1999年股东大会 · 巴菲特：为什么1999年的股票市场已经过热了 — 文稿

F10:00

我叫 Esther Wilson。

My name is Esther Wilson.

我住在 Nebraska 的 South Sioux City。

I live in South Sioux City, Nebraska.

我丈夫和我在八十岁出头的时候，会有一笔新的资金，作为我们的生活来源。

My husband and I will have some new money in the early '80s of our livelihood.

我们有一个女儿，五十岁了，我们有什么财产最后都会由她继承。

We have a daughter, 50 years old, who will inherit anything we have.

我的问题是，我现在还有一笔免税的 mutual fund，利率是百分之四。

My question is, I also have a 4% interest on a mutual fund that is nontaxable.

M10:25

对。

Yes.

F10:25

那有没有更好的方式来投资我们的钱呢？

Are there any better ways to invest our money?

M20:32

这个嘛，这些问题都很难回答。

Well, those are tough questions.

我是说，你知道，我经常会碰到一些朋友，他们会在某个时候突然拿到一大笔钱。你知道，Charlie 和我，对这种整笔资金该怎么投资，其实也没有特别高明的答案。

I mean, I, you know, I run into friends of mine all the time where they come into a lump sum at a given time, and, you know, Charlie and I do not have great answers about investing sums of money.

尤其是对那些并不真正积极参与投资过程的人来说。

For people who are not really active in the process.

我是说，就像我们前面讲过的，如果我们现在操作的是小额资金，我们会开始去看很多非常小的机会，还有一些我们知道怎么以小规模去做的事情。

I mean, if, as we said earlier, if we were working with small sums now, we would start looking at a whole bunch of very small situations and some things that we might know how to do on a small scale.

但是对普通投资者来说，如果他想在二十年或者三十年的时间里持有股票类资产，我们觉得，定期把钱投进某种成本非常低的资金池里——很可能就是 index fund——大概已经是非常合理的做法了。

But for the average investor who wants to own equities over a 20- or 30-year period, we think regular investment in some kind of very low-cost pool of money, which might well be an index fund, probably makes as much sense as anything.

不过关键是，成本一定要压低。

But it's important to keep the cost down.

你知道，我几乎百分之百的净资产都放在 Berkshire 里。

You know, I have close to 100% of my net worth in Berkshire.

我对此很安心，因为我喜欢我们持有的这些企业。

I'm comfortable with it because I like the businesses we own.

但是，你知道，我也不是在现在这个价格买入的，所以我不想——我从来不会建议任何人去买或者卖它。

And, but, you know, I didn't buy it at this price either, so I don't like to go—I never recommend anybody buy or sell it.

Charlie，你有什么建议吗？

And Charlie, do you recommend anything?

M11:48

如果在场有人觉得，明天手里突然多了一大笔新钱，然后要想出一句简单的话，告诉别人一个特别棒、完全不用动脑子的投资机会，是件很容易的事，那我真希望他上来告诉我到底是什么。

If there's anybody in the room who thinks it would be very easy to come up with a one-liner for a great no-brainer investment tomorrow with a great slug of new money, I wish they'd come up and tell me what it is.

这个问题我们也没有现成的答案。

We don't have any solution to that one.

对我们来说，现在比起其他一些时候更难。

It's harder for us now than it has been at other times.

M22:09

对，之前也有过那么几次。

Yeah, there's been a couple of times.

一九七四年，Forbes 上有过一些东西；还有一九六九年，那又是相反的情况。

In 1974, there was something in Forbes, and '69, the reverse of that situation.

后来我想我还给 Forbes 写过一篇文章，我记不太清具体是什么时候了，大意是说，在当时那个时候，股票几乎肯定比债券更有吸引力。

And then I think I wrote an article for Forbes, I can't remember exactly when it was, about how equities almost had to be more attractive than bonds at that time.

而且债券本身也不算那么没有吸引力。

And bonds weren't that unattractive.

我的意思是，时不时地，你是可以说，买股票真的很划算；或者有时候你也可以说，买固定收益投资真的很划算。

I mean, every now and then you can, you can say you are getting a great deal for your money in equities, or sometimes you can say you're getting a great deal for your money in fixed income investments.

呃，现在你没法这么说，那你该怎么办呢？

Uh, you can't say that now, so what do you do?

你知道，就新进来的资金来说，我们发现自己只能坐着等，等某个机会出现，同时也一直在继续寻找。

You know, in terms of new money, we find ourselves sitting and waiting for something, and we continue to look.

但我们又被迫去看更大的想法，所以如果我们操作的是更小规模的资金，我们现在找到机会的可能性，会比我们目前这种情况大得多。

But we are forced to look at bigger ideas, so if we were working with smaller funds, we'd be much more likely to find something than we are in our present situation.

就像 Charlie 说的，这件事我们确实没有什么特别精彩、可以一句话讲清楚的建议。

As Charlie says, we really don't have any great one-line advice on it.

我真希望我们有。

I wish we did.

四区——请讲。

Zone 4—go ahead.

M13:10

把钱存下来再拿去投资，长期真正能得到的回报率，肯定得比美国近些年的经验下降，尤其是和股票相关的这段近期经验。

The real long-term rate of return from saving money and investing it has to go down from recent experience in America, particularly equity-related recent experience.

世界财富的增长，不可能一直维持在大家在美国股票市场里已经习惯了的那种速度。

The wealth of the world can't increase at the kind of rates that people are used to in the American equity markets.

而且，美国股票市场也不可能永远大幅跑赢世界财富的增长。

And the American equity markets can't hugely outperform the growth of the wealth of the world forever.

总的来说，我们应该把对未来的预期往下调。

We ought to have reduced expectations regarding the future generally.

M23:50

因为，你知道，我们前面提过，全球股市市值里有百分之五十三在美国。那如果美国 GDP 每年增长百分之四、百分之五，再加上百分之一到百分之二的通胀，这已经算是相当——这是非常好的结果了。

Because, you know, we mentioned earlier 53% of the world stock market value is in the U.S. Well, if U.S. GDP grows at 4%, 5% a year with 1 or 2% inflation, which would be a pretty—it would be a very good result.

我觉得，公司利润不太可能以比这个更高的速度增长。

I think it's very unlikely that corporate profits are going to grow at a greater rate than that.

公司利润占 GDP 的比重本来就已经偏高了，你不可能让公司利润一直比 GDP 增长得更快。

Corporate profits as a percent of GDP are on the high side already, and you can't constantly have corporate profits grow at a faster rate than GDP.

不然的话，到最后公司利润岂不是比 GDP 还大了。

And obviously in the end they'd be greater than GDP.

这就像有人说，New York 的律师比人还多。

And it's like somebody said that New York has more lawyers than people.

我的意思是说，如果你说利润可以大过 GDP，那往下讲的时候，在概念上就会碰到一些明显冲突的地方。

I mean, there are certain—you run into certain conflicts in terminology as you go along if you say profits can get bigger than GDP.

所以，如果现实情况真的是，未来这些年公司利润增长最理想也就只能指望百分之四到百分之五，那怎么还能合理地认为，股票——也就是公司利润的资本化——可以每年增长百分之十五呢？

So if you really have a situation where the best you can hope for in corporate profit growth over the years is 4 or 5%, how can it be reasonable to think that equities, which are a capitalization of corporate profits, can grow at 15% a year.

说坦白点，这根本就是胡扯。

I mean, it is nonsense, frankly.

而且，人们在股票上的平均回报，不会有百分之十五，连接近都不会。

And people are not going to average 15% or anything like it, uh, in equities.

而且，呃，我几乎可以说，谁要是觉得能做到，就拿数学给我证明一下，看看整体上怎么可能办到。

And, uh, I would almost defy them to show me mathematically how it can be done in aggregate.

呃，我前几天看了一下 Fortune 500。

Uh, I looked the other day at the Fortune 500.

它们赚了三千三百四十亿美元，年底的时候总市值是九点九万亿美元，现在大概至少有十点五万亿美元了。

They earned $334 billion and had a market cap of $9.9 trillion at the end of the year, which would probably be at least $10.5 trillion now.

长期来看，投资者最终能赚到的钱，只会是这些企业实际赚到的钱。

Well, the only money investors are going to make in the long run is what the businesses make.

我的意思是，不会凭空多出什么。

I mean, there is nothing added.

政府也不会往里面白送什么。

The government doesn't throw in anything.

你知道，没人会往这个锅里再加料。

You know, nobody's adding to the pot.

相反，还会有人从这个锅里往外拿，像各种摩擦成本——投资管理费、券商佣金之类，都是这样。

People are taking out from the pot in terms of frictional costs—investment management fees, brokerage commissions, and all of that.

所以，这三千三百四十亿美元，就是——这就是投资全部能赚到的东西。

But the $334 billion is all that—it's all the investment earns.

就像你拥有一座农场，那这座农场能给你的，就只有它实际产出的那些东西。

I mean, if you own a farm, what the farm produces is all you're going to get from the farm.

如果它每英亩能带来五十美元的净利润，那你得到的就是每英亩五十美元的净利润。

If it produces, you know, $50 an acre of net profit, you get $50 an acre of net profit.

这里面没有任何东西会用什么神奇的方式把它变成别的什么。

And there's nothing about it that transforms that in some miraculous form.

如果你拥有整个 America——如果你现在拥有全部 Fortune 500，百分之百都归你所有，那你赚到的就是三千三百四十亿美元。

If you own all of America—if you own all of the Fortune 500 now, if you owned 100% of it, you would be making $334 billion.

而如果你为此付出十万亿美元、十点五万亿美元，那这可不是什么很好的投资回报。

And if you pay $10, $10.5 trillion for that, that is not a great return on investment.

然后你再问自己，这东西能在五年里翻一倍吗？

And then you say to yourself, can that double in 5 years?

不可能。

It can't.

这三千三百四十亿美元，不可能在五年之内翻一倍。

The $334 billion, it can't double in 5 years.

假设 GDP 每年增长百分之四，或者差不多这么个数字。

With GDP growing at 4% a year, or some number like that.

那样的话，按美国经济以往的经验来看，就会产生一些严重失衡、非常不对劲的结果。

It would, it would, it would just produce things that are so out of whack in terms of experience in the American economy.

那是不可能发生的。

It won't happen.

所以，任何时候你碰到这种事情，只要你顺着里面的数学推演下去，最后会撞上荒谬的结论，那你最好就适当地调整一下预期。

So anytime you get involved in these things where if you trace out the mathematics of it, you bump into absurdities, then you better change expectations somewhat.

Charlie？

Charlie?

M16:50

嗯，有两句很经典的话。

Well, there are 2 great sayings.

一句是，如果一件事不可能永远持续下去，那它最终一定会停下来。

One is, if a thing can't go on forever, it will eventually stop.

另一句是我从我的朋友 Fred Stanback 那儿借来的，我想他今天也在场。

And the other I borrowed from my friend Fred Stanback, who I think is here.

在一个有限的地球上，还指望真实财富永远持续增长的人，不是疯子，就是经济学家。

People who expect perpetual growth in real wealth on a finite earth are either madmen or economists.

M27:23

请第四区提问。

Zone 4, please.