段永平強烈推薦，李誕說改變了他一生，這個演講到底有多神？

作者：巴菲特

來源：Heisup（ID：HEISUP001）

巴菲特最經典的一次演講，盛傳投資大佬段永平曾說「建議你看下巴菲特1998年在 Florida university 的那個演講。

可以多看幾次,看到明白為止哈。

這個演講我聽了不下10次,非常值得仔細聽」。

巴菲特在這次演講中，用樸實、幽默，甚至有些戲謔的口吻，向當時佛羅里達大學的MBA傳授自己在投資與人生上的經驗，非常值得一聽。

巴菲特的經驗和智慧

與自己認可的人和公司為伍，保持長期主義，時間會贈予豐厚的回饋
把喜歡和熱愛放到決定是否做一件事的第一位，不要犧牲自己來追求所謂的成功
認清自己的能力邊界，不投資看不懂的公司，關注有核心競爭力的公司
不要試圖理解所有公司，就算只理解一部分公司，也可以有非常可觀的收益
對於有投資能力的人，發現少數認可的公司就足夠了，不要再盲目多元化投資
投資業務能被理解，管理層正直且有能力，能預見未來十年發展狀況的公司
區分清楚真正重要和不重要的因素，公司層面比宏觀層面更加重要，也更可知
最佳的投資往往不是計算出來，而是情緒主導，這時你對公司產品有強烈信心
一家公司是大盤股還是小盤股不重要，重要的依然是你是否認可這家公司
當股市下跌時，更加仔細研究已經可能買入的公司，因為這時可能出現買入價格
在浮躁的市場保持冷靜，固定留給自己一些時間和空間去做思考
不要貪婪，任何事情都有失敗的可能性，留出容錯空間
吸收教訓不可避免，但要儘可能地多從別人的錯誤中吸取教訓

中英雙語演講文稿

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.

我想先講幾句話，之後對我來說最精彩的部分就是回答你們的問題。我想談談你們關心的事情。

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.

我想花一分鐘時間和同學們談談你們畢業後的未來。因為你們在這裡會學到大量關於投資的知識，你們都有能力做好；你們都有足夠的智商做好這件事。你們都有精力和主動性去做好，否則你們也不會坐在這裡。你們中的大多數人都會實現自己的抱負。

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.

但在決定你們是否成功的因素中，除了智力和精力，還有其他方面。我想簡單說一下這一點。事實上，在奧馬哈有個人叫皮特·基威特，他過去常說，他在招人時會看三點：誠信、智慧和精力。他說如果一個人沒有前兩點，後兩點會害了他，因為如果他們沒有誠信，你寧願他們又笨又懶。

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.

我們想談談前兩點，因為我們知道你們具備後兩點。你們都是MBA二年級的學生，所以你們對同學們都有了一定了解。現在設想一下，我賦予你們一項權利——你們可以買下某個同學未來餘生10%的收入。但你們不能挑選有富爸爸的人，必須挑選要靠自身實力取得成就的人。我給你們一個小時來思考這個問題。

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.

你會給他們做智商測試，然後挑選智商最高的人嗎？我對此表示懷疑。你會挑選成績最好的人嗎？還是最有活力的人？你會開始尋找除（量化指標）之外的定性因素，因為每個人都有足夠的智力和精力。你可能會選擇那個與你最合得來、具備領導才能、能讓別人為其實現利益的人。這個人會很慷慨、誠實，並且會認可他人的想法。各種各樣的品質。也就是你在班上最欽佩的人。然後我再給你出個難題。除了選這個人，你還得做空你的一個同學。（注：原文中 “Then I would throw in a hooker.” 表述可能有誤，結合語境推測可能是 “Then I would throw in a hitch.” ，hitch有“意外障礙、難題”的意思，譯文按推測含義翻譯。如果原詞無誤，“hooker”常見釋義為“妓女”，但在此處語義不通，需根據實際情況進一步確認。）

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.

這就更有意思了。你會選擇做空誰呢？你不會挑選智商最低的人，而是會想到那個讓你反感的人，那個自負、貪婪、偷工減料、有點不誠實的人。

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.

當你審視左右兩邊的這些品質時，會發現一個有趣的現象：這些品質不是能把橄欖球扔出60碼遠的能力，不是能在9.3秒內跑完100碼的速度，也不是班上顏值最高的長相。如果你真的想要擁有左邊的那些品質，你是可以做到的。

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.

這些都是行為、氣質和性格方面的品質，是可以培養出來的，在座的每個人都有機會擁有。再看看右邊那些讓你討厭別人的品質，沒有一個是你必須具備的。你可以摒棄這些品質。在你們這個年紀摒棄它們，比在我這個年紀要容易得多，因為大多數行為都是習慣養成的。習慣的枷鎖很輕，輕到你察覺不到，直到重得無法打破。這一點毫無疑問。我見過和我年紀相仿甚至比我小20歲的人，被這些自我毀滅的行為模式困住。

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.

他們四處行事，總是讓身邊的人反感。他們本不必如此，但到了一定程度，就很難改變了。但在你們這個年紀，你們可以養成任何你們想要的習慣和行為模式，這僅僅取決於你們的選擇。

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.

如果你這麼做……本·格雷厄姆會觀察身邊那些他敬佩的人，在他之前，本·富蘭克林也這麼做過。本·格雷厄姆在十幾歲的時候就這樣做了，他觀察身邊那些他敬佩的人，然後說：“我希望受到別人的敬佩，那我為什麼不像他們那樣行事呢？”他發現，像他們那樣行事並非不可能。同樣，在摒棄那些不良品質方面，他也採取了相同的做法。我建議你們把這些品質寫下來，思考一會兒，讓它們成為習慣，這樣等你們完成學業後，就會成為那個你願意購買其10%未來收入的人。美妙之處在於，你已經完全屬於自己，而且無法改變這一點。所以，你不妨成為那個人，成為讓別人欣賞的人。

Well that is a short little sermon. So let's get on with what you are interested in. Let's start with questions………..

好了，這就是一段簡短的教誨。那麼，我們來聊聊你們感興趣的內容吧。現在開始提問……

Question: What about Japan? Your thoughts about Japan?

問題：日本的情況如何？你對日本有什麼看法？

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：我對日本的看法？我不是一個關注宏觀經濟的人。現在我心裡想，伯克希爾·哈撒韋可以在日本以1%的年利率借到10年期的貸款。1%！我心想，我45年前上了格雷厄姆的課，並且一生都在努力鑽研投資，或許我每年能賺到超過1%的收益，這似乎並非不可能。但我不想涉足匯率風險，所以借款必須是日元計價的。我得投資日本房地產、日本公司之類的，而我要做的就是收益超過1%。這就是這筆錢的成本，而且我能借10年。到目前為止，我還沒找到合適的投資專案。這有點意思。日本企業的股權回報率非常低——只有4% – 5% – 6%，當你投資的企業賺不了多少錢時，作為投資者也很難獲得豐厚回報。

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.

現在有些人就是這麼做的。事實上，我有個朋友叫沃爾特·施洛斯，我在格雷厄姆公司工作時，他也在那裡。我最初投資股票的方法就是購買股價遠低於營運資本的股票。這是一種非常廉價的、基於量化的股票投資方法。我把它稱為“撿菸蒂式”投資法。你走在街上，四處尋找菸蒂。最後你看到一個，它又溼又髒，有點讓人厭惡，但裡面還有一口可抽。於是你把它撿起來，這一口是免費的——這就是一支“菸蒂股”。你免費抽了一口，然後把它扔掉，再去找下一個。這種方法並不高雅，但很有效。這些都是低迴報的企業。

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.

但時間是優質企業的朋友，是糟糕企業的敵人。如果你長期投身於一家糟糕的企業，即便買入成本很低，最終結果也會很糟糕。而如果你長期投資一家優質企業，即便初始買入價格略高，只要長期持有，也會收穫出色的回報。

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.

目前，我在日本幾乎找不到什麼優質企業。他們或許會在某些方面改變企業文化，讓管理層對股東的回應更積極，進而提高股票回報率。當下，日本有許多低迴報的企業，即便在日本經濟繁榮時期也是如此。這很不可思議，他們曾經擁有一個令人難以置信的市場，卻沒有與之匹配的卓越公司。他們在開展大量業務方面表現出色，但在股權回報率方面卻不盡人意，而這最終還是對他們產生了影響。所以到目前為止，我們在日本沒有任何投資。但只要日本的資金成本維持在1%，我們就會繼續尋找機會。

Question: You were rumored to be one of the rescue buyers of Long Term Capital, what was the play there, what did you see?

問題：有傳言稱你是長期資本管理公司（Long Term Capital）的拯救性買家之一，當時是怎麼回事，你看到了什麼情況呢？

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. I got the really serious call about LTCM on a Friday afternoon that things were getting serious. 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 reaching anybody.

巴菲特：就是那期封面人物是魯珀特·默多克的《財富》雜誌。它講述了我們參與（長期資本管理公司事件）的整個過程，這是個挺有意思的故事。在一個週五的下午，我接到了關於長期資本管理公司（LTCM）的非常嚴肅的電話，說情況變得很嚴重了。我和那裡的大多數人都很熟——我在所羅門公司（Salomon）的時候，他們中的大多數人也在那裡。當時那家公司（長期資本管理公司）正面臨崩潰，那個週末美聯儲還派人過去了。從那個週五到接下來的週三，紐約聯邦儲備銀行實際上精心策劃了一場救援行動，但沒有動用任何聯邦資金。我當時非常積極地參與其中，但聯絡上任何人都讓我費了好大勁。

We put in a bid on Wednesday morning. I talked to Bill McDonough at the NY Fed. We made a bid 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.

我們在週三上午提交了一份報價。我和紐約聯邦儲備銀行的比爾·麥克多諾談過。我們出價2.5億美元收購其淨資產，但除此之外我們還會額外投入37.5億美元。其中伯克希爾哈撒韋公司出資30億美元，美國國際集團（AIG）出資7億美元，高盛集團出資3億美元。我們提交了報價，但設定了非常短的時限，因為當你對價值1000億美元且價格不斷波動的證券進行出價時，你不會希望讓一個固定價格的報價長時間有效。

In the end the bankers made the deal, but it was an interesting period. The whole LTCM 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 one room. Now you combine that with the fact that those people 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. 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. That to me is absolutely fascinating.

最終，銀行家們達成了交易，但那真是一段有趣的時期。整個長期資本管理公司（LTCM）的事件確實很引人深思，因為如果你想想拉里·希倫布蘭德、埃裡克·羅森菲爾德、約翰·梅里韋瑟以及那兩位諾貝爾獎得主。把他們這16個人放在一起，他們的智商總和大概比美國任何一個行業裡一同共事的16個人都要高，包括微軟公司的員工。同一間辦公室裡匯聚了極其強大的智力資源。現在，再結合這樣一個事實，即這些人在他們所從事的領域有著豐富的經驗。他們可不是一群靠賣男裝賺了錢，然後突然轉行進入證券行業的人。總的來說，這16個人在他們所從事的業務上，有著三四百年的經驗積累。然後還有第三個因素，他們中的大多數人把自己相當可觀的淨資產都投入到了公司業務中。他們投入了數億美元的自有資金（面臨風險），擁有超高的智商，並且在自己熟悉的領域工作。但基本上，他們最後還是破產了。這一點對我來說，絕對是非常值得探究的。

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.

如果我要寫一本書，書名就叫《為什麼聰明人會做蠢事》。我的搭檔說這本書應該寫成自傳。但長期資本管理公司這件事或許就是個很有意思的例證。他們都是非常不錯的人。我尊重他們，而且我在所羅門公司遇到麻煩的時候，他們還幫過我。他們壓根兒就不是壞人。

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. 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. Yet people do it financially very much without thinking.

但是，為了賺取他們本沒有且也不需要的錢，他們拿自己所擁有且確實需要的東西去冒險。這簡直太愚蠢了，不管你的智商有多高都是如此。如果你為了一些對你來說不重要的東西，而去拿對你來說重要的東西冒險，那真的毫無道理。不管你成功的機率是99比1，還是1000比1，我都不在乎。如果你遞給我一把有一百萬個彈膛的槍，其中一個彈膛裡有一顆子彈，然後把槍抵在你的太陽穴上，還說只要我扣動扳機就給我錢，不管給我多少錢，我都不會扣動扳機。你可以說出任何你想要的金額，但這對我來說沒有任何好處，而且我覺得後果是相當明顯的。然而，人們在金融領域常常不假思索地就做出這樣的冒險行為。

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 or anybody else.

沃爾特·古特曼寫過一本糟糕的書，卻有著很棒的書名——《你只需富一次》。這道理似乎相當基本。如果你年初有1億美元，在不使用槓桿的情況下能獲得10%的收益，而在100次裡有99次使用99倍槓桿的情況下能獲得20%的收益，那麼到了年底，你擁有1.1億美元還是1.2億美元又有什麼區別呢？根本沒什麼區別。如果你在年底去世了，撰寫關於你的事蹟的人可能會打錯字，也許你有1.2億美元，可他卻寫成了1.1億美元。你根本沒有多得到什麼。這絕對沒有任何差別。這對你的家人或者其他任何人來說都沒有差別。

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. Yet 16 guys with very high IQs 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.

不利的一面在於，尤其是當你在管理別人的錢時，不僅會賠光所有的錢，還會身敗名裂、顏面掃地，而且還要面對那些被你賠了錢的朋友們。然而，16個高智商的人卻參與了那樣的遊戲。我認為這簡直是瘋狂之舉。在某種程度上，這是由於過度依賴某些東西導致的。那些人在我還在所羅門公司的時候就曾對我說：六西格瑪事件不會降臨到我們頭上。但他們錯了。歷史並不能告訴你未來會發生什麼事情。他們過於依賴數學了。他們認為股票的貝塔係數能說明這隻股票的風險情況。但在我看來，它對於股票的風險根本說明不了任何問題。

Sigma’s do not tell you about the risk of going broke in my view and maybe now in their view too. 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.

在我看來，西格瑪值並不能告訴你破產的風險，或許現在他們也這麼認為了。但我並不想以他們為例。類似的事情換種方式也可能發生在我們任何人身上，我們在某些關鍵問題上確實存在盲點，因為我們對其他很多方面瞭解得太多了。就像亨利·考夫曼說的那樣：“在這種情況下破產的人有兩種，一種是什麼都不懂的人，另一種是自以為什麼都懂的人。”從某種程度上來說，這挺可悲的。

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 unless I had a medical emergency come along.

我要告誡你們。我們基本上從不借錢。甚至在我只有大概一萬美元的時候，我也從不借錢，這又有什麼關係呢。在人生的道路上我過得很開心，不管我擁有一萬美元、十萬美元還是一百萬美元都無所謂，除非遇到了突發的重大醫療狀況。

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, we wear the same clothes basically (SunTrust gives me mine), we eat similar food—we all go to McDonald’s or better yet, Dairy Queen, and we live in a house that is warm in winter and cool in summer. We watch the Nebraska (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. What can I do that you can’t do?

當我錢不多的時候和當我有很多錢的時候，我打算做的事情是一樣的。如果你想想我和你們之間的差別，基本上我們穿的衣服是一樣的（太陽信託銀行會給我提供衣服），我們吃的食物也差不多——我們都會去麥當勞，或者更好一點，去冰雪皇后（Dairy Queen），而且我們都住在冬暖夏涼的房子裡。我們會在大螢幕電視上看內布拉斯加州（橄欖球）比賽。你看到的和我看到的是一樣的。我們做的所有事情都一樣——我們的生活並沒有那麼大的不同。唯一的區別就是我們出行的方式不同。有什麼我能做而你們不能做的事情呢？

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. 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?

我得以從事一份自己熱愛的工作，但其實我一直都在做自己喜歡的工作。當我覺得能掙到1000美元是件了不起的大事時，我就非常熱愛自己的工作了。我勸你們去從事自己熱愛的工作。要是你一直做著自己不喜歡的工作，僅僅是因為你覺得這在簡歷上會好看些，那我覺得你真是瘋了。前幾天我在哈佛和一個年輕人在一起，他當時帶我去聊天。他28歲，跟我講了他人生中做過的所有事情，都非常了不起。然後我問他：“那你接下來打算做什麼呢？”他說：“嗯，也許等我拿到工商管理碩士學位後，我會去一家諮詢公司工作，因為這在我的簡歷上會很好看。”我說：“聽著，你才28歲，已經做了這麼多事情，你的簡歷比我見過的任何人的都要豐富10倍。這難道不有點像把性生活都留到年老時才去享受嗎？ ”

There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. 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.

總有那麼一個時刻，你應該開始去做自己想做的事情。找一份你熱愛的工作。這樣你每天早上都會迫不及待地從床上跳起來。我剛從哥倫比亞商學院畢業的時候，就想立刻無償為格雷厄姆工作。他覺得我“要價”太高（能力與期望不匹配）。但我一直纏著他。我賣了三年證券，還一直給他寫信，最後終於去為他工作了幾年。那是一段很棒的經歷。但我一直都在做自己喜歡的工作。你真的應該找一份工作，一份即使你已經財富自由也依然會選擇去做的工作。你會學到東西，會對這份工作充滿熱情，而且每天都會迫不及待地起床。這樣做你不會有任何損失。你以後或許還會嘗試其他的事情，但你會從這份工作中收穫更多，而且我不在乎這份工作的起薪是多少。

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.

當你離開這裡後，找一份你熱愛的工作，而不是一份你認為在簡歷上看起來會很不錯的工作。你應該找到自己喜歡的事情去做。

If you think you will be happier getting 2x instead of 1x, you are probably making a mistake. 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.

如果你認為得到兩倍（的財富等）會比得到一倍更幸福，那你很可能犯了一個錯誤。如果你覺得賺到十倍或二十倍的錢會讓你更幸福，那你就會陷入麻煩，因為那樣的話，你可能會在不該借錢的時候去借錢，或者在一些事情上走捷徑。這根本毫無道理，而且當你回首往事時，你不會喜歡自己當時的所作所為。

Question: What makes a company something that you like?

問題：是什麼讓一家公司成為你喜歡的公司？

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.

巴菲特：我喜歡那些我能夠理解的企業。咱們就從這一點說起。這就把範圍縮小了90%。有各種各樣我不理解的東西，但幸運的是，也有足夠多我能理解的東西。外面有廣闊的世界，而且幾乎每家公司都是公開上市的。所以實際上所有美國企業都在你的選擇範圍之內。因此，選擇那些你能夠理解的企業是有道理的。

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—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.

我能理解這個，任何人都能理解這個（巴菲特舉起一瓶可口可樂）。自1886年以來，這是一門簡單的生意，但它不是一門容易的生意——我可不希望對競爭對手來說這是一門容易的生意。我想要一家周圍有護城河的企業。我想要在中間有一座非常有價值的城堡，然後我希望掌管那座城堡的公爵非常誠實、勤奮且有能力。接著我還想要那座城堡周圍有一條護城河。這條護城河可以是各種各樣的東西：我們的汽車保險公司政府僱員保險公司（Geico）的護城河就是低成本。

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.

人們必須購買汽車保險，所以基本上每個人每輛車都得買一份汽車保險保單。我沒法賣給他們20份，但他們必須買一份。我只能賣給他們一份。那他們會基於什麼來購買呢？（依據什麼標準呢？）他們（客戶）會基於服務和價格來購買。大多數人會認為各公司之間的服務是相同的，或者相差不大。所以他們會依據價格來做決定。因此，我必須成為低成本的供應商——這就是我的護城河。我的成本比其他公司低得越多，就相當於我往護城河裡多扔了幾條鯊魚。你一直擁有這座很棒的城堡，而外面總有人會來攻打它，試圖把它從你手中奪走。我想要一座我能理解的城堡，但我更想要一座周圍有護城河環繞的城堡。

Kodak 柯達

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.

30年前，伊士曼柯達公司的護城河和可口可樂公司的護城河一樣寬廣。我的意思是，如果你要給六個月大的寶寶拍張照片，並且希望在20年後或者50年後還能看看這張照片。而你又絕不是專業攝影師，沒有機會去評判這張照片在20年或50年後看起來效果如何。在這種情況下，你對這家攝影公司的印象（心智佔有率）才是關鍵所在。因為他們向你承諾，你今天拍攝的照片，在20年到50年後依然會很棒，而照片裡記錄的是對你來說非常重要的東西。嗯，30年前的柯達在這方面優勢極為明顯，他們佔據著這一領域。他們擁有我所說的心智佔有率。先別提市場佔有率，我說的是心智佔有率。他們有那樣一個東西——那個黃色的小盒子——上面寫著“柯達是最棒的”。這是無價之寶。他們已經失去了一部分這樣的優勢，但還沒有完全喪失。

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.

這並非喬治·費舍爾的過錯。喬治乾得很出色，但他們讓柯達的護城河變窄了。他們任由富士公司進入市場，並開始以各種方式侵蝕這條護城河。他們讓富士獲得了奧運會的相關權益，失去了那種只有柯達才適合拍攝奧運會的特殊地位。於是富士進入了這個領域，而且很快在人們的認知裡，富士在一定程度上與柯達平起平坐了。

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.

這種情況在可口可樂身上可沒有出現；如今可口可樂的護城河比30年前更寬了。你不可能每天都察覺到這條護城河的變化，但每當在某個國家建設起那些目前對可口可樂來說還無法盈利、但20年後可能盈利的基礎設施時，可口可樂的護城河就在一點點變寬。事情總是在這樣或那樣地發生著細微的變化。十年之後，你就能看到其中的差異。對於我們所經營業務的管理者們，我只有一個要求，那就是我們要拓寬護城河。我們要往護城河裡投放鱷魚、鯊魚，還有短吻鱷——我想是這些——來抵禦競爭對手。這可以透過優質的服務、高質量的產品來實現，也可以透過控制成本來達成，有時候還可以依靠專利，或者是絕佳的地理位置。這就是我所追求的企業模式。

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.

那麼，我要到哪裡去找到這樣的企業呢？嗯，我會在簡單產品領域去尋找，因為我無法想象十年之後，甲骨文、蓮花軟體公司或者微軟的護城河會是什麼樣子。蓋茨是我見過的最出色的商人，他們的企業也佔據著極其有利的地位，但我真的不知道十年後這些企業會發展成什麼樣子。我當然無從知曉十年之後，他的競爭對手會是什麼樣子，我也不知道。但我知道十年之後口香糖行業會是什麼樣子。網際網路改變不了我們嚼口香糖的方式，其他東西也很難改變我們嚼口香糖的習慣。未來會有很多新產品出現。綠箭口香糖或者果味口香糖會消失嗎？那是不可能的。你給我十億美元，讓我進入口香糖行業，試著對箭牌公司造成實質性的衝擊，我做不到。我就是這樣思考企業的。我會對自己說，給我十億美元，我能對那個企業造成多大的傷害呢？給我一百億美元，我又能在全球範圍內對可口可樂造成多大的傷害呢？我做不到。這些都是優秀的企業。

Now give me some money and tell me to hurt somebody in some other fields, and I can figure out how to do it.

現在給我一些錢，然後讓我去在其他某些領域中打擊某個企業，那我就能想出該怎麼做。

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.

所以我想要的是一家簡單的企業，易於理解，目前有著良好的經濟效益，擁有誠實且有能力的管理團隊，而且大體上我能預見它十年後的發展狀況。如果我無法預見它十年後的樣子，我就不會買入它。基本上來說，如果紐約證券交易所明天關閉五年，而我持有某隻股票卻會因此不開心的話，我就不會去買這隻股票。我買了一個農場，五年內都沒有它的報價，但如果這個農場經營狀況良好，我就會很高興。我買了一棟公寓樓，五年內沒有它的報價，但如果這棟公寓樓能帶來我預期的收益，我也會很開心。人們買了一隻股票，第二天早上就盯著股價，然後據此判斷自己做得好不好。這太瘋狂了。他們買的可是企業的一部分啊。這就是格雷厄姆所教給我的最核心的內容。

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. 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.

你買的不是股票，而是一家企業的部分所有權。如果這家企業經營得好，而且你當初買入的價格也並非愚蠢至極，那麼你就會獲得不錯的收益。事情的本質就是如此。你應該買入那些你瞭解的企業。這就如同你購買農場一樣，你應該購買那些你瞭解的農場。這並不複雜。

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. So we buy businesses we think we can understand. There is no one here who can’t understand Coke…………..

順便說一下，之所以把這稱為格雷厄姆-巴菲特投資理念，其實這完全源自格雷厄姆。我非常幸運。我19歲的時候讀到了他的書（《聰明的投資者》）；我六七歲的時候就對股票產生了興趣。我11歲時買了自己的第一支股票。但在那之前我一直是瞎折騰——我有股價走勢圖、成交量資料，還做著各種技術分析之類的事情。然後我讀到了一本小冊子，上面說你不只是在買一個每天上下波動的股票程式碼，你買的是一家企業的一部分。一旦我開始從這個角度去思考，其他的一切也就順理成章了。這非常簡單。所以我們買入那些我們認為自己能夠理解的企業。在座的各位沒有人理解不了可口可樂公司……

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).

如果我在商學院授課，在期末考試時，我會給學生們發放關於一家網際網路公司的資料，然後讓每個學生對它進行估值。要是有人給我一個（關於該公司估值的）答案，我就會讓他不及格。（笑聲）

I don’t know how to do it. But people do it all the time; it is more exciting. 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.

我可不知道該如何去給網際網路公司估值。但人們卻總是在這麼做，而且他們覺得這更刺激。如果你把這當成是去賽馬場賭馬——那就是另一回事了——但如果你是在做投資……投資是投入資金，目的是確保日後能以合適的回報率獲得更多的回報。要做到這一點，你在任何時候都必須清楚自己在做什麼。你必須瞭解相關的企業。你能夠了解某些企業，但不可能瞭解所有的企業。

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?

問題：你已經談到了其中的一半，即努力去了解一家企業並買入這家企業。你也間接提到了投入到企業中的資金要獲得回報。那麼你如何確定為一家企業支付怎樣的價格才是合適的呢？

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. 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. 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.

巴菲特：這是個很難做的決定，但我不想買入任何我沒有十足把握的企業。所以，如果我對某家企業有十足把握，它可能也不會帶來令人難以置信的高回報。為什麼一件基本上肯定會經營得很好的事情，卻要給你每年40%的回報率呢？我們沒想過要獲得鉅額回報，但我們確實想著不要有任何損失。我們在1972年收購了喜詩糖果公司。當時喜詩糖果每年銷售1600萬磅糖果，每磅售價1.95美元，每磅能賺20美分，也就是稅前利潤400萬美元。我們花了2500萬美元收購它，相當於稅前利潤的6.25倍，或者說稅後利潤的10倍左右。而且經營這家企業基本不需要投入什麼資金。當我和我的合夥人查理審視這家企業時，我們需要判斷它是否存在尚未挖掘的定價能力。也就是那盒售價1.95美元的糖果能否賣到2美元到2.25美元。如果它能賣到2.25美元，也就是每磅再提高0.3美元，那麼1600萬磅糖果就能多賺480萬美元。對於2500萬美元的收購價格來說，這是很不錯的。我們這輩子從來沒有僱用過顧問；我們所謂的諮詢方式就是出去買一盒糖果，然後把它吃掉。

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. 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.

我們當時確實知道的是，喜詩糖果在加利福尼亞州擁有較高的心智佔有率。它有著一些特別之處。加利福尼亞州的每個人對喜詩糖果都有一定的印象，而且絕大多數都是好印象。有人曾在情人節時送了一盒喜詩糖果給某個女孩，然後那個女孩吻了他。要是女孩扇了他一巴掌，那我們的生意可就沒戲了。只要女孩吻了他，這就是我們希望在人們心中留下的印象。喜詩糖果意味著會得到親吻。如果我們能讓人們有這樣的想法，我們就能提高價格。我在1972年收購了這家公司，從那以後每年的12月26日，也就是聖誕節後的第二天，我都會提高價格，因為我們在聖誕節期間的銷量很大。事實上，今年我們將盈利6000萬美元。我們銷售3000萬磅糖果，每磅能賺2美元。同樣的生意，同樣的配方，一切都沒變，卻能賺6000萬美元，而且依然不需要投入什麼資金。

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. 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.

而且十年後我們還能賺更多的錢。在這6000萬美元的利潤中，有5500萬美元是在聖誕節前的三週內賺來的。我們公司的歌是：“主耶穌是我們多麼好的朋友。”（笑聲）這是一樁好生意。稍微思考一下就明白了。大多數人買盒裝巧克力並不是為了自己吃，而是買來當禮物——比如給別人過生日，或者更常見的是在節假日時送。情人節是一年中最重要的單個日子。而聖誕節則是到目前為止最重要的節日季。女性會為了過聖誕節買巧克力，她們會提前計劃，然後在兩三個星期的時間裡購買。男性則在情人節買巧克力。他們在開車回家的路上，而我們在電臺播放廣告。負罪感，負罪感，滿滿的負罪感——男人們紛紛偏離高速公路（去買巧克力）。在我們電臺廣告的“攻勢”下，他們可不敢不帶上一盒巧克力就回家。所以情人節是最重要的日子。

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. So in a sense, there is untapped pricing power—it is not price dependent.

你能想象在情人節那天回家的情景嗎？多虧了我的英明決策，我們的喜詩糖果現在每磅售價11美元。假設現在有每磅售價6美元的糖果。你真的想在情人節這天走進家門，要知道這麼多年來她對喜詩糖果一直有著美好的印象，然後說：“親愛的，今年我選了個便宜的。”接著遞給她一盒糖果嗎？這根本行不通。所以從某種意義上說，喜詩糖果還有尚未挖掘的定價潛力——它並不依賴於價格（來吸引消費者購買）。

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.

想想迪士尼吧。迪士尼的家庭錄影帶售價為16.95美元、18.95美元或者其他價格。在全世界範圍內——就拿人們來說吧，在這種情況下我們尤其要說的是母親們，她們對迪士尼都有著一定的印象。在座的每一個人，當聽到“迪士尼”這個詞的時候，腦海中都會浮現出一些與迪士尼相關的東西。當我說環球影業，或者說20世紀福克斯的時候，你們的腦海中不會有什麼特別的印象。但現在要是我說迪士尼，你們的腦海中就會有特別的想法。這在全世界都是如此。

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.

現在，想象一下你自己帶著幾個年幼的孩子，你每天都想讓他們自己待上幾個小時，好讓自己能清淨一會兒。你知道，如果你買了一盤錄影帶，孩子們會看上二十遍。於是你去音像店或者別的什麼地方買錄影帶。你會坐在那兒先預覽十盤不同的錄影帶，每盤都看一個半小時，然後再決定讓你的孩子看哪一盤嗎？不會的。比如說，店裡有一盤賣16.95美元，而迪士尼的那盤賣17.95美元——你知道要是買了迪士尼的那盤，就不會有問題。所以你就買了它。對於一件你不想花時間去仔細甄別的事情，你沒必要去做關於其質量的抉擇。所以，如果你是迪士尼，你就能多賣點兒錢，而且還能賣出更多的錄影帶。這就使得這成為了一樁很棒的生意。而這也讓其他同行很難與之競爭。

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.

你要如何努力打造一個品牌呢——就像夢工廠正在嘗試的那樣——使其能在全球範圍內與迪士尼競爭，並把人們腦海中有關迪士尼的概念，替換為類似環球影業這樣的概念呢？這樣一來，一位母親走進商店時，會優先挑選環球影業的錄影帶，而不是迪士尼的。但這種情況是不會發生的。

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.

在全世界範圍內，可口可樂都與人們的快樂聯絡在一起。在每一個地方——迪士尼樂園、世界盃、奧運會——這些人們感到快樂的場合，快樂總是和可口可樂相伴相隨。現在，你給我錢——我不在乎有多少——然後讓我在全球範圍內對RC可樂（美國一種可樂品牌）也做到這一點，讓50億人心中都對RC可樂懷有好感。這是辦不到的。你可以折騰，可以為所欲為，你可以在週末搞價格優惠活動。但你就是無法做到和可口可樂一樣。這就是你希望一家企業所具備的特質。這就是護城河。你希望這條護城河不斷變寬。

If you are See’s Candy, you want to do everything in the world to make sure that the experience basically of giving that gift leads to a favorable reaction. It means what is in the box, it means the person who sells it to you, because all of our business is done when we are terribly busy. People come in during theose weeks before Chirstmas, Valentine’s Day and there are long lines. So at five o’clock in the afternoon some woman is selling someone the last box candy and that person has been waiting in line for maybe 20 or 30 customers. And if the salesperson smiles at that last customer, our moat has widened and if she snarls at ‘em, our moat has narrowed. We can’t see it, but it is going on everyday. But it is the key to it. It is the total part of the product delivery. It is having everything associated with it say, See’s Candy and something pleasant happening. That is what business is all about.

如果你是喜詩糖果公司，你就會想盡一切辦法，確保贈送這份禮物所帶來的體驗基本上能引發積極的反應。這涉及到盒子裡裝的是什麼，也關乎把糖果賣給你的那個人，因為我們所有的生意都在非常忙碌的時候進行。人們會在聖誕節前的那幾周以及情人節期間光顧，店裡常常排著長隊。所以，在下午五點鐘的時候，有位女售貨員在把最後一盒糖果賣給某位顧客，而這位顧客可能已經等了前面二三十位顧客了。如果售貨員對最後這位顧客微笑，我們的護城河就變寬了；要是她對顧客兇巴巴的，我們的護城河就變窄了。我們看不到這種變化，但它每天都在發生。而這就是關鍵所在。這是產品交付過程中不可或缺的一部分。與喜詩糖果相關的一切都意味著，只要提到喜詩糖果，就會聯想到一些令人愉快的事情發生。這就是生意的真諦所在。

Question: If I have every bought a company where the numbers told me not to. How much is quantitative and how much is qualitative?

問題：我是否曾收購過一家資料顯示不該收購的公司？在決策過程中，定量因素和定性因素各佔多大比重？

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：最划算的收購往往是那種從資料上看幾乎不應該去做的收購。因為那時你會對該公司的產品有著強烈的信心。這可不只是因為你能廉價買到一個“雪茄煙蒂”（指那些看似廉價但價值有限、沒有發展潛力的公司）。那樣的收購才是有吸引力的。我曾經擁有過一家風車公司。相信我，風車公司就是“雪茄煙蒂”式的企業。我以很低的價格買下了它，價格只有其營運資金的三分之一。我們從這家公司賺了錢，但沒辦法持續從它身上賺錢。這類公司只能帶來一次性的利潤。這可不是值得去做的事情。我經歷過那個階段。我買過有軌電車公司以及各種各樣的公司。至於定性分析方面，可能在我接到電話的那一刻就對其定性有所瞭解了。幾乎我們收購的每一家公司，從分析的角度來說，都只花了五到十分鐘的時間。今年我們就收購了兩家公司。

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.

通用再保險公司（General Re）那筆交易涉及金額達180億美元。我從來沒去過他們的總部辦公室。我希望它確實在那兒。（笑聲）“說不定那兒有幾個人在商量這個月該給巴菲特送什麼樣的資料呢？”我能想象他們每個月來這麼一次，然後虛報說銀行裡有200億美元，而不是實際的180億美元。可我從來就沒去過那兒。

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. 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.

在我收購“行政噴氣機公司”（該公司提供飛機的部分產權服務）之前，我從沒去過那兒。三年前，我給家人在該公司的專案中買了四分之一的產權份額。我體驗過他們的服務，而且看起來發展得很不錯。我也拿到了相關資料。但如果你沒有足夠的能力立刻了解這家公司的業務，那麼給你一個月或者兩個月的時間，你也還是瞭解不夠。你必須具備一定的背景知識，能明白自己理解什麼、不理解什麼。這才是關鍵所在。這就是界定你自己的能力圈。

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.

每個人都有不同的能力圈。重要的不是能力圈有多大，重要的不是能力圈的規模大小；重要的是要待在能力圈之內。如果在證券交易所上市的數千家公司中，你的能力圈裡只有30家公司，只要你清楚這30家公司是哪些，那你就沒問題。而且你應該對這些公司足夠了解，這樣你就不需要做大量的研究工作。在早年的時候，我確實做了大量的工作來熟悉各類公司，而我採用的方法就是菲利普·費雪所說的“閒聊調查法”。我會走出去，與客戶、供應商交談，在某些情況下，可能還會和前僱員交流。和所有相關的人交流。每當我對某個行業感興趣時，比如說煤炭行業，我就會四處走訪，去考察每一家煤炭公司。我會問每一位執行長：“如果你只能購買一家非自己公司的煤炭企業的股票，你會選哪一家，為什麼？”你把這些資訊拼湊起來，過一段時間後，你就會了解這個行業了。

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.

很有意思的是，只要你詢問有關競爭對手的問題，得到的答案往往非常相似。如果你有一顆“銀子彈”（殺手鐧），可以用它來對付一個競爭對手，你會選哪個競爭對手，又為什麼呢？透過這樣的問題，你就會發現這個行業裡誰才是最厲害的角色。所以，有很多方法你可以瞭解一家企業。過去，對於那些我覺得自己能夠理解的企業，我就是這麼做的，所以現在我不必再那樣做了。投資這件事的美妙之處在於，你不必去學習任何新東西。如果你想學習新東西，當然也可以去學，但如果你在四十年前就瞭解了箭牌口香糖公司，那麼現在你依然瞭解箭牌口香糖公司。在這個過程中，你並不需要獲得很多那種高深莫測的見解。所以，你的腦海中確實會形成一個資訊庫。

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.

我認識一個人，弗蘭克·魯尼，他經營梅爾維爾公司很多年。他的岳父去世了，生前擁有一家名為H.H. 布朗的鞋業公司。他透過高盛公司準備出售這家公司。當時他在佛羅里達和我的一個朋友一起打高爾夫球，他跟我這個朋友提到了這件事，於是我的朋友就說：“你為什麼不給沃倫打個電話呢？”打完球后他就給我打了電話，五分鐘內我基本上就敲定了一樁交易。

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.

但我瞭解弗蘭克，也瞭解這個行業。我大致清楚製鞋業的基本經濟狀況，所以我能買下這家公司。從定量分析的角度來看，我得確定價格是否合適。不過，你知道的，這無非就是買或者不買的問題。我不太喜歡在談判上過多糾纏。如果他們提出的價格我覺得合理，我就買下來。如果價格不合適，反正我在這之前的日子過得也很開心，那麼即便不買下這家公司，之後的日子我也照樣開心。

Question: The Asian Crisis and how it affects a company like Coke that recently announced their earnings would be lower in the fourth quarter.

問題：亞洲金融危機以及它對像可口可樂這樣的公司有何影響，該公司最近宣佈其第四季度收益將會下降。

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.

巴菲特：嗯，基本上我對此持樂觀態度，因為在未來二十年裡，可口可樂產品在國際市場的增長速度將遠遠超過在美國市場的增長速度。在美國，從人均角度來看，它也會有所增長。雖然誰也不知道會有一段艱難時期持續多久——可能是三個月，也可能是三年——但不會艱難二十年之久。世界各地的人們仍將高效地工作，而且他們會發現，就為了能喝上一瓶可口可樂（要是能像我一樣一天喝上五瓶就更好了）而需要付出的那部分工作時間而言，這是一種很划算的商品。

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. 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.

這是一種產品。1936年，我第一次花25美分買了6瓶，然後以每瓶5美分的價格賣出去。當時的瓶子是6.5盎司裝的，而且每個瓶子要付2美分的押金。那時，6.5盎司裝的一瓶賣5美分；現在是12盎司裝的聽裝可樂，如果你在週末購買，或者一次性多買一些，這樣就沒那麼多錢花在包裝上了——基本上12盎司的可樂花不了20多美分就能買到。所以，如今每盎司的價格相比1936年也就高了不到兩倍。多年來，相對於人們的收入水平而言，這種產品變得越來越便宜了。而且人們都很喜歡它。在200個國家裡，對於這麼一款已經有100多年曆史且佔據市場主導地位的產品，人均消費量每年都在上升。這太不可思議了。

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. 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.

有一件事人們並不瞭解，而這件事正是讓這種產品價值達數十億乃至上百億美元的原因之一，其實這是一個關於所有可樂的簡單事實，但我們暫且以可口可樂為例來說明。恰好我也很喜歡這個品牌名。可樂沒有味覺記憶。你可以在9點、10點、下午1點和5點分別喝上一瓶。下午5點喝的那瓶，在你品嚐起來，味道會和你一大早喝的那瓶一樣好。但你沒法對奶油蘇打水、沙士汽水、橙汁或葡萄汁做到這一點。所有那些飲品都會讓你的味覺產生累積效應。過不了多久，你就會喝膩它們。還有，如果你吃喜詩糖果 —— 那些來喜詩糖果公司為我們工作的人，第一天他們會狂吃糖果，可一週之後，他們吃的量就和自己掏錢買著吃時差不多了，因為巧克力會讓你的味覺產生累積效應。可樂沒有味覺記憶，這就意味著在世界各地，都有大量的重度可樂飲用者 —— 他們一天能喝五瓶普通可樂，如果是健怡可樂，一天能喝七瓶甚至八瓶。但他們絕對不會對其他飲品或食品有這樣的消費量。所以就出現了這種令人難以置信的人均消費量。在世界上的這個地區，或者稍微偏北一點的地方，平均每人每天要飲用 64 盎司的液體。你可以這 64 盎司全都是可樂，而且只要你一開始就喜歡喝可樂，你一點都不會喝膩。但要是換成其他任何東西，如果你一整天都只吃同一種食物，過不了多久你就會有點厭煩了。

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. 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.

這是一個極其重要的因素。所以如今，全球每天會售出超過10億份可口可樂產品，而且這個銷量還會逐年增長。實際上，在每個國家它的銷量都會增長，人均消費量也會上升。從現在起的二十年後，它在國際市場的增長速度會比在美國快得多，所以我真的更看好國際市場，因為隨著時間推移，那裡有更大的增長空間。不過，目前從短期來看，這（亞洲金融危機等情況）會對可口可樂公司造成一定影響，但這其實沒什麼大不了的。可口可樂公司在1919年上市，當時股價是每股40美元。錢德勒家族在19世紀80年代末的時候，僅花了2000美元就買下了整個公司。到了1919年公司上市，股價每股40美元。一年之後，股價跌到了每股19美元，一年內跌了50%。你可能會覺得這是一場災難，還可能會認為是食糖價格上漲了，或者裝瓶商們起來反抗了，諸如此類的原因。你總能找到一些理由，來說明當時不是買入的好時機。多年後，你又會經歷大蕭條、第二次世界大戰、食糖配給制、熱核武器危機等等——總是會有各種各樣的理由。

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.

但最終，如果你當初以每股40美元的價格買入一股可口可樂股票，並且將股息再投資，那麼現在這一股就價值500萬美元了（40美元按14.63%的複利計算，經過86年的結果！）。這個因素遠遠超過了其他任何因素的影響。如果你對一家企業的判斷是正確的，你就會賺很多錢。至於投資時機的把握是非常微妙的事情，所以如果我擁有一家很棒的企業，我不會為它明年會怎樣之類的特定事件而擔憂。在這個國家（美國），價格管制在不同時期都出現過，這甚至會對最優秀的企業造成干擾。我也許無法在12月31日提高喜詩糖果的價格。但即便發生了這種情況，也並不意味著喜詩糖果就成了一家糟糕的企業，因為價格管制不會永遠持續下去。我們在20世紀70年代初就經歷過價格管制。

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.

一家出色的企業——你能夠弄清楚將會發生什麼事情，但你無法確定這些事情何時會發生。你不應該過於關注事情發生的時間，而應該關注事情本身的走向。如果你對事情的發展方向判斷正確，那麼你就不必太擔心它什麼時候會發生了。

Question: What about your business mistakes?

問題：那你在商業方面犯過的錯誤呢？

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. 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.

巴菲特：你有多少時間來聽呢？對我和我的合夥人查理·芒格來說，投資方面有意思的地方在於，我們所犯的最大錯誤並非是因主動作為而犯下的，而是因不作為造成的。就是那些我們對業務已經有足夠了解，本可以有所行動的情況，但出於這樣或那樣的原因，我們只是乾坐在那裡無所作為。所以我們錯過了一些機會，而要是當初有所行動，我們本可以從這些自己瞭解的業務中賺到鉅額財富，更別提那些我們不瞭解的業務了。我本可以從微軟公司賺上數十億美元這件事其實沒什麼意義，因為我從來就沒能理解微軟的業務。但要是我能從醫療保健類股票上賺上數十億美元，那我就應該去賺這筆錢。當初克林頓的醫療保健計劃提出來時，這類股票價格暴跌，我們本應藉此大賺一筆的，因為我能理解這個行業。但我們卻沒有抓住機會。

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. 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. 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. 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.

在20世紀80年代中期的時候，我本應該從房利美公司大賺一筆的，但我卻沒有這麼做。這些都是價值數十億美元甚至上百億美元的錯誤，而一般公認會計原則是體現不出這些錯誤的。你能看到的那些錯誤，比如幾年前我購買美國航空優先股就是一個錯誤。當時我手頭有很多現金。當我現金充裕的時候就容易犯錯。查理告訴我還不如去酒吧呢，別在辦公室瞎晃悠。但我還是待在辦公室裡，而且口袋裡又有錢，結果就做了蠢事。這種情況每次都會發生。所以我就買了美國航空優先股。沒人逼我買。現在每當我想買入航空公司股票的時候，我就會撥打一個800開頭的號碼。我說：“我是沃倫，我對航空股上癮。”他們就會勸我冷靜下來，說：“繼續說，別做任何衝動的事。”最後我終於克服了這種衝動。但我當時確實買了美國航空優先股。而且當時看起來我們會血本無歸。實際上我們也差一點就血本無歸了。可以說，我們虧掉那筆錢也是活該。

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. 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.

我們買下它（美國航空優先股）是因為它是一種很有吸引力的證券。但它所處的行業卻並不吸引人。我在所羅門公司的事情上也犯了同樣的錯誤。我買入了一種很有吸引力的證券，但對於這家公司的股票，我是不會去買的。所以可以說這是一種錯誤形式。因為喜歡其條款而買入某樣東西，但卻並不是很看好其所在的行業。我過去犯過這樣的錯誤，而且以後可能還會再犯。更大的錯誤是那些因不作為而犯下的錯誤。當我只有1萬美元的時候，我拿出其中2000美元投資了一家辛克萊加油站，結果這筆錢虧掉了，所以這筆錢的機會成本現在大概有60億美元左右——這是相當大的錯誤了。當伯克希爾的股價下跌時，我心裡會好受一些，因為我投資辛克萊加油站的機會成本也隨之降低了。我那20%資金的機會成本啊。我想說的是，儘可能多地從別人的錯誤中吸取教訓是比較好的。但我們不會花時間去回顧伯克希爾過去的失誤。我有一個合夥人，查理·芒格；我們做了四十年的好夥伴了——從來沒吵過架。我們在很多事情上都有不同意見，但我們不會為此爭吵。

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. 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.

我們從不回頭看。我們只是覺得有太多值得期待的事情了，去想我們本可能做過什麼根本沒有意義。這真的沒什麼影響。你只能朝著未來去生活。或許你可以從錯誤中吸取一些教訓，但最重要的是堅持專注於你所瞭解的企業。所以，如果在你的能力圈之外犯了一些常見的錯誤，比如因為別人的小道訊息而買入某樣東西之類的情況。在一個你一無所知的領域裡，你應該從中吸取教訓，那就是要堅持去做你自己能夠弄明白的事情。你真的應該透過審視自己來做決策。對自己說：“我以每股55美元的價格買入100股通用汽車的股票，是因為……” 如果你要買入，那你就得對這件事負責。必須得有一個理由，而如果你說不出這個理由，那你就不應該買它。如果僅僅是因為有人在雞尾酒會上跟你提到了這隻股票，那這個理由還不夠充分。不能是因為股票的成交量（大），或者是因為股票走勢圖看起來不錯之類的理由。必須得有一個買入這家企業（股票）的合理理由。我們一直都非常嚴格地堅持這一點。這也是本·格雷厄姆教給我的道理之一。

Question: The current tenuous economic situation and interest rates? Where are we going?

問題：當前脆弱的經濟形勢和利率情況如何？我們將走向何方？

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.

巴菲特：我不會去考慮宏觀層面的事情。在投資中，你真正想要做的是弄清楚哪些事情是重要且可知的。如果一件事既不重要又不可知，那就把它拋諸腦後。你所談論的這些（宏觀經濟形勢和利率相關的事情）是重要的，但在我看來，它們是不可知的。瞭解可口可樂公司、箭牌公司或者伊士曼柯達公司是可知的事情。你能夠理解這些可以弄明白的企業。而最終這些是否重要，取決於你對企業的估值以及企業的股價等等因素。但我們從來不會因為任何一種宏觀層面的感覺而去買入或不買入一家企業，因為這毫無意義。比如說，在1972年我們收購喜詩糖果公司的時候，我記得尼克松不久後就實施了一些價格管制措施，但那又怎樣呢！我們差點就錯過了一個以2500萬美元收購一家如今能產生6000萬美元稅前利潤的企業的機會。我們不想因為對一些我們根本不擅長預測的宏觀因素的擔憂，而錯過做明智投資決策的機會。所以我們根本不會去關注與宏觀因素相關的資訊，也不會去聽這方面的分析。典型的投資顧問機構會請出他們的經濟學家，讓他出來給你描繪一幅宏大的宏觀經濟圖景。然後他們就從這個宏觀圖景出發去開展後續工作。但在我們看來，這完全是無稽之談。

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.

如果艾倫·格林斯潘在我一邊，羅伯特·魯賓在我另一邊，而且他們倆都在我耳邊悄悄告訴我他們在未來十二個月裡具體要做些什麼，這對於我為商務噴氣航空服務公司（Executive Jet）、通用再保險公司（General Re）或者其他任何我要投資的專案所願意支付的價格，都不會產生任何影響。

Question: What is the benefit of being an out-of-towner as opposed to being on Wall Street?

問題：與身處華爾街的人相比，外地人有什麼優勢？

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. 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.

巴菲特：我曾在華爾街工作過幾年，在美國東西海岸都有我最要好的朋友。我喜歡和他們見面。我去那裡的時候也會獲得一些靈感。但思考投資的最佳方式是獨自待在一個房間裡，然後專注思考。如果這樣都不行，那其他方法也無濟於事了。處於像華爾街這樣極端的市場環境中的一大弊端在於，你會受到過度刺激。你會覺得自己每天都得做點什麼。錢德勒家族當初花了2000美元買下了可口可樂公司。如果你選中了這樣一家好公司，其實你不需要再做太多其他事情。而關鍵就在於別再去做其他多餘的事。甚至在1919年公司上市時也別賣掉（股票），而錢德勒家族後來就這麼做了。所以你要做的是想辦法每年獲得一個好的投資點子。然後充分挖掘它的潛力，而在一個人們每隔五分鐘就喊出買賣價格，還把各種報告硬塞到你眼前的環境中，這是很難做到的。華爾街靠交易活動賺錢。而你則要靠不頻繁交易來賺錢。

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. You want to stay away from any environment that stimulates activity. And Wall Street would have the effective of doing that.

如果在座的每個人每天都和其他人頻繁地交易自己的投資組合，最終你們都會破產。而那些中介機構會把所有的錢都賺走。如果你們所有人都持有一些普通企業的股票，然後就這麼坐著，未來50年都不動這些股票，最終你們會賺到相當數量的錢，而你們的經紀人卻會破產。經紀人就好比醫生，他的收入取決於讓你換藥的頻率。如果他給你一顆能治癒你且保你餘生健康的藥，那他就只能做成一筆買賣，一次交易，僅此而已。但如果他能說服你，讓你相信每天換藥才是保持健康的良方，那這對他和藥劑師來說可太有利了。而你並不會因此變得更健康，而且你的經濟狀況會變得更糟。你要遠離任何會刺激你頻繁交易的環境。而華爾街就會產生這樣的影響。

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.

當我回到奧馬哈的時候，我會帶著一長串我想要考察的公司名單回去，而且我會充分利用那些行程，讓花出去的錢物有所值。但之後我就會回到奧馬哈，然後對考察的情況進行思考。

Question: How to evaluate Berkshire or MSFT if it does not pay dividends?

問題：如果伯克希爾（Berkshire）或微軟（MSFT）不分紅，該如何對它們進行估值？

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：（伯克希爾）也不會支付任何股息的。這是我能保證做到的事。對於伯克希爾的股票，你所能做的就是把它放進你的銀行保險箱，然後每年你去銀行，愛撫一下它（的股票憑證）。你把它拿出來，然後再放回去。這其中有著巨大的精神回報。可別低估了這一點。

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 1/100 $1/100$ 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.

真正的問題在於，我們能否留存美元資金，並以不錯的回報率將它們增值到超過一美元的價值。這就是我們努力去做的事。查理·芒格和我把我們所有的錢都投入其中來實現這一目標。這也是我們因之而獲得回報的唯一方式。我們不會拿任何股票期權，也可以說我們不會拿任何薪水。但這就是我們正在努力做的事情。而且這件事變得越來越難了。我們管理的資金越多，要做到這一點就越困難。如果伯克希爾的規模只有現在的百分之一，從百分比的角度來看，我們的表現會好得多。伯克希爾是為它的股東們經營的，但經營它並不是為了給股東分紅，因為到目前為止，我們所賺取的或者本可以用來支付股息的每一美元，都已經增值到了超過一美元的價值。把這些錢留存下來比把它作為股息支付出去更有價值。所以，把錢作為股息支付出去是很愚蠢的做法，即使所有持有伯克希爾股票的人都不用交稅。對伯克希爾來說，支付股息曾是個錯誤的決定，因為到目前為止，留存下來的每一美元都已經增值到了超過一美元。但無法保證未來還會如此。在某個時候，這種增值的情況可能就不會再出現了。這就是我們所從事的業務的本質。我們不會用其他任何標準來評判我們的業務，不會以公司總部辦公樓的大小或者在那裡工作的員工數量之類的標準來評判。我們總部有12名員工，而伯克希爾總共有45000名員工，總部佔地3500平方英尺，而且我們不會改變這種狀況。

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.

但我們會依據公司的業績來評判自己，而這也是我們獲得報酬的唯一方式。不過相信我，現在要做到這一點比過去困難多了。

Question: What tells you when an investment has reached its full potential?

問題：如何判斷一項投資何時已經發揮出了全部潛力？

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.

巴菲特：我買入可口可樂股票的時候，可不是想著它會在10年或者50年後就失去發展動力。也許會有一些意外情況發生，但我覺得那種可能性幾乎為零。所以我們真正想做的是買入那些我們樂意永遠持有的企業。這就如同我對那些買入伯克希爾股票的人的看法一樣。我希望那些買入伯克希爾股票的人打算永遠持有它。他們或許會因為這樣或那樣的原因而最終沒有做到永遠持有，但我希望他們在買入的時候，認為自己買入的是一家他們想要永遠擁有的企業。

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. 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.”

我並不是說這是唯一的投資方式。只是我希望那些人和我秉持同樣的理念，因為我不想總是面對一群不斷變動的投資者。我衡量伯克希爾的一個標準就是它的股票交易活躍度有多低。這就好比我要是掌管著一座教堂且擔任牧師，結果每個星期天都有一半的教眾離開。我肯定不會說：“我的教眾們有這麼高的流動性，真是太棒了。”

Terrific turnover… I would rather go to church where all the seats are filled every Sunday by the same people. 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.

極高的換手率…… 我更願意去那種每個星期天所有座位都被同樣一批人坐滿的教堂。嗯，這就是我們看待所收購企業的方式。我們幾乎是想永遠持有我們所買入的企業。而這樣的企業我們並不能找到很多。在我剛開始投資的時候，我的想法比資金要多得多，所以我總是不得不賣掉那些最沒有吸引力的股票，以便去買入我剛發現的看起來更便宜的股票。但現在這確實不是我們面臨的問題了。所以我們希望買入那些，五年後我們還會像現在一樣樂意持有的企業。而且要是我們遇到了一筆非常重大的收購機會，那或許我們就得賣掉一些東西。也許是為了完成那筆收購，但那會是一個非常令人開心的 “麻煩”。

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.

我們從來不會在心裡想著一個價格目標才去買東西。我們從不會在股價為30美元時買入一隻股票，然後想著如果它漲到40美元、50美元、60美元或者100美元我們就把它賣掉。我們就是不這麼做。這就如同我們以2500萬美元收購像喜詩糖果這樣的私人企業時一樣。我們從不會說如果有人出價5000萬美元收購這家企業，我們就會把它賣掉。看待一家企業不能用那樣的方式。

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.

看待一家企業的方式應該是：隨著時間的推移，這家企業是否會持續創造出越來越多的利潤呢？如果答案是肯定的，那你就無需再問其他問題了。

Questions: How did you decide to invest in Salomon?

問題：你當初是如何決定投資所羅門公司的呢？

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：就像我說的，關於所羅門公司，我投資它是因為在1987年，1987年9月的時候，它是一種收益率為9%的證券，當時道瓊斯指數上漲了35%，我們賣出了很多資產。我手頭有大量資金，而且在我看來我們似乎再也找不到可投資的專案了，所以我就選擇了這家公司的一種有吸引力的證券產品，而這家公司的普通股我是絕不會買的。我當初是出於這個原因才進行投資的，而且我認為總體而言，那是個錯誤。不過最終結果還算可以。但那並不是我本應做的事情。我要麼就應該再等等，那樣的話大約一年後我就可以多買些可口可樂的股票，要麼即便當時可口可樂的股價已經相當高了，我也應該直接買入它的股票。所以，那次投資所羅門公司是個錯誤。

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.

關於長期資本管理公司（Long-Term Capital）——多年來，我們還擁有過其他與證券相關的業務——其中之一就是套利業務。我從事套利交易已經有45年了，在我之前格雷厄姆從事這一行有30年之久。不幸的是，從事這項業務我得守在電話旁邊。我必須親自在辦公室裡實際運作（套利業務），因為這需要更加密切地關注市場動態，因為我不想再做這方面的事了。所以，除非出現我能理解的真正重大的套利機會，否則我不會再大量涉足套利業務了。但在我的一生中，我可能至少參與過大約300起套利交易，也許更多。套利曾是一項不錯的業務，完全算得上是好業務。

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 $1/2 – 3/4$ a percentage point of our return a year. They are little pluses you get for actually having been around a long time.

長期資本管理公司（LTCM）有大量的頭寸，他們的頭寸數量極多，但排名前十的頭寸可能佔了其面臨風險資金的90%左右，而我對這十個頭寸的情況有所瞭解。遠非說我對它們瞭如指掌，但我瞭解的程度足以讓我覺得，在大幅折價的情況下介入是可行的，而且我們有足夠的耐力堅持持有。我們可能會在某些方面因此而虧損，但從機率上來說對我們是有利的。這是我能理解的一種交易。我們持有的其他頭寸規模沒有那麼大，因為它們無法達到那麼大的規模。但這些頭寸可能涉及收益率曲線關係，或者新發行國債與已發行國債之間的關係，這些都是你在證券市場浸淫久了就能逐漸瞭解的東西。它們並非我們業務的核心。大概平均算下來，它們每年為我們的回報率貢獻了0.5到0.75個百分點。它們是你在這個領域長期摸爬滾打後獲得的一些小的收益加成。

Arbitrage 套利

One of the first arbitrages I did involved a company that offered cocoa beans in exchange for their stock. That was in 1955. I bought the stock, turned in the stock, got warehouse certificates for cocoa beans and they happen to be a different type but there was a basis differential and I sold them. That was something I was around at the time, so I learned about it. There hasn’t been a cocoa deal since. 40 odd years, I have been waiting for a cocoa deal. I haven’t seen it. It is there in my memory if it ever comes along. LTCM is that on a big scale.

我做的第一筆套利交易之一涉及一家公司，該公司提出用可可豆來交換其公司股票。那是在1955年。我買入了該公司的股票，交出股票後，得到了可可豆的倉儲憑證，而且那些可可豆碰巧是不同的品種，但存在基差，於是我把它們賣掉了。當時我正好接觸到了這樣的機會，所以就做了這筆套利並瞭解了其中的門道。從那以後就再也沒有出現過可可豆相關的套利交易了。四十多年來，我一直在等這樣一筆可可豆交易，可一直都沒再見到。如果以後再出現的話，我還能記起這件事。長期資本管理公司（LTCM）的套利業務就是在更大規模上進行的類似操作。

Question: Diversification?

問題：多樣化（投資）嗎？

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. If you really know businesses, you probably shouldn’t own more than six of them.

巴菲特：問題是關於多元化投資的。對此我有雙重答案。如果你不是專業投資者，而且你的目標不是透過管理資金來獲得比市場平均水平顯著更高的回報，那麼我認為要進行極度的多元化投資。我認為98%到99%的投資者都應該廣泛地分散投資，並且不要頻繁交易，這就會讓他們做出選擇低成本指數基金的決定。他們所要做的就是持有美國市場的一部分份額。而且他們已經認定持有美國市場的一部分是值得的。對此我完全沒有異議。除非他們想全身心投入到投資中，去做決策並開始評估企業，否則這就是他們應該採取的投資方式。一旦你從事評估企業的工作，並且你決定要付出努力、投入精力和時間去做好這件事，那麼我認為在任何程度上進行多元化投資都是一個嚴重的錯誤。前幾天在太陽信託銀行（SunTrust）有人問了我這個問題。如果你真的瞭解企業，你持有的企業可能不應該超過六家。

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.

如果你能找到六家非常出色的企業，那這就是你所需要的全部“多元化”了。而且你會賺很多錢。我可以保證，與其把更多的錢投入到你最初看好的企業中，卻選擇去投資第七家企業，那肯定是個嚴重的錯誤。很少有人是靠他們第七好的投資想法發家致富的。但很多人都是靠他們最好的投資想法而變得富有的。所以我想說，對於任何擁有普通資金量、並且真正瞭解自己所投資企業的人來說，六家企業就足夠了，而且我持有的企業數量可能只有我最看好的企業數量的一半。就我個人而言，我不會進行多元化投資。在我認識的所有投資做得好的人當中，除了沃爾特·施洛斯（Walter Schloss）之外，沃爾特進行大量的多元化投資。我稱他為諾亞，他什麼東西都有兩份。

Question: How do you distinguish the Cokes of the world from the Proctor & Gambles of this world?

問題：你如何區分世界上的可口可樂公司和寶潔公司這類企業？

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：嗯，寶潔是一家非常非常出色的企業，它有著強大的分銷能力，還擁有眾多品牌。但如果你問我，要是我要離開20年，並且把我全家的淨資產都投入到一家企業中，我是會選擇寶潔還是可口可樂呢？實際上，寶潔在產品線方面更為多元化，但相比寶潔，我對可口可樂更有信心。如果有人告訴我在這20年裡我必須持有寶潔的股份，我也不會不開心。我的意思是，寶潔會在我最看好的企業中排名前5%。因為寶潔不會被擊垮，但對於可口可樂在未來二三十年的銷量增長和定價能力，我會更有信心。

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，可口可樂的定價權或許面臨挑戰，但你想想，每天售出10億份產品，每份提價1美分，那就是每天多收入1000萬美元。我們（伯克希爾·哈撒韋）持有可口可樂8%的股份，所以這意味著伯克希爾·哈撒韋每天能多進賬80萬美元。把產品價格提高1美分並非沒有可能。我覺得它就值多這1美分的價格。目前在大多數市場試圖提價可能是個錯誤。但隨著時間的推移，可口可樂每份產品的利潤會比現在更高。我敢保證，20年後，每份產品的利潤肯定會比現在高，而且產品的銷售份數也會大幅增加。我不知道具體會增加多少份數或多少利潤，但我知道肯定會增加。

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.

寶潔的主要產品——我認為它們沒有那種（像可口可樂那樣的）統治地位，也沒有那樣的銷量增長態勢，但寶潔仍是很不錯的企業。要是你告訴我，我必須把我全家的淨資產都投入到寶潔公司，而且這將是我持有的唯一一支股票，我也不會不開心。我可能會更傾向於其他一些公司的股票，但也沒有100家我會更青睞的公司。

Question: Would you buy McDonald’s and go away for twenty years?

問題：你會買入麥當勞的股票，然後放著不管二十年嗎？

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：麥當勞有很多優勢，尤其是在海外市場方面更是如此。它在許多國家的海外市場地位比在美國本土還要穩固。隨著時間的推移，經營麥當勞這樣的業務難度越來越大。人們並不想每天都在麥當勞用餐——除了孩子們在麥當勞有贈送豆豆娃之類活動的時候。要是有人一天喝五罐可口可樂，那他們明天很可能還是會喝五罐。快餐業務的情況比這要複雜棘手一些。但如果你必須在快餐行業中選擇一家企業（而快餐行業在全球範圍內將會是一個龐大的產業），你會選擇麥當勞。我的意思是，麥當勞有著最強大的市場地位。

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.

在成年人參與的口味測試中，它（麥當勞食品）並非勝出者。它很受孩子們歡迎，成年人對它的接受度也還不錯，但它並非是毫無懸念的優勝者。而且近年來，麥當勞捲入了更多以價格促銷為主的競爭之中——你還記得大概一年前做的那個實驗吧。它變得更加依賴這種（價格促銷）手段，而不是單純靠產品自身來銷售。我喜歡產品本身的魅力。如果人們是因為喜歡吉列鋒速3（剃鬚刀）而購買它，而不是因為購買鋒速3能獲贈一個豆豆娃才買，那我對吉列這個品牌會更有信心。所以從根本上來說，如果（產品靠自身魅力銷售）是這種情況的話，產品本身會更具競爭力。而很可能事實就是如此。

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). 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.

我們持有大量吉列的股份。當你想到全球有幾十億臉上會長鬍子的男性時，你晚上都能睡得特別安穩。你睡覺時，他們的鬍子一整晚都在生長。女性還有兩條腿（要刮毛），這情況就更好了。這可比數羊有用多了。這就是我們所尋找的那種業務……但下個月我該推出什麼樣的促銷活動來對抗漢堡王呢？要是他們和迪士尼簽約而我沒能簽到迪士尼該怎麼辦？我喜歡那些無需價格促銷或額外噱頭就能暢銷的產品，儘管基於促銷手段也能打造出非常出色的業務。麥當勞是一家很棒的企業。但它不像可口可樂那麼出色。真的很難有企業能和可口可樂媲美。麥當勞是非常優秀的企業，如果你要在快餐領域押注一家公司，那就選麥當勞（此處garbled可能導致部分資訊缺失）。不久前我們收購了冰雪皇后（Dairy Queen），所以我才在這裡不遺餘力地宣傳它。

Question: What do I think about the utility industry?

問題：我對公用事業行業有什麼看法？

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：我對公用事業行業思考過很多，因為你可以在這個行業投入大量資金。我甚至曾考慮過收購一整家相關企業。實際上，在奧馬哈有個人透過加州能源公司（Cal Energy）在這方面有所嘗試。但就該行業在放松管制的情況下將如何發展而言，我還不太清楚其中的門道。我能預見到，一旦那些高成本的生產商不再受到壟斷區域的保護，放松管制會讓它們損失大量價值。

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.

我並不確切知道誰會從中受益以及受益多少。顯然，那些擁有成本極低電力的人，或者那些能以每度電兩美分的價格獲得水電的人，有著巨大的優勢。但我不清楚他們能保留多少這樣的優勢，也不知道他們能在多大程度上將電力輸送到其原本的自然供應區域之外，所以我確實無法確定這個行業十年後會是什麼樣子。不過這是我一直在思考的問題，如果我有了任何值得采取行動的深刻見解，我會付諸行動的。因為我認為我能理解這類產品的吸引力。包括使用者需求的確定性等所有方面，以及這類產品其實是物有所值的這一事實，這些我都能理解。但我不明白十年後誰會在這個行業裡賺到錢。而這正是讓我對這個行業望而卻步的原因。

Question: Why do large caps outperform small caps (1998)?

問題：為什麼1998年大盤股的表現優於小盤股？

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：我們不在乎一家公司是大盤股、小盤股、中盤股還是超小盤股。這沒有任何區別。對我們來說，唯一重要的問題是：

Do we understand the business?
我們是否瞭解這家企業的業務情況？
Do we like the people running it?
我們是否喜歡經營這家公司的人呢？
And does it sell for a price that is attractive?
它的售價是否具有吸引力呢？

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.

從目前我個人經營伯克希爾的角度來看，因為算上通用再保險公司（Gen. Re）的備考資料，我們有750億到800億美元的資金可用於投資，而我只想投資於五個專案，所以我實際上只能侷限於投資非常大型的公司。但如果我要投資10萬美元，我才不會在意是否某家公司是大盤股還是小盤股之類的問題。我只會尋找我能理解的企業。

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. 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.

現在，我認為總體而言，大盤股公司在過去十年裡作為企業取得了極為出色的業績——比人們預期的要好得多。實際上，美國企業的淨資產收益率接近20%。這是沒人曾想到過的，而且這是眾多大型公司總體所實現的成績。所以，由於利率降低以及資本回報率大幅提高，（這些公司的價值）出現了大幅的向上重估。如果美國企業真的是一種收益率為20%的隱性債券，那麼票面利率為20%的它可要比票面利率為13%的債券好得多。而這正是近年來大公司所發生的情況，至於這種情況是否會持續下去則是另一個問題了。對此我持懷疑態度。若不是考慮到我們可用於投資的資金規模問題，我甚至都不會去考慮企業的規模大小。我們收購喜詩糖果公司（See's Candy）時，它的業務規模只有2500萬美元。如果以我們目前的資金體量，現在還能找到像這樣的公司，我會很樂意收購它。關鍵在於其（業務和盈利等方面的）確定性。

Question: The securitization of real estate?

問題：房地產的證券化？

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：房地產債務也存在著大規模的證券化，而這正是當前真正堵塞資本市場的因素之一。抵押支援證券根本賣不動，無論是商業地產的抵押支援證券，還是住宅地產的抵押支援證券都是如此。但我想你可能問的是房地產相關股票方面的問題。就房地產股票而言，如果你拋開公司這種組織形式來看，持有這類股票一直以來都不是個好的投資方式。人們原本個人可以直接持有相關資產並只繳納一次稅，但（以公司形式持有）卻引入了公司所得稅，而且在常規的公司形式下還存在雙重徵稅的情況。你其實並不需要（這種公司形式），而且它會侵蝕掉太多的投資回報。

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.

實際上，房地產投資信託基金（REITs）創造了一種渠道，這樣就不會出現雙重徵稅的情況，但它們通常也有著相當高的運營成本。比如說，如果你投資房地產，假設你可以買到收益率在8%左右的相當簡單型別的房地產，而當你把股票期權以及其他所有費用都算進去後，差不多會扣除掉1%到1.5%的收益，那麼透過這種方式持有房地產並不是特別有吸引力。也許對於只有1000美元或5000美元資金的人來說，這是唯一能投資房地產的方式，但如果你有100萬美元或1000萬美元，你最好還是直接持有房地產，而不是透過某個中間人來投資，因為中間人會從收益中拿走相當大的一部分。所以我們在這個領域沒發現什麼太好的投資機會。

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. 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.

在接下來的幾周內，你會看到一則公告，這則公告可能會與我今天告訴你的內容相悖。我不希望你認為我在這裡對你耍兩面派。但一般來說，在那個領域（房地產領域），我們很少看到能讓我們興奮的東西。人們有時會非常困惑——他們會關注一些大型的土地公司，比如德克薩斯太平洋土地信託公司（Texas Pacific Land Trust），這家公司已經存在了100多年，在德克薩斯州擁有幾百萬英畝的土地。他們每年會出售1%的土地，然後他們會把（出售所得當作收入嗎？此處表述含混不清），並且得出與市場價值相比非常高的估值。但如果你真的擁有這些地產，這種（估值方法）是毫無意義的。你無法隨意處置（這些土地）。你不可能一下子賣掉50%或者20%的地產，這比持有流動性差的股票還要糟糕得多。所以我認為，很多房地產的估值都非常荒謬。

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.

如你所知，房地產投資信託基金（REITs）在當前市場中的表現極為糟糕。完全可以想象，它們會成為一類極不受歡迎的投資產品，其售價可能會大幅低於房產本身的出售價格。它們有可能作為一個類別變得具有投資吸引力，然而問題在於，在這個過程中管理層是否會與投資者作對，因為他們將放棄管理這些資產所帶來的收入流，而且在這方面他們的利益可能與股東的利益背道而馳。我一直對一些房地產投資信託基金感到疑惑，這些基金的管理層聲稱他們的資產非常優質，而且股價十分低廉，可隨後他們（管理層）卻對外發售股票。這其中存在著矛盾之處。他們說自家股票每股28美元已經很便宜了，然而卻以28美元減去承銷佣金的價格大量發售股票。這其中存在脫節的情況。但這仍是我們會關注的一個領域。

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.

查理和我能夠理解房地產相關業務，而且我們會時不時地願意參與規模很大的交易。如果出現類似於長期資本管理公司（LTCM）那種情況在房地產領域重演（的機會），我們會願意考慮的，問題在於其他很多人也會對這樣的機會感興趣，所以（交易達成的）價格不太可能低到讓我們真正心動的程度。

Question: A down market is good for you?

問題：下跌的市場對你來說是好事嗎？

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.

巴菲特：我完全不知道市場會走向何方。我倒是希望市場下跌。但我的偏好和市場走向毫無關係。市場才不會理會我的感受呢。這是你在投資股票時首先要明白的事情之一。比如你買了100股通用汽車（GM）的股票。突然間，你就會對通用汽車產生一種特殊的情感。要是股價下跌了，你可能會對它感到惱火。你也許會說：“唉，要是它能漲回到我買入的價格，我的生活就又美好了。” 或者要是股價上漲了，你可能會覺得自己多麼聰明，還會覺得自己和通用汽車之間有著某種特殊的關聯。你會產生各種各樣這樣的情緒。但股票可不知道你持有它。

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. 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.

股票就擺在那兒，它才不在乎你當初花了多少錢買它，也不在乎你持有它這一事實。我對市場抱有的任何情緒都不會得到回應。我的意思是，我們在這裡談論的可是徹頭徹尾的被冷落。實際上，在座的各位在未來十年裡，成為股票淨買家的可能性很可能要比成為淨賣家的可能性大，所以你們每個人都應該希望股價更低。如果你在未來十年裡是漢堡的淨消費者，你就希望漢堡價格下跌，除非你是養牛的牧場主。如果你打算買入可口可樂公司的股票，而你又尚未持有可口可樂的股票，你就會希望可口可樂的股價下跌。你會盼著這週末超市裡的可口可樂打折促銷。當你去逛超市的時候，你希望週末時可口可樂的價格是下降的，而不是上漲的。

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.

紐約證券交易所就像是一個大型的公司超市。而你打算買入股票，那你希望發生什麼情況呢？你希望那些股票下跌，大幅下跌；這樣你就能以更好的價格買入了。從現在起再過二三十年，當你處於動用儲蓄的階段，或者當你的繼承人動用儲蓄來供養你的時候，那時你或許會在意股價上漲。格雷厄姆所著的《聰明的投資者》一書中，第八章講的是對待股市波動應持有的態度，第二十章則是關於安全邊際的內容。這兩章內容是有史以來寫得最為重要的文章。因為我 19 歲時讀到第八章，就明白了我剛才所說的那些道理，道理雖然顯而易見，但我自己卻想不明白，是書裡給我解釋清楚的。要不然的話，我可能再過 100 年還會覺得自己的股票上漲是件好事呢。我們希望股價下跌，不過我根本不知道股市會如何表現。我從來都不知道，以後也不會知道。這壓根就不是我會去考慮的事情。

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.

當股市下跌時，我會更加仔細地研究當天我可能買入的股票，因為我知道，此時更有可能出現一些值得我投入資金、讓資金得到有效利用的投資標的。

Moderator: Ok, Warren, we will let you take one more question from the audience….

主持人：好的，沃倫，我們（只能）再讓你回答一個觀眾提出的問題……

Buffett: I will let you pick who get it. You can be the guy…(laughter).

巴菲特：你來選誰可以提問吧。這個（壞）人你來當吧……（笑聲）

Question: What would you do to live a happier life if you could live over again?

問題：如果你能重新活一次，你會做些什麼來讓自己過上更幸福的生活呢？

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：這聽起來可能會有點怪。問題是如果要重新活一次，怎樣才能過上更幸福的生活呢？唯一想做的事就是選擇一個基因庫，在那裡的人都能活到120歲左右，也就是我出生在那樣的環境裡。

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.

我一直都極其幸運。我的意思是，我會舉這個例子，且會花上一兩分鐘來講，因為我覺得這值得大家稍微思考一下。我們就假設在你出生的24小時前，有一個精靈來到你面前，它對你說：“赫伯（Herb），你看起來很有潛力，而我有個大麻煩。我得設計一個你即將生活的世界。但我覺得這太難了，你來設計吧。所以你有24個小時的時間，去想好社會規則應該是怎樣的，經濟規則以及政府規則又該是怎樣的，而且你、你的孩子以及他們的孩子都將在這些規則下生活。

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?

你說：“我可以設計任何東西嗎？肯定有什麼陷阱吧？” 精靈說確實有個條件。你不知道自己出生時會是黑人還是白人，是富有還是貧窮，是男性還是女性，是體弱多病還是身體健全，是聰明伶俐還是智力遲鈍。你只知道你要從一個裝有58億個（綵球）的桶裡摸出一個球。你將參與這場 “卵巢彩票”。而這將是你一生中最重要的事情，因為這將決定你是出生在這裡還是阿富汗，以及你出生時的智商是130還是70。它將決定很多事情。那麼你會設計出一個怎樣的世界呢？

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.

我認為這是審視社會問題的一個好方法，因為在不知道自己會摸到哪個“球”（即處於何種人生境遇）的情況下，你會希望設計出一個能提供大量商品和服務的體系，因為總體而言，你希望人們生活優渥。而且你希望這個體系能夠產出越來越多的成果，這樣你的孩子就能比你生活得更好，你的孫輩也能比他們的父母生活得更好。但你也希望這個確實能產出大量商品和服務的體系，不會拋下那些不巧摸到“錯球”、不太適應這個特定體系的人。我非常適合我所身處的這個體系。我投身於能夠讓我進行資本配置的領域。要是我們所有人都被困在某個荒島上，而且永遠都無法離開，那麼在那裡最有價值的人會是那個能夠長期種出最多稻米的人。而我要是說：“我能進行資本配置！” 你們肯定不會為此感到興奮。所以說，我出生在了合適的地方。

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?

蓋茨說，如果我出生在三百萬年前，我早就成了某種動物的午餐了。他說：“你跑不快，也不會爬樹，什麼都做不了。” 你可能第一天就會被吃掉。你很幸運，因為你出生在當今這個時代。而我也是如此。回到剛才的問題，假設有這麼一個裝著65億個球的桶，代表著世界上的每一個人。如果你可以把自己的 “球” 放回去，然後隨機取出100個球，而你必須從這100個球中選一個，你會把自己的那個球放回去嗎？

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? 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.

現在，從那裡面取出的這100個球中，大概有5個代表的是美國人，比例是95比5。所以，如果你想生在美國，那就只有5個球可供選擇（代表有機會生在美國），而且這5個球裡一半是女性，一半是男性—— 這方面的選擇就由你自己決定了。這100個人裡，一半人的智力會在平均水平以下，另一半人的智力會在平均水平以上。你想把自己的球放回去參與這100個球的抽取嗎？你們中的大多數人都不會想把自己的球放回去再從這100個球裡選。所以，你們其實是在說：我現在坐在這個房間裡，就已經屬於世界上最幸運的那1% 的人了—— 屬於世界上最頂尖的1% 的幸運兒。嗯，我也是這麼覺得的。我很幸運能出生在我所出生的地方，因為在我出生的時候，出生在美國的機率是50比1（即機率很低卻幸運地出生在美國）。我幸運地擁有好父母，在各種事情上都很幸運，而且幸運的是，我的天賦秉性在市場經濟中讓我獲得了鉅額回報。對於那些和我一樣絕對稱得上是好公民的人來說，比如那些帶領童子軍、在主日學校教書，或者做其他事情，還養育著美滿家庭的人，他們就不會像我這樣獲得豐厚回報，只是因為他們碰巧沒有我這樣的天賦秉性。所以，我一直都極其幸運，因此我還想繼續這麼幸運下去。

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.

那麼，實現（幸福生活）的方法就是好好地過好這一生，去做一些你一生都喜歡做的事情，並且和你喜歡的人交往。我只和我喜歡的人一起共事。如果和一個讓我心裡不舒服的人合作能賺1億美元，我會拒絕，因為這在很大程度上就好比為了錢而結婚，無論在什麼情況下，這可能都不是個好主意，而且要是你已經很富有了，這麼做就更荒唐了。我不會為了錢而結婚。除了不會買下美國航空公司之外，我基本上還會做我已經做過的那些事情。

Thank you.

謝謝各位

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