“对巴菲特来说，被爱和感受爱是成功背后的推动力量。”——传记《滚雪球——巴菲特和他的财富人生》作者施罗德

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当地时间8月30日，是“股神”巴菲特的80岁生日(资料图)

【中国企业家网】在全球资本市场大爆炸期间，当投资者都在做短线交易时，巴菲特早已通过寻找被低估的股票并长期持有而积累了大笔财富;

当CEO们都因天价薪水遭到痛斥时，巴菲特作为伯克希尔·哈撒韦(Berkshire Hathaway Inc.)公司的主席，却多年只拿10万美金的报酬：他的个人财富完全取决于公司财富;

当精英们都蜂拥到纽约、伦敦、香港等地积累财富，巴菲特却依然居住在内布拉斯加州的小镇奥巴哈，那里有一座不起眼的两层小楼，在成为“沃伦·巴菲特”之前，他就已经在那里住了几十年;

最有趣的是，当巴菲特以世界富豪的身份庆祝80岁生日时，他的名誉不仅从金融危机中完璧而退，反而以更加光辉的资本英雄形象出现，而政府、政客和公司却不得不为重建公共信誉而挣扎。

《滚雪球——巴菲特和他的财富人生》传记作者爱丽丝·施罗德说：“巴菲特在全球受到尊重，因为人们为财富着迷，同时又相信只有通过不道德手段方能获 得财富。而巴菲特则诱人地提出了相反的可能性，即使不对自己妥协，同样可以创造财富。他是一个道德典范，是一个很多人愿意去相信的理想。”

2006年，当他承诺将价值470亿美元的财富捐赠给慈善事业，以及今年与盖茨基金会号召世界级富豪捐献半数财产时，巴菲特已经树立的名誉更加牢不可摧。

价值投资

但在巴菲特承诺散尽财富之前，他先建立财富。作为一个商人和四届国会议员的儿子，巴菲特在高中和大学期间就开始投资。对巴菲特产生巨大影响的一个人 就是他在哥伦比亚大学的老师、倡导“价值投资”的经济学家本杰明·格雷厄姆(Benjamin Graham)，去投资那些价值被低估的公司。

有时候，巴菲特的价值投资理念看起来有违常理。1988年，他投资10亿美元购买了可口可乐公司8%的股份，当时看来，这笔钱并不低。但随着该公司在全球市场不断扩张，现在这些股份价值已达110亿美元。

上世纪90年代末期，人们都认为“奥马哈先知”错失了投资科技公司的良机，结果却是伯克希尔避开了.com灾难：从2000年3月到2003年3月，随着互联网泡沫的破灭，标准普尔500价值蒸发了43%，伯克希尔投资的价值却增长了25%。

也许衡量巴菲特投资智慧的最佳准绳就是伯克希尔的股票价格。1965年，当巴菲特买进伯克希尔·哈撒韦时，该公司每股股价为18美元，本周，该公司 股票已达到每股11.5万美元。1964年以来，该公司年平均投资回报率为20.3%，相比同期标准普尔500指数投资回报为9.3%。

承认错误

2004年，在巴菲特的妻子苏珊·巴菲特去世之前，被问及巴菲特的遗产是什么时，她的回答是：他给股东的信。

巴菲特股东信件的风格就是他做生意的蓝图。“一方面，巴菲特不提供季度收益指南，他们真的在做长期投资，所以他不会告诉投资者有望获得多少收益，”分析师瑞滕豪斯表示，“生活一团混乱，你的投资收益可能很糟糕，你的保险集团可能会付出巨额赔偿——他们非常诚实。”

《我们为什么犯错误》一书作者哈里南表示，巴菲特对错误的诚实是他犯错更少的原因。“过度自信是CEO们犯错误的最大原因。在他们的意识里，弱肉强 食，一旦表现出缺乏自信，就会被摧毁。只有两个词是例外：沃伦·巴菲特。如果你读了他给股东的信，他用非常平实的语言承认自己犯了哪些大错误。这在企业界 令人耳目一新。”

例如，1993年以4.33亿美元收购Dexter公司之后，在2008年致股东的信中，巴菲特承认，“迄今为止，Dexter是我罪过的最糟糕的 一笔交易。”事实上，这笔交易是用伯克希尔股票进行的，随着后者股价不断上升，这笔4.33亿美元的交易现在已经花费了伯克希尔35亿美元。

施罗德表示，“为什么巴菲特却得到如此爱戴与尊重?那是因为多年来他一直在努力——他知道，如果他只是有钱的话，会被视为一个强盗男爵。”

千金散尽

2010年6月，巴菲特宣布将99%的个人财富捐赠给慈善事业，并与盖茨和梅琳达基金会一道，劝说富豪作出捐款承诺。在“捐赠誓言”中，巴菲特说，“拥有某些东西，确实能让我的生活更有滋味，但拥有过多反让我吃不消。”

巴菲特表示，留下的财富够花即可，其余则赠予社会，去满足更多需求。

作为一个道德大亨的形象，在许多意义上讲，都是巴菲特自己的创造。施罗德表示，“和许多大人物一样，巴菲特也被巨大的动力和不安全感所驱使。对巴菲 特来说，被爱和感受爱的需求是他成功背后的驱动力量。在他还是一个孩子的时候，他从未感受过爱，如今，每年都会有4万人专程赶到年度股东大会看他。”

(本文内容综合于CNN报道和巴菲特捐赠誓言)

Happy 80th birthday, Warren Buffett

(CNN) -- Warren Buffett has built a career based on contradictions.

During the greatest explosion of the global capital markets -- with more investors flipping stock in quick trades -- Buffett has amassed one of the world's largest fortunes by looking for bargains and holding onto them.

As chief executives are excoriated for wallet-bursting salaries, Buffett's salary as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has been capped at $100,000 for years: His personal fortune is wholly dependent on the fortune of his company.

While the elite have flocked to cities such as New York, London and Hong Kong to build their fortunes, Buffett has accumulated his wealth from the backwater of Omaha, Nebraska, going home to a nondescript two-story home he lived in for decades before Warren Buffett became "Warren Buffett."

And, perhaps most interesting as Buffett celebrates his 80th birthday on Monday as one of the world's richest men, he emerged from the Financial Crisis not only with his reputation intact, but his image burnished: A capitalist hero wearing the white hat, while governments, politicians and companies struggle to regain their pre-crisis reputations in the public eye.

"He is globally respected because people are fascinated with the rich, but at the same time they would like to think it's possible to become rich without it gotten through immoral means -- that you have to cut corners, that you have to be ruthless," said Alice Schroeder, author of "The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life."

"This is one man who raises the tantalizing possibility that that's not true, that you can become rich without compromise," Schroeder said. "He has an image of being an ethical paragon -- that's an ideal a lot of people would like to believe in."

His reputation was solidified in 2006 with his pledge to donate his wealth -- estimated this year at $47 billion -- to charity, and his efforts this year with Bill and Melinda Gates for the world's billionaires to donate half their fortunes.

"He certainly doesn't seem to fit the Rockefeller mode or model of the tycoon," said Laura Rittenhouse, author of "Buffett's Bites: The Essential Investor's Guide to Warren Buffett's Shareholder Letters." "It's less 'noblesse oblige' philanthropy but a sense of you can't take it with you, and you were damn lucky to have it in the first place -- you have to give it back.

"He is a capitalist who is not a materialist," Rittenhouse said.

Value investing

But before Buffett's pledge to give it all back, he built it up. The son of a businessman and four-term congressman, Buffett began investing while in high school and throughout college. But one of his largest influences was Benjamin Graham, an economist who taught him at Columbia University who was an early champion of value investing -- buying shares of companies that are underpriced.

The search for value helped propel Buffett's career and fortune through a wide diversity of industries with impeccable timing. "He studies the concept of 'buy low', 'sell high' as he would nuclear physics ... he will spend years thinking about every nuance and working at it from every angle," Schroeder said. "He's exquisitely aware of what 'buy low' means in a particular economic time and place, and has shifted in an anticipatory way from grungy industries to media and consumer markets at just the right time."

His sense of value investing has at times seemed counterintuitive. In 1988, he spent $1 billion for an 8 percent stake in the Coca-Cola Co., which at the time didn't seem much of a bargain. But as the company exploded with the opening of global markets, that stake is now worth $11 billion.

In the late 1990's, people perceived the "Oracle of Omaha" was missing the boat as he didn't buy into the explosion in technology companies. It turned out instead Berkshire Hathaway missed the dotcom Titanic -- as the S&P 500 lost 43 percent of its value from March 2000 to March 2003 in the wake of the dotcom implosion, the value of Berkshire investments increased 25 percent.

Perhaps the greatest measure of Buffett's investing acumen is the price of stock in his company. When he bought into Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 it was about $18 a share -- this week the price was hovering around $115,000 a share. Its annual return rate to investors since 1964 has averaged 20.3 percent, compared to the 9.3 percent return rate of the S&P.

Admission of mistakes

In 2004 shortly before her death, his wife, Susan, was asked what Warren Buffett's legacy would be. Her answer: His annual letters to stockholders.

Rittenhouse has made a study of Buffett's letters to stockholders. Her "Rittenhouse Rankings" charts a correlation between the candor of a CEO's annual letter to shareholders and the company's stock performance: The more candid assessment of the company in the letter, the better a company's stock performs.

Buffett's style in his letters is a blueprint for how he does business. "For one thing, Warren doesn't provide quarterly earnings guidance -- they truly invest in the long term, so he doesn't tell his investors you can expect to make XXX earnings," Rittenhouse said. "Life is messy, you could have lousy earnings, your insurance holdings may have to pay a great deal of claims -- there's a great deal of honesty in them."

That honesty in his missteps is one reason why Buffett makes fewer of them than others, said Joseph Hallinan, author of the book, "Why We Makes Mistakes," which was published in the UK as "Errornomics."

"Overconfidence is the greatest cause of mistakes for executives ... there's a perception that they kill the weak, and if they show any lack of confidence they can be destroyed," Hallinan said. "The exception is two words: Warren Buffett. If you read his annual letters, he admits in very plain terms making some big mistakes. That's amazingly refreshing in the corporate world."

For example, Buffet's 1993 purchase of the Dexter Show Company for $433 million. In his letter to shareholders in 2008, he admitted "to date, Dexter is the worst deal that I've made." The mistake about the durability of the business was compounded by the fact it was purchased in Berkshire stock -- meaning, over time, the $433 million cost the company $3.5 billion as Berkshire's share price rose.

Acknowledging an error and analyzing why it was made is a cognitive exercise most executives prefer not to make. "He's very well calibrated in understanding what he knows and what he doesn't know ... he's optimistic, but not overconfident," Hallinan said.

Buffett's image as a virtuous tycoon is, in many ways, his own creation, Schroeder said. "Like many oversized, towering figures, he is driven by a tremendous drive and insecurity, otherwise he would be content to stay back at home," she said. "For Buffett, the need to be loved and feel love is behind this drive to succeed. When he was a child, he never felt love -- now he has 40,000 people coming to see him at the (Berkshire) annual meetings.

Many famous CEOs have the same dynamic, Schroeder says, yet they still come across as tyrannical. "Why is he so well liked and respected? He's been working at that for years -- he knew that if he was just rich, he'd be perceived as a robber baron."

Now Buffett has made his greatest investment, a $26 billion investment in the railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., what Buffett has called his "all-in bet" on the U.S. economy. Will that pay off? Buffett is betting his track record that it will.