成为下一代巴菲特：从何处着手
 
http://www.fortunechina.com/first/content/2008-11/18/content_12905.htm
   2008年11月18日
 

    先知给年轻投资者的建议就是：“读一切可读之物。”

    每年都会有成千上万的投资者赶到位于美国奥马哈市的伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司（Berkshire Hathaway）参加它的年度股东大会，希望可以从杰出的价值投资者沃伦•巴菲特（Warren Buffett）那里汲取智慧。对冲基金创始人，金融博客写手兼专业怀疑论者杰夫•马修斯（Jeff Mathews）曾参加过2007年的会议，写下了《通往巴菲特奥马哈帝国的朝圣之旅》。下面就是其中的摘录。

    会上提出的问题既看不出任何事先安排好的迹象，也没有公关部门在暗地操纵，又没有特殊的主题要求。

    这些股东本人，他们提的问题以及他们提问题的方式看上去很真诚或者说不固定。尽管有那么一两个人似乎有备而来，然而对巴菲特而言，他并不知道会遇到什么问题。

    只是很多人在无拘无束地提问题。

    但他们还是分成了两派：一派是从美国东海岸和加州来的职业投资者，他们会清楚地报出自己的名字，你会感觉到，有一两个人在提出自己事先仔细拟好的关于特定金融话题之前，只是想让巴菲特对自己有印象。

    另一方面，那些非专业的投资者通常对自己的身份一带而过，却会问到一些非常随意但内容广泛的问题，其中既会问“对于那些长时间受重创的《纽约时报》股东，您有何建议”，还有“你会如何改革医疗体系”这样的问题。

    期间还夹杂着一个关于约翰和爱比盖尔•亚当斯夫妇（John and Abigail Adams）的问题，这是芒格（Munger）最喜欢的两个历史人物（查理•芒格是巴菲特的长期合作伙伴——译注），对此业内人士几乎人人皆知。（巴菲特在一片笑声中，打趣地问道：“查理，你知道这两个人吧？”）

    最常见的问题来自在场的年轻人。

    一位来自旧金山充满热情的17岁小伙子是第一个问起 “如何才能成为一名伟大的投资者”的人，他称自己已经连续10次参加年会了。

    巴菲特的答案简单而直接，他掷地有声地说：“读一切可读之物”。

    这是巴菲特多年来一直热衷的建议，他非常相信这一点，会通过不同方式从早到晚地提到。芒格对此非常赞同，他称巴菲特是“学习机器”。就是因为在巴菲特成长过程中，阅读塑造了巴菲特的投资方式，为他此后50年事业的成功打下了基础。

    当巴菲特对年轻人说“读一切可读之物”，他是很认真的。

    他继续说：“到10岁的时候，我已经读过了奥马哈公共图书馆所有题目中包含金融字样的书，有的还读了两遍。”

    巴菲特的阅读习惯并没有止步于10岁。在他进行投资的50年，或者是50多年里，每年他都会仔细阅读上千份财务报表和年度报告。那些与巴菲特一起搭乘飞机的朋友或熟人都提到过，他只会简短地与大家先谈一下，随后便马上开始阅读。巴菲特传记《永恒的价值》一书作者安德鲁•基尔帕特里克 (Andrew Kilpatrick)说，他们两个签名售书时，巴菲特告诉他自己还有50本要读的书在家里呢。

    尽管巴菲特提到自己在第一次阅读价值投资大师本杰明•格雷汉姆（Benjamin Graham）的《聪明投资者》时，受到了很深远的影响，但他并没有建议这个17岁的旧金山男孩读某一专门方向的书，或者引领他专注某一投资方式。他只是建议尽可能去阅读，找到适合自己的投资方式，他说：“如果一本书令你爱不释手，就很可能对你有所助益。”

    除了阅读，巴菲特还建议，“不要只读书，可以小规模的投资看看。”

    他说：“查理，你还有什么要补充的吗？”

    芒格从他那个一直僵坐着、双臂交叉、眼睛藏在厚厚的瓶底眼镜下面的状态活动了一下，凑向他面前桌上的麦克风。他建议一种符合逻辑的方式，这也是他在整个会议中经常谈到的观点。

    他说：“问你自己，你拥有什么，为什么拥有？”他最后果断地总结说：“如果你回答不出，你就不是一名投资者。”

    巴菲特对此表示同意，并且又对在场的下一代巴菲特们重复了这么多年来他一直对股票投资者和类似的学生们说过的话。（巴菲特在20世纪50年代的时候在奥马哈大学教授投资课程，大约每年教30个班。）“如果你不能写出一篇论文，解释‘为什么我要以现在的股价买进整个公司’，哪么你就连100股都不要买。”

    当然，巴菲特能成为一名伟大的投资者，秘诀不仅于此，随着时间的推移，我们会了解的得更多。

    但是，一切先从阅读开始。

Budding Buffetts: Where to begin?
The Oracle's advice to young investors? "Read everything you can."
Last Updated: November 14, 2008: 11:34 AM ET


Tens of thousands of investors travel to Omaha each year the Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB) annual meeting, hoping to soak up the wisdom of value investor extraordinaire Warren Buffett. Hedge fund founder, financial blogger and professional skeptic Jeff Mathews went to the 2007 meeting and wrote "Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett's Omaha." Here's an excerpt.

The questions show no sign of having been arranged ahead of time. There is no invisible hand of a PR flak guiding things, no particular order by theme or subject matter.

There is nothing that makes the shareholders themselves, their questions, or even the delivery of those questions come across as insincere or planted - although one or two seem to have an agenda. Still, there is almost nothing to tip off Warren Buffett to what's coming.

It's just a lot of people asking questions, unfettered.

A dichotomy begins to emerge. Professional investors from the East Coast and from California tend to enunciate their own names clearly - you get the sense that one or two of them want to make an impression on Buffett himself - before launching into tightly scripted questions about specific financial topics.

Shareholders who aren't professional investors, on the other hand, often hurry through their identities and ask loosely constructed, but farther-ranging questions, from "What advice do you have for long-suffering shareholders of the New York Times?" to "How would you fix the healthcare system?"

There's even a rambling question about John and Abigail Adams - two of Munger's favorite historical figures, as almost everyone in the arena already knows. ("Did you know them, Charlie?" Buffett quips, to laughter.)

The question that is asked most frequently comes from younger members of the audience.

The question is, "What should I do to become a great investor?" and it is asked for the first time by an earnest 17-year- old from San Francisco who says he is attending his tenth consecutive meeting.

Buffett's emphatic answer is simple and straightforward: "Read everything you can," he says with finality.

This is advice that Buffett has been giving for years, and it is advice that he will give in different ways throughout the morning and afternoon, for he strongly believes - and Munger concurs, calling Buffett "a learning machine" - that it was the reading he did in his formative years that shaped his approach to investing and prepared the groundwork for the next 50 unprecedented successful years.

And Buffett isn't kidding when he tells the young man, "Read everything you can."

"By the age of 10," he goes on, "I'd read every book in the Omaha Public Library with the word finance in the title, some twice."

Buffett's reading habits did not stop when he was 10. He still reads literally thousands of financial statements and annual reports each year - as he has done for each of the last 50 or more years that he's been investing. Friends and acquaintances who are invited to share a jet with Buffett report that he'll chitchat briefly and then start reading. Andrew Kilpatrick, author of the massive Buffett hagiography - Of Permanent Value -- reported that Buffett once mentioned, while the two were at a book signing, that he had 50 books at home, waiting to be read.

Buffett does not advise the 17-year-old from San Francisco to read any particular books, although he does mention the profound impact that value-investing guru Benjamin Graham's "The Intelligent Investor" had on him when he read it for the first time. "What I'm doing today, at age 76, is running things through the same thought process I learned from the book I read at 19." Nor does he steer the budding Buffett toward any particular investment style. Instead, he advises reading everything possible to find the style that suits the individual. "If it turns you on, it probably will work for you," he says.

Buffett also recommends doing something else besides reading: "Invest - on a small scale - don't just read."

"Charlie," he says, "you have anything to add?"

Munger stirs from the implacable position he maintains throughout - seated stiffly in his chair, arms folded, eyes distorted by Coke-bottle-thick glasses - and leans slightly forward toward the microphone on the table before him. He suggests a logical approach that's typical of almost everything he will say during the session.

"Ask, 'What do you own and why do you own it?'" Munger says. "And if you can't answer that," he declares with absolute finality, "you aren't an investor."

Buffett concurs, and repeats for the budding Buffetts in this crowd what he has told shareholders and students alike over many years (Buffett taught an investing course at the University of Omaha in the 1950s and speaks to as many as 30 student groups each year): "If you can't write an essay describing 'why I'm going to buy the entire company at the current valuation,' you have no business buying 100 shares of stock."

Of course, there is more to what has made Buffett a great investor than this - as we will come to understand as the day continues.

But it all began by reading. To top of page