixed price bid out there for very long. Because we going to be shopped. In the end the bankers made the deal, but it was an interesting period.
星期三的早上，我们出了一个报价。那时，我已经在蒙塔那（译者注：美国西北部的一个州）了。我和纽约储备局的头儿通了话。他们在10点会和一批银行家碰头。我把意向传达过去了。纽约储备局在10点前给在怀俄明（译者注：美国西北部的一个州）的我打了电话。我们做了一个报价。那确实只是一个大概的报价，因为我是在远程（不可能完善细节性的东西）。最终，我们对2.5亿美元的净资产做了报价,但我们会在那之上追加30到32.5亿左右。Berkshire Hathaway（巴菲特的投资公司）分到30个亿, AIG有7个亿, Goldman Sachs有3个亿。我们把投标交了上去，但是我们的投标时限很短，因为你不可能对价值以亿元计的证券在一段长时间内固定价格，我也担心我们的报价会被用来作待价而沽的筹码。最后，银行家们把合同搞定了。那是一个有意思的时期。

The whole LTCM ,I hope you are get familiar with it but the whole story is really fascinating because if you take Larry Hillenbrand, Eric Rosenfeld, John Meriwether and the two Nobel prize winners.  If you take the 16 of them, they have about as high an IQ as any 16 people working together in one business in the country, including Microsoft.  An incredible amount of intellect in that room. Now you combine that with the fact that the 16 had extensive experience in the field they were operating in. These were not a bunch of guys who had made their money selling men’s clothing and all of a sudden went into the securities business.  They had in aggregate, the 16, had 300 or 400 years of experience doing exactly what they were doing and then you throw in the third factor that most of them had most of their very substantial net worth’s in the businesses. So they have their own money up. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of their own money up (at risk), super high intellect and working in a field that they knew.  Essentially they went broke.
整个长期资金管理基金的历史，我不知道在座的各位对它有多熟悉，其实是波澜壮阔的。如果你把那16个人，象John Meriwether, Eric Rosenfeld，Larry Hilibrand，Greg Hawkins, Victor Haghani，还有两个诺贝尔经济学奖的获得者，Myron Scholes和Robert Merton，放在一起，可能很难再从任何你能想像得到的公司中，包括象微软这样的公司，找到另外16个这样高IQ的一个团队。那真的是一个有着难以置信的智商的团队，而且他们所有人在业界都有着大量的实践经验。他们可不是一帮在男装领域赚了钱，然后突然转向证券的人。这16个人加起来的经验可能有350年到400年，而且是一直专精于他们目前所做的。第3个因素，他们所有人在金融界都有着极大的关系网，数以亿计的资金也来自于这个关系网，其实就是他们自己的资金。超级智商，在他们内行的领域，结果是他们破产了。

That to me is absolutely fascinating.  If I ever write a book it will be called, Why Smart People Do Dumb Things.  My partner says it should be autobiographical.  But this might be an interesting illustration.  They are perfectly decent guys.   I respect them and they helped me out when I had problems at Salomon.  They are not bad people at all.  But to make money they didn’t have and didn’t need, they risked what they did have and what they did need.  That is just plain foolish; it doesn’t matter what your IQ is. 
这于我而言，是绝对的百思不得其解。如果我要写本书的话，书名就是“为什么聪明人净干蠢事”。我的合伙人说那本书就是他的自传（笑）。这真的是一个完美的演示。就我自己而言，我和那16个人没有任何过节。他们都是正经人，我尊敬他们，甚至我自己有问题的时候，也会找他们来帮助解决。他们绝不是坏人。但是，他们为了挣那些不属于他们，他们也不需要的钱，他们竟用属于他们，他们也需要的钱来冒险。这就太愚蠢了。这不是IQ不IQ的问题。

If you risk something that is important to you for something that is unimportant to you it just doesn’t make sense.  I don’t care if the odds you succeed are 99 to 1 or 1000 to 1 that you succeed.  If you hand me a gun with a million chambers with one bullet in a chamber and put it up to your temple and I am paid to pull the trigger, it doesn’t matter how much I would be paid.  I would not pull the trigger.  You can name any sum you want, but it doesn’t do anything for me on the upside and I think the downside is fairly clear. I am not interest in this kind of game. Yet people do it financially very much without thinking about it very much.There was a lousy book with a great title written by Walter Gutman—You Only Have to Get Rich Once.  Now that seems pretty fundamental.  If you have $100 million at the beginning of the year and you will make 10% if you are unleveraged and 20% if you are leveraged 99 times out of a 100, what difference if at the end of the year, you have $110 million or $120 million?  It makes no difference.  If you die at the end of the year, the guy who makes up the story may make a typo, he may have said 110 even though you had a 120.  You have gained nothing at all. It makes absolutely no difference.  It makes no difference to your family ,make no difference to anything.
用对你重要的东西去冒险赢得对你并不重要的东西，简直无可理喻，即使你成功的概率是100比1，或1000比1。如果你给我一把枪，弹膛里一千个甚至一百万个位置，然后你告诉我，里面只有一发子弹，你问我，要花多少钱，才能让我拉动扳机。我是不会去做的。你可以下任何注，即使我赢了，那些钱对我来说也不值一提。如果我输了，那后果是显而易见的。我对这样的游戏没有一点兴趣。可是因为头脑不清楚，总有人犯这样的错。有这样一本一般般的书，却有着一个很好的书名，“一生只需富一次”。这再正确不过了，不是码？如果你有一个亿开始，每年没有一点风险的可以挣10％，有些风险，但成功率有99％的投资会赚20％。一年结束，你可能有1.1个亿，也可能有1.2个亿，这有什么区别呢？如果你这时候过世，写亡讯的人可能错把你有的1.2个亿写成1.1个亿了，有区别也变成没区别了（笑）。对你，对你的家庭，对任何事，都没有任何一点点不同。

The downside, especially if you are managing other people’s money, is not only losing all your money, but it is disgrace, humiliation and facing friends whose money you have lost.  I just can’t imagine and acquision that make senseful.Yet 16 guys with very high IQs and energetic people entered into that game.  I think it is madness.  It is produced by an over reliance to some extent on things.  Those guys would tell me back at Salomon; a six Sigma event wouldn’t touch us.  But they were wrong.  History does not tell you of future things happening.   They had a great reliance on mathematics.  They thought that the Beta of the stock told you something about the risk of the stock. It doesn’t tell you a damn thing about the risk of the stock in my view.Sigma’s do not tell you about the risk of going broke in my view and maybe now in their view too.
但是万一有点闪失的话，特别是当你管理他人的钱时，你不仅仅损失了你的钱，你朋友的钱，还有你的尊严和脸面。我所不能理解的是，这16个如此高智商的能人怎么就会玩这样一个游戏。简直就是疯了。某种程度上，他们的决定基本上都依赖于一些事情。他们都有着所罗门兄弟公司的背景，他们说一个6或7西格玛的事件（指金融市场的波动幅度）是伤他们不着的。他们错了，历史是不会告诉你将来某一金融事件发生的概率的。他们很大程度上依赖于数学统计，他们认为关于股票的（历史）数据揭示了股票的风险。我认为那些数据根本就不会告诉你股票的风险！我认为数据也不会揭示你破产的风险。也许他们现在也这么想了？
 
But I don’t like to use them as an example.  The same thing in a different way could happen to any of us, where we really have a blind spot about something that is crucial, because we know a whole lot of something else.  It is like Henry Kauffman said, “The ones who are going broke in this situation are of two types, the ones who know nothing and the ones who know everything.”   It is sad in a way. I urge you. We basically never borrow money.  I never borrowed money even when I had $10,000 basically, what difference did it make.  I was having fun as I went along it didn’t matter whether I had $10,000 or $100,000 or $1,000,000 except that I had a medical emergency come along.
事实上，我根本不想用他们来作例子，因为他们的经历换一种形式，很可能发生在我们中的每个人身上。我们在某些关键之处存在着盲点，因为我们懂得太多的其他地方。正象Henry Gutman所说的，破产的多是两类人：一是一窍不通者；一是学富五车者。这其实是令人悲哀的。我们是从来不借钱的，即使有保险做担保。即使是在我只有1万块钱的时候，我也决不借钱。借钱能带来什么不同玛？我只凭我一己之力时我也乐趣无穷。一万，一百万，和一千万对我都没有什么不同。当然，当我遇到类似紧急医疗事件的情况下会有些例外。

I was going to do the same things when I had a little bit of money as when I had a lot of money.If you think of the difference between me and you in terms of how we live, we wear the same clothes basically (SunTrust gives me mine), we eat similar food—we all go toMcDonald’s or better yet,Dairy Queen, and we live in a house that is warm in winter and cool in summer.  We watch theNebraska(football) game on big screen TV.  You see it the same way I see it. We do everything the same—our lives are not that different.  The only thing we do is we travel differently. I travel on my private plane and I love it. But it takes money. But if you leave the other side, if you leave this, our life is the same other than trouble. Think about it. Think that what can I do that you can’t do? I get to work in a job that I love, but I have always worked at a job that I loved. I loved it just as much when I thought it was a big deal to make $1,000.  I urge you to work in jobs that you love.  I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume.  
基本上，在钱多钱少的情况下，我都会做同样的事情。如果你从生活方式的角度来想想你们和我的不同，我们穿的是同样的衣服，当然我的是SunTrust给的；我们都有机会喝上帝之泉（说这话的时候，巴菲特开了一瓶可乐），我们都去麦当劳，好一点的，奶酪皇后（译者注：即DairyQueen，一家类似于麦当劳的快餐店），我们都住在冬暖夏凉的房子里，我们都在平面大电视上看Nebraska和Texas A& M（美国的两所大学）的橄榄球比赛，我们的生活没什么不同，你能得到不错的医疗，我也一样，唯一的不同可能是我们旅行的方式不同，我有我的私人飞机来周游世界，我很幸运。但是除了这个之外，你们再想想，我能做的你们有什么不能做呢？我热爱我的工作，但是我从来如此，无论我在谈大合同，还是只赚一千块钱的时候。我希望你们也热爱自己的工作。如果你总是为了简历上好看些就不断跳槽，做你不喜欢的工作，我认为你的脑子一定是进了水。

I was with a fellow at Harvard the other day who was taking me over to talk.  He was 28 and he was telling me all that he had done in life, which was terrific. And then I said, “What will you do next?”  “Well,”he said, “Maybe after I get my MBA I will go to work for a consulting firm because it will look good on my resume.”  I said, “Look, you are 28 and you have been doing all these things, you have a resume 10 times than anybody I have ever seen.  Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age? There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. You may change on it, just like you will jump out of bed in the morning.  When I first got out of Columbia Business School, I wanted to go to work for Graham immediately for nothing.  He thought I was over-priced. But I kept pestering him.  I sold securities for three years and I kept writing him and finally I went to work for him for a couple of years. It was a great experience. But I always worked in a job that I loved doing. You really should take a job that if you were independently wealthy that would be the job you would take. You will learn something, you will be excited about, and you will jump out of bed.   You can’t miss.  You may try something else later on, but you will get way more out of it and I don’t care what the starting salary is. When you get out of here take a job you love, not a job you think will look good on your resume. You ought to find something you like.  If you think you will be happier getting 2x instead of 1x, you are probably making a mistake.You ought to find sth that you like and it works. You will get in trouble if you think making 10x or 20x will make you happier because then you will borrow money when you shouldn’t or cut corners on things.  It just doesn’t make sense and you won’t like it when you look back. 
我碰到过一个28岁的哈佛毕业生，他一直以来都做得不错。我问他，下一步你打算做些什么？他说，可能读个MBA吧，然后去个管理资询的大公司，简历上看着漂亮点。我说，等一下，你才28岁，你做了这么多事情，你的简历比我看到过的最好的还要强十倍，现在你要再找一个你不喜欢的工作，你不觉得这就好像把你的性生活省下来到晚年的时候再用吗？是时候了，你就要去做的（不能老等着）。（这是一个比喻）但是我想我把我的立场告诉了他。你们走出去，都应该选择那些你热爱的工作，而不是让你的简历看上去风光。当然，你的爱好可能会有变化。（对那些你热爱的工作，）每天早上你是蹦着起床的。当我走出校园的时候，我恨不得马上就给格拉姆干。但是我不可能为他白干，于是他说我要的工资太高了（所以他没有要我）。但我总是不停地bug他，同时我自己也卖了3年的证券，期间从不间断地给他写信，聊我的想法，最终他要了我，我在他那儿工作了几年。那几年是非常有益的经验。我总是做我热爱的工作。抛开其他因素，如果你单纯的高兴做一项工作，那么那就是你应该做的工作。你会学到很多东西，工作起来也会觉得有无穷的乐趣。可能你将来会变。但是（做你热爱的工作），你会从工作中得到很多很多。起薪的多寡无足轻重。不知怎么，扯得远了些。总之，如果你认为得到两个X比得到一个让你更开心，你可能就要犯错了。重要的是发现生活的真谛，做你喜欢做的。如果你认为得到10个或20个X是你一切生活的答案，那么你就会去借钱，做些短视，以及不可理喻的事情。多年以后，不可避免地，你会为你的所作所为而后悔。

Question: What makes a company something that you like?
问题：讲讲你喜欢的企业吧, 不是企业具体的名字，而是什么素质的企业你喜欢？

Buffett: I like businesses that I can understand. Let’s start with that. That narrows it down by 90%. There are all types of things I don’t understand, but fortunately, there is enough I do understand. You have this big wide world out there and almost every company is publicly owned. So you have all American business practically available to you. So it makes sense to go with things you can understand. I can understand this, anyone can understand this (Buffett holds up a bottle of CocaCola). Since 1886, it is a simple business, but it is not an easy business.
巴菲特：我只喜欢我看得懂的生意，这个标准排除了90％的企业。你看，我有太多的东西搞不懂。幸运的是，还是有那么一些东西我还看得懂。设想一个诺大的世界里，大多数公司都是上市的，所以基本上许多美国公司都是可以买到的。让我们从大家都懂的事情上开始讲吧（巴菲特举起他的可乐瓶）。我懂得这个，你懂得这个，每个人都懂这个。这是一瓶樱桃可乐，从1886年起就没什么变化了。很简单，但绝不容易的生意。

 I don’t want an easy business for competitors. I want a business with a moat around it. I want a very valuable castle in the middle and then I want the Duke who is in charge of that castle to be very honest and hard working and able. Then I want a moat around that castle. The moat can be various things: The moat around our auto insurance business, Geico, is low cost.
我可不想要对竞争者来说很容易的生意，我想要的生意外面得有个城墙，居中是价值不菲的城堡，我要负责的、能干的人才来管理这个城堡。我要的城墙可以是多样的，举例来说，在汽车保险领域的GEICO（译者注：美国一家保险公司），它的城墙就是低成本。

People have to buy auto insurance so everyone is going to have one auto insurance policy per car basically. I can’t sell them 20, but they have to buy one. I can sell them 1. What are they going to buy it on? (based on what criteria?) They (customers) will buy based on service and cost. Most people will assume the service is identical among companies or close enough. So they will do it on cost. So I have to be a low cost producer--that is my moat. To the extent that my costs are further below the other guy, I have thrown a couple of sharks into the moat. All the time you have this wonderful castle, there are people out there who are going to attack it and try to take it away from you. I want a castle I can understand, but I want a castle with a moat around it.
人们是必须买汽车保险的，每人每车都会有，我不能卖20份给一个人，但是至少会有一份。消费者从哪里购买呢？这将基于保险公司的服务和成本。多数人都认为（各家公司的）服务基本上是相同的或接近的，所以成本是他们的决定因素。所以，我就要找低成本的公司，这就是我的城墙。当我的成本越比竞争对手的低，我会越加注意加固和保护我的城墙。当你有一个漂亮的城堡，肯定会有人对它发起攻击，妄图从你的手中把它抢走，所以我要在城堡周围建起城墙来。

Kodak柯达

30 years ago, Eastman Kodak’s moat was just as wide as Coca-Cola’s moat. I mean if you were going to take a picture of your six-month old baby and you want to look at that picture 20 years from now or 50 years from now. And you are never going to get a chance—you are not a professional photographer—so you can evaluate what is going to look good 20 or 50 years ago. What is in your mind about that photography company (Share of Mind) is what counts. Because they are promising you that the picture you take today is going to be terrific 20 to 50 years from now about something that is very important to you. Well, Kodak had that in spades 30 years ago, they owned that. They had what I call share of mind. Forget about share of market, share of mind. They had something—that little yellow box—that said Kodak is the best. That is priceless. They have lost some of that. They haven’t lost it all.
三十年前，柯达公司的城墙和可口可乐的城墙是一样难以逾越的。如果你想给你6个月的小孩子照张像，20年或50年后你再来看那照片，你不会象专业摄影师那样来衡量照片质量随着时间的改变，真正决定购买行为的是胶卷公司在你的心目中的地位。柯达向你保证你今天的照片，20年，50年后看起来仍是栩栩如生，这一点对你而言可能恰恰是最重要的。30年前的柯达就有那样的魅力，它占据了每个人的心。在地球上每个人的心里，它的那个小黄盒子都在说，柯达是最好的。那真是无价的。现在的柯达已经不再独占人们的心。

It is not due to George Fisher. George is 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 that only Kodak was fit to photograph the Olympics. So Fuji gets there and immediately in people’s minds, Fuji becomes more into parity with Kodak.
这不怪George Fisher，George Fisher干得很淡，但 它的城墙变薄了，富士用各种手段缩小了差距。柯达让富士成为奥林匹克运动会的赞助商，一个一直以来由柯达独占的位置。于是在人们的印象里，富士变得和柯达平起平坐起来。

You haven’t seen that with Coke; Coke’s moat is wider now than it was 30 years ago. You can’t see the moat day by day but every time the infrastructure that gets built in some country that isn’t yet profitable for Coke that will be 20 years from now. The moat is widening a little bit. Things are, all the time, changing a little in one direction or the other. Ten years from now, you will see the difference. Our managers of the businesses we run, I have one message to them, and we want to widen the moat. We want to throw crocs, sharks and gators—I guess—into the moat to keep away competitors. That comes about through service, through quality of product, it comes about through cost, some times through patents, and/or real estate location. So that is the business I am looking for.
与之相反的是，可口可乐的城墙与30年前比，变得更宽了。你可能看不到城墙一天天的变化。但是，每次你看到可口可乐的工厂扩张到一个目前并不盈利，但20年后一定会的国家，它的城墙就加宽些。企业的城墙每天每年都在变，或厚或窄。10年后，你就会看到不同。我给那些公司经理人的要求就是，让城墙更厚些，保护好它，拒竞争者于墙外。你可以通过服务，产品质量，价钱，成本，专利，地理位置来达到目的。我寻找的就是这样的企业。

Now what kind of businesses am I going to find like that? Well, I am going to find them in simple products because I am not going to be able to figure what the moat is going to look like for Oracle, Lotus or Microsoft, ten years from now. Gates is the best businessman I have ever run into and they have a hell of a position, but I really don’t know what that business is going to look like ten years from now. I certainly don’t know what his competitors will look like ten years from now. I know what the chewing business will look like ten years from now. The Internet is not going to change how we chew gum and nothing much else is going to change how we chew gum. There will lots of new products. Is Spearmint or Juicy Fruit going to evaporate? It isn’t going to happen. You give me a billion dollars and tell me to go into the chewing gum business and try to make a real dent in Wrigley’s. I can’t do it. That is how I think about businesses. I say to myself, give me a billion dollars and how much can I hurt the guy? Give me $10 billion dollars and how much can I hurt Coca-Cola around the world? I can’t do it. 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. 
那么这样的企业都在做什么生意呢？我要找到他们，就要从最简单的产品里找到那些（杰出的企业）。因为我没法预料到10年以后，甲骨文，莲花，或微软会发展成什么样。比尔.盖茨是我碰到过的最好的生意人。微软现在所处的位置也很好。但是我还是对他们10年后的状况无从知晓。同样我对他们的竞争对手10年后的情形也一无所知。虽然我不拥有口香糖的公司，但是我知道10年后他们的发展会怎样。互联网是不会改变我们嚼口香糖的方式的，事实上，没什么能改变我们嚼口香糖的方式。会有很多的（口香糖）新产品不断进入试验期，一些以失败告终。这是事物发展的规律。如果你给我10个亿，让我进入口香糖的生意，打开一个缺口，我无法做到。这就是我考量一个生意的基本原则。给我10个亿，我能对竞争对手有多少打击？给我100个亿，我对全世界的可口可乐的损失会有多大？我做不到，因为，他们的生意稳如磐石。给我些钱，让我去占领其他领域，我却总能找出办法把事情做到。

So I want a simple business, easy to understand, great economics now, honest and able management, and then I can see about in a general way where they will be ten (10) years from now. If I can’t see where they will be ten years from now, I don’t want to buy it. Basically, I don’t want to buy any stock where if they close the NYSE 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 am happy if the farm does OK. I buy an apartment house and don’t get a quote on it for five years, I am happy if the apartment house produces the returns that I expect. People buy a stock and they look at the price next morning and they decide to see if they are doing well or not doing well. It is crazy. They are buying a piece of the business. That is what Graham—the most fundamental part of what he taught me.  You are not buying a stock, you are buying part ownership in a business. You will do well if the business does well, if you didn’t pay a totally silly price.
所以，我要找的生意就是简单，容易理解，经济上行得通，诚实，能干的管理层。这样，我就能看清这个企业10年的大方向。如果我做不到这一点，我是不会买的。基本上来讲，我只会买那些，即使纽约证交所从明天起关门五年，我也很乐于拥有的股票。如果我买个农场，即使五年内我不知道它的价格，但只要农场运转正常，我就高兴。如果我买个公寓群，只要它们能租出去，带来预计的回报，我也一样高兴。人们买股票，根据第二天早上股票价格的涨跌，决定他们的投资是否正确，这简直是扯淡。正如格拉姆所说的，你要买的是企业的一部分生意。这是格拉姆教给我的最基本最核心的策略。你买的不是股票，你买的是一部分企业生意。企业好，你的投资就好，只要你的买入价格不是太离谱。
      
That is what it is all about. You ought to buy businesses you understand. Just like if you buy farms, you ought to buy farms you understand. It is not complicated.     
这就是投资的精髓所在。你要买你看得懂的生意，你买了农场，是因为你懂农场的经营。就是这么简单。

Incidentally, by the way, in calling this Graham-Buffett, this is pure Graham. I was very fortunate. I picked up his book (The Intelligent Investor) when I was nineteen; I got interested in stocks when I was 6 or 7. I bought my first stock when I was eleven. But I was playing around with all this stuff—I had charts and volume and I was making all types of technical calculations and everything. Then I picked up a little book that said you are not just buying some little ticker symbol, that bounces around every day, you are buying part of a business. Soon as I started thinking about it that way, everything else followed. It is very simple.
这都是格拉姆的理念。我6、7岁就开始对股票感兴趣，在11岁的时买了第一只股票。我沉迷于对图线，成交量等各种技术指标的研究。然后在我还是19岁的时候，幸运地拿起了格拉姆的书。书里说，你买的不是那整日里上下起伏的股票标记，你买的是公司的一部分生意。自从我开始这么来考虑问题后，所以一切都豁然开朗。就这么简单。
      
So we buy businesses we think we can understand. There is no one here who can’t understand Coke………….. (end of first side.)  If I was teaching a class at business school, on the final exam I would pass out the information on an Internet company and ask each student to value it. Anybody that gave me an answer, I’d flunk (Laughter). I don’t know how to do it. But people do it all the time; it is more exciting.
我们只买自己谙熟的生意。在坐的每一个人都懂可口可乐的生意。我却敢说，没人能看懂新兴的一些互联网公司。我在今年的Berkshire Hathaway的股东大会上讲过，如果我在商学院任教，期末考试的题目就是评估互联网公司的价值，如果有人给我一个具体的估价，我会当场晕倒的（笑）。我自己是不知道如何估值的，但是人们每天都在做！

If you look at it like you are going to the races--that is a different thing--but if you are investing…. Investing is putting out money to be sure of getting more back later at an appropriate rate. And to do that you have to understand what you are doing at any time. You have to understand the business. You can understand some businesses but not all businesses.
如果你这么做是为了去竞技比赛，还可以理解。但是你是在投资。投资是投入一定的钱，确保将来能恰当幅度地赚进更多的钱。所以你务必要晓得自己在做什么，务必要深入懂得（你投资的）生意。你会懂一些生意模式，但绝不是全部。

Question: You covered half of it which is trying to understand a business and buying a business. You also alluded to getting a return on the amount of capital invested in the business. How do you determine what is the proper price to pay for the business?
问题：就如你刚才所说，你已经讲了事情的一半，那就是去寻找企业，试着去理解商业模式，作为一个拥有如此大量资金的投资者，你的积累足以让你过功成身退。回到购买企业的成本，你如何决定一个合适的价格来购买企业？

Buffett: It is a tough thing to decide but I don’t want to buy into any business I am not terribly sure of. So if I am terribly sure of it, it probably won’t offer incredible returns. Why should something that is essentially a cinch to do well, offer you 40% a year? We don’t have huge returns in mind, but we do have in mind not losing anything.
巴菲特：那是一个很难作出的决定。对一个我不确信（理解）的东西，我是不会买的。如果我对一个东西非常确信，通常它带给我的回报不会是很可观的。为什么对那些你只有一丝感觉会有40％回报的企业来试手气呢？我们的回报不是惊人的高，但是一般来讲，我们也不会有损失。
      
We bought See’s Candy in 1972, See’s Candy was then selling 16 m. pounds of candy at a $1.95 a pound and it was making 2 bits a pound or $4 million pre-tax. We paid $25 million for it—6.25 x pretax or about 10x after tax. It took no capital to speak of. When we looked at that business—basically, my partner, Charlie, and I—we needed to decide if there was some untapped pricing power there. Where that $1.95 box of candy could sell for $2 to $2.25. If it could sell for $2.25 or another $0.30 per pound that was $4.8 on 16 million pounds. Which on a $25 million purchase price was fine.
1972年，我们买了See’s Candy（一家糖果公司）。See’s Candy每年以每磅1.95美元的价格，卖出1千6百万磅的糖果，产生4百万的税前利润。我们买它花了2千5百万。我和我的合伙人觉得See’s Candy有一种尚未开发出来的定价魔力，每磅1.95美元的糖果可以很容易地以2.25的价钱卖出去。每磅30分的涨价，1千6百万磅就是额外的4百80万呀，所以2千5百万的购买价还是划算的。

We never hired a consultant in our lives; our idea of consulting was to go out and buy a box of candy and eat it. What we did know was that they had share of mind in California. There was something special. Every person in Ca. has something in mind about See’s Candy and overwhelmingly it was favorable. They had taken a box on Valentine’s Day to some girl and she had kissed him. If she slapped him, we would have no business. As long as she kisses him, that is what we want in their minds. See’s Candy means getting kissed. If we can get that in the minds of people, we can raise prices.
我们从未雇过咨询师。我们知道在加州每个人都有一个想法。每个加州人心中对See’s Candy都有一些特殊的印象，他们绝对认这个牌子的糖。在情人节，给女孩子送See’s Candy的糖，她们会高兴地亲它。如果她们把糖扔在一边，爱理不理，那我们的生意就糟糕了。只要女孩子亲吻我们的糖，那就是我们要灌输给加州人脑子里的，女孩子爱亲See’s Candy的糖。如果我们能达到这个目标，我们就可以涨价了。
      
I bought it in 1972, and every year I have raised prices on Dec. 26th, the day after Christmas, because we sell a lot on Christmas. In fact, we will make $60 million this year. We will make $2 per pound on 30 million pounds. Same business, same formulas, same everything--$60 million bucks and it still doesn’t take any capital. And we make more money 10 years from now. But of that $60 million, we make $55 million in the three weeks before Christmas. And our company song is: “What a friend we have in Jesus.” (Laughter). It is a good business.
我们在1972年买的See’s Candy，那之后，我们每年都在12月26日，圣诞节后的第一天，涨价。圣诞节期间我们卖了很多糖。今年，我们卖了3千万磅糖，一磅赚2个美元，总共赚了6千万。十年后，我们会赚得更多。在那6千万里，5千5百万是在圣诞节前3周赚的。耶稣的确是我们的好朋友（笑）。这确实是一桩好生意。
   
Think about it a little. Most people do not buy boxed chocolate to consume themselves, they buy them as gifts— somebody’s birthday or more likely it is a holiday. Valentine’s Day is the single biggest day of the year. Christmas is the biggest season by far. Women buy for Christmas and they plan ahead and buy over a two or three week period. Men buy on Valentine’s Day. They are driving home; we run ads on the Radio. Guilt, guilt, guilt—guys are veering off the highway right and left. They won’t dare go home without a box of Chocolates by the time we get through with them on our radio ads. So that Valentine’s Day is the biggest day. Can you imagine going home on Valentine’s Day—our See’s Candy is now $11 a pound thanks to my brilliance. And let’s say there is candy available at $6 a pound. Do you really want to walk in on Valentine’s Day and hand—she has all these positive images of See’s Candy over the years—and say, “Honey, this year I took the low bid.” And hand her a box of candy. It just isn’t going to work.
如果你再想想，关于这生意的重要一点是，多数人都不买盒装巧克力来自己消费，他们只是用它来做为生日或节日的馈赠礼品。情人节是每年中最重要的一天。圣诞节是迄今为止最最重要的销售季节。女人买糖是为了圣诞节，她们通常在那前后2－3周来买。男人买糖是为了情人节。他们在回家的路上开着车，我们在收音机节目里放广告，“内疚，内疚”，男人们纷纷从高速路上出去，没有一盒巧克力在手，他们是不敢回家的。情人节是销售最火的一天。你能想像，在情人节那天，See’s Candy的价钱已经是11美元一磅了（译者注：又涨价了）。当然还有别的牌子的糖果是6美元一磅。当你在情人节的时候回家（这些都是关于See’s Candy深入人心的一幕幕场景，你的那位接受你的礼品，由衷地感谢你，祝福剩下的一年），递给你的那位（6块钱的糖），说，“亲爱的，今年我买的是廉价货”？这绝不可能行得通！

So in a sense, there is untapped pricing power—it is not price dependent.
在某种程度上，有些东西和价格是没关系的，或者说，不是以价格为导向的。

Think of Disney. Disney is selling Home Videos for $16.95 or $18.95 or whatever. All over the world—people, and we will speak particularly about Mothers in this case, have something in their mind about Disney. Everyone in this room, when you say Disney, has something in their mind about Disney. When I say Universal Pictures, if I say 20th Century Fox, you don’t have anything special in your mind. Now if I say Disney, you have something special in your mind. That is true around the world.
这就像迪斯尼。迪斯尼在全世界卖的是16.95或19.95美元的家庭影像制品。人们，更具体的说，那些当妈妈的对迪斯尼有着特殊的感情。在座的每个人在心中对迪斯尼都有着一些情愫。如果我说环球影视，它不会唤起你心中的那种特殊情愫；我说20世纪福克斯公司，你也不会有什么反应。但是迪斯尼就不同。这一点在全世界都如此。

Now picture yourself with a couple of young kids, whom you want to put away for a couple of hours every day and get some peace of mind. You know if you get one video, they will watch it twenty times. So you go to the video store or wherever to buy the video. Are you going to sit there and premier 10 different videos and watch them each for an hour and a half to decide which one your kid should watch? No. Let’s say there is one there for $16.95 and the Disney one for $17.95—you know if you take the Disney video that you are going to be OK. So you buy it. You don’t have to make a quality decision on something you don’t want to spend the time to do. So you can get a little bit more money if you are Disney and you will sell a lot more videos. It makes it a wonderful business. It makes it very tough for the other guy.
当你的年纪变老的时候，那些（迪斯尼的）影像制品，你可以放心让小孩子每天在一边看几个小时。你知道，一个这样的影片，小孩子会看上20遍。当你去音像店时，你会坐在那儿，把十几种片子都看上一遍，然后决定你的孩子会喜欢哪一部？这种可能性很小。别的牌子卖16.95，而迪斯尼的卖17.95，你知道买迪斯尼的不会错，所以你就买了。在某些你没有时间的事情上，你不一定非要做高质量的决定。而作为迪斯尼而言，就可以因此以更高的价格，卖出多得多的影片。多好的生意！而对其他牌子来讲，日子就不那么好过了。

How would you try to create a brand—Dreamworks is trying—that competes with Disney around the world and replaces the concept that people have in their minds about Disney with something that says, Universal Pictures? So a mother is going to walk in and pick out a Universal Pictures video in preference to a Disney. It is not going to happen. Coca-Cola is associated with people being happy around the world. Everyplace – Disneyland, the World Cup, the Olympics—where people are happy. Happiness and Coke go together. Now you give me—I don’t care how much money—and tell me that I am going to do that with RC Cola around the world and have five billion people have a favorable image in their mind about RC Cola. You can’t get it done. You can fool around, you can do what you want to do. You can have price discounts on weekends. But you are not going to touch it. That is what you want to have in a business. That is the moat. You want that moat to widen.
梦想家们一直努力打造出类似于迪斯尼概念的品牌，来同它在世界范围内竞争，取代人们心中对迪斯尼的那份特殊情愫。比如，环球影视吧，妈妈们不会在音像店里买他们的片子，而放弃迪斯尼的。那是不可能发生的。可口可乐是在全球范围内和喜悦的情绪关联在一起的。不管你花多少钱，你想让全世界的50亿人更喜欢RC可乐（译者注：巴菲特杜撰出来的饮料牌子），那是做不到的。你可以搞些诡计，做折扣促销，等等，但都是无法得逞的。这就是你要的生意，你要的城墙。

Question: If I have every bought a company where the numbers told me not to. How much is quantitative and how much is qualitative?
问题：在你购买公司的分析过程里，是否有些数字会告诉你不要买？哪些东西是质化的，哪些东西是量化的？

Buffett: The best buys have been when the numbers almost tell you not to. Because then you feel so strongly about the product. And not just the fact you are getting a used cigar butt cheap. Then it is compelling. I owned a windmill company at one time. Windmills are cigar butts, believe me. I bought it very cheap, I bought it at a third of working capital. And we made money out of it, but there is no repetitive money to be made on it. There is a one-time profit in something like that. And it is just not the thing to be doing. I went through that phase. I bought streetcar companies and all kinds of things. In terms of the qualitative, I probably understand the qualitative the moment I get the phone call. Almost every business we have bought has taken five or ten minutes in terms of analysis. We bought two businesses this year.
巴菲特：最好的买卖里，从数字的角度来讲，几乎都要告诉你不要买。你可能对（被购买公司的）产品的印象是非常之深，但是你对那套雪茄烟蒂式的廉价思维已经根深蒂固。我曾经拥有一个风力发电公司。相信我，风力发电公司如同雪茄烟蒂一般廉价。我们买的也很便宜，只相当于公司流动资金的三分之一的价钱。我们却实赚了钱，但是这种收益是不可复制的，更象是一次性的买卖。你可不想做那样的事情，但我经历了那样一个阶段，在那个阶段里，我还买过租车公司等等一些生意。谈到质化的东西，我可能在接到电话的那一刻就能感受到了。几乎我们买的所有企业，只需要10分钟，15分钟的分析。我今年买了两个企业。）我拿到了它们的经营数据。

General Re is a $18 billion deal. I have never been to their home office. I hope it is there. (Laughter) “There could be a few guys there saying what numbers should we send Buffett this month?” I could see them going once a month and saying we have $20 billion in the bank instead of $18 billion. I have never been there.
General Re（译者注：全球最大的再保险公司之一）是一个180亿的交易。我连它们的总部都没去过。我希望它们的的确确有个总部（译者注：巴菲特在开玩笑）。“总有那么几个人会问，我们这个月要发哪些数据给巴菲特？”我每个月会受到一份数据报表，报表上显示，我们银行的存款从180增长到200亿了。我真的从没去过他们总部。

Before I bought Executive Jet, which is fractional ownership of jets, before I bought it, I had never been there. I bought my family a quarter interest in the program three years earlier. And I have seen the service and it seems to develop well. And I got the numbers.
在那之前，我买了Executive Jet，主要做部分拥有小型飞机的生意（译者注：美国近年来，很流行私人拥有飞机。但毕竟花销很大，不是一般人能承受得起。所以，买一部分飞机的拥有权，这样你可以有一段你自己的飞行计划和路线，变得很实际）。在我们买之前，我也没去过它的公司总部。四年前，我给我的家庭买了一个飞机计划的四分之一拥有权。我亲身体会了他们的服务，我也看到了这些年它们的迅速发展。（在购买交易发生之前，）我拿到了它们的经营数据。

But if you don’t know enough to know about the business instantly, you won’t know enough in a month or in two months. You have to have sort of the background of understanding and knowing what you do or don’t understand. That is the key. It is defining your circle of competence.
如果你不能马上足够了解所作的生意，即使你花上一二个月，情况也未见得会有多少改观。你必须对你可能了解的和不能了解的有个切身体会，你必须对你的能力范围有个准确的认知。范围的大小无关大局，重要的是那个范围里的东西。

Everybody has got a different circle of competence. The important thing is not how big the circle is, the important thing is the size of the circle; the important thing is staying inside the circle. And if that circle only has 30 companies in it out of 1000s on the big board, as long as you know which 30 they are, you will be OK. And you should know those businesses well enough so you don’t need to read lots of work. Now I did a lot of work in the earlier years just getting familiar with businesses and the way I would do that is use what Phil Fisher would call, the “Scuttlebutt Approach.” I would go out and talk to customers, suppliers, and maybe ex-employees in some cases. Everybody. Everytime I was interested in an industry, say it was coal, I would go around and see every coal company. I would ask every CEO, “If you could only buy stock in one coal company that was not your own, which one would it be and why? You piece those things together, you learn about the business after awhile.
哪怕在那个范围里只有成千上万家上市公司里的30个公司，只要有那30家，你就没问题。你所做的就应当是深入了解这30家公司的业务，你根本不需要去了解和学习其他的东西。在我早年的时候，我做了大量功课来熟悉生意上的事情。我们走出去，采取所谓‘抹黄油’的方式，去与企业的用户谈，与企业以前的雇员谈，与企业的供应商谈，我们能找到的每一个人。每次我看到业界的专业人员，举例来说，我对采煤业有兴趣，我会遍访每一家采煤公司，问每一位CEO,“如果要在业界买一家公司，你认为我该买哪一家？为什么？” 如果你把这些片段的信息串起来，你会学到很多业界的信息。

Funny, you get very similar answers as long as you ask about competitors. If you had a silver bullet and you could put it through the head of one competitor, which competitor and why? You will find who the best guy is in the industry. So there are a lot of things you can learn about a business. I have done that in the past on the business I felt I could understand so I don’t have to do that anymore. The nice thing about investing is that you don’t have to learn anything new. You can do it if you want to, but if you learn Wrigley’s chewing gum forty years ago, you still understand Wrigley’s chewing gum. There are not a lot of great insights to get of the sort as you go along. So you do get a database in your head.
当你问到竞争对手的时候，你会得到非常相似的答案。比如说，如果你有一个解决一切问题的良方，那么你首先要解决的竞争对手是谁？为什么？通过这种手段，你很快会发现谁是业界最好的企业。做投资的好处是你不用学习日新月异的知识和技能。当然你愿意那么去做，就另当别论了。四十年前你了解的口香糖的生意，现如今依旧适用，没有什么变化。
      
I had a guy, Frank Rooney, who ran Melville for many years; his father-in-law died and had owned H.H. 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 he mentioned it to this friend, so my friend said “Why don’t you call Warren?” He called me after the match and in five minutes I basically had a deal.
我认识一个人，他的岳父去世了，丢下一间他创建的制鞋公司。这个人托Goldman Sachs来卖掉这家公司。他和我的一个朋友在佛罗里达打高尔夫，提到了这件事。我朋友让他给我打电话。他打了，结果我们用五分钟谈成了这桩生意。

But I knew Frank, and I knew the business. I sort of knew the basic economics of the shoe business, so I could buy it. Quantitatively, I have to decide what the price is. But, you know, that is either yes or no. I don’t fool a lot around with negotiations. If they name a price that makes sense to me, I buy it. If they don’t, I was happy the day before, so I will be happy the day after without owning it.
我认识这个人，我基本了解制鞋生意，所以我就买了。质化的方面定了后，就是价格了。我的答案只有是或者不是，很简单，谈判的时候没什么圈子可兜。只要价格合适，我就会买。不然的话，谈判之前我很快乐，谈判不成我也一样。

Question: The Asian Crisis and how it affects a company like Coke that recently announced their earnings would be lower in the fourth quarter.
问题：可口可乐最近发布了对未来季度调低盈利预期的消息。你对可口可乐并没有因为在美国之外的许多问题，包括亚洲危机，造成的负面影响而撒谎怎么看？

Buffett: Well, basically I love it, but because the market for Coca-Cola products will grow far faster over the next twenty years internationally than it will in the United States. It will grow in the U.S. on a per capita basis. The fact that it will be a tough period for who knows—three months or three years—but it won’t be tough for twenty years. People will still be going to be working productively around the world and they are going to find this is a bargain product in terms of a portion of their working day that they have to give up in order to have one of these, better yet, five of them a day like I do. This is a product that in 1936 when I first bought 6 of those for a quarter and sold them for a nickel each. It was in a 6.5 oz bottle and you paid a two cents deposit on the bottle. That was a 6.5 oz. bottle for a nickel at that time; it is now a 12 oz. can which if you buy it on Weekends or if you buy it in bigger quantities, so much money doesn’t go to packaging—you essentially can buy the 12 ozs. for not much more than 20 cents. So you are paying not much more than twice the per oz. price of 1936. This is a product that has gotten cheaper and cheaper relative to people’s earning power over the years.
巴菲特：我很喜欢他们（的诚实）。事实上，在未来20年，可口可乐在国际上的市场增长要比在美国国内好得多。在美国国内的人均消费量会增长，但在别的国家的增长会快得多。可口可乐可能会有一段3个月，也可能是3年的艰难时期，但不会是未来的20年。人们在全世界的范围内高效地工作，他们会发现换取一瓶可乐（巴菲特举起手中的可乐瓶），就占他们每天所获得的劳动报酬的比例而言，实在是一笔很好的买卖。实际上，我是一天五瓶（笑）。在1936年的时候，我第一次用25美分买了6瓶可乐（单卖是5美分一瓶）。那是6.5盎司的瓶子，2美分的瓶子押金，实际上是6.5盎司的可乐只要5美分。现在是12盎司的罐子，如果你在周末去买大瓶装的，减少一些在包装上的费用，你基本上可以花20美分多一点买12盎司。你现在在每盎司上花的钱只是1936年的两倍多一点点。相对于人们不断增长的购买力而言，可乐实际上在年复一年地变得越来越便宜。
      
And which people love. And in 200 countries, you have the per capita consumption use going up every year for a product that is over 100 years old that dominates the market. That is unbelievable. 在全世界的两百多个国家里，这个有着一百多年历史的产品的人均消费量每年都在增长。它霸占着饮料市场，真的是难以置信。

One thing that people don’t understand is one thing that makes this product worth 10s and 10s of billions of dollars is one simple fact about really all colas, but we will call it Coca-Cola for the moment. It happens to be a name that I like. Cola has no taste memory. You can drink one of these at 9 O’clock, 10 O’clock, 1 O’clock and 5 O’clock. The one at 5 o’clock will taste as good to you as the one you drank early in the morning, you can’t do that with Cream Soda, Root Beer, Orange, Grape. All of those things accumulate on you. Most foods and beverages accumulate; you get sick of them after a while. And if you eat See’s Candy—we get these people who go to work for us at See’s Candy and the first day they go crazy, but after a week they are eating the same amount as if they were buying it, because chocolate accumulates on you. 
有一件人们可能不懂，但却使这个产品有着数以百亿元的价值的简单事实就是可乐没有味觉记忆。你可以在9点，11点，下午3点，5点喝上一罐，5点时你喝的味道和你一早上9点喝的味道一样好。其他的饮料如甜苏打水，橙汁，根啤都做不到这一点，它们对味道有着累积作用（译者注：累积使味觉麻木），重复的饮用会使你厌烦。我们在See’s Candy的雇员可以免费享用公司生产糖果。在他们第一天工作的时候，他们渴着劲儿吃。但在那之后，他们再吃起来就跟要花钱买似的。为什么？巧克力一样有着味觉累积。
      
There is no taste memory to Cola and that means you get people around the world who will be heavy users—who will drink five a day, or for Diet Coke, 7 or even 8 a day. They will never do that with other products. So you get this incredible per capita consumption. The average person in this part of the world or maybe a little north of here drinks 64 ozs. of liquid a day. You can have 64 ozs. of that be Coke and you will not get fed up with Coke if you like it to start with in the least. But if you do that with anything else; if you eat just one product all day, you will get a little sick of it after a while.It is a huge factor. So today over 1 billion of Coca-Cola product servings will be sold in the world and that will grow year by year. It will grow in every country virtually, and it will grow on a per capita basis. And twenty years from now it will grow a lot faster internationally than in the U.S., so I really like that market better, because there is more growth there over time. But it will hurt them in the short term right now, but that doesn’t mean anything.
但是可乐就没有味觉累积。这意味着，全世界的人们可以每天都可以消费很多次可乐，而不是其他的饮料，所以你得到的就是可乐之难以企及的人均消费量。在今天，全世界范围内可乐的日销售量超过800亿盎司。这个数目还在年复一年地增长。增长还体现在无论是以国家计还是人均计的消费量上。可乐和其它食物不一样，其它食物让你天天吃，你会很快受不了的，可乐每天来一瓶也没什么，这是很重要的因素。20年后，在美国之外的增长讲远远超过美国国内。我分外看好国际市场的前景。（目前可乐的国际危机，）短期来讲对他们确实有消极的影响，但这不是一个大不了的问题。
      
Coca-Cola went public in 1919; the stock sold for $40 per share. The Chandler family bought the whole business for $2,000 back in the late 1880s. So now he goes public in 1919, $40 per share. One year later it is selling for $19 per share. It has gone down 50% in one year. You might think it is some kind of disaster and you might think sugar prices increased and the bottlers were rebellious. And a whole bunch of things. You can always find reasons that weren't the ideal moment to buy it. Years later you would have seen the Great Depression, WW II and sugar rationing and thermonuclear weapons and the whole thing—there is always a reason.
可口可乐公司于1919年上市，那时的价格是40美元左右。一年后，股价降了50％，只有19美元。看起来那是一场灾难。瓶装问题，糖料涨价，你总能发现这样那样的原因让你觉得那不是一个合适的买入时机。一些年之后，又发生了大萧条，第二次世界大战，核武器竞赛等。总是有原因（让你不买）。如果你在一开始40块钱买了一股，然后你把派发的红利进行再投资（买入可口可乐的股票），一直到现在，那股可乐股票的价值是5百万。这个事实压倒了一切。如果你看对了生意模式，你就会赚很多钱。

But in the end if you had bought one share at $40 per share and reinvested the dividends, it would be worth $5 million now ($40 compounding at 14.63% for 86 years!). That factor so overrides anything else. If you are right about the business you will make a lot of money. The timing part of it is very tricky thing so I don’t worry about any given event if I got a wonderful business what it does next year or something of the sort. Price controls have been in this country at various times and that has fouled up even the best of businesses. I wouldn’t be able to raise prices Dec 31st on See’s Candy. But that doesn’t make it a lousy business if that happens to happen, because you are not going to have price controls forever. We had price controls in the early 70s.
切入点的时机是很难把握的。所以，如果我拥有的是一个绝佳的生意，我丝毫不会为某一个事件的发生，或者它对未来一年的影响等等而担忧。当然，在过去的某些个时间段，政府施加了价格管制政策。企业因而不能涨价，即使最好的企业有时也会受影响，我们的See’s Candy糖果不能在12月26日涨价。但是，管制该发生的时候就会发生，它绝不会把一个杰出的企业蜕变成一个平庸的企业。政府是不可能永远实施管制政策的。

The wonderful business—you can figure what will happen, you can’t figure out when it will happen. You don’t want to focus too much on when but you want to focus on what. If you are right about what, you don’t have to worry about when very much.
一个杰出的企业可以预计到将来可能会发生什么，但不一定会准确到何时会发生。重心需要放在“什么”上面，而不是“何时”上。如果对“什么”的判断是正确的，那么对“何时”大可不必过虑。

Question: What about your business mistakes?
问题：谈谈你投资上的失误吧。

Buffett: How much time do you have? The interesting thing about investments for me and my partner, Charlie Munger, the biggest mistakes have not been mistakes of commission, but of omission. They are where we knew enough about the business to do something and where, for one reason or another, sat they're sucking out thumbs instead of doing something. And so we have passed up things where we could have made billions and billions of dollars from things we understood, forget about things we don’t understand. The fact I could have made billions of dollars from Microsoft doesn’t mean anything because I never could understand Microsoft.
巴菲特：你有多少时间？（译者注：巴菲特的幽默在这里表现得淋漓尽致）关于失误的有趣的一点是，在投资上，至少对我和我的合伙人而言，最大的失误不是做了什么，而是没有做什么。对于我们所知甚多的生意，当机会来到时，我们却犹豫了，而不是去做些什么。我们错过了赚取数以十亿元计的大钱的好机会。不谈那些我们不懂的生意，只专注于那些我们懂的。我们确实错过了从微软身上赚大钱的机会，但那并没有什么特殊意义，因为我们从一开始就不懂微软的生意。

But if I can make billions out of healthcare stocks, then I should make it. And I didn’t when the Clinton health care program was proposed and they all went in the tank. We should have made a ton of money out of that because I could understand it. And didn’t make it.
但是对于在医疗保健股票上理应赚得的几十亿，我们却错过了。当克林顿政府推出医疗保健计划时，医疗保健公司获益非浅。我们应当在那上面赚得盘满钵满的，因为我懂那里面的因果。

I should have made a ton of money out of Fannie Mae back the mid-1980s, but I didn’t do it. Those are billion dollar mistakes or multi-billion dollar mistakes that generally accepted accounting principles don’t pick up.
80年代中期，我们应当在Fannie Mae（译者注：美国一家受政府支持，专做二级房贷的超大型公司）上获利颇丰，因为我们也算得清个中的究竟。这些都是数以十亿计的超级错误，却不会被GAAP会计法则抓个现形。

The mistakes you see. I made a mistake when I bought 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. Don’t hang around the office. But I hang around the office and I have money in my pocket, I do something dumb. It happens every time.
你们所看到的错误，比如我买下了几年前我买的US Air（译者注：巴菲特在这笔交易中几乎损失了全部的投资，3.6个亿）。当我手里有很多现金的时候，我就很容易犯错误。查理（译者注：巴菲特的合伙人）让我去酒吧转转，不要总滞留在办公室里（笑）。但是我一有闲钱，又总在办公室里，我想我是够愚昧的，这种事时有发生。

So I bought this thing. Nobody made me buy it. I now have an 800 number I call every time I think about buying a stock in an airline. I say, “I am Warren and I am an air-aholic.” They try to talk me down, “Keep talking don’t do anything rash.” Finally I got over it.
总之，我买了US Air的股票，虽然没人逼着我买。现在我有一个800的电话号码，每次我打算买航空公司的股票后，我就打这个电话。我跟他们讲我很蠢，老犯错，他们总是劝我别买，不断地和我聊，让我别挂电话，不要仓促地做任何决定。最后，我就会放弃要购买的冲动。（译者注：真有这么回事吗？听起来像是巴菲特在开玩笑）
      
But I bought it. And it looked like we would lose all our money in it. And we came very close to losing all our money in it. You can say we deserved to lose our money it.
于是我买了US Air的股票。看上去我们的投资要打水漂了，而且我们的投资也确实几乎全打了水漂，（那笔糟糕的投资）理应全军覆没的。

We bought it because it was an attractive security. But it was not in an attractive industry. I did the same thing in Salomon. I bought an attractive security in a business I wouldn’t have bought the equity in. So you could say that is one form of mistake. Buying something because you like the terms, but you don’t like the business that well. I have done that in the past and will probably do that again. The bigger mistakes are the ones of omission. Back when I had $10,000 I put $2,000 of it into a Sinclair Service Station which I lost, so the opportunity cost on that money is about $6 billion right now-- fairly big mistakes. It makes me feel good when my Berkshire goes down, because the cost of my Sinclair Station goes down too. My 20% opportunity cost.
我因为价钱非常诱人而买了那些股票，但是那绝不是个诱人的行业。我对所罗门的股票犯了同样的错误，股票本身价廉诱人没错，但那应该是杜绝涉足的行业。你可以说那是一种犯错的模式。你中意具体交易的条件，但不感冒交易公司所处的行业。我以前犯过这样的错误，很可能将来我还会犯这样的错误。但更大的错误还是我一开始所讲的因犹豫和迟疑所致。当我只有1万块钱的时候，我投资了两千在汽修厂，而且肉包子打狗，那笔机会成本高达60个亿（笑），是个大错。当Berkshire的股价下降时，我还能感受好些，因为那也降低了汽修厂的购买成本（笑），以及20％的机会成本。
      
 I will say this, it is better to learn from other people’s mistakes as much as possible. But we don’t spend any time looking back at Berkshire. I have a partner, Charlie Munger; we have been pals for forty years—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 is so much to look forward to that there is no sense thinking of what we might have done. It just doesn’t make any difference.  当你聊到从失败中汲取经验时，我笃信你最好还是从他人的失败中来学习吧，越多越好（笑）。在Berkshire公司里，我们绝不花一点时间来缅怀过去。我和我的合伙人是40年的哥们了，从没有任何的争吵。我们有很多事情上会有不同的见解，但从没有过争吵，我们也从不回顾过去。我们总是对未来充满希冀，都认为牵绊于‘如果我们那样做了。。。’的假设是不可理喻的，那样做不可能改变既成的事实。

 You can only live life forward. You can learn something perhaps from the mistakes, but the big thing to do is to stick with the businesses you understand. So if there is a generic mistake outside your circle of competence like buying something that somebody tips you on or something of the sort. In an area you know nothing about, you should learn something from that which is to stay with what you can figure out yourself. You really want your decision making to be by looking in the mirror. Saying to yourself, “I am buying 100 shares of General Motors at $55 because……..” It is your responsibility if you are buying it. There’s gotta be a reason and if you can’t state the reason, you shouldn’t buy it. If it is because someone told you about it at a cocktail party, not good enough. It can’t be because of the volume or a reason like the chart looks good. It has to be a reason to buy the business. That we stick to pretty carefully. That is one of the things Ben Graham taught me.
你只能活在现在时。你也许可以从你过去的错误中汲取教训，但最关键的还是坚持做你懂的生意。如果是一个本质上的错误，比如涉足自己能力范围之外的东西，因为其他人建议的影响等等，所以在一无所知的领域做了一些交易，那倒是你应该好好学习的。你应该坚守在凭自身能力看得透的领域。当你做出决策时，你应该看着镜子里的自己，扪心自问，“我以一股55元的价格买入100股通用汽车的股票是因为。。。”。你对自己所有的购买行为负责，必须时刻充满理性。如果理由不充分，你的决定只能是不买。如果仅仅是有人在鸡尾酒会上提起过，那么这个理由远未充分。也不可能是因为一些成交量或技术指标看上去不错，或盈利等等。必须确实是你想拥有那一部分生意的原因，这一直是我们尽量坚持做到的，也是格拉姆教给我的。

Question: The current tenuous economic situation and interest rates? Where are we going?
问题：谈谈目前的经济形式和利率，和将来的走向？

Buffett: I don’t think about the macro stuff. What you really want to in investments is figure out what is important and knowable. If it is unimportant and unknowable, you forget about it. What you talk about is important but, in my view, it is not knowable. Understanding Coca-Cola is knowable or Wrigley’s or Eastman Kodak. You can understand those businesses that are knowable. Whether it turns out to be important depends where your valuation leads you and the firm’s price and all that. But we have never not bought or bought a business because of any Macro feeling of any kind because it doesn’t make any difference. Let’s say in 1972 when we bought See’s Candy, I think Nixon put on the price controls a little bit later, but so what! We would have missed a chance to buy something for $25 million that is producing $60 million pre-tax now. We don’t want to pass up the chance to do something intelligent because of some prediction about something we are no good on anyway. So we don’t read or listen to in relation to macro factors at all. The typical investment counselor organization goes out and they bring out their economist and they trot him out and he gives you this big macro picture. And they start working from there on down. In our view that is nonsense. If Alan Greenspan was on the one side of me and Robert Rubin on the other side and they both were whispering in my ear exactly what they were going to do the next twelve months, it wouldn’t make any difference to me what I would pay for Executive Jet or General Re or anything else I do.
巴菲特：我不关心宏观的经济形式。在投资领域，你最希望做到的应该是搞清楚那些重要的，并且是可以搞懂的东西。对那些既不重要，又难以搞懂的东西，你忘了它们就对了。你所讲的，可能是重要的，但是难以拎清。了解可口可乐，Wrigley（译者注：美国一家营销口香糖的公司），或柯达，他们的生意是可以拎得清的。当然你的研究最后是否重要还取决于公司的评估，当前的股价等因素。但是我们从未因对宏观经济的感觉来买或者不买任何一家公司。我们根本就不读那些预估利率，企业利润的文章，因为那些预估真的是无关痛痒。1972年，我们买了See’s Candy，那之后不久政府实施了价格管制，但那又怎么样呢，（如果我们因为价格管制的原因没有买）我们就错过了以2千5百万买下一个现如今税前利润6千万的生意！我们不愿因为自身本就不精通的一些预估而错过买到好生意的机会。我们根本就不听或不读那些涉及宏观经济因素的预估。在通常的投资咨询会上，经济学家们会做出对宏观经济的描述，然后以那为基础展开咨询活动。在我们看来，那样做是毫无道理的。假想Alan Greenspan（译者注：上一任美联储主席）在我一边，Robert Rubin（译者注：克林顿时期美财长）在我另一边，即使他们都悄悄告诉我未来12个月他们的每一步举措，我是无动于衷的，而且这也不会对我购买Executive Jets飞机公司或General Re再保险公司，或我做的任何事情有一丝一毫的影响。
   
Question: What is the benefit of being an out-of-towner as opposed to being on Wall Street?
相比身处华尔街，置身华尔街之外又有什么好处？

Buffett: I worked on Wall Street for a couple of years and I have my best friends on both coasts. I like seeing them. I get ideas when I go there. But the best way to 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.
巴菲特：我在华尔街上工作了两年多。我在东西海岸都有最好的朋友。能见到他们让我很开心，当我去找他们的时候，总是会得到一些想法。但是最好的能对投资进行深思熟虑的方法就是去一间没有任何人的屋子，只是静静地想。如果那都不能让你想的话，没有什么可以。
      
 The disadvantage of being in any type of market environment like Wall Street in the extreme is that you get over-stimulated. You think you have to do something every day. The Chandler family paid $2,000 for this company (Coke). 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 to sell at 1919, which the family did later on. So what you are looking for is some way to get one good idea a year. And then ride it to its full potential and that is very hard to do in an environment where people are shouting prices back and forth every five minutes and shoving reports in front of your nose and all that. Wall Street makes its money on activity. You make your money on inactivity.（身处华尔街的）缺点就是，在任何一个市场环境下，华尔街的情况都太极端了，你会被过度刺激，好像被逼着每天都要去做点什么。钱德勒家族花两千块钱买了可口可乐公司，除此之外，就不要再做其他的事情了。事情的关键是无为而治，即使在1919年也不要卖（钱德勒家族在这一年卖掉了可乐公司）。所以，你所找寻的出路就是，想出一个好方法，然后持之以恒，尽最大可能，直到把梦想变成现实。在每五分钟就互相叫价一个来回，人们甚至在你的鼻子底下报价的环境里，想做到不为所动是很难的。华尔街靠的是不断的买进卖出来赚钱，你靠的是不去做买进卖出而赚钱。   
   
If everyone in this room trades their portfolio around every day with every other person, you will all end up broke. And the intermediary will end up with all the money. If you all own stock in a group of average businesses and just sit here for the next 50 years, you will end up with a fair amount of money and your broker will be broke. He is like the Doctor who gets paid on how often to get you to change pills. If he gave you one pill that cures you the rest of your life, he would make one sale, one transaction and that is it. But if he can convince you that changing pills every day is the way to great health, it will be great for him and the prescriptionists. You won’t be any healthier and you will be a lot worse off financially.
这间屋子里的每个人之间每天互相交易你们所拥有的股票，到最后所有人都会破产，而所有钱财都进了经纪公司的腰包。相反地，如果你们象一般企业那样，50年岿然不动，到最后你赚得不亦乐乎，而你的经纪只好破产。就像一个医生，依赖于你变更所用药品的频率而赚钱。如果一种用药就能包治百病，那么他只能开一次处方，做一次交易，他的赚头也就到此为止了。但是，如果他能说服你每天更新处方是一条接往健康的通途，他会很乐于开出处方，你也会烧光你的钱，不但不会更健康，反而处境会更差。
      
You want to stay away from any environment that stimulates activity. And Wall Street would have the effective of doing that.
你应该做的是远离那些促使你做出仓促决定的环境。华尔街自有它的功效。

When I went back to Omaha, I would go back with a whole list of companies I wanted to check out and I would get my money’s worth out of those trips, but then I would go back to Omaha and think about it.
在我回Omaha之前，每六个月都有一个长长的单子的事情去做，一大批公司去考察，我会让自己做的事情对得起旅行花的钱。然后，我会（离开华尔街）回Omaha，仔细考量。

Question: How to evaluate Berkshire or MSFT if it does not pay dividends?
问题：投资人如何来给Berkshire或微软这样从来不分红的公司估值？

Buffett: It won’t pay any dividends either. That is a promise I can keep. All you get with Berkshire, you stick it in your safe deposit box and then every year you go down and fondle it. You take it out and then you put it back. There is enormous psychic reward in that. Don’t underestimate it.
巴菲特：这是个关于Berkshire从来不分红的问题。Berkshire将来也不会分红，这是一个我可以担保的承诺（笑）。你能从Berkshire得到的是将（红利）放进安全的存款箱，每年你可以拿出来好好地把玩一翻，然后再把它放回原位。这样，你会得到巨大的自我满足感。可别小瞧了这样的自我满足感！（译者：像不像葛朗台数钱？）

The real question is if we can retain dollar bills and turn them into more than a dollar at a decent rate. That is what we try to do. And Charlie Munger and I have all our money in it to do that. That is all we will get paid for doing. We won’t take any options or we won’t take any salaries to speak of. But that is what we are trying to do. It gets harder all the time. The more money we manage the harder it is to do that. We would do way better percentage wise with Berkshire if it was 1/100th the present size. It is run for its owners, but it isn’t run to give them dividends because so far every dollar that we earned or could have paid out, we have turned into more than a dollar. It is worth more than a dollar to keep it. Therefore, it would be silly to pay it out. Even if everyone was taxfree 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. But there is no guarantee that happens in the future. At some point the game runs out on that. That is what the business is about. Nothing else about the business do we judge ourselves by. We don’t judge it by the size of its home office building or anything the like the number of people working there. We have 12 people working at headquarters and 45,000 employees at Berkshire, 12 people at HQ and 3,500 sq ft. and we won’t change it.
当然，这里的核心问题是我们能否让截留下来的钱财以可观的幅度升值。这是我们一直孜孜以求的。查理和我的立身之本也在此处。当然，这项任务正变得越来越难。我们管的钱越多，就越难做到（以可观的幅度升值）。如果Berkshire的大小只有现在的百分之一，我们升值的幅度要比现在好得多。如果我们能做到不断地升值，那么派发红利自然是不明智的。到目前为止，我们做到了让截留下来的红利再投资胜过直接派发红利。但是，没有人可以保证在将来还能这样。在某一个阶段，总会有物极必反的时候。保持持续增长是我们努力的目标。那也是唯一衡量我们公司价值的标尺。公司总部的大小等等都不能用来衡量公司的价值。Berkshire有4万5千名雇员，但在总部只有12人和3千5百平方英尺（译者注：300多平米）的办公室。这一点我们不打算改变。

But we will judge ourselves by the performance of the company and that is the only way we will get paid. But believe me, it is a lot harder than it used to be.
我们用公司的表现来评估自己，我们也以此来谋生。相信我，比起从前来，（保持持续增长）难得多了。

Question: What tells you when an investment has reached its full potential?
问题：什么时候你会认为你的投资已经实现了它的增长极限？

Buffett: I don’t buy Coke with the idea it will be out of gas in 10 years or 50 years. There could be something that happens by I 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 is the same way I fell about people who buy Berkshire. I want people who buy Berkshire to plan to hold it forever. They may not for one reason or the other but I want them at the time they buy it to think they are buying a business they are going to want to own forever. And I don’t say that is the only way to buy things. It is just the group to join 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.
巴菲特：理想的情况是当你购买生意的时候，你不希望你买的企业有一个增长极限。我买可口可乐公司的时候，我不希望10年，15年后看到可乐弹尽粮绝。不排除有这个可能，但可能性接近于零。我们想看到的是，当你买一个公司，你会乐于永久地持有那个公司。同样的道理，当人们买Berkshire的股票的时候，我希望他们打算一辈子持有它。因为这样或那样的原因，这可能行不通。我不想说，这是唯一的购买股票的方式，但是我希望依据那样的方式来购买股票的一群人加入Berkshire，因为我不希望总是看到 一群不同的股东。我实际上对Berkshire股东的变化更替实行跟踪。

If I had a church and I was the preacher and half the congregation left every Sunday. I wouldn’t say, “It is marvelous to have all this liquidity among my members.” Terrific turnover… I would rather go to church where all the seats are filled every Sunday by the same people.
举个例子，如果有一个教堂，我是行祷告之人，看到做礼拜的人每个星期都换掉一半，我不会说，这真是太好了，看看我的成员流动性有多强呀（笑）。我宁愿在每个星期天看到教堂里坐满了同样那么一批人。

Well that is the way we look at the businesses we buy. We want to buy something virtually forever. And we can’t find a lot of those. And back when I started, I had way more ideas than money so I was just constantly having to sell what was the least attractive stock in order to buy something I just discovered that looked even cheaper. But that is not our problem really now. So we hope we are buying businesses that we are just as happy holding five years from now as now. And if we ever found a huge acquisition, then maybe we would have to sell something. Maybe to make that acquisition but that would be a very pleasant problem to have.
当我们考量生意的时候，这就是我们的原则。基本上我们寻找那些打算永久持有的生意。那样的企业并不多。在一开始，我的主意比资金多得多，所以我不断地卖出那些我认为吸引力差些的股票以便来购买那些新近发现的好生意。但这已经不是我们现在的问题了。（译者注：我们现在不缺钱，而是缺好生意)购买企业的五年后，我们希望彼时如同此时一般的满意。如果有一些极其庞大的兼并机会，也可能我们需要卖出一些股票（来筹措资金）。当然，我很乐于拥有那样的问题。

We never buy something with a price target in mind. We never buy something at 30 saying if it goes to 40 we’ll 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 See’s Candy for $25 million. We don’t ever say if we ever get an offer of $50 million for this business we will sell it. That is not the way to look at a business.
我们在购买企业时从来不预先定下一个目标价。比如，如果我们的买入价是30，当股价到达40，50，60，或100时，我们就卖，诸如此类。我们不再如此的行事。当我们花2500万买私有公司See’s Candy时，我们没有“如果有人出5000万我们就卖”的计划。那不是一个考量生意的正确方式。

The way to look at a business is this going to keep producing more and more money over time? And if the answer to that is yes, you don’t need to ask any more questions.
我们考量生意的方式是，随着时间的推移，是否买下的企业会带来越来越多的利润？如果对这个问题的回答是肯定的，任何其他问题都是多余的。

Questions: How did you decide to invest in Salomon?
问题：你是如何看待对所罗门的投资的？类似的，长期管理资金的买卖？

Buffett: Salomon like I said, I went into that because it was a 9% security in 1987 in September 1987 and the Dow was up 35% and we sold a lot of stuff. And I had a lot of money around and it looked to me like we would never get to do anything, so I took an attractive security form in a business I would never buy the common stock of. I went in because of that and I think generally it is a mistake. It worked out OK finally on that. But it is not what I should have been doing. 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 even though it was selling at a pretty good price at the time. So that was a mistake.
巴菲特：我们投资所罗门的原因是，在1987年9月，所罗门公司是一家9％资产被证券化的企业，道指在这一年涨了35％，之前我们卖了很多股票，一下子手里有了很多现金，并且看上去我们暂时不会用得到它们。所以，在这个我通常不会购买股票的行业里，我们采用了这种有吸引力的证券形式，购买了所罗门。这是一个错误。最后结果还不错，但那不是我应该做的。我应该再等等，这样一年后我会多买一些可口可乐公司的股票，或者我在当时就该买，即便可乐那时的卖价真的不便宜。
      
On Long-Term Capital that is—we have owned other businesses associated with securities over the years-–One of them is arbitrage. I’ve done arbitrage for 45 years and Graham did it for 30 years before that. That is a business unfortunately I have to be near a phone for. I have to really run it (arbitrage operations) out of the office myself, because it requires being more market-attuned because 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 participated in about 300 arbitrage situations at least in my life maybe more. It was a good business, a perfectly good business.
对于长期管理资金，我们，随着时间的推移，积累了对和证券有关的其他生意的了解。其中一个就是套利。套利，我做了45年，格拉姆做了30年。套利是必须靠近电话，我自己也必须东奔西跑地做，因为它要求我跟紧跟大市的脉动。现在我已经不做了，除非出现我自己看得懂，又是极大的套利机会。我这一辈子可能做了300桩，可能更多，套利的交易。

LTCM has a bunch of positions, they have tons of positions, but the top ten are probably 90% of the money that is at risk, and I know something about those ten positions. I don’t know everything about them by a long shot, but I know enough that I would feel OK at a big discount going in and we had the staying power to hold it out. We might lose money on something on that, but the odds are with us. That is a game that I understand. There are few other positions we have that are not that big because they can’t get that big. But they could involve yield curve relationships or on the run/off the run governments that are just things you learn over time being around securities markets. They are not the base of our business. Probably on average, they have accounted for ½ - ¾ a percentage point of our return a year. They are little pluses you get for actually having been around a long time.
套利本身是很好的生意。长期管理资金有很多套利的头寸，它前10名的头寸可能占据了90％的资金。我对那前10名的头寸有一些了解。我虽然不了解其中所有的细节，但是我已经掌握足够多的信息。同时，交易中我们将得到可观的折扣，我们也有足够的本钱打持久战，所以我们觉得交易可以进行。我们是可能在那样的交易中赔钱的。但是，我们占据了一些有利因素，我们是在我们懂得的领域作战。我们还有一些其他的头寸，不像长期管理资金那么大，因为像那么大规模的确实不多。那些头寸或涉及到收益曲线的关系（译者注：Yield Curve），或跟不同时期发布的政府债券有关等等（译者注：on the run, off the run)。如果在证券业足够长的话，这些品种都是要接触到的。它们不是我们的核心生意，平均大概占到我们年收益的0.5% 至0.75%，算是额外的一点惊喜吧。

Question: Diversification?
问题：谈一谈投资多元化吧。

Buffett: The question is about diversification. I have a dual answer to that. If you are not a professional investor. If your goal is not to manage money to earn a significantly better return than the world, then I believe in extreme diversification. I believe 98% - 99% who invest should extensively diversify and not trade, so that leads them to an index fund type of decision with very low costs. All they are going to do is own part of America. And they have made a decision that owning a part of America is worthwhile. I don’t quarrel with that 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. Once you are in the businesses 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 diversification is a terrible mistake to any degree. I got asked that question the other day at SunTrust. 
巴菲特：如果你不是一个职业投资者，如果你的目标不是远超大多数人表现的话，那么你就需要做到最大可能的投资多元化。98％，99％，甚至更高比例的人需要尽可能地去多元化，而不是不断地买进卖出。你们面临的选择就是管理成本很低的指数类的共同基金了。（译者注：指数类的基金指用计算机模型来模拟股票指数，如道琼斯指数，纳斯达克指数，所包含的股票，权重，和走势。投资者可以将指数基金当成普通股票来投资） 如果你认为拥有部分美国是值得的话，就去买指数基金。你拥有了一部分美国。对此我没有任何异议，那就是你应该的做法，除非你想给投资游戏带些悬念，并着手对企业做评估。一旦你进入对企业做评估的领域，下定决心要花时间，花精力把事情做好，我会认为投资多元化，从任何角度来说，都是犯了大错。那天我在SunTrust的时候，有人问了一个问题。

If you really know businesses, you probably shouldn’t own more than six of them. If you can identify six wonderful businesses, that is all the diversification you need. And you will make a lot of money. And I can guarantee that going into a seventh one instead of putting more money into your first one is gotta be a terrible mistake. Very few people have gotten rich on their seventh best idea. But a lot of people have gotten rich with their best idea. So I would say for anyone working with normal capital who really knows the businesses they have gone into, six is plenty, and I probably have half of what I like best. I don’t diversify personally. All the people I’ve known that have done well with the exception of Walter Schloss, Walter diversifies a lot. I call him Noah, he has two of everything.
如果要做到真正懂生意的话，那么你懂的生意可能不会超过6个。如果你真的懂6个生意的话，那就是你所需要的所有多元化，我保证你会因此而赚很多钱。把钱放在第七个主意上，而不是选择投更多的钱于最好的主意，绝对是个错误。很少有人会因他们第七好的主意而赚钱，很多人却因为他们最棒的主意而发财。我认为，对任何一个拥有常规资金量的人而言，如果他们真的懂得所投的生意，6个已经绰绰有余了。 在我最看好的生意中，我只拥有一半左右。我自己就没有去做所谓的投资多元化。许多我所知晓的做的不错的人都没有多元化他们的投资。唯一的例外是Walter Schloss（译者注：同巴菲特一样，也是本杰明.格拉姆的门生。他的基金收益50年来一直领先大市），他做到了多元化，投资了方方面面。我管他叫诺亚，因为他在每个行业都投两个企业。（笑）（译者注：诺亚方舟的典故）
   
Question: How do you distinguish the Cokes of the world from the Proctor & Gambles of this world?
问题：你如何区分P & G和可口可乐公司？

Buffett: Well, P & G is a very, very good business with strong distribution capability and lots of brand names, but if you ask me and I am going to go away for twenty years and put all my family’s net worth into one business, would I rather have P&G or Coke? Actually P&G is more diversified among product line, but I would feel more sure of Coke than P&G. I wouldn’t be unhappy if someone told me I had to own P&G during the twenty-year period. I mean that would be in my top 5 percent. Because they are not going to get killed, but I would feel better about the unit growth and pricing power of a Coke over twenty or thirty years.
巴菲特：P& G是一个很好的公司，有着很强的行销网络，旗下有很多名牌，等等。如果你告诉我，我要离开20年，这期间我们家族的资产都放在了P& G上面，我不会感到不高兴的。P& G是我5％的选择之一。20年的时间，它不会消亡的。但是，未来20年，30年的时间里，相对于P& G，我对可口可乐公司的单位增长率，定价能力更看好些。

Right now the pricing power might be tough, but you think a billion servings a day for a penny each or $10 million per day. We own 8% of that, so that is $800,000 per day for Berkshire Hathaway. You could get another penny out of the stuff. It doesn’t seem impossible. I think it is worth a penny more. Right now it would be a mistake to try and get it in most markets. But over time, Coke will make more per serving than it does now. Twenty years from now I guarantee they will make more per serving, and they will be selling a whole lot more servings. I don't know how many or how much more, but I know that.
目前可乐的定价能力可能差些。设想以下，数以十亿计的日均消费量，多一分钱，那就是一千万。Berkshire拥有8％的股份，那就是每天80万。看上去不是不可能，不是吗？现在就想涨价，在很多市场是行不通的。但假以时日，二十年后，可乐在单位消费量里一定赚得更多，并且总量上也会卖得更多。我不确信这个涨幅会有多大，但是我确信一定会增长。

P&G'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 are good businesses. I would not be unhappy if you told me that I had to put my family's net worth into P&G and that was the only stock I would own. I might prefer some other name, but there are not 100 other names I would prefer.
我不认为P& G的主要产品有可乐这样的统治力，有这样的消费量增长率，但是P& G依旧是好公司。即使我可能会更中意其他一些公司，但是那样的公司凤毛麟角。
 
Question: Would you buy McDonald’s and go away for twenty years?
问题：麦当劳的20年前景如何？
      
Buffett: McDonald’s has a lot of things going for it, particularly abroad again. Thee position abroad in many countries is stronger than it is here. It is a tougher business over time. People don't want to be eating--exception to the kids when they are giving away beanie babies or something--at McDonald’s every day. If people drink five Cokes a day, they probably will drink five of them 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 worldwide, you would pick McDonald’s. I mean it has the strongest position.
巴菲特：麦当劳的情况里，许多因素都起作用，特别是海外的因素。麦当劳在海外的处境比在美国国内要强势一些。这个生意随着时间的推移，会越来越难。人们，那些等着派发礼物的孩子除外，不愿每天都吃麦当劳。喝可乐的人，今天喝五罐，明天可能还会喝五罐。快餐业比这要艰难得多。但是，如果你一定要在快餐业里，世界范围里这个行业规模是巨大的，选择一家的话，你会选麦当劳。它有着最好的定位。

It doesn't win taste test with adults. It does very well with children and it does fine with adults, but it is not like it is a clear winner. And it is gotten into the game in recent years of being more price promotional--you remember the experiment a year ago or so. It has gotten more dependent on that rather than selling the product by itself. I like the product by itself. I feel better about Gillette if people buy the Mach 3 because they like the Mach 3 than if they get a Beanie Baby with it. So I think fundamentally it is a stronger product if that is the case. And that is probably the case. We own a lot of Gillette and you can sleep pretty well at night if you think of a couple billion men with their hair growing on their faces. It is growing all night while you sleep. Women have two legs, it is even better. So it beats counting sheep. And those are the kinds of business…(you look for).
虽然对小孩子虽是美味，对成人而言它却不是最好吃的。近来，它进入了用降价来促销的领域，而不是靠产品本身来销售。我个人更中意那些靠产品本身就卖钱的公司。在这一点上，我更喜欢吉列。人们不是因为还有一些附送的小礼品而买Mark 3。在本质上，吉列的产品更强势些。Berkshire拥有很多吉列的股票。当你想到几十亿的男人脸上每天每夜长出的胡子，更好的是，还有女人的两条腿，你晚上的睡眠一定会很香甜。那才是你要的生意。

But what type of promotion am I going to put out there against Burger King next month or what if they sign up Disney and I don't get Disney? I like the products that stand alone absent price promotion or appeals although you can build a very good business based on that. And McDonald’s is a terrific business. It is not as good a business as Coke. There really hardly are any. It is a very good business and if you bet on one company in that field bet on (garbled) McDonald’s. We bought Dairy Queen a while back that is why I am plugging it shamelessly here.
如果你想的是下个月我要用什么降价策略来压制汉堡王（译者注：Berger King），如果它们和迪斯尼签了协议，而我却没有。。。等等。我偏爱那些独立的产品，不需要做降价促销这些噱头来让它更有吸引力。虽然你可以用那些伎俩来做好生意，比如，麦当劳就是一个非常优秀的企业，但它终究不像可乐那样，像可乐那样的几乎也没有。 如果你一定要在那个领域买一家企业，就买奶酪皇后吧！我是开玩笑的，还是买麦当劳吧。一段时间以前，Berkshire买了奶酪皇后，所以我在这儿给奶酪皇后不知羞耻地做广告（笑）。
      
Question: What do I think about the utility industry?
问题：你对能源基础行业的公司怎么看？

Buffett: I have thought about that a lot because you can put big money in it. I have even thought of buying the entire businesses. There is a fellow in Omaha actually that has done a little of that through Cal Energy. But I don't quite understand the game in terms of how it is going to develop with deregulation. I can see how it destroys a lot of value through the high cost producer once they are not protected by a monopoly territory.
巴菲特：我考虑了很久了，因为这方面的投资要花很多钱的。我甚至考虑过要彻底买下一个公司。我们Omaha公司总部的一个人员通过CalEnergy（译者注：一家位于Omaha的地热能源公司）做了一些投资。但是，对于能源行业在政府的调控下究竟会如何发展，我还不是太懂。我看到了一些因素对高成本的企业在曾经的垄断地域是如何的具有破坏性。我不确信哪家会因而得益，程度又是如何等等。
     
I don't for sure see who benefits and how much. Obviously the guy with very low cost power or some guy has hydro-power at two cents a KwH has a huge advantage. But how much of that he gets to keep or how extensively he can send that outside his natural territory, I haven't been able to figure that out so I really know what the Industry will look like in ten years. But it is something I think about and if I ever develop any insights that call for action, I will act on them. Because I think I can understand the attractiveness of the product. All the aspects of certainty of users need and the fact it is a bargain and all of that. I understand. I don't understand who is going to make the money in ten years. And that keeps me away.
当然，不同的能源企业的成本会有高有低。水利发电的成本是每千瓦2分钱，它们的优势就非同小可了。但是在它们所产出的电力里，它们自己能保留多少，它们又可以把多少电力发送到区外，我还没想通。所以，对于这个行业未来十年的情况，我还看不清。（译者注：在美国，发电公司的电力交易和定价并不完全是市场行为，而是有政府做管理调控的）但这的确是一个我一直以来不断考量的行业。一旦我理出些头绪，我会付诸行动的。我晓得产品的吸引力，各个方面用户需要的确定性，还有现在这些公司的价钱可能很便宜，等等。我只是不确定在未来的十年里，谁会从中赚大钱，所以我还处于观望的态度。
      
Question: Why do large caps outperform small caps (1998)?
问题：为什么资本市场更青睐大型企业，而不是小型企业？

Buffett: We don't care if a company is large cap, small cap, middle cap, micro cap. It doesn't make any difference. The only questions that matter to us:
巴菲特：我们不在乎企业的大小，是巨型，大型，小型，还是微型。企业的大小无所谓。真正重要的因素是：

• Do we understand the business?
我们对企业，对生意懂多少；
• Do we like the people running it?
是否是我们看好的人在管理它们；
• And does it sell for a price that is attractive?
产品的卖价是否具有竞争力。

From my personal standpoint running Berkshire now because we got, pro forma for Gen. Re, $75 to $80 billion to invest in and I only want to invest in five things, so I am really limited to very big companies. But if I were investing $100,000, I wouldn't care whether something was large cap or small cap or anything. I would just look for businesses I understood. Now, I think, on balance, large cap companies as businesses have done extraordinarily well the last ten years--way better than people anticipated they would do.
从我自己管理Berkshire的经验来看，我需要将从General Re带来的750到800个亿的保费进行投资。我只能投资5桩生意，我的投资因而就只局限于那些大公司。如果我只有10万块，我是不会在乎所投资企业的大小的，只要我懂得它们的生意就行。

You really have American businesses earning close to something 20% on equity. And that is something nobody dreamed of and that is being produced by very large companies in aggregate. So you have had this huge revaluation upwards because of lower interest rates and much higher returns on capital. If America business is really a disguised bond that earns 20%, a 20% coupon it is much better than a bond with a 13% coupon. And that has happened with big companies in recent years, whether it is permanent or not is another question. I am skeptical of that. I wouldn't even think about it--except for questions of how much money we run--I wouldn't even think about the size of the business. See's Candy was a $25 million business when we bought it. If I can find one now, as big as we are, I would love to buy it. It is the certainty of it that counts.
在我看来，总体而言，大企业过去十年来表现非常杰出，甚至远远超过人们的预期。没人能预计到美国公司的资产收益率能接近于20％。这主要归功于特大型公司。由于较低的利息率，和高得多的资产回报率，对这些公司的评估也必然会显著的上调。如果把美国公司假想成收益率20％的债券，比起收益率13％的债券自然是好得多。这是近些年来确实发生的情况，是否会一直如此，那是另外一个问题。我个人对此表示怀疑。除了我所管理资金多少的因素，我不会在乎企业的大小。See’s Candy在我们买它时，还只是一个年收入二千五百万的生意。如果我们现在还能找到一个类似的，即使按照我们公司现在的运作规模，我也乐于买下它。（我认为）是那些令人确信的因素才真正重要。

Question: The securitization of real estate?
问题：在过去的五年里，不动产业的主流都是私有的。你对不动产业的证券化有何高见？

Buffett: There has been enormous securitization of the debt too of real estate and that is one of the items right now that is really clogging up the capital markets. The mortgage back securities are just not moving, commercial, not residential mortgage backs. But I think you are directing your question at equities probably. The equities, if you leave out the corporate form, have been a lousy way to own equities. You have interjected a corporate income tax into something that people individually have been able to own with a single tax, and to have the normal corporate form you have a double taxation in there. You really don't need it and it takes too much of the return.
巴菲特：巨大的不动产业债务的证券化的确是近来资本市场里的一个疑难症结。以房屋贷款为基础的证券了无生气。我指的是商业房贷，而不是居民房贷。我想你的问题是关于资产（证券化）方面的。拥有公司是一种很不好的拥有资产的方式。如果你把公司收入税摊派给个人，因而个人就可以只交纳一种税。如果是常规的公司形式，人们被迫两次缴税（译者注：一次公司，一次个人）。在不动产业，你不需要那样做的，（真那样的话）回报上会因缴税而受很大的影响。

REITS have, in effect, created a conduit so you don't get the double taxation, but they also generally have fairly high operating expenses. If you get real estate, let's just say you can buy fairly simple types of real estate at an 8% yield, or thereabouts, and you take away close to 1% to 1.5% by the time you count stock options and everything, it is not a terribly attractive way to own real estate. Maybe the only way a guy with a $1,000 or $5,000 can own it but if you have $1 million or $10 million, you are better off owning the real estate properties yourself instead of sticking some intermediary in between who will get a sizable piece of the return for himself. So we have found very little in that field. You will see an announcement in the next couple of weeks that may belie what I am telling you today. I don't want you to think I am double crossing you up here. But generally speaking we have seen very little in that field that gets us excited. People sometimes get very confused about--they will look at some huge land company, like Texas Pacific Land Trust, which has been around over 100 years and has got a couple of million acres in Texas. And they will sell 1% of their land every year and they will take that (as income? Garbled) and come up with some huge value compared to the market value. But that is nonsense if you really own the property. You can't move. You can't move 50% of the properties or 20% of the properties, it is way worse than an illiquid stock.
REIT（译者注：专门投资不动产业的共同基金，公司税率很低，但主要盈利都要派发给股东), 巧妙避开了法律的规定，因而人们不需要两次缴纳。但是它们的管理费用也很高。如果你进入不动产业，举例讲你如果买最简单的REIT，每年有8％的收益，除去1％或1.5％的费用后，所得也不是那么有吸引力了。对只有千把块钱或5千块钱的投资，可能还可以。但是如果是百万级的投资，直接去买不动产可能更划算些，这样你能避免在中间人上可观的开销。在不动产领域，我们鲜有令人激动的发现。看到一些特大型的地产公司，有些人可能会有些迷惑，我在这里试着不冒犯在座的各位，这里举一个例子，得克萨斯太平洋土地基金，这个有着百年历史的公司，在得克萨斯州有着几百万公顷的土地，每年卖掉1％的土地，并以那为基准，得出一个比市场行情高得多的估价。我认为，如果你是土地的拥有者，那样的估价是毫无道理的。你不可能交易50％，甚至是20％的土地，这比流动性很差的股票还要差得多。

So you get these, I think, you get some very silly valuations placed on a lot of real estate companies by people who really don't understand what it is like to own one and try to move large quantity of properties.
我认为对许多不动产公司的估价都是愚蠢的，都是那些不曾拥有土地的人或是想卖出大量土地套现的人的伎俩。

REITS have behaved horribly in this market as you know and it is not at all inconceivable that they become a class that would get so unpopular that they would sell at significant discounts from what you could sell the properties for. And they could get interesting as a class and then the question is whether 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 have always wondered about REITS that have managements they say their assets are so wonderful, and they are so cheap and then they (management) go out and sell stock. There is a contradiction in that. They say our stock is very cheap at $28 and then they sell a lot of stock at $28 less an underwriting commission. There is a disconnect there. But it is a field we look at. Charlie and I can understand real estate, and we would be open for very big transactions periodically. If there was a LTCM situation translated to real estate, we would be open to that, the trouble is so many other people would be too that it would unlikely go at a price that would get us really get us excited.
REIT基金今年的市场表现很不好，这个你们可能都知道。不难想象它们将会变成没人要的一类，同你的不动产卖价相比，它们会以很大的折扣贱卖。事情会变得很有趣。因为接下来的问题是REIT基金的管理层是否会同你斗争到底，因为（卖出不动产的过程中）他们不得不放弃管理物业的收入。他们的实际利益同股东的正好相反。我总是在想，REIT基金一直在鼓吹他们优秀的不动产和廉价的股票，而管理层却在市场上卖股票，比如他们说28块钱的股票很便宜了，他们却在28元以下卖股票，这显然是自相矛盾的。但是，我们还是在关注着这一块。我们懂得这个行业，在不同的时段，我们会考虑进行一些特大笔的交易。如果有长期资金管理公司的事件在不动产领域里发生了，我们会敞开胸怀的。问题是其他许多人也会纷至沓来的，所以出现让我们兴奋的价格的可能性并不大。

Question: A down market is good for you?
问题：据我的理解，在你的理论里，熊市对抄底买家是很有利的。你是如何预计，在一个走下坡路的市场里，你的长期性盈利状况呢？

Buffett: I have no idea were the market is going to go. I prefer it going down. But my preferences have nothing to do with it. The market knows nothing about my feelings. That is one of the first things you have to learn about a stock. You buy 100 shares of General Motors (GM). Now all of a sudden you have this feeling about GM. It goes down, you may be mad at it. You may say, "Well, if it just goes up for what I paid for it, my life will be wonderful again." Or if it goes up, you may say how smart you were and how you and GM have this love affair. You have got all these feelings. The stock doesn't know you own it.The stock just sits there; it doesn't care what you paid or the fact that you own it. Any feeling I have about the market is not reciprocated. I mean it is the ultimate cold shoulder we are talking about here.
巴菲特：对于大市的走势，我一无所知。虽然我的偏好无足轻重，但是我希望它向下调整。市场对我的感情是无暇顾及的（笑）。这是在你学习股票时，首要了解的一点。如果你买了100股通用汽车之后，对通用一下子充满了感情。当它降价时，你变得暴躁，怨天尤人；当它攀升时，你沾沾自喜，自以为聪明，对通用也是喜爱有加。你变得如此情绪化。但是，股票却不晓得谁买了它。股票只是一个物质存在而已，它并不在乎谁拥有了它，又花了多少钱，等等。我对市场的感情是不会有一丝回报的。我们这里靠的是一个异常冰冷的肩膀（笑）。

Practically anybody in this room is probably more likely to be a net buyer of stocks over the next ten years than they are a net seller, so everyone of you should prefer lower prices. If you are a net eater of hamburger over the next ten years, you want hamburger to go down unless you are a cattle producer. If you are going to be a buyer of Coca-Cola and you don't own Coke stock, you hope the price of Coke goes down. You are 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 tend the Supermarket.
未来10年里，在座的每个人可能都是股票的净买家，而不是净卖家，所以每人都应该盼着更低的股价。未来10年里，你们肯定是汉堡包的大吃家，所以你盼着更便宜的汉堡包，除非你是养牛“专业户”。如果你现在还不拥有可口可乐的股票，你又希望买一些，你一定盼着可乐的股价走低。你盼着超市在周末大甩卖，而不是涨价。

The NYSE is one big supermarket of companies. And you are going to be buying stocks, what you want to have happen? You want to have those stocks go down, way down; you will make better buys then. Later on twenty or thirty years from now when you are in a period when you are dis-saving, or when your heirs dis-save for you, then you may care about higher prices. There is Chapter 8 in Graham's Intelligent Investor about the attitude toward stock market fluctuations, that and Chapter 20 on the Margin of Safety are the two most important essays ever written on investing as far as I am concerned. Because when I read Chapter 8 when I was 19, I figured out what I just said but it is obvious, but I didn't figure it out myself. It was explained to me. I probably would have gone another 100 years and still thought it was good when my stocks were going up. We want things to go down, but I have no idea what the stock market is going to do. I never do and I never will. It is not something I think about at all. When it goes down, I look harder at what I might buy that day because I know there is more likely to be some merchandise there to use my money effectively in.
纽约证交所就如同公司的超市。你知道自己要买股票，那么你盼着什么好事呢，你恨不得股价都跳水，越深越好，这样你就可以拣到些便宜货了。20年以后，30年以后，当你退休开始要支取养命钱了，或者你的后代支取你的养命钱时（笑），你也许会希望股价能高点。在格拉姆的“智慧的投资者”一书中的第8章，描述了对待股票市场上下波动的态度，以及第20章中讲到了安全边际效应的问题，我认为是所有描写投资的著述中最好的两篇。因为当我在19岁读到第8章时，我恍然大悟。我领悟到了上面涉及的心得。看上去它们显而易见，但我从前没有体会过。如果不是那文章里的解释，恐怕过了100年，我还在盼着股价节节高呢。我们希望股票降价，但是我并不晓得股票市场会有如何的走势。恐怕我永远也不会。我甚至想都不去想这些事情。当股市真的走低时，我会很用心的研究我要买些什么，因为我相信到那时我可以更高效地使用手上的资金。   

Moderator: Ok, Warren, we will let you take one more question from the audience….
主持人插:沃伦，下面的问题将是最后一个问题了

Buffett: I will let you pick who get it. You can be the guy…(laughter).
巴菲特马上笑着说，好，你就帮我选那个最后的幸运儿吧。你也可以选自己。（笑）

Question: What would you do to live a happier life if you could live over again?
最后一个问题：如果你有幸再重新活一次的话，你会去做些什么，让你的生活更快乐？

Buffett: This will sound disgusting. The question is how would I live my life over again to live a happier life? The only thing would be to select a gene pool where people lived to 120 or something where I came from.
巴菲特：这听上去有点让人反胃。我也许会从活到120岁的那群人的基因池中做个选择吧（笑）。

I have been extraordinarily lucky. I mean, I use this example and I will take a minute or two because I think it is worth thinking about a little bit. Let's just assume it was 24 hours before you were born and a genie came to you and he said, "Herb, you look very promising and I have a big problem. I got to design the world in which you are going to live in. I have decided it is too tough; you design it. So you have twenty-four hours, you figure out what the social rules should be, the economic rules and the governmental rules and you and your kids and their kids will live under those rules.
我认为我自己是罕见的幸运。让我在这里花上一到二分钟讲个例子，也许值得我们好好想想。让我们做这样一个假设，在你出生的24小时以前，一个先知来到你的身边。他说，“小家伙，你看上去很不错，我这里有个难题，我要设计一个你将要生活的世界。如果是我设计的话，太难了，不如你自己来设计吧。所以，在24小时以内，你要设计出所有那些社交规范，经济规范，还有管理规范等等。你会生活在那样一个世界里，你的孩子们会生活在那样一个世界里，孩子们的孩子们会生活在那样一个世界里。”

You say, "I can design anything? There must be a catch?" The genie says there is a catch. You don't know if you are going to be born black or white, rich or poor, male or female, infirm or able-bodied, bright or retarded. All you know is you are going to take one ball out of a barrel with 5.8 billion (balls). You are going to participate in the ovarian lottery. And that is going to be the most important thing in your life, because that is going to control whether you are born here or in Afghanistan or whether you are born with an IQ of 130 or an IQ of 70. It is going to determine a whole lot. What type of world are you going to design?
你问先知，“是由我来设计一切吗”？先知回答说是。你反问，“那这里肯定有什么陷阱”。先知说，“是的，是有一个陷阱。你不知道自己是黑是白，是富是穷，是男是女，体弱多病还是身体强健，聪明还是愚笨。。。你能做的就是从装着65亿球的大篮子里选一个代表你的小球”。我管这游戏叫子宫里的彩票。这也许是决定你命运的事件，因为这将决定你出生在美国还是阿富汗，有着130的IQ还是70，总之这将决定太多太多的东西。如何设计这个你即将降生到的世界呢？

I think it is a good way to look at social questions, because not knowing which ball you are going to get, you are going to want to design a system that is going to provide lots of goods and services because you want people on balance to live well. And you want it to produce more and more so your kids live better than you do and your grandchildren live better than their parents. But you also want a system that does produce lots of goods and services that does not leave behind a person who accidentally got the wrong ball and is not well wired for this particular system. I am ideally wired for the system I fell into here. I came out and got into something that enables me to allocate capital. Nothing so wonderful about that. If all of us were stranded on a desert island somewhere and we were never going to get off of it, the most valuable person there would be the one who could raise the most rice over time. I can say, "I can allocate capital!" You wouldn't be very excited about that. So I have been born in the right place.
我认为这是一个思考社会问题的好方法。当你对即将得到的那个球毫不知情时，你会把系统设计得能够提供大量的物品和服务，你会希望人们心态平衡，生活富足，同时系统能源源不绝地产出（物品和服务），这样你的子子孙孙能活得更好。而且对那些不幸选错了球，没有接对线路的人们，这个系统也不会亏待他们。在这个系统里，我绝对是接对了路，找到了自己的位置。我降生后，人们让我来分配资金。这活本身也并不出彩。假设我们都被仍在了一个荒岛上，谁都走不出来，那么在那个岛上，最有价值的人一定是稻谷收获最多的人。如果我说，我能分配资金，估计不会招什么人待敬。我是在合适的时间来到了合适的地方。

Gates says that if I had been born three million years ago, I would have been some animal's lunch. He says, "You can't run very fast, you can't climb trees, you can't do anything." You would just be chewed up the first day. You are lucky; you were born today. And I am. The question getting back, here is this barrel with 6.5 billion balls, everybody in the world, if you could put your ball back, and they took out at random a 100 balls and you had to pick one of those, would you put your ball back in? Now those 100 balls you are going to get out, roughly 5 of them will be American, 95/5. So if you want to be in this country, you will only have 5 balls, half of them will be women and half men--I will let you decide how you will vote on that one. Half of them will below average in intelligence and half above average in intelligence. Do you want to put your ball in there?
盖茨说如果我出生在几百万年前，权当了那些野兽的鱼肉耳。我跑不快，又不会爬树，我什么事也干不了。他说，出生在当代是你的幸运。我确实是幸运的。时不时地，你可以自问一下，这里有个装着65亿小球的篮子，世界上的每个人都在这里；有人随机取出另外100个小球来，你可以再选一个球，但是你必须把你现有的球放回去，你会放回去吗？100个取出的小球里，大约5个是美国人吧，95个不是。如果你想留在这个国家，你能选的就只有5个球。一半是男生，一半是女生，一半是高智商，一半是低智商。你愿意把你现在的小球放回去吗？盖茨说如果我出生在几百万年前，权当了那些野兽的鱼肉耳。我跑不快，又不会爬树，我什么事也干不了。他说，出生在当代是你的幸运。我确实是幸运的。时不时地，你可以自问一下，这里有个装着65亿小球的篮子，世界上的每个人都在这里；有人随机取出另外100个小球来，你可以再选一个球，但是你必须把你现有的球放回去，你会放回去吗？100个取出的小球里，大约5个是美国人吧，95个不是。如果你想留在这个国家，你能选的就只有5个球。一半是男生，一半是女生，一半是高智商，一半是低智商。你愿意把你现在的小球放回去吗？

Most of you will not want to put your ball back to get 100. So what you are saying is: I am in the luckiest one percent of the world right now sitting in this room--the top one percent of the world. Well, that is the way I feel. I am lucky to be born where I was because it was 50 to 1 in the United States when I was born. I have been lucky with parents, lucky with all kinds of things and lucky to be wired in a way that in a market economy, pays off like crazy for me. It doesn't pay off as well for someone who is absolutely as good a citizen as I am (by) leading Boy Scout troops, teaching Sunday School or whatever, raising fine families, but just doesn't happen to be wired in the same way that I am. So I have been extremely lucky so I would like to be lucky again.
你们中的大多数不会为了那一百个球而把你自己的球放回去。所以，你们是世界上最幸运的1％，至少现在是这样。这正是我的感受。一路走来，我是如此幸运。在我出生的时候，出生在美国的比率只有50比1。我幸运有好的父母，在很多事情上我都得到幸运女神的眷顾。。。幸运地出生在一个对我报酬如此丰厚的市场经济里，对那些和我一样是好公民的人们，那些领着童子军的人们，周日教书的人们，养育幸福的家庭。它们可能在报酬上未必如我，但也并不需要像我一样呀。我真的非常幸运，所以，我盼着我还能继续幸运下去。

Then the way to do it is to play out the game and do something you enjoy all your life and be associated with people you like. I only work with people I like. If I could make $100 million dollars with a guy who causes my stomach to churn, I would say no because in way that is very much like marrying for money which is probably not a very good idea in any circumstances, but if you are already rich, it is crazy. I am not going to marry for money. I would really do almost exactly what I have done except I wouldn't have bought the US Air.
如果我幸运的话，那个小球游戏给我带来的只有珍惜，做一些我一生都喜欢做的事情，并和那些我欣赏的人交朋友。我只同那些我欣赏的人做生意。如果同一个令我反胃的人合作能让我赚一个亿，那么我宁愿不做。这就如同为了金钱而结成的婚姻一般，无论在何种条件下，都很荒唐，更何况我已经富有了。我是不会为了金钱而成婚的。所以，（如果我有机会重新来过的话）我可能还会去做我做过的每一件事情，当然，购买USAir除外。

Thank you.
谢谢！