巴菲特：宏观经济预测太难了，所以我们干脆不去想它了

Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder meeting

Morning Session - 1998 Meeting

Link from CNBC

听众：我是来自加利福尼亚州洛杉矶的 Paul Yoon (PH)。沃伦·巴菲特先生，查尔斯·芒格先生，我是非常钦佩你们的人之一。我有两个问题。

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Paul Yoon (PH) from L.A., California. Mr. Warren Buffett, Mr. Charles Munger, I am one of the persons who highly admire you both. I have two questions.

问题一：您对未来十年世界金融商业环境的看法。

Question one: your view on the world financial business environment in the next decade.

问题二——（笑声）——美国在未来十年的经济竞争中的立场。谢谢你。

Question two — (laughter) — U.S. position for economic competition in the next decade. Thank you.

沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，你问了两个大问题，但恐怕你会得到非常小的答案。 （笑声）这并不是不尊重你。但是我们不太会考虑这些事情。我们只是在寻找优质的企业。顺便说一句，我们过去在对经济的预测和看法对我们现在的投资结果不会有任何好处。

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, you’ve asked two big questions, but you’re going to get very small answers, I’m afraid. (Laughter) And that’s no disrespect. But we — we just — we don’t have that. We don’t think about those things very much. We just are looking for decent businesses. And incidentally, our views in the past wouldn’t have been any good on those subjects.

我们试着思考两件事。我们试图去思考重要的事情和可知的事情。现在有些重要的事情是不可知的。我们认为，你提出的这两个问题都属于这一点。有些事情是可知的但并不重要，对于这些我们不想把我们的思想弄得乱七八糟。

We try to think about two things. We try to think about things that are important and things that are knowable. Now, there are things that are important that are not knowable. In our view, those two questions that you raised fall in that. There are things that are knowable but not important. We don’t want to clutter our minds up with those.

所以我们会问自己“什么是重要的，什么是可知的？”我们可以将属于这两个类别的内容转化为对伯克希尔有用的行动。查理和我对于各种重要的主题实际上一无所知，因此我们不考虑它们。我们对未来十年世界在商业或竞争环境的预测和观点并不能做有效预测。

So we say, “What is important and what is knowable?” And what among the things that fall within those two categories can we translate into some kind of an action that is useful for Berkshire. And we really — there are all kinds of important subjects that Charlie and I, we don’t know anything about, and therefore we don’t think about them. So we have — our view about what the world will look like over the next ten years in business or competitive situations, we’re just no good.

但是我们确实认为我们知道可口可乐在十年后会是什么样子，或者吉列在十年后会是什么样子，或者迪士尼在十年后会是什么样子，或者我们的一些运营子公司会是什么样子十年后的样子。我们非常关心这一点。我们对此思考了很多。我们希望在这方面是正确的。如果我们在这点上是对的，那么其他事情就会变得不那么重要了。如果我们开始专注于这些不可预测的事情，我们会错过很多重要的事情。

We do think we know something about what Coca-Cola’s going to look like in ten years, or what Gillette’s going to look like in ten years, or what Disney’s going to look like in ten years, or what some of our operating subsidiaries are going to look like in ten years. We care a lot about that. We think a lot about that. We want to be right about that. If we’re right about that, the other things get to be — you know, they’re less important. And if we started focusing on those, we would miss a lot of big things.

我以前用过这个例子。可口可乐上市是在 1919 年。第一年每股的价格是 40 美元。第一年下降了50%多一点。到年底，它降至 19 美元。可口可乐和装瓶商合同存在一些问题，糖有问题，各种各样的问题。

I’ve used this example before, but Coca-Cola went public in, I think, it was 1919. And the first year one share cost $40. The first year it went down a little over 50 percent. At the end of the year, it was down to $19. There were some problems with bottler contracts. There’s problems with sugar. Various kinds of problems.

如果你有完美的远见，你就会看到世界上最严重的萧条等着你，严重到会动摇社会秩序。你会看到第二次世界大战紧随其后，然后你会看到原子弹和氢弹，你会看到各种各样的东西。

If you’d had perfect foresight, you would have seen the world’s greatest depression staring you in the face, when the social order even got questioned. You would have seen World War II. You would have seen atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs. You would have seen all kinds of things.

你总能找到一个理由来推迟你应该购买那份可口可乐股票的理由。但重要的不是看到这一点。重要的是看到他们今年每天将销售 10 亿份 8 盎司的饮料。一个每天能让全世界的人们快乐十亿次的公司应该能从中赚到几块钱。

And you could always find a reason to postpone why you should buy that share of Coca-Cola. But the important thing wasn’t to see that. The important thing was to see they were going to be selling a billion eight-ounce servings of beverages a day this year. Or some large number. And that the person who could make people happy a billion times a day around the globe ought to make a few bucks off doing it.

因此，持有可口可乐的股票从40 美元下降到 19 美元，在股息再投资后，现在价值已经远远超过 500 万美元。如果你对这些其他的因素形成了观点，导致你阻止了你对可口可乐公司这种更重要、更具体的因素采取行动，你就会错失良机。所以公司的自身潜力是我们关注的事情。

And so that $40, which went down to $19, I think with dividends reinvested, has to be well over $5 million now. And if you developed a view on these other subjects that in any way forestalled you acting on this more important, specific narrow view about the future of the company, you would have missed a great ride. So that’s the kind of thing we focus on.

查理？

Charlie?

查理芒格：是的，我们并不会预测即将到来的浪潮，我们只是预测一些事物将如何在潮流中游泳。

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, we’re not predicting the currents that will come, just how some things will swim in the currents, whatever they are.