Why were Warren Buffett and his creation, Berkshire Hathaway, so unusually
successful?
为什么巴菲特和他的所建立的公司伯克希尔,都是那么不寻常的成功?
Why did one man, starting with nothing, no credit rating, end up with this ridiculous collection of assets: $120 billion of cash and marketable securities, all from $10 million when Warren took over, with about the same number of shares outstanding. It’s a very extreme result…
为什么一个人,开始一无所有,没有信用评级,但结果竟然是拥有这种荒唐和庞大的资产:从华伦接手时的1000万美元,大约同样数量的流通股，变成了现在1200亿美元的现金和有价证券。这是一个非常极端结果…
A confluence of factors in the same direction caused Warren’s success. It’s very unlikely that a lollapalooza effect can come from anything else. So let’s look at the factors that contributed to this result:
很多因素在同一方向汇合造成沃伦的成功.这样如此出色的伟人是非常罕有的，并不是意外就可以解释他的存在，让我们看看因素促成了这一结果因素:
The first factor is the mental aptitude. Warren is seriously smart. On the other hand, he can’t beat all comers in chess blindfolded. He’s out-achieved his mental aptitude.
第一项因素是心理素质.华伦他绝顶聪明.另一方面,他是不能击败所有前来挑战他对手。但他可以战胜过他的心理素质.
Then there’s the good effect caused by his doing this since he was 10 years old. It’s very hard to succeed until you take the first step in what you’re strongly interested in. There’s no substitute for strong interest and he got a very early start.
他10岁的时候就开始做自己有兴趣的事情并且得到了良好的结果，兴趣则是他成功的垫脚石.凡事起步难，除非你能踏出第一步去做非常感兴趣的事情。而兴趣是无法代替的,巴菲特他年少的时候就开始做他感兴趣的事情.
This is really crucial: Warren is one of the best learning machines on this earth. The turtles who outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you. Warren was lucky that he could still learn effectively and build his skills, even after he reached retirement age. Warren’s investing skills have markedly increased since he turned 65. Having watched the whole process with Warren, I can report that if he had stopped with what he knew at earlier points, the record would be a pale shadow of what it is.
这实在是非常重要的:华伦是这个地球上最好的学习机器之一。乌龟跑赢兔子的故事说明了乌龟也是个了不起的学习机器. 如果你停止学习,在这个世界很快就超越你.即使他达到退休年龄，幸运的是他仍然能够有效地学习和建立自己的技能。进入65岁的高龄，沃伦的投资技巧明显提高. 看了整个过程与华伦我可以向大家报告说,如果他很早就放弃学习,他所创造的记录早将会是一个淡淡的阴影,并不是今天所谓的历史。
The work has been heavily concentrated in one mind. Sure, others have had input, but Berkshire enormously reflects the contributions of one great single mind. It’s hard to think of great success by committees in the investment world – or in physics. Many people miss this. Look at John Wooden, the greatest basketball coach ever: his record improved later in life when he got a great idea: be less egalitarian. Of 12 players on his team, the bottom five didn’t play – they were just sparring partners. Instead, he concentrated experience in his top players. That happened at Berkshire – there was concentrated experience and playing time.
企业的发展方向很大程度上是量集中在一个人的思想.当然,其他人也有付出,但伯克希尔的成功却有效地反映出一个伟大思想所作出的贡献.在投资和物理界，成就是很难会发生在委员会中的，很多人怀念这个事实。看看约翰木,伟大的篮球教练:他的一个大胆的念头改变了他后半生:将减少平均主义. 他球队里的12个球员, 其中5个是得不到上场比赛的机会,他们只是核心球员的训练伙伴.相反,他集中培养球队里的顶尖选手.这也发生在伯克希尔集团里-集中培养经验管理层.
This is not how we normally live: in a democracy, everyone takes turns. But if you really want a lot of wisdom, it’s better to concentrate decisions and process in one person…
这不是我们正常的生活:在一个民主国家里，人人平等.但如果你真想得到很多的智慧已经成功,最好是把决策权和过程集中在一人身上… …
Lots of people are very, very smart in terms of passing tests and making rapid calculations, but they just make one asinine decision after another because they have terrible streaks of nuttiness... You’ll find that Warren is very objective.
从通过测试和迅速计算的能力可以看出许多人都非常聪明, 但他们刚做了愚蠢的决定后,马上又会犯上其他错误。你会发现,沃伦是很客观.
All human beings work better when they get what psychologists call reinforcement. If you get constant rewards, even if you’re Warren Buffett, you’ll respond – and few things give more rewards than being a great investor…
所有人类更努力地工作时,他们所得到的心理学家叫XXX.如果你得到的报酬是一直不变,即使你是巴菲特的话,你也会有所不满－也有其他职业的报酬是比投资者还要多的。
The importance of reading（阅读的重要性）
How did Berkshire’s track record happen? If you were an observer, you’d see that Warren did most of it sitting on his ass and reading. If you want to be an outlier in achievement, just sit on your ass and read most of your life. But they fire you for that!
Look at this generation, with all of its electronic devices and multi-tasking. I will confidently predict less success than Warren, who just focused on reading. If you want wisdom, you’ll get it sitting on your ass. That’s the way it comes.
巴菲特是怎样刷新纪录的呢? 如果你是名观察者, 你会发现华伦确实大部分时间是在阅读.如果你也想像他那么成功,那就多阅读吧.但你的老板可能会因为这样解雇你！
看看这一代人,所用的电子设备和多任务处理器. 我可以满怀信心地预言：这么多的电子发明都比不上在专注阅读华伦巴菲特.如果你想智慧和学识,你就得像他那样阅读，事情就是这样而来.
Mental models（心智模式）
If you have enough sense to become a mental adult yourself, you can run rings around people smarter than you. Just pick up key ideas from all the disciplines, not just a few, and you’re immensely wiser than they are. This is not a great social advantage, however, as I can tell you from experience of the early Charlie Munger. To meet a great expert in a field and regard him as a malformed child is not a winning social grace. I got a lot of hard knocks when I was young. You could say I was forced into investing. The world will not ordinarily reward you for correcting other people in their area of expertise…
如果你有足够的见识而成为一种有心智的成年人,你可以指使周围比你更聪明的人. 就拿各个学科的重要的概念来说吧,不只是一个点,而且你非常聪明,比他们好.这并不是一个巨大的社会优势,但正如我可以告诉你关于Charlie Munger早期的经验. 迎接一个在某个领域的伟大的专家并把他看成一个畸形的孩子不是个好的社会风尚.我年轻的时候经历过不少的打击与挫折.你可以说我是被迫的投资.然而你纠正其他人的专业领域知识，世界是不会奖赏你的。
I’m a great believer in solving hard problems by using a checklist. You need to get all the likely and unlikely answers before you; otherwise it’s easy to miss something important.
我是在解决问题,通常会列出一份清单，想出所以有很可能发生的事情和最坏的结果是什么，否则很容易错过一些重要的东西.
What is your favorite human misjudgment? （你最喜欢的人性误判是什么?）
My favorite human misjudgment is self-serving bias: how the brain subconsciously will decide that what’s good for the holder of the brain is good for everyone else. If the little me wants it, why shouldn’t the little me have it? People go through life like this.
我个人最喜欢的人性误判是自私偏见:大脑是如何将潜意识决定对自己有利的东西对别人也是有好处的呢？如果渺小的我想得到什么东西，那为什么渺小的我不拥有它呢?人身就是这样.
I’ve underestimated this phenomenon all my life. People go bonkers taking care of their own self-interest. It’s a sea of miscognition. People who write the laws, people who treat patients, who experiment with rats, all suffer horribly from this bias…
我低估了生活中的这个现象－人们疯狂地了照顾为了自身的利益生存.制定法律的人,治疗病人的医生，拿老鼠做试验的研究人员，都遭受到这个偏见。
I would say that the current head of the World Bank [Paul Wolfowitz] had an elementary question: as head of the Bank, a lot of people hate you, so how bright do you have to be to distance yourself from a question of a large raise from your live-in girlfriend? He sent it to the lawyers, they hemmed and hawed, and he lost his moorings. Even a child shouldn’t make his obvious mistake. Similarly, I’d guess President Clinton would have had a better record if he’d had better insight on certain subjects. Note that I carefully picked one from each party. [Laughter]
我会说,现任世界银行[沃尔福威茨]有个问题：作为世行行长,世上很多人关注你而且有很多人恨你，你怎么能利用职权替你女朋友升职加薪呢？他把问题留给他律师处理，但最后他还是要下台。这种连小孩都不会犯的错竟然会发生在世行行长身上。同样,美国总统克林顿如果他更注意他的个人行为，我猜他本来有更好的留任纪录。注意,我只是从各党里挑出一个现象. [笑]
Comments on Berkshire （对伯克希尔公司的评价）
The Munger family has the better part of $2 billion in Berkshire, so there has been some thought as to whether this is a good idea. The answer is that I’m quite content to hold that position and I hope my family members will hold an overwhelming amount of that for a long time. They won’t have the same kind of results that I have had getting the position to its present size from small beginnings, but they don’t need the kind of results I got.
Munger家族拥有差不多20亿的资产在伯克希尔公司，有人提出这个疑问：一直把这么多资产留在伯克希尔公司是明智的吗？我的回应是绝对支持的，我希望我家族成员会永久把所以资产都投资在伯克希尔集团。但他们并不需要我那样的结果，从一开始规模较小的公司发展成现在庞大的企业。
Berkshire’s a very reputable place, full of the right kind of people with the right kind of values. If your expectations are moderate and you like to sleep well at night, it’s not a bad place to have your money compared to other stocks. If what you need is 30% compounded for years into the future, our stock is not for you. Compared to the other stocks available to you, it’s OK and will stay OK long after Warren and I are gone…
伯克希尔集团是一个非常有声誉的地方，满是有实力而且有价值的人才。如果你的预期回报率是中等而且想晚上睡的安心，这里就不属于你。如果你是个期望回报是30％的复合增长，这里也股票也不适合你。就算巴菲特和我都去世了，和其他股票相比，我们的股票还是会给你们带来不错的收入。
As I said on an earlier occasion, if you get Warren Buffett for 40 years and the bastard finally dies on you, you don’t really have a right to complain. [Laughter]
正如我说早先所说,如果你可以使巴菲特生存多40年，但他最终还是会去世的,你真的没有抱怨的权利. [笑]
A seamless web of deserved trust（一个值得信赖的关系网络）
An enormous pleasure in life is to be rightly trusted... If your friends are asking you to raise their children if they die, you’re doing something right... Some think if we just had more compliance checks and process, virtue would be maximized. At Berkshire, we have subnormal process. We try to operate in a web of seamless trust, deserved trust, and try to be careful whom we let in.
人身最大的乐趣在于得到别人的信任。如果你一个朋友在去世前请你照顾他的孩子，你是在做正确的事情。有人认为,如果我们能有更多的监督巡查,效能将会最大限度的发挥。在伯克希尔，我们的有低于正常的过程。我们尝试在值得信任的网络里运作,并设法加以小心要加入我们网络的人（或公司）。
What role does the board of directors play at Berkshire?（董事会在伯克希尔扮演着什么样的角色?）
The board is a safety valve in case I go completely crazy and Warren doesn’t do anything
about it. [Laughter] They are eminent people. We’re required to have a board with
independent directors and since we’re required to have such a board, we figured we
might as well have a good one.
当我完全疯了而华伦巴菲特什么事情都不做的时候，董事会是非常安全的（开玩笑）。他们都是杰出的领导人。我们必须有一个董事会,由独立董事组成。我们必须有这样一个董事会,而我认为我们有一个很好的董事会。
[He paused here, apparently debating whether to add the following:] Would we have had
a board if we were allowed not to have one? No, we wouldn’t have a board. [Laughter]
Is value investing becoming more widespread?（价值投资是否变得越来越普及）
I think our way of looking at things will become more popular. In fact, it already is a lot
more popular than it was decades ago. I used to look out at this group and it was 20
people. The increased popularity of the investment style will not make it easier for all of
you to make a lot of money. All these smart people competing will make it harder, but
that’s not all a bad thing: maybe some of you will have to make money less the way we
did and more the way some engineer does.
我觉得我们的投资理念会将会变得更受欢迎。事实上，它已经比几十年前受欢迎多了，我以前注意的时候只有20个人。这样日益流行的投资方式不会容易地让你赚到钱。所有这些聪明的投资者在竞争,难度会更大,但这并非全部是坏事：你们可能会赚得比我少，但会比一般工薪阶层要多。
Where are there market inefficiencies? （哪里有因不完全信息而失效的市场？）
Two markets are inefficient: very small ones (which are not much use to Berkshire, with its $120 billion), and ones where crazy people are doing crazy things, especially if they’re selling. From time to time, the big markets have some crazily mispriced securities in them. But there’s no question that in small markets there’s a lot of opportunity to find mispricings.
有两个市场是失效的:第一个市场是非常小(这对拥有1200亿美元的伯克希尔公司没有多大用处) 另外一个市场，疯狂的投资者经常在做疯狂的事,尤其是如果他们卖出所持有的股票.有时,大市场里会有些低于其企业本身价值的股票证券.但有一点毫无疑问,在市场规模小,这样机会会更多。
Subprime and the rating agencies （次级和信用评级机构）
The rating agencies have prospered mightily, and their most likely source of embarrassment is subprime paper. Overall, they do a good job, and you always miss things with the benefit of hindsight. I would not predict they encounter great distress. If you want to pick things to disapprove of, the rating agencies would be far down on the list.
You might pick many originators of the subprime mortgages. They are some of the most disgusting people we’ve been able to produce, and many of them belong in the lowest circle of hell. There will always will be such people, making money by misleading people. You’ll always get people like the worst commissioned salespeople in the mortgage brokerage business. This isn’t the real tragedy.
信用评级机构非常繁荣，并且他们最有可能的阻碍来源是subprime paper. 总体而言，他们做好他们的本身的工作，你也经常怀念后见之明的好处。我将不会预测他们会遭遇大危难。如果你想要证明机构的误处，信用机构将不会在你考虑范围之内。
你或许会挑出次级信用评级机构的创始人。他们是最恶心的人，其中很多属于地狱最底层的圈子。世上总会有这样的人，靠误导别人而赚钱。你总会在按揭经纪业务中遇到这样品质差的销售员。这不是真正的悲剧。
The real tragedy is the people higher up at the Wall Street banks who only asked if they could sell it, not if they should do it. They violated engineering principles and ethical principles.
真正的悲剧是在华尔街银行,如果只要求他们可以卖掉股票,他们实际上是炒高股票的价格，他们并不是做他们该做的事情.他们违反工程原理和伦理原则.
Is there a trend in the private equity business? （私募股权投资公司有趋势吗？）
Of course there’s a trend. The LBO funds get larger and larger and buy larger and larger businesses, so it’s a huge trend.
It’s a different lifestyle than Berkshire’s. We almost never sell – we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to play gin rummy with our friends, dumping five businesses and getting five new ones. We aren’t buying to resell.
当然有趋势。杠杆收购基金变得越来越多并且购买越来越多的公司，所以这是个极大的趋势。
但它和伯克希尔的投资理念不同。我们从来不出售公司－我们并不想这样做。我们不会和我们的朋友玩拉米牌戏，卖掉5个公司然后又买5个新的回来。我们购置公司的动机并不是要出售它。
The leveraged equity crowd is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. What’s happened is endowments and pension plans are believing in the tooth fairy. With assets being bid up, they’re not getting enough return from ordinary investments from stocks and bonds. Then silver-tongued people came along and said you don’t have to suffer low returns. Give us the money, we’ll lever up, pay us a lot of compensation and we will give you 15% not 5%. It’s worked – not as well as claimed; there’s dubious use of statistics – but for good shops, it works.
杠杆式股权投资公司瓶颈问题变得越来越严重。但公司资产给市场哄高，他们将不能从原先的投资在股票或债券中得到足够的回报。那些杠杆收购基金公司就会和你说你所得到得回报不止这么少，并说服你把钱交给他们管理，他们有办法把回报率提高，他们会给你15％的回报而不是5％。这样的确可行－但不是像他说得那么好；他们用可疑的数据－但在好的企业里，这的确会发生。
Then, a lot of envy sweeps the field. Yale can’t stand Harvard making more. Envy is a
huge motivator, though it’s seldom admitted. In my whole life, I’ve never had someone
say, “Charlie, I’m doing this out of envy.”
然后，耶鲁不能站在哈佛前面说他们比哈佛有多好。妒忌的是一个巨大的动力,虽然它的很少被承认.在我的整个生命,从来不会有人对我说, "查理,我这样做是因为嫉妒"。
In venture capital, except for a handful of firms at the top, the returns are lousy. This will eventually happen to the LBO firms as well. God has not decided that anyone who wants 15% can get it.
在风险资本,除极少数在行业顶端公司,回报是很糟糕的. 这将最终出现的杠杆股权投资公司上.上帝还没有决定让哪些想得到15％回报率的公司得到这样的回报。
Thoughts on his advancing age（晚年思想）
I’m getting more experienced at aging. I’m like the man who jumped off the skyscraper and at the 5th floor on the way down says, “So far this is not a bad ride.” [Laughter] I’m getting better with aging. I’m not going to complain about age because if I didn’t have it, I’d be dead.
随着年龄在增加，我变得越来越富有经验。我喜欢的人跳下摩天大楼,在五楼上下山途中说, "到目前为止,这是一个不错的旅程. " [笑] 我随着年龄渐入佳境.我不想抱怨年龄,因为如果我我没有它, 我就是死了.
Career advice（职业忠告）
Ideally, you would have figured it out by now. If you’re only now asking that question well along in your business school career, then your business school is about as effective as I would have guessed. [Laughter]
理想情况下,现在你会明白这一点。如果在商学院的你现在才提出了这个问题,那么我猜你的商学院所得到的建议和我的忠告是是一样有效地.
Deserve what you want（你值得拥有什么）
Figure out what you don’t want and avoid it and you’ll get what you do want. Warren had the same instincts I had. We haven’t had our share of disappointed, angry people that ruin so many lives. It’s easy to get into that position. Ask the question: How can you best get what you want? The answer: Deserve what you want! How can it be any other way?
找出你不想要的并且避免它，你将会得到你所想要得。巴菲特和我有一样的本能。我们没有分享过对人生的失望, 愤怒的人摧毁了无数的生命.人们很容易犯这样的错误.问问你自己:你如何能得到你想要的? 答案是:你值得拥有什么!除了这样的答案，还会有其他吗?