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1999年股东大会 · 又到了每年股东大会怼有效市场理论的时刻

59 段 · 3 位说话人 · 原片 7:01
M1
M10:01

大家好,我是来自 Ontario 省 Markham 的 Murray Case。

Hello, I'm Murray Case from Markham, Ontario.

首先,Buffett 先生、Munger 先生,我想感谢你们每年在这些会议上都这么慷慨地拿出时间。

First off, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger, I'd like to thank you for being so generous with your time every year at these meetings.

Buffett 先生,学术界很多人说你只是运气好,或者说你是个统计学上的异类。

Mr. Buffett, many in the academic community call you lucky or a statistical outlier.

Munger 先生,至于他们怎么称呼你,我就不太确定了。

Mr. Munger, I'm not sure what they call you.
M2
M20:23

嗯,你完全可以自己猜猜他们是怎么说他的。

Well, you're free to speculate on what they call him.
M1
M10:30

我知道你们不喜欢预测股票市场,不过也许你们愿意大胆预测一下,有效市场理论支持者和价值投资者之间这场争论会怎么发展。

I know you don't like to forecast the equity markets, but maybe you would dare to forecast the evolution of the debate between proponents of the efficient market theory and value investors.

你觉得双方最终会不会达成某种和解?

Do you think there will ever be a reconciliation?

我尤其是指商学院里教的那些东西。

And I'm talking especially about what's taught at the business schools.

另外再补充一句,你们指定的接班人——他们也算异类吗?

And as an addendum, are your designated successors—are they outliers as well?
M2
M20:58

嗯,我们愿意这么想,而且他们可能比我们还更像异类。

Well, we like to think they are, and they may be more outliers than we are.

市场总体上——而且你知道,对我来说,只要你在市场里待过一段时间,这几乎是不言自明的——市场总体上是相当有效的。

The market is generally—and, you know, to me, it's almost self-evident if you've been around markets for any length of time—that the market is generally fairly efficient.

在不同资产类别之间的定价上,它相当有效。

It's fairly efficient as pricing between asset classes.

在评估具体企业这件事上,它也相当有效。

It's fairly efficient in terms of evaluating specific businesses.

但是,相当有效,并不意味着——并不足以支持用有效市场理论来指导投资,或者支持学术界从它衍生出来的那些分支理论。

But being fairly efficient does not make—does not suffice to support an efficient market theory approach to investing or to all of the offshoots that have come off of that in the academic world.

所以,如果你相信有效市场理论,而且二十年、三十年前,或者十年前,你学的是这个、也把它用在自己身上——我觉得它大概在二十年前达到顶峰——那你就很可能犯了一个非常非常严重的错误。

So, if you'd believed in efficient market theory and been taught that and adopted it for your own 20 or 30 years ago or 10 years ago, I think it probably hit its peak about 20 years ago, you know, it would have been a terrible, terrible mistake.

这就好比你学到的是地球是平的。

It would have been like learning the Earth is flat.

这会让你——你人生一开始就走错了方向。

It just—you would have had—you'd have had the wrong start in life.

后来,它在学术界变得极其流行。

Now, it became terribly popular in the academic world.

几乎到了你想保住一个职位,就必须信这一套的程度。

It almost became a required belief in order to hold a position.

所有高级课程里教的都是这个,而且围绕它还建立起了一整套涉及其他投资问题的数学理论,所以如果你直捣核心,把这一部分摧毁掉,那就等于那些花了很多很多很多年拿到 PhD 的人,会发现自己的整个世界都在眼前崩塌。

It was what was taught in all the advanced courses, and a mathematical theory that involved other investment questions was built around it so that if you went to the center of it and destroyed that part of it, it really meant that people who'd spent years and years and years getting PhDs found their whole world crashing around them.

我会说,在过去十年到二十年里,它已经在相当大程度上被证伪、被削弱了。

I would say that it's been discredited in a fairly significant way over the last decade or two.

我的意思是,你现在已经不像十五年、二十年前那样,老听到人们用同样的口气谈论它了。

I mean, you don't hear people talking the same way about it as you did 15 or 20 years ago.

但市场总体来说,在大多数方面还是相当有效的。

But the market generally is fairly efficient in most ways.

我是说,要找到——要找到定价无效的证券,其实很难。

I mean, it is hard to find—it's hard to find securities that are inefficiently priced.

有些时候相对容易一些,但比如说现在,就很难。

There are times when it's relatively easy, but right now, for example, it's difficult.
M3
M33:24

有——。

There—.
M2
M23:25

我也不太清楚它在商学院里究竟还在多大程度上被当成金科玉律。

I don't know exactly how much it's holy writ still in business schools.

但我到各个商学院去交流时,确实感觉到,和十五年、二十年前相比,它已经远没有那么被当成那种不容置疑的教条了。

I certainly get the impression as I go around talking to business schools that it is far less regarded as, you know, sort of unquestioned dogma like it was 15 or 20 years ago.

University of Florida 现在已经开了一些关于企业估值的课程。

The University of Florida now has some courses in valuing businesses.

University of Missouri 也正在开设这样的课程。

University of Missouri is putting in one.

我觉得,高举有效市场理论大旗的那些大祭司们,现在在外面受邀演讲、办研讨会之类的需求,大概已经不像十年二十年前那么旺了。

And I think the high priests of efficient market theory are probably not in the same demand for speaking engagements and seminars and all of that as they were a decade or two ago.

不过这很难——也很有意思——一种信念一旦慢慢变成了金融系里的教条,就很难把它撼动。

It's hard, though, to— it's very interesting, it's hard to dislodge a belief that becomes sort of, becomes the dogma of a finance department.

这对他们来说太有挑战了。你想啊,一个人到了三十岁、四十岁,还得回过头来说,我到目前为止学的东西、我教给学生的那些东西,统统都很荒唐。

It's, it's so challenging to them and, you know, they have to at age 30 or 40 to go back and say what I've learned up to this point and what I've been teaching students and all of that is silly.

这对人来说可不是件容易的事。

That doesn't come easy to people.

Charlie?

Charlie?
M3
M34:37

嗯,你知道,伟大的物理学家 Max Planck 说过,就连在物理学里,老一代其实也不会真正接受新思想。

Well, you know, Max Planck, the great physicist, said that even in physics the old guard really didn't accept the new ideas.

新思想最后之所以能占上风,是因为那一代旧人会慢慢淡出,还死抱着过去那些荒唐的东西不放。

The new ideas prevail in due course because the old guard fades away clinging to the inanities of the past.

这也正是那些极端强式有效市场理论信徒的下场。

And that's what's happened to the hard-form efficient market theorists.

他们在这个领域里已经成了个笑话,而且很快就会消失。

They're an embarrassment to the scene, and they will soon be gone.

当然,那些认为市场是相当有效、或者说大体有效的人,绝对是对的,这种看法也会长期存在。

And the, the people who think the market is reasonably efficient or roughly efficient, of course, are absolutely correct, and that will stay with us for the long haul.
M2
M25:22

不过,你要只是觉得它大体上有效,这在学术界对你可没什么帮助。

Thinking it's roughly efficient, though, does nothing for you in academia.

你没法围绕这个搭起一整套东西。

You can't build anything around it.

我的意思是,人们想要的是那种他们所谓优雅的理论,可这个——这个就行不通。

I mean, what people want are what they call elegant theories, and it just— it doesn't work.

你知道,投资这件事,说到底就是给企业估值。

You know, what investment is about is valuing businesses.

我是说,投资全部的核心也就这个。

I mean, that is all there is to investment.

你坐在那里,努力弄清楚一家企业到底值多少钱;如果它的卖价低于那个数字,你就买。

You sit around and you try to figure out what a business is worth, and if it's selling below that figure you buy it.

可在我看来——你,你几乎找不到哪门课是真正在教你怎么给企业估值的。

That, to my— you, you can't find a course virtually in the country on how to value businesses.

倒是有各种各样的课会教你怎么算 beta,或者别的什么,因为这些是老师会做的,但他并不知道该怎么给一家企业估值。

You can find all kinds of courses on how to, you know, how to compute beta or whatever it may be, because that's something the instructor knows how to do, but he doesn't know how to value a business.

所以真正重要的东西没有被教,而这门东西本身也确实不好教。

So the important subject doesn't get taught, and it, it's tough to teach.

呃,我觉得 Ben Graham 在 Columbia 教这个就教得很好,而我在很多很多年前碰上他,真是非常幸运。

Uh, I think Ben Graham did a good job of teaching it at Columbia, and I was very fortunate to run into him many decades ago.

但如果你找一个普通的 finance PhD,让他给一家企业估值,他就要犯难了。

But if you take the average PhD in finance and ask him to value a business, he's got a problem.

而如果他连估值都不会,我就不知道他怎么去投资。

And if he can't value it, I don't know how he can invest in it.

所以呢,干脆去讲有效市场理论就容易多了,然后说这根本没区别,反正大家对一切都已经知道了,也没必要去动脑子研究企业估值。

So therefore, it's much easier to take up efficient market theory and say it doesn't make any difference because everybody knows everything about it anyway, and there's no sense in trying to think about valuing businesses.

市场是有效的,所有东西都已经被完美定价了。

The market's efficient, it's valued them all perfectly.

这门课大概上到第二天左右,

About on the second day in that course.

我的意思是,对,对。

I mean, yeah, yeah.

第一天你一进教室,就说,所有东西都被完美定价了,都被完美定价了,好,下课。

The first, you know, you walk in, you say, you know, everything's valued perfectly, it's valued perfectly, and class dismissed.

所以我也觉得挺费解的,不过我还是鼓励你去寻找那些被错误定价的东西。

So it puzzles me, but I encourage you to look for the inefficiently priced.

Zone three。

Zone three.