2008年股东大会 · 巴菲特：我放弃高回报，也不愿承担不必要的风险 — 文稿

M10:00

你好，Buffett 先生，Munger 先生。

Hello, Mr. Buffett, Mr. Munger.

我叫 Kevin Truer，来自 Illinois 州的 Chicago。

My name is Kevin Truer from Chicago, Illinois.

我的问题是这样的：你们已经确定了四位投资专业人士，他们将在未来某个时候负责管理 Berkshire Hathaway 的投资组合。

My question is this: you have identified 4 investment professionals who will at some point in time be running the portfolio for Berkshire Hathaway.

你们挑选这四个人的标准是什么？

What were the criteria that you used to select the 4 people?

另外，今后你们又会用什么标准来评估他们？

And what will be the criteria for evaluating them going forward?

M20:34

对，关于挑选标准，我想我们在二零零六年的年报里已经讲得挺清楚了。

Yeah, the criteria for selecting, we— I think we laid out pretty well in the 2006 annual report.

显然，我们会看一个人过去的业绩记录是不是相当不错，但光这一条标准，离我们想找到合适人选还差得远。

We obviously look for people that have had pretty good records, but that criteria alone is nowhere near sufficient to come up with the candidates we want.

我的意思是，我们非常非常看重人的品质，而且我们觉得，有些情况下我们能做出这个判断，有些情况下我们做不出来。

I mean, we care enormously about human qualities, and we think we can make that judgment in some cases, and in some cases we can't.

而且，这并不是说那些被我们跳过的人有什么不好。

I mean, and it's no negative vote on people we skipped over.

只是我们判断不了，他们是不是那种合适的人。

We just decided we didn't know whether they would be the right kind of person.

我们对其中四个人做出了明确的正面判断，认为他们无论是能力还是诚信都过关。还有，这里面我想还有一点，我记得，在过去这一年里显得更有现实意义了。

We made an affirmative judgment on 4 as to both their ability and their integrity, and I would like to— there was one other item in here, I believe, which I think achieved a little added relevance in the last year.

我当时说过，所以我们需要的是那种仿佛天生就被设定好、能够识别并避开重大风险的人。

I said, we therefore need someone genetically programmed to recognize and avoid serious risks.

然后我还用斜体特别强调了一句：包括那些以前从来没有出现过的风险。

And then I put in italics, including those never before experienced.

接着我又说，投资策略里潜伏的某些危险，并不是靠现在金融机构普遍使用的那些模型就能发现的。

And then I said, certain perils that lurk in investment strategies cannot be spotted by one of the models— by use of the models commonly employed today by financial institutions.

嗯，我觉得这话后来多少有点像预言了去年发生的事。

Well, I think that proved to be somewhat, uh, prophetic of what happened last year.

那些地方全都有模型。

All of these places had models.

我的意思是，那些大型银行、那些大型投资银行，大概每周都会开风险委员会会议，拿着他们的模型过一遍，所有统计数据都会整整齐齐地打印在漂亮的表格里，什么都有。

I mean, the major banks, the major investment banks, and they would meet weekly at a risk committee probably and go over their models, and all of the statistics would be printed in nice columns and everything.

可他们根本就不知道自己到底卷进了什么风险里。

And they didn't have the faintest idea what risks they were involved in.

在投资这个世界里，你真正需要的是一个非常稳健、你信得过的人，他要有合理的分析能力，但你还需要他真的能够去设想那些还没冒出来、可已经开始变成某种可能性的问题。

You really need in the investment world someone very solid, someone you trust, uh, reasonable analytical skills, but you also need someone that actually can contemplate problems that haven't popped up yet but which are starting to become, uh, possibilities.

比如说，新型金融工具，或者市场里出现的新行为模式，诸如此类。

In terms of new financial instruments or new behaviors in markets and that sort of thing.

而这是一种很稀缺的素质。

And that's a rare quality.

我的意思是，如果你没法想象那些不会出现在你过往模型里的东西，那是可能致命的。

I mean, that, that inability to envision something that doesn't show up in your past model, you know, can be fatal.

Charlie 和我会花很多时间去想，那些可能会突然从天而降打到我们的事情，而别人根本不会把这些放进他们的思考里。

And Charlie and I spend a lot of time thinking about things that could hit us out of the blue that other people don't include in their thinking.

这么做，可能会让我们错过一些机会，但我们觉得，在管理别人的钱时，或者说就算是管理我们自己的钱时，这都是必不可少的。

And we may miss some opportunities because of that, but we feel it's essential when managing other people's money, or for that matter, managing our own money.

所以我会说，你也许可以回头再看看二零零六年的年报，不过那些就是我们在寻找的标准，而且也是我们认定已经在那几个人身上具备了的标准——对，你也能看出来 Berkshire 对风险有多厌恶。

So I would say that, that you might go back and read the 2006 annual report again, but those are the criteria, uh, we're looking for and we have identified as being met by— yeah, you can see how risk-averse Berkshire is.

M33:44

首先，我们会尽量让自己的行为方式达到这样一种程度：任何理性的人都不会担心我们的信用。

In the first place, we try and behave in a way so that no rational person is going to worry about our credit.

而且在做到这一点、并且多年一直这样做之后，我们还会进一步让自己的行为方式达到：就算全世界突然都不喜欢我们的信用状况了，我们几个月内甚至都不会察觉，因为我们的流动性非常充足，而且几乎不可能被任何人逼到墙角。

And after we've done that and done it for many years, we also behave in a way that if the world suddenly didn't like our credit, we wouldn't even notice it for months because we have such liquidity and are so unlikely to be unable to be pressured by anybody.

这种双层的风险防护，对 Berkshire 来说就像呼吸一样自然。

That double layering of protection against risk is like breathing around Berkshire.

这就是我们文化的一部分。

It's just part of the culture.

而另一种文化则恰恰相反。

And the alternative culture is just the opposite.

你管一个人叫首席风险官，但很多时候，他其实就是个让你在做蠢事的时候心里感觉良好的人。

You call a man the chief risk officer, but often he is functioning as a guy that makes you feel good while you do dumb things.

所以他就像那个 Delphic Oracle，怂恿那个波斯国王去攻击这个或者那个。

So he's like the Delphic Oracle that convinced the Persian king to attack somebody or other.

我的意思是，他就是个愚蠢的预言家。

I mean, he's just a dumb soothsayer.

可一个人都有 PhD 了，还会做这些高级数学，怎么还能蠢呢？

And how can a guy be dumb when he's got a PhD and he can do all this advanced math?

嗯，你可以，你可以，是的。

Well, you can, you can, yeah.

但你就是可以。

But you can.

这很——你只需要过度迷恋体系和计算，迷恋到把现实硬生生拧进某个模型里，某个数学模型里，可那个模型其实并不贴合现实，尤其是在极端情况下。

It's very— all you've got to do is crave system and computation so much that you torture reality into fitting some model, mathematical model, which really doesn't match, particularly under extreme conditions.

然后，因为你在这些事情上投入了这么多工作，又做了这些关于日常交易风险之类的计算，你就会很有信心，觉得自己已经把风险搞定了，但其实并没有。

And then because of this work that you're putting into everything and these computations about daily trading risk and so forth, you feel confident that you've clobbered the risk, but you haven't.

你只是把自己的脑子搞乱了。

You've just clobbered up your own head.

M25:27

这一句我都要鼓掌。

I'll even applaud that one.

我们是真的想把 Berkshire 经营成这样：如果明天这个世界的运转方式不再像今天这样，或者——它以一种谁都没预料到的方式在运转，我们也不会有问题。

We really want to run Berkshire so that if the world isn't working tomorrow the way it's working today, or— and it's working in a way nobody expected, that we don't have a problem.

我们不想依赖任何人，也不想依赖任何别的东西。

We do not want to be dependent on anybody or anything else.

但与此同时，我们也想继续做事情。

And yet we want to keep doing things.

所以，呃，我们找到了一种办法——我们觉得自己找到了一种办法来做到这一点。

So, uh, we found a way to— we think we found a way to do that.

这可能会让我们放弃一部分东西。

It may give up some of that.

嗯，很明显，这就意味着百分之九十九的时候，甚至可能百分之九十九点九的时候，我们会放弃赚取更高回报的机会。

Well, obviously gives up earning higher returns 99% of the time, and maybe 99.9% of the time.

很显然，这些年来我们本来可以用比现在更多的杠杆来经营 Berkshire，但那样我们就睡不好觉了，也不会觉得安心。这个房间里有很多人，几乎把自己全部净资产都放在 Berkshire 里了，包括我自己。所以我们不会安心地用那种方式来经营一家企业。

Obviously, we could have run Berkshire with more leverage over the years than we have, but we wouldn't have slept as well, and we wouldn't feel comfortable. We have a lot of people in this room that have almost all their net worth in Berkshire, including me, and we wouldn't feel comfortable, uh, running a business that way.

为什么要那么做呢？

Why do it?

我的意思是，这对我们来说——让自己暴露在毁灭、名誉扫地和难堪的风险之下，就为了一个其实没那么有意义的东西，这根本说不通。

I mean, it doesn't— it just doesn't make any sense to us to be exposed to ruin and disgrace and embarrassment and, uh, for something that's not that meaningful.

如果我们能够获得相当不错的资本回报，你知道，多那一个百分点又怎么样呢？

If we can earn a decent return on capital, you know, what's an extra percentage point?

那真的没那么重要。

It just isn't that important.

所以我们的做法永远都会是这样：第一，风险判断不能依赖别人，除了我们自己。

So we will always try to behave in a way that, uh, A, is not dependent on anybody else evaluating the risk except for us.

这件事不能外包。

It cannot be farmed out.

你们也看到有些机构发生了什么，它们的管理层以为自己把这件事外包出去了。

And you've seen what happened to some institutions where the management thought they were farming it out.

而且，你知道，如果这意味着拿一个合理的回报，而不是一个稍微不太合理的回报，我们就接受。

And, you know, if that means a reasonable return instead of a slightly unreasonable return, we just accept it.

第二。

Number two.