1997年股东大会 · 巴菲特：永远不要忘记，好公司还要有好价格买入 — 文稿

M10:00

Buffett 先生，我叫 Pete Banner，来自 Colorado 的 Boulder，我是一名股东。

Mr. Buffett, my name is Pete Banner, and I'm from Boulder, Colorado, and I'm a shareholder.

最近，Greenspan 先生谈到了市场的 exuberance，没过多久，你就在年报里出来发表了看法，说你觉得市场已经被充分估值了，或者大概是这个意思。

Recently, Mr. Greenspan made his comments about exuberance, and it wasn't long thereafter that, that you came out in the annual report and made your comments that you felt the market was fully valued or something of that nature.

你有没有，或者你之前有没有跟 Greenspan 先生沟通过，呃，关于——关于股市估值这件事？

Did you have, or have you had, any communication with Mr. Greenspan, uh, regarding the— regarding the valuation of the stock market?

M20:34

没有，答案是没有。

No, the, the answer to that is no.

我——我上一次，嗯——这个，我记不太清我上一次见 Alan Greenspan 是什么时候了，不过那已经是很久以前的事了。

I have— the last time I, um— well, I can't remember precisely when the last time I saw Alan Greenspan was, but it was a long time ago.

还有，呃，我们在 Salomon 危机那时候谈过一次话。他在去 Fed 任职之前，曾经在 Cap Cities 的董事会，呃，还有 Cap Cities/ABC，所以我那时候就认识他了。不过你也知道，有时候 Alan 说的话很难听明白，所以跟他聊也没太大意义。

And, uh, we had one conversation at the time of the Salomon crisis, and he was formerly on the board of Cap Cities before he took his job with the Fed, and, uh, and Cap Cities/ABC, so I knew him then, but But, you know, it's very hard to understand what Alan says sometimes, so there's not much sense talking to him.

我是说，他说话非常谨慎。

I mean, he's very careful about what he says.

不过我不该——你提到年报这个话题我倒很高兴，因为我在年报里做的，其实是我谈到了 Coke 和 Gillette，说它们是那种 inevitables，也就是非常确定的公司，还说了它们是多么出色的企业。

But I shouldn't— I'm glad you brought up the subject of the annual report because what I was doing in the annual report is I had talked about Coke and Gillette as being the inevitables and what wonderful businesses they were.

然后，呃，我觉得有必要说明一下，特别是因为这份报告会送到很多人手里，大家不要把这理解成对这些公司的无条件买入推荐，虽然它们的确是非常非常棒的公司，也都是非常杰出的管理层在经营。

And, and, uh, I thought it appropriate, particularly the report goes to a lot of people, that they would not take that as an unqualified buy recommendation about the companies, because they're absolutely wonderful companies run by outstanding managers.

但是，就算是这样的企业，至少在短期内，你也可能出价太高。

But you can pay too much, at least in the short run, for businesses like that.

所以我觉得有必要指出，不管一家企业有多好，始终都存在一种风险，就是你买入的价格太高了，以至于需要好几年时间，企业本身才能追上股价——也就是说，股价可能会跑到企业前面去。

So I thought it was only appropriate to point out that no matter how wonderful a business it is, that that there always is a risk that you will, you will pay a price where it will take a few years for the business to catch, or for this, for the business to catch up with the stock, that the stock can get ahead of the business.

至于这些公司，或者其他任何公司，那个临界点到底在哪儿，我并不知道。但我当时确实说了，我觉得风险相当高，也就是说，市场上大多数证券都存在这种情况，包括像这些 inevitables 这样的公司。

And I don't know where that point is with those companies or any other companies, but I did say that I thought that the risks were fairly high, that that situation existed with most securities in the market, including companies such as the inevitables.

但我这么说，目的是要确保大家不要因为我夸了这些公司，就把那当成一种不看价格、无条件买入的推荐。

But it was designed to be sure that people did not take the remarks that I made about those companies and just take that as an unqualified buy recommendation regardless of price.

我们完全没有打算卖掉这两只股票。

We have no intention of selling those 2 stocks.

就算它们的价格比现在高出很多，我们也不会卖。

We wouldn't sell them if they were selling at prices considerably higher than they are now.

但我尤其不希望那些相对没那么老练的投资者看到这些名字，就觉得这家伙是在鼓吹它们是特别值得买的好东西。

But I didn't want particularly relatively unsophisticated people to see those names there and then think this guy is touting these as a wonderful buy.

一般来说，我认为，如果你足够确定一家企业真的很出色，那么相比之下，更重要的是确定它确实是一家优秀的企业，而不是非得特别确定现在的价格是不是高了百分之十、或者高了百分之五之类的。

Generally speaking, I think if you're sure enough about a business being wonderful, it's more important to be certain about the business being a wonderful business than it is to be certain that the price is not 10% too high or 5% too high or something of the sort.

呃，这种理念也是我慢慢才形成的。

And, uh, that's a philosophy that I came slowly to.

我一开始对价格是极度敏感的。

I originally was incredibly price conscious.

以前我们哪怕想把报价提高八分之一点，都会先开个祈祷会，你知道，差不多就是——我是说，我们也因为这样错过过一些机会。

We used to have prayer meetings before we would raise our bid an eighth, you know, around— I mean, we've, we've missed things because of that.

所以，呃，我在年报里说的那些话，绝不是任何意义上的市场预测。

And uh, so what I said in the report was not a market prediction in any sense.

我们从来不试图预测股市。

We never try to predict the stock market.

我们确实会努力给证券估值。

We do try to price securities.

更准确地说，我们努力做的是给企业估值。

We try to price businesses is what we try to do.

然后，然后，然后我们发现，不管是非常棒的、不错的、普通的，还是差一些的企业，现在看起来真正便宜的都很难找到。

And, and, and we find it hard to find wonderful, good, average, substandard businesses that are— that look to us like they're cheap now.

但是，呃，你也知道，你并不总能等到便宜买东西的机会。

But, uh, you know, you don't always get a chance to buy things cheap.

M33:43

嗯，这一点我当然同意。

Well, I certainly agree with that.

有一件事我们可以相当有把握地保证，那就是，投资于一个标准化的股票组合，未来长期的实际回报——也就是扣除通胀之后的回报——会低于过去大约十五年里的水平。

The one thing we can confidently guarantee is that real inflation-adjusted returns from investing in a standard collection of stocks will be lower in the long-term future than they've been in the last 15 years or so.

这段时期是前所未有的，股市投资的平均回报会在一定程度上向均值回归。

This has been an unprecedented period, and there will be some regression toward the mean in average returns from investing in the stock market.

M24:18

在过去十多年里，美国企业的表现极其出色，而这对证券来说是一个巨大的、巨大的利好，因为证券本质上只是这些企业的一部分而已。

American business has done extraordinarily well in the last decade-plus, and that's a huge, a huge plus for securities because they just represent pieces of those businesses.

过去十五年里，利率一直在下降。

Interest rates over the last 15 years have fallen.

这对股票来说是个很大的利好。

That's a big plus for stocks.

只要利率下降，从理性的计算来看，几乎所有金融资产的价值都会上升。

Anytime interest rates go down, the value of every financial asset goes up in rational calculation.

这两个因素在最近这些年叠加在一起，形成了有利条件，提升了 American business 的真实价值。

Both of those factors have combined in recent years to produce conditions that enhance the true value of American business.

不过这些现在大家其实都已经相当清楚了。

But those are pretty widely recognized now.

而且，过一阵子以后，Ben Graham 以前总是说，一个好的前提在投资里带来的麻烦，可能比一个坏的前提还要多。因为坏前提会立刻冲着你喊出来，告诉你它是错的；但好前提呢，它会先奏效一阵子。

And, and after a while, Ben Graham always used to say you could get more trouble in investment with a good premise than with a bad premise, because the bad premise will shout out to you immediately as being fallacious, whereas with a good premise it'll work for a while.

嗯，你知道，如果利率下降、股票上涨，企业当然会值更多钱。但到了最后，证券本身的市场表现会自己给自己制造出一套理由，吸引整整一大批买家。然后人们就会忘掉，最初让他们兴奋起来的那些原因，以及其中本来就包含的数学上的限制。

Uh, you know, businesses are worth more money if interest rates fall and stocks rise, but eventually the market action of the securities themselves creates its own rationale for a whole—for a large crop of buyers, and people forget about the reasons and the mathematical limitations that were implied in what got them excited in the first place.

再过一阵子，光是上涨的价格本身，就足以让人持续兴奋，并吸引更多人进入这场游戏。

And after a while, rising prices themselves alone will keep people excited and cause more people to enter the game.

所以，那个好的前提慢慢就被人忘了，大家只记得它带来了这些上涨的价格，而最后是价格本身接管了一切。

And therefore, the good premise after a while is forgotten except for the fact that it produced these rising prices, and the prices themselves take over.

他在谈到二十世纪二十年代的时候写过这个现象。当时 Edgar Lawrence Smith 在一九二四年写了一本很不错的书，讲为什么股票比债券更好。

He, he wrote about that in connection with the 1920s, when Edgar Lawrence Smith in 1924 wrote a fine book on why stocks were better than bonds.

那本书某种程度上就像是二十年代那轮牛市的圣经。

And that was sort of the, sort of the Bible of the, of the bull market of the '20s.

如果你注意到 Edgar Lawrence Smith 那本小书里的几个前提和保留条件，尤其是跟价格有关的那些，那这套说法其实是讲得通的。

And it made sense if you paid attention to a couple of the caveats which were in, in Edgar Lawrence Smith's little book, which were related to price.

但是，在牛市一路上涨的经历里，人的感觉通常会逐渐变得迟钝，于是大家往往就忘了自己付出的价格到底有多重要。

But people tend to forget about the importance of the price they pay as the experience of a bull market just sort of dulls the senses generally.

Zone 3。

Zone 3.