M20:44
谢谢。
Thank you.
嗯，当然，过去十八个月里，opportunity cost 确实比以往更占据我们的脑海，因为事情变化得非常快。
Well, certainly opportunity cost has been, uh, much more in the forefront of mind in the last 18 months when things are moving very fast.
当价格在变动，而且在某些情况下，企业的 intrinsic business value 也在以远高于我们很久以来所见的速度变化时，这就意味着，在衡量 A 对 B 对 C 的时候，事情会更难、更有意思、更有挑战性，不过——它也可能带来大得多的利润，嗯，但这是一项完全不同的任务。
When both prices are moving and in certain cases intrinsic business value is moving at a pace that's far greater than we've seen for a long time, it means that in terms of calibrating A versus B versus C, it's, it's tougher, it's more interesting, it's more challenging, but it's— and it can be way more profitable too, uh, but it's a different task.
跟所有东西都以更从容的节奏变化的时候不一样。
Than when everything was moving at a more leisurely pace.
我之前也说过，你知道，我们会面对这个问题，嗯，而且这是个值得拥有的好问题。
And I described earlier, you know, we face that problem, uh, and it's a good problem to have.
我们在九月和十月就遇到了这个问题，因为我们一直都想手头保留大量现金。
We face that problem in September and October because we want to always keep a lot of money around.
我们在 Berkshire 遵循各种层级的、额外的安全标准，我们绝不会让自己变得依赖银行、依赖别人的钱，或者任何类似的东西，嗯，我们就是不会那样经营公司。
We have all kinds of levels of extra levels of safety that we follow at Berkshire, and we will never get so we're dependent on banks or other people's money or anything else, uh, we're just not going to run the company that way.
所以我们当时看到很多事情在发生。
So we were seeing things happen.
我是说，我们接到过一个电话，我们接到过很多电话，但其中大多数我们都没理会。
I mean, we got a call, we got lots of calls, but most of them we ignored.
不过，那些我们没理会的电话，也帮助我们校准了哪些电话是值得我们关注的。
But the calls we got that we ignored helped us calibrate the calls that we paid attention to too.
如果我们接到 Goldman Sachs 的电话，我想大概是在一个星期三吧，你知道，那是一笔前一个星期三根本不可能做成、下一个星期三也未必还能做成的交易。
And we, if we got a call from Goldman Sachs, I think it was on a Wednesday maybe, you know, that was a transaction that couldn't have been done the previous Wednesday and might not be done the next Wednesday.
而且我们谈的是实打实的大金额，那次是五十亿美元，同时我们手上还有一些已经作出的承诺。
And we're talking real sums, $5 billion in that case, and we had certain commitments outstanding.
我们对 Dow Chemical 还有一笔三十亿美元的承诺。
We had a $3 billion commitment out on Dow Chemical.
我想在那个时候——具体是哪一天我可能记错了——我们对 Constellation Energy 还有一笔五十亿美元的承诺。
I think at that point, I could be wrong exactly on the day when we made it, we had a $5 billion commitment out on Constellation Energy.
我们还得在十月初为 Wrigley-Mars 那笔交易拿出六十五亿美元。
We had $6.5 billion we were going to have to come up with in early October on the Wrigley-Mars deal.
所以我们当时面对的，就是这类 opportunity cost 的考量。
So we were faced with opportunity cost type considerations.
就像我刚才说的，实际上我们还卖掉了一些东西。正常情况下，如果 Johnson & Johnson 的价格高出十个点或者十五个点，我们根本不会考虑卖，但我们就是不想让自己处在不舒服的状态。
And as I said earlier, we actually sold something that under normal circumstances we wouldn't have thought about selling if it was 10 or 15 points higher in Johnson & Johnson, but we, we just didn't want to get uncomfortable.
所以在一个混乱的市场里，尤其是当人们需要大额资金的时候，你就会面对这种情况。
So you are faced in a chaotic market, particularly where people need large sums.
所以这不是说你今天买一亿美元的某个东西，明天再买一亿美元，而是突然之间，人家开口就是要几十亿美元。
So you're not talking about buying $100 million worth of something that, you know, one day and $100 million the next day, but all of a sudden you're called on for billions.
只要你还想参与的话。
If you're going to play at all.
在那段时期里，我们经常要做这种 opportunity cost 的计算。
We faced that opportunity cost calculation frequently during that period.
我的意思是，当我们决定投入去买 Constellation Energy 的时候，我们就得愿意在接下来七八个月里拿出五十亿美元。
I mean, when we decided to commit to buy Constellation Energy, we had to be willing to come up with $5 billion 7 or 8 months down the line.
你并不知道具体会是在什么时候，因为这还要取决于 Public Utility Commission 的批准。
You didn't know exactly when because it would be subject to Public Utility Commission approval.
但是，如果下周市场发生什么混乱的情况，我们就会接到电话，或者我们会看到有些股票、债券在按我们喜欢的价格被卖出。
But if something chaotic happened to the market next week, we would get phone calls or we would see stocks selling or bonds selling at prices we liked.
如果跟我们手里持有的东西相比，相对价值显得很有吸引力，我们就可能会卖掉一些东西。
And if the relative values against what we held were interesting, we might sell things.
不过，在那样的时期里，大规模卖出东西，比大规模买入东西要更难。
Now, it's harder to sell things in huge quantities than it is to buy things in huge quantities during a period like that.
所以你得衡量，你到底能不能真正完成那个对冲式的交易，从一种资产切换到另一种资产。
So you have to measure whether you can actually get the offsetting transaction done to move from one to another.
我们现在的规模比以前大得多——如果我们要调动几十亿美元，那可不像以前只是把几十万、几万美元从一个持仓挪到另一个持仓。
We have a much— if we're gonna move billions from— we may have been moving hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars from one holding to another.
如果我们不够小心，交易成本真的会非常大。
We really can have big transactional costs unless we're careful.
不过，这就是我们会去做的那种计算。
But that's the kind of calculation we go through.
而且我们很喜欢自己有机会去做这样的计算。
And we love the fact that we get the opportunity to make those calculations.
这说明周围到处都有机会。
It's a sign of opportunity around.
你知道，我们已经很久没有像去年那样那么密集地忙着操作了。
You know, we'll— we haven't had the flurry of activity like we had last year for a long time.
所以，那也是我们第一次真正面对这样一个问题：我们能不能在很短时间内筹出几十亿美元，确保把我们在买入端承诺出去的现金需求对冲掉？
Uh, so it was the first time we really faced the question, you know, can we raise a couple billion dollars in a hurry to be sure that we've offset the cash needs of what we're committing to on the purchase side?
至于我们卖掉的 Johnson & Johnson，那笔交易里我们实际上谈了一个条件，给我们卖出的价格设了一个底价，因为当时市场实在太混乱了。
On the Johnson & Johnson we sold, we actually made a deal where we got— had a floor price on what we would sell that for just because the markets were so chaotic.
我们就是想绝对确保，等一切都做完之后，我们的资金状况不会比我们觉得舒服的水平少上个几十亿美元。
That we wanted to be absolutely sure that we would not end up a couple billion dollars less than comfortable when we got all through.
我们对“舒服”的定义，是真的非常舒服。
Our definition of comfortable is really comfortable.
我们希望手头一直有好多个十亿、好多个十亿美元的资金，然后我们才会去考虑怎么处理多出来的部分。
We, we want to have billions and billions and billions around, and then we'll think about what we do with the surplus.
Charlie？
Charlie?
还是那句话，我没什么可补充的。
Again, I've got nothing to add.