巴菲特：1999年太阳谷会议演讲

时间：1999年7月

来源：The Snowball by Alice Schroeder

原文标题： Allen Sun Valley Conference

巴菲特穿着他最喜欢的内布拉斯加红色毛衣，外套一件格子衬衫，和克拉克一起站在讲台上。讲完他的全部故事。¹

Buffett joined Clarke at the podium, wearing his favorite Nebraska red sweater over a plaid shirt. He finished the story.

“科夫（Keough）一家是很棒的邻居，”他说。“确实有时候唐（Don）会提到，他和我不一样，他有一份工作，但我们的关系很好。有一次，我的妻子苏西（Susie）过去借了一杯糖，就像中西部人常做的那样，而唐的妻子米基（Mickie）给了她一整袋。当我听说这件事时，我决定那天晚上也去科夫家。我对唐说，‘你为什么不给我两万五千美元，让我为合伙人投资呢？’科夫一家在那时有点紧张，我被拒绝了。”

“The Keoughs were wonderful neighbors,” he said. “It’s true that occasionally Don would mention that, unlike me, he had a job, but the relationship was terrific. One time my wife, Susie, went over and did the proverbial Midwestern bit of asking to borrow a cup of sugar, and Don’s wife, Mickie, gave her a whole sack. When I heard about that, I decided to go over to the Keoughs’ that night myself. I said to Don, ‘Why don’t you give me twenty-five thousand dollars for the partnership to invest?’ And the Keough family stiffened a little bit at that point, and I was rejected.

“我后来又回来，要求克拉克提到的一万美元，结果也是一样。但我并不自豪。所以我又过了一段时间，要求五千美元。到了那时，我又被拒绝了。”

“I came back sometime later and asked for the ten thousand dollars Clarke referred to and got a similar result. But I wasn’t proud. So I returned at a later time and asked for five thousand dollars. And at that point, I got rejected again.

“所以有一天晚上，1962年夏天，我开始朝着基奥家走去。我不知道我会不会把价格降到两千五百美元，但是当我到了基奥家的时候，整个地方都是黑暗的，寂静无声。看不到任何东西。但我知道发生了什么。我知道唐和米基正在楼上躲着，所以我没有离开。”

“So one night, in the summer of 1962, I started heading over to the Keough house. I don’t know whether I would have dropped it to twenty-five hundred dollars or not, but by the time I got to the Keough household, the whole place was dark, silent. There wasn’t a thing to see. But I knew what was going on. I knew that Don and Mickie were hiding upstairs, so I didn’t leave.

“我按了门铃。我敲了敲门。没人应。但是唐和米基在楼上，而且一片漆黑。”

“I rang that doorbell. I knocked. Nothing happened. But Don and Mickie were upstairs, and it was pitch-black.

“太黑了，看不清楚。太早了，没到睡觉的时候。我记得那一天就像昨天一样清楚。那是1962年6月21日。”

“Too dark to read, and too early to go to sleep. And I remember that day as if it were yesterday. That was June twenty-first, 1962.

“克拉克，你什么时候出生的？”

“Clarke, when were you born?”

“1963年3月21日。”

“March twenty-first, 1963.”

“就是这样的小事，历史才会因此改变。所以你应该庆幸他们没有给我一万美元。”

“It’s little things like that that history turns on. So you should be glad they didn’t give me the ten thousand dollars.”

在用这个小小的互动吸引了观众的注意后，巴菲特转向了手头的事情。“现在，我要尝试一下多任务处理。赫伯（Herb）让我加入了几张幻灯片。‘要跟上时代，’他说。在巴菲特家里，赫伯说的话就像是一条命令。”他故意忽略了“巴菲特家庭”到底包括了什么——因为巴菲特认为他的家庭就像其他普通家庭一样——他开始讲了一个关于艾伦（Allen）的笑话。美国总统的秘书匆匆跑进椭圆形办公室，为不小心安排了两个同时进行的会议而道歉。总统必须在见教皇和见赫伯特·艾伦之间做出选择。巴菲特停顿了一下，制造效果。“‘让教皇进来，’总统说。‘至少我只需要亲他的戒指。’”

Having charmed the audience with this little piece of give and take, Buffett turned to the matter at hand. “Now, I’m going to attempt to multitask today. Herb told me to include a few slides. ‘Show you’re with it,’ he said. When Herb says something, it’s practically an order in the Buffett household.” Speeding past exactly what comprised “the Buffett household”—for Buffett thought of his household as being like any other family’s—he launched into a joke about Allen. The secretary to the President of the U.S. rushed into the Oval Office, apologizing for accidentally scheduling two meetings at once. The President had to choose between seeing the Pope and seeing Herbert Allen. Buffett paused for effect. “ ‘Send in the Pope,’ said the President. ‘At least I only have to kiss his ring.’

“各位亲爱的戒指亲吻者，今天我想跟你们谈谈股市，”他说。“我将讨论如何定价股票，但我不会讨论预测它们下个月或明年的走势。估值和预测不是一回事。”

“To all you fellow ring-kissers, I would like to talk today about the stock market,” he said. “I will be talking about pricing stocks, but I will not be talking about predicting their course of action next month or next year. Valuing is not the same as predicting.

“短期来看，市场就像是投票机。而从长期角度，它则是称重机。

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine. In the long run, it’s a weighing machine.

“重量最终是有影响的。但在短期内，投票的影响力较大。而这种投票方式并不十分民主。遗憾的是，他们并没有设立任何投票资格能力测试，就如你们所了解的那样。”

“Weight counts eventually. But votes count in the short term. And it’s a very undemocratic way of voting. Unfortunately, they have no literacy tests in terms of voting qualifications, as you’ve all learned.”

巴菲特按下了一个按钮，他右侧的巨大屏幕上亮起了一个 PowerPoint 幻灯片。²坐在观众席上的比尔·盖茨屏住了呼吸，直到以笨手笨脚而著名的巴菲特成功展示出第一张幻灯片。³

Buffett clicked a button, which illuminated a PowerPoint slide on a huge screen to his right.17 Bill Gates, sitting in the audience, caught his breath until the notoriously fumble-fingered Buffett managed to get the first slide up.

道琼斯工业平均指数 DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE

1964 年 12 月 31 日 December 31, 1964 874.12

1981 年 12 月 31 日 December 31, 1981 875.00

他走向屏幕开始解释。

He walked over to the screen and started explaining.

“在这十七年里，经济规模增长了五倍。《财富》五百强公司的销售额增长了五倍以上。⁴然而，在这十七年中，股市几乎毫无变化。”

“During these seventeen years, the size of the economy grew fivefold. The sales of the Fortune five hundred companies grew more than fivefold.* Yet, during these seventeen years, the stock market went exactly nowhere.”

他后退了一两步。“当你投资时，你正在做的是延迟消费，现在花钱以便在未来的某个时候获取更多的回报。这里真正只有两个问题。一个是你能拿回多少，另一个是何时拿回。

He backed up a step or two. “What you’re doing when you invest is deferring consumption and laying money out now to get more money back at a later time. And there are really only two questions. One is how much you’re going to get back, and the other is when.

“伊索并不擅长金融，因为他说过类似这样的话，‘手中一鸟胜过林中两鸟。’ 但他没有说什么时候。”利率——借款的成本——巴菲特解释说，是“何时”的价格。它们对金融就像引力对物理学一样。随着利率的变化，所有金融资产——房屋、股票、债券的价值都会改变，就好像鸟的价格发生了波动。“这就是为什么有时手中的一只鸟比林中的两只鸟更好，有时林中的两只鸟比手中的一只鸟更好。”

“Now, Aesop was not much of a finance major, because he said something like, ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ But he doesn’t say when.” Interest rates—the cost of borrowing—Buffett explained, are the price of “when.” They are to finance as gravity is to physics. As interest rates vary, the value of all financial assets—houses, stocks, bonds—changes, as if the price of birds had fluctuated. “And that’s why sometimes a bird in the hand is better than two birds in the bush and sometimes two in the bush are better than one in the hand.”

他以平淡、气息急促的口吻说话，言辞之快，有时连他自己都跟不上。巴菲特将伊索的寓言与1990年代的大牛市联系起来，他形容这是一场空洞的牛市。利润增长远不及之前的那个时期，但由于利率低，林中的鸟价格昂贵。很少有人愿意在如此低的利率下持有现金——手中的鸟。所以，投资者们为了那些林中的鸟付出了前所未有的价格。巴菲特轻描淡写地将此称为“贪婪因素”。

In his flat, breathy twang, the words coming so fast that they sometimes ran over one another, Buffett related Aesop to the great bull market of the 1990s, which he described as baloney. Profits had grown much less than in that previous period, but birds in the bush were expensive because interest rates were low. Fewer people wanted cash—the bird in the hand—at such low rates. So investors were paying unheard-of prices for those birds in the bush. Casually, Buffett referred to this as the “greed factor.”

全场观众，都是在大牛市中变得富有的科技大佬们，他们在改变世界。他们静静地坐着，他们的投资组合中塞满了估值超高的股票。他们对此感到十分满意。这是一个新的模式，互联网时代的曙光。他们认为巴菲特没有权利称他们贪婪。沃伦——他积蓄了多年，很少有慷慨之举，他如此节俭，以至于他的车牌上写着“节约”，他大部分时间都在考虑如何赚钱，他错过了科技繁荣和机会——他在他们的香槟里吐口水。

The audience, full of technology gurus who were changing the world while getting rich off the great bull market, sat silent. They were perched atop portfolios that were jam-packed with stocks trading at extravagant valuations. They felt terrific about that. It was a new paradigm, this dawning of the Internet age. Their attitude was that Buffett had no right to call them greedy. Warren—who’d hoarded his money for years and given very little away, who was so cheap his license plate said “Thrifty,” who spent most of his time thinking about how to make money, who had blown the technology boom and missed the boat—was spitting in their champagne.

巴菲特继续说道。股市能以每年十分之一或更多的速度持续上升，只有三种可能。一种是如果利率下降并保持在历史水平以下。第二种是如果分给投资者的经济份额，相对于给雇员和政府以及其他事物的份额，上升到已经历史性高位的水平。⁵ 或者，他说，经济可能开始增长得比正常水平更快。⁶他称使用这些乐观的假设是“一厢情愿”的想法。

Buffett continued. There were only three ways the stock market could keep rising at ten percent or more a year. One was if interest rates fell and remained below historic levels. The second was if the share of the economy that went to investors, as opposed to employees and government and other things, rose above its already historically high level.19 Or, he said, the economy could start growing faster than normal.20 He called it “wishful thinking” to use optimistic assumptions like these.

他说，有些人并不认为整个市场都会繁荣。他们只是相信自己能从其他人中挑选出赢家。他挥舞着手臂，就像一个管弦乐团的指挥，一边解释虽然创新可能会使世界摆脱贫困，但历史上投资创新的人们事后并未感到高兴，一边成功地放上了另一张幻灯片。

Some people, he said, were not thinking that the whole market would flourish. They just believed they could pick the winners from the rest. Swinging his arms like an orchestra conductor, he succeeded in putting up another slide while explaining that, although innovation might lift the world out of poverty, people who invest in innovation historically have not been glad afterward.

“这是来自一个70页清单的半页内容，列出了美国所有的汽车公司。”他在空中挥舞着完整的清单。“曾有两千家汽车公司：可能是二十世纪上半叶最重要的发明。它对人们的生活产生了巨大影响。如果你在第一辆汽车出现的时候看到了这个国家如何与汽车共同发展，你就会说，‘这就是我必须在的地方。’但在这两千家公司中，直到几年前，只有三家汽车公司幸存⁷。而且，这三家公司中的每一家在某个时候都曾以低于账面价值的价格出售，账面价值就是投入公司并留在那里的金额。所以，汽车对美国产生了巨大影响，但对投资者则产生了相反的影响。”

“This is half of a page which comes from a list seventy pages long of all the auto companies in the United States.” He waved the complete list in the air. “There were two thousand auto companies: the most important invention, probably, of the first half of the twentieth century. It had an enormous impact on people’s lives. If you had seen at the time of the first cars how this country would develop in connection with autos, you would have said, ‘This is the place I must be.’ But of the two thousand companies, as of a few years ago, only three car companies survived. And, at one time or another, all three were selling for less than book value, which is the amount of money that had been put into the companies and left there. So autos had an enormous impact on America, but in the opposite direction on investors.”

他放下清单，把手塞进口袋。“现在，有时候找出输家要容易得多。我认为，当时有一个明显的决定。当然，你应该做的事情是做空马。”⁸ 点击。一个关于马的幻灯片弹了出来。

He put down the list to shove his hand in his pocket. “Now, sometimes it’s much easier to figure out the losers. There was, I think, one obvious decision back then. And, of course, the thing you should have been doing was shorting horses.”* Click. A slide about horses popped up.

美国马的数量

U.S. HORSE POPULATION

1900— 1700万 17 million

1998— 500万 5 million

“坦率地说，我有点失望，巴菲特家族在这整个时期都没有做空马。总是有输家的。”

“Frankly, I’m kind of disappointed that the Buffett family was not shorting horses throughout this entire period. There are always losers.”

观众们轻轻笑了，尽管声音微弱。他们的公司可能正在亏损，但他们心中坚信他们是赢家，他们是在天际发生巨大变化的时刻闪耀的超新星。

Members of the audience chuckled, albeit faintly. Their companies might be losing money, but in their hearts beat a conviction that they were winners, supernovas blazing at the cusp of a momentous shift in the heavens.

点击。另一张幻灯片出现了。

Click. Another slide appeared.

“二十世纪上半叶的另一项伟大发明是飞机。在1919年到1939年这段期间，大约有两百家公司。想象一下，如果你当时能看到在基蒂霍克的航空工业的未来。你会看到一个你从未梦想过的世界。但假设你有这种洞察力，你看到所有这些人都希望飞翔，去拜访他们的亲戚，或者从他们的亲戚那里逃跑，或者做任何你在飞机上要做的事情，你决定这就是你要去的地方。

“Now, the other great invention of the first half of the century was the airplane. In this period from 1919 to 1939, there were about two hundred companies. Imagine if you could have seen the future of the airline industry back there at Kitty Hawk. You would have seen a world undreamed of. But assume you had the insight, and you saw all of these people wishing to fly and to visit their relatives or run away from their relatives or whatever you do in an airplane, and you decided this was the place to be.

“直到几年前，从历史上看，航空工业的所有股票投资累计起来一共没有赚到任何钱。

“As of a couple of years ago, there had been zero money made from the aggregate of all stock investments in the airline industry in history.

“所以我向你们提出：我真的很喜欢想象，如果我当时在基蒂霍克，我应该足够有远见，足够有公心，去击落奥维尔。我欠未来的资本家这个。”⁹

“So I submit to you: I really like to think that if I had been down there at Kitty Hawk, I would have been farsighted enough and public-spirited enough to have shot Orville down. I owed it to future capitalists.”

人们再次轻轻地笑了一下。有些人开始厌倦这些陈旧的例子。但出于尊重，他们让巴菲特继续。

Another light chuckle. Some were getting tired of these musty old examples. But out of respect, they let Buffett get on with it.

现在他开始谈论他们的业务。“推广新行业是很棒的，因为它们非常容易被推广。推广一个平淡无奇的产品是非常困难的。推广一个深奥的产品，尤其是一个有损失的产品，要容易得多，因为没有定量的指导。”这直接攻击了观众，让他们痛苦。“但人们会不断回来投资，你知道。这让我想起了一个故事，关于一个油田勘探者死后去了天堂。圣彼得说，‘嗯，我查过你，你符合所有的条件。但有一个问题。’他说，‘我们在这里有一些严格的分区法，我们把所有的油田勘探者都关在那个围栏里。你可以看到，那里已经满得快要爆炸了。没有你的位置。’

Now he was talking about their businesses. “It’s wonderful to promote new industries, because they are very promotable. It’s very hard to promote investment in a mundane product. It’s much easier to promote an esoteric product, even particularly one with losses, because there’s no quantitative guideline.” This was goring the audience directly, where it hurt. “But people will keep coming back to invest, you know. It reminds me a little of that story of the oil prospector who died and went to heaven. And St. Peter said, ‘Well, I checked you out, and you meet all of the qualifications. But there’s one problem.’ He said, ‘We have some tough zoning laws up here, and we keep all of the oil prospectors over in that pen. And as you can see, it is absolutely chock-full. There is no room for you.’

“那个勘探者说，‘你介意我只说四个字吗？’

“And the prospector said, ‘Do you mind if I just say four words?’

“圣彼得说，‘那没什么问题。’

“St. Peter said, ‘No harm in that.’

“所以那个勘探者捧起手，大声喊道，‘地狱有油！’

“So the prospector cupped his hands and yells out, ‘Oil discovered in hell!’

“然后，笼子的锁就开了，所有的油田勘探者都开始直奔地狱。

“And of course, the lock comes off the cage and all of the oil prospectors start heading right straight down.

“圣彼得说，‘那是一个非常聪明的把戏。那么，’他说，‘进去吧，像在自己家一样。这里有你想要的所有空间。’

“St. Peter said, ‘That’s a pretty slick trick. So,’ he says, ‘go on in, make yourself at home. All the room in the world.’

“那个勘探者停了一会儿，然后说，‘不，我想我还是和其他人一起去吧。那个谣言说不定是真的。’¹⁰

“The prospector paused for a minute, then said, ‘No, I think I’ll go along with the rest of the boys. There might be some truth to that rumor after all.’

“嗯，人们对股票就是这种感觉。很容易相信那个谣言说不定是真的。”

“Well, that’s the way people feel with stocks. It’s very easy to believe that there’s some truth to that rumor after all.”

这引起了半秒钟的微笑，但是，一旦观众明白了巴菲特的观点，笑声就停了。他的观点是，他们可能会像那些勘探者一样，不假思索地跟随谣言，到地狱去钻石油。

This got a mild laugh for a half second, which choked off as soon as the audience caught on to Buffett’s point, which was that, like the prospectors, they might be mindless enough to follow rumors and drill for oil in hell.

他通过回到那句谚语中的灌木丛中的鸟来结束。他说，股市没有改变。最终，股市的价值只能反映经济的产出。

He closed by returning to the proverbial bird in the bush. There was no new paradigm, he said. Ultimately, the value of the stock market could only reflect the output of the economy.

他放上一张幻灯片，以说明在过去的几年里，市场的估值已经大大超过了经济的增长。巴菲特说，这意味着接下来的十七年可能不会比1964年到1981年那个长时间段看起来好多少，当时道琼斯指数一直没有变化——也就是说，除非市场暴跌。“如果我必须选一个在那个期间最有可能的回报，”他说，“那可能是6%。”¹¹然而，最近的一次PaineWebber-Gallup民意调查显示，投资者预计股票将回报13%到22%。¹²

He put up a slide to illustrate how, for several years, the market’s valuation had outstripped the economy’s growth by an enormous degree. This meant, Buffett said, that the next seventeen years might not look much better than that long stretch from 1964 to 1981 when the Dow had gone exactly nowhere—that is, unless the market plummeted. “If I had to pick the most probable return over that period,” he said, “it would probably be six percent.” Yet a recent PaineWebber-Gallup poll had shown that investors expected stocks to return thirteen to twenty-two percent.

他走到屏幕前。他扬起浓密的眉毛，指着一个裸体男人和女人的漫画，这个漫画取自一本关于股市的传奇书籍，叫《顾客的游艇在哪里？》¹³“男人对女人说，‘有些事情是不能通过言语或图片充分解释给处女的。’ ”观众明白了他的观点，即那些买互联网股票的人即将遭受重创。他们默默无言地坐着。没有人笑。没有人笑出声，没有人嘲笑或大笑。

He walked over to the screen. Waggling his bushy eyebrows, he gestured at the cartoon of a naked man and woman, taken from a legendary book on the stock market, Where Are the Customers’ Yachts? “The man said to the woman, ‘There are certain things that cannot be adequately explained to a virgin either by words or pictures.’ ” The audience took his point, which was that people who bought Internet stocks were about to get screwed. They sat in stony silence. Nobody laughed. Nobody chuckled or snickered or guffawed.

巴菲特似乎没有注意到这一点，他走回讲台，向观众讲述了他从伯克希尔哈撒韦带来的礼品袋。“我刚买了一家出售分时使用喷气机的公司，NetJets，”他说。“我想给你们每人一个Gulfstream IV的四分之一份额。但是当我去机场时，我意识到对你们大多数人来说，这将是一种降级。”听到这个，他们笑了。所以，他继续说，他给每个人都送了一把珠宝放大镜，他说他们应该用它来看看彼此妻子的戒指——特别是第三任妻子的。

Seeming not to notice, Buffett moved back to the podium and told the audience about the goody bag he had brought for them from Berkshire Hathaway. “I just bought a company that sells fractional jets, NetJets,” he said. “I thought about giving each of you a quarter share of a Gulfstream IV. But when I went to the airport, I realized that’d be a step down for most of you.” At that, they laughed. So, he continued, he was giving each of them a jeweler’s loupe instead, which he said they should use to look at one another’s wives’ rings—the third wives’ especially.

这一点准确无误。观众笑了起来，鼓起掌来。然后他们停下来了。一股怨恨的暗流在房间里涌动。在1999年的Sun Valley对股市的过度行为进行说教，就像在妓院里宣扬贞节。这篇演讲可能会吸引观众注意，但这并不意味着他们会去戒除。

That hit its mark. The audience laughed and applauded. Then they stopped. A resentful undercurrent was washing through the room. Sermonizing on the stock market’s excesses at Sun Valley in 1999 was like preaching chastity in a house of ill repute. The speech might rivet the audience to its chairs, but that didn’t mean that they would go forth and abstain.

然而，有些人认为他们正在听到一些重要的事情。“这太棒了，这就是关于股市的基本教程，一次性上完所有的课程，”盖茨想。¹⁴许多正在寻找更便宜股票的资金经理人觉得这很安慰，甚至觉得它是一种宣泄。

Yet some thought they were hearing something important. “This is great; it’s the basic tutorial on the stock market, all in one lesson,” thought Gates. The money managers, many of whom were hunting for cheaper stocks, found it comforting and even cathartic.

巴菲特在空中挥舞着一本书。“这本书是1929年股市狂热的知识基础。埃德加·劳伦斯·史密斯的《作为长期投资的普通股》证明了股票总是比债券产生更多的收益。史密斯找出了五个原因，但其中最新颖的一个是公司保留了部分收益，他们可以以相同的回报率进行再投资。这就是反耕作——在1924年这是一个新颖的观点！但是像我的导师本·格雷厄姆总是说的那样，‘你可能因为一个好主意而惹上更多的麻烦，而不是一个坏主意，’因为你忘记了好主意是有限的。凯恩斯勋爵在他给这本书的序言中说，‘存在一种危险，期望未来的结果可以从过去预测。’”¹⁵

Buffett waved a book in the air. “This book was the intellectual underpinning of the 1929 stock-market mania. Edgar Lawrence Smith’s Common Stocks as Long Term Investments proved that stocks always yielded more than bonds. Smith identified five reasons, but the most novel of these was the fact that companies retained some of their earnings, which they could reinvest at the same rate of return. That was the plowback—a novel idea in 1924! But as my mentor, Ben Graham, always used to say, ‘You can get in way more trouble with a good idea than a bad idea,’ because you forget that the good idea has limits. Lord Keynes, in his preface to this book, said, ‘There is a danger of expecting the results of the future to be predicted from the past.’ ”

他又回到了同样的主题：人们不能从过去几年股价的加速上升中推断出未来。“现在，有没有我没冒犯的人？”¹⁶他停顿了一下。这个问题是反问的；没有人举手。

He had worked his way back around to the same subject: that one couldn’t extrapolate from the past few years of accelerating stock prices. “Now, is there anyone I haven’t insulted?” He paused. The question was rhetorical; nobody raised a hand.

“谢谢你们，”他说，然后结束了。

“Thank you,” he said, and ended.

“名誉赞美，类别批评”是巴菲特的原则。这场演讲意在挑战，而不是令人反感——因为他非常在乎他们对他的看法。他没有指名道姓地指责任何人，并且他认为他们会对他的笑话有所回应。他的论点非常有力，几乎无法反驳，他认为即使那些不喜欢他的信息的人也必须承认它的力量。无论观众感到的不安如何，都没有公开表示出来。他回答了问题，直到会议结束。人们开始站起来，向他表示赞扬。无论他们如何看待这场演讲——关于如何思考投资的精彩论述，还是一头老狮子的最后咆哮——这场演讲无论如何都是一场精彩的表演。

“Praise by name, criticize by category” was Buffett’s rule. The speech was meant to be provocative, not off-putting—for he cared a great deal what they thought of him. He had named no culprits, and he assumed they would get over his jokes. His argument was so powerful, almost unassailable, that he thought even those who didn’t like its message must acknowledge its force. And whatever unease the audience felt was not expressed aloud. He answered questions until the session ended. People began to stand, awarding him an ovation. No matter how they saw it—a masterful exposition on how to think about investing or the last roar of an old lion—the speech was by any standard a tour de force.

1. 为了可读性和长度，巴菲特的言论被精简了。Buffett’s remarks have been condensed for readability and length. ↩

2. PowerPoint 是最常用于制作幻灯片演示文稿的 Microsoft 程序，在美国企业中普遍使用。PowerPoint is the Microsoft program most often used to make the slide presentations so ubiquitous in corporate America. ↩

3. 来自比尔·盖茨的采访。Interview with Bill Gates. ↩

4. 广泛引用的美国股票指标。A widely quoted U.S. stock measure. ↩

5. 当时的企业利润超过 GDP 的 6%，而长期平均水平为 4.88%。 他们后来升至 9% 以上，远高于历史标准。Corporate profits at the time were more than 6% of GDP, compared to a long-term average of 4.88%. They later rose to over 9%, far above historic standards. ↩

6. 长期以来，美国经济的实际增长率为 3%，名义增长率（扣除通货膨胀后）为 5%。 除了战后繁荣或从严重衰退中复苏之外，很少有人超过这一水平。Over long periods the U.S. economy has grown at a real rate of 3% and a nominal rate (after inflation) of 5%. Other than a postwar boom or recovery from severe recession, this level is rarely exceeded. ↩

7. 美国汽车公司，最小的“四大”汽车制造商之一，于1987年被克莱斯勒收购American Motors, smallest of the “Big Four” automakers, sold out to Chrysler in 1987. ↩

8. 《财富》杂志根据销售额对最大的 500 家公司进行排名，并将它们称为“财富 500 强”。 这组公司可以用作美国企业的粗略代表。Fortune magazine ranks the largest 500 companies based on sales and refers to them as the “Fortune 500.” This group of companies can be used as a rough proxy for U.S.-based business. ↩

9. 这里，巴菲特是在比喻说话。他承认自己一两次投资了带翅膀的东西，但结果并不好。Buffett is speaking metaphorically here. He admits to investing in things with wings a time or two, and not with good results. ↩

10. 巴菲特在 1985 年董事长的信中首次使用了这个故事，引用了本·格雷厄姆 (Ben Graham) 的话，格雷厄姆在纽约金融学院证券分析当前问题系列的第十次演讲中讲述了这个故事。 这些讲座的文字记录于 1946 年 9 月至 1947 年 2 月之间提供，可在 http://www.wiley.com//legacy/products/subject/finance/bgraham/ 或本杰明·格雷厄姆和珍妮特·洛，重新发现的本杰明格雷厄姆：华尔街传奇文选。 纽约：威利出版社，1999 年。Buffett first used this story in his 1985 chairman’s letter, citing Ben Graham, who told the story at his tenth lecture in the series Current Problems in Security Analysis at the New York Institute of Finance. The transcripts of these lectures, given between September 1946 and February 1947, can be found at http://www.wiley.com//legacy/products/subject/finance/bgraham/ or in Benjamin Graham and Janet Lowe, The Rediscovered Benjamin Graham: Selected Writings of the Wall Street Legend. New York: Wiley, 1999. ↩

11. 这篇演讲的精简和编辑版本被发表为“巴菲特先生谈股市”，《财富》，1999年11月22日。A condensed and edited version of this speech was published as “Mr. Buffett on the Stock Market,” Fortune, November 22, 1999. ↩

12. PaineWebber-Gallup民意调查，1999年7月。PaineWebber–Gallup poll, July 1999. ↩

13. Fred Schwed Jr., 《顾客的游艇在哪里？或者，对华尔街的一次深入了解》。纽约，西蒙与舒斯特，1940年。Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers’ Yachts? or, A Good Hard Look at Wall Street. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1940. ↩

14. 与比尔·盖茨的访谈。Interview with Bill Gates. ↩

15. 凯恩斯写道：“对未来应用基于过去经验的归纳论断是危险的……除非我们可以区分出为什么过去的经验是这样的广泛原因”，他在1925年为史密斯的《作为长期投资的普通股》的《国家和雅典艳》的书评中写道，后来成为凯恩斯，《约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯著作集》卷12，经济文章和通信；投资和编辑。剑桥：剑桥大学出版社，1983年。Keynes wrote: “It is dangerous … to apply to the future inductive arguments based on past experience, unless one can distinguish the broad reasons why past experience was what it was,” in a book review for Smith’s Common Stocks as Long-Term Investments in Nation and Athenaeum in 1925 that later became the preface for Keynes, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes. Vol.12, Economic Articles and Correspondence; Investment and Editorial. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. ↩

16. 喜剧演员莫特·萨尔常常以“有没有我没冒犯的人”结束他的表演。The comedian Mort Sahl used to end his routine by asking, “Is there anyone I haven’t offended?” ↩