advantage because we have the power to effect change. In
practice, however, this advantage is somewhat illusory:
Management changes, like marital changes, are painful, timeconsuming
and chancy. In any event, at our three marketable-but
permanent holdings, this point is moot: With Tom Murphy and Dan
Burke at Cap Cities, Bill Snyder and Lou Simpson at GEICO, and
Kay Graham and Dick Simmons at The Washington Post, we simply
couldn't be in better hands.
在进行取得控制权或是部份股权投资时，我们不但试着去找一家好公司，
同时最好是能够由品格才能兼具且为我们喜爱的管理者经营，如果是看错了人，
在具控制权的情况下，我们还有机会发挥影响力来改变，事实上这种优势有点不太实际，
因为更换管理阶层，就像是结束婚姻关系一样，过程是相当地费时痛苦且要看运气，
不论如何，我们三家永恒的股权投资在这点是不太可能发生的，有Tom Murphy 和
Dan Burke 在资本城, Bill Snyder 和 Lou Simpson 在盖可保险 Kay Graham 和
Dick Simmons 在华盛顿邮报，我们实在想不出有更有的接替人选。
我必须说明控制一家公司有二个主要的优点，首先当我们控制一家公司
我们便有分配资金与资源的权力，相较之下，若是部份股权投资则完全没有说话的余地，
这点非常重要，因为大部分的公司经营者，并不擅长于做资金分配，
之所以如此并不让人讶异，因为大部分的老板之所以能够成功是靠着他们在行销、
生产、工程、行政管理方面的专长。
I would say that the controlled company offers two main
advantages. First, when we control a company we get to allocate
capital, whereas we are likely to have little or nothing to say
about this process with marketable holdings. This point can be
important because the heads of many companies are not skilled in
capital allocation. Their inadequacy is not surprising. Most
bosses rise to the top because they have excelled in an area such
as marketing, production, engineering, administration or,
sometimes, institutional politics.
而一旦成为CEO之后，他们马上必须面临许多新的责任与挑战，包括要做资金分配的决策，
这是一项他们以前从未面对艰巨且重要的任务，打个比方，这就好象是一位
深具天分的音乐家，没有安排让他到卡内基音乐厅演奏，却反而任命他为
联邦准备理事会主席一般。
Once they become CEOs, they face new responsibilities. They
now must make capital allocation decisions, a critical job that
they may have never tackled and that is not easily mastered. To
stretch the point, it's as if the final step for a highly
talented musician was not to perform at Carnegie Hall but,
instead, to be named Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
CEO缺乏资金分配的能力可不是一件小事，一家公司若是每年保留10%的盈余在公司的话，
经过十年后，他所要掌管的资金等于增加了60%。
The lack of skill that many CEOs have at capital allocation
is no small matter: After ten years on the job, a CEO whose
company annually retains earnings equal to 10% of net worth will
have been responsible for the deployment of more than 60% of all
the capital at work in the business.
某些体认到自己缺乏这方面能力的CEO(当然也有很多不这样认为)，会转向部属、
管理顾问或是投资银行家寻求建议，查理跟我时常观察这种帮忙最后的结果，
总的来说，我们认为大多数的情况并不能解决问题，反而是让问题变得更严重。
CEOs who recognize their lack of capital-allocation skills
(which not all do) will often try to compensate by turning to
their staffs, management consultants, or investment bankers.
Charlie and I have frequently observed the consequences of such
"help." On balance, we feel it is more likely to accentuate the
capital-allocation problem than to solve it.
结果你就会发现在美国企业一大堆不明智的资本分配决策一再重复的发生
(这也是为什么你常常听到组织重整再造的原因)，然而在Berkshire我们算是
比较幸运，在一家我们不具控制权的股权投资方面，大部分的公司资金运用还算得当，
有的甚至还相当的杰出。
In the end, plenty of unintelligent capital allocation takes
place in corporate America. (That's why you hear so much about
"restructuring.") Berkshire, however, has been fortunate. At the
companies that are our major non-controlled holdings, capital has
generally been well-deployed and, in some cases, brilliantly so.
第二项优点是相较于部份投资，取得控制权的投资享有租税上的优惠，
Berkshire身为一家控股公司，在投资部份股权时，必须吸收相当大的租税成本，
相较之下，持有控制股权的投资则没有这种情况，这种租税弱势发生在我们身上由来已久，
但过去几年的税法修订，使得这种情形更雪上加霜，同样的获利，
若发生在我们持有80%以上股权的公司，要比其它部份股权投资的效益要高出50%以上。
The second advantage of a controlled company over a
marketable security has to do with taxes. Berkshire, as a
corporate holder, absorbs some significant tax costs through the
ownership of partial positions that we do not when our ownership
is 80%, or greater. Such tax disadvantages have long been with
us, but changes in the tax code caused them to increase
significantly during the past year. As a consequence, a given
business result can now deliver Berkshire financial results that
are as much as 50% better if they come from an 80%-or-greater
holding rather than from a lesser holding.
不过这种劣势有时可以由另一项优势所抵消掉，有时候股票市场让我们可以
以不可思议的价格买到绩优公司部份的股权，远低于协议买下整家公司
取得控制权的平均价格，举例来说，我们在1973年以每股5.63元买下
华盛顿邮报的股票，该公司在1987年的每股盈余是10.3元，同样地，
我们分别在1976、1979与1980年以每股6.67元的平均价格买下盖可保险的部份股权，
到了去年其每股税后的营业利益是9.01元，从这些情况看来，市场先生
实在是一位非常大方的好朋友。
The disadvantages of owning marketable securities are
sometimes offset by a huge advantage: Occasionally the stock
market offers us the chance to buy non-controlling pieces of
extraordinary businesses at truly ridiculous prices -
dramatically below those commanded in negotiated transactions
that transfer control. For example, we purchased our Washington
Post stock in 1973 at $5.63 per share, and per-share operating
earnings in 1987 after taxes were $10.30. Similarly, Our GEICO
stock was purchased in 1976, 1979 and 1980 at an average of $6.67
per share, and after-tax operating earnings per share last year
were $9.01. In cases such as these, Mr. Market has proven to be a
mighty good friend.
一个矛盾又有趣的会计现象，从上面的表你可以看到，我们在这三家公司
的股权投资市值超过20亿，但是他们在1987年总共贡献给Berkshire帐面
税后盈余却只有一千一百万美元。
An interesting accounting irony overlays a comparison of the
reported financial results of our controlled companies with those
of the permanent minority holdings listed above. As you can see,
those three stocks have a market value of over $2 billion. Yet
they produced only $11 million in reported after-tax earnings for
Berkshire in 1987.
会计原则规定我们必须在这些公司分配股利的时候才能认列利益，
这通常要比公司实际所赚的数字要少的多，以这三家公司合计，
1987年可以分配到的盈余数字高达一亿美元，另一方面，会计原则
规定这三家公司的股份若是有保险公司所持有，则其帐面价值应该要以
其市场价格列示，结果是一般公认会计原则要求我们在资产负债表上
秀出这些被投资事业的实际价值，却不准让我们在损益表是反应他们
实质的获利能力。
Accounting rules dictate that we take into income only the
dividends these companies pay us - which are little more than
nominal - rather than our share of their earnings, which in 1987
amounted to well over $100 million. On the other hand,
accounting rules provide that the carrying value of these three
holdings - owned, as they are, by insurance companies - must be
recorded on our balance sheet at current market prices. The
result: GAAP accounting lets us reflect in our net worth the upto-
date underlying values of the businesses we partially own, but
does not let us reflect their underlying earnings in our income
account.
In the case of our controlled companies, just the opposite
is true. Here, we show full earnings in our income account but
never change asset values on our balance sheet, no matter how
much the value of a business might have increased since we
purchased it.
在我们具有控制权的投资事业，情况却刚好相反，我们可以在损益表上
充分表示其获利状况，但不管这些资产在我们买下之后，价值在无形间如何地增加，
我们也无法在资产负债表上做任何的变动。
Our mental approach to this accounting schizophrenia is to
ignore GAAP figures and to focus solely on the future earning
power of both our controlled and non-controlled businesses.
Using this approach, we establish our own ideas of business
value, keeping these independent from both the accounting values
shown on our books for controlled companies and the values placed
by a sometimes foolish market on our partially-owned companies.
It is this business value that we hope to increase at a
reasonable (or, preferably, unreasonable) rate in the years
ahead.
我们对于这种会计精神分裂症的调整心态方式就是不去理会一般公认会计原则
所编制的数字，而只专注于这些具控制权或者是部份股权的公司，其未来的获利能力，
采用这种方法，我们依自己的概念建立一套企业价值的评价模式，它有别于会计帐上
所显示的具控制权的帐面投资成本以及有的时候高的离谱的部份股权投资市值，
这才是我们真正想要在未来年度持续稳定增加的数字(当然若能以不合理的速度成长的话更好)。
Marketable Securities – Other
其它有价证券
除了上述的三家重要投资事业，我们的保险公司也持有大量的有价证券，
主要可以分为五个类型，分别为：
(1)长期股票投资(2)长期固定收益债券(3)中期固定收益债券(4)短期约当现金(5)短期套利交易
In addition to our three permanent common stock holdings, we
hold large quantities of marketable securities in our insurance
companies. In selecting these, we can choose among five major
categories: (1) long-term common stock investments, (2) mediumterm
fixed-income securities, (3) long-term fixed income
securities, (4) short-term cash equivalents, and (5) short-term
arbitrage commitments.
对于这五种类型的交易，我们没有特别的偏好，我们只是持续不断地寻找
最高的税后报酬预计的数学期望值，且仅限于我们认为了解熟悉的投资，
我们无意让与短期的帐面盈余好看，我们的目标是让长期的净值极大化。
We have no particular bias when it comes to choosing from
these categories. We just continuously search among them for the
highest after-tax returns as measured by "mathematical
expectation," limiting ourselves always to investment
alternatives we think we understand. Our criteria have nothing
to do with maximizing immediately reportable earnings; our goal,
rather, is to maximize eventual net worth.
首先谈谈普通股投资，1987年股市的表现精彩连连，但最后指数却没有太大的进展，
道琼整个年度只涨了2.3%，你知道这就好象是在坐云霄飞车一样，
市场先生在十月以前爆跳如雷，但之后却突然收敛了下来。
o Let's look first at common stocks. During 1987 the stock
market was an area of much excitement but little net movement:
The Dow advanced 2.3% for the year. You are aware, of course, of
the roller coaster ride that produced this minor change. Mr.
Market was on a manic rampage until October and then experienced
a sudden, massive seizure.
市场上有所谓专业的投资人，掌管着数以亿万计的资金，就是这些人造成市场的动荡，
他们不去研究企业下一步发展的方向，反而专研于其它基金经理人下一步的动向，
对他们来说，股票只不过是赌博交易的筹码，就像是大富翁里的棋子一样。
We have "professional" investors, those who manage many
billions, to thank for most of this turmoil. Instead of focusing
on what businesses will do in the years ahead, many prestigious
money managers now focus on what they expect other money managers
to do in the days ahead. For them, stocks are merely tokens in a
game, like the thimble and flatiron in Monopoly.
他们的做法发展到极致，便形成所谓的投资组合保险，一个在1986到1987年间
广为基金经理人所接受的一种策略，这种策略只不过是像投机者停损单一样，
当投资组合或是类似指数期货价格下跌时就必须处分持股，这种策略不管如此，
只要下跌到一定程度便会涌出一大堆卖单，根据一份研究报告显示：
有高达600亿到900亿的股票投资在1987年十月中面临一触即发的险境。
An extreme example of what their attitude leads to is
"portfolio insurance," a money-management strategy that many
leading investment advisors embraced in 1986-1987. This strategy
- which is simply an exotically-labeled version of the small
speculator's stop-loss order dictates that ever increasing
portions of a stock portfolio, or their index-future equivalents,
be sold as prices decline. The strategy says nothing else
matters: A downtick of a given magnitude automatically produces a
huge sell order. According to the Brady Report, $60 billion to
$90 billion of equities were poised on this hair trigger in mid-
October of 1987.
若是你认为投资顾问是被请来投资的，那你就大错特错了，在买下一家农场后，
一个理性的主人会不会叫其不动产经纪人开始寻求可能的买主，只因为隔壁的农场
最近卖出的价格更低一些?或是你会不会一早起来就想要把你的房子卖掉，
只因为几分钟前你听到隔壁的房子以比以前便宜的价格脱手。
If you've thought that investment advisors were hired to
invest, you may be bewildered by this technique. After buying a
farm, would a rational owner next order his real estate agent to
start selling off pieces of it whenever a neighboring property
was sold at a lower price? Or would you sell your house to
whatever bidder was available at 9:31 on some morning merely
because at 9:30 a similar house sold for less than it would have
brought on the previous day?
这样的举动正是投资组合风险理论告诉退休基金或是学术单位当他们持有福特
或是通用电气部份股权时，应该要做的动作，因为这些公司的价值越被低估，
你就越应该赶快把他们处分掉，根据逻辑推论，这种方法还要求投资机构
在股价反弹时再把他们买回来，一想到有这么多的资金，掌握在整天沉溺在
爱莉丝梦游仙境般的经理人手中，也难怪股票市场会有如此不寻常的表现。
Moves like that, however, are what portfolio insurance tells
a pension fund or university to make when it owns a portion of
enterprises such as Ford or General Electric. The less these
companies are being valued at, says this approach, the more
vigorously they should be sold. As a "logical" corollary, the
approach commands the institutions to repurchase these companies
- I'm not making this up - once their prices have rebounded
significantly. Considering that huge sums are controlled by
managers following such Alice-in-Wonderland practices, is it any
surprise that markets sometimes behave in aberrational fashion?
然而许多评论家在观察最近所发生的事时，归纳出一个不正确的结论，
他们喜欢说由于股票市场掌握在这些投资大户手上，所以小额投资人
根本一点机会也没有，这种结论实在是大大地错误，不管资金多寡，
这样的市场绝对有利于任何投资者，只要他能够坚持自己的投资理念，
事实上由手握重金的基金经理人所造成的市场波动，反而使得真正的
投资人有更好的机会可以去贯彻其明智的投资行动，只要他在面临股市波动时，
不会因为财务或心理因素而被迫在不当的时机出脱手中持股，他就很难会受到伤害。
Many commentators, however, have drawn an incorrect
conclusion upon observing recent events: They are fond of saying
that the small investor has no chance in a market now dominated
by the erratic behavior of the big boys. This conclusion is dead
wrong: Such markets are ideal for any investor - small or large -
so long as he sticks to his investment knitting. Volatility
caused by money managers who speculate irrationally with huge
sums will offer the true investor more chances to make
intelligent investment moves. He can be hurt by such volatility
only if he is forced, by either financial or psychological
pressures, to sell at untoward times.
在Berkshire过去几年，我们在股票市场实在没有什么可以发挥的地方，
在十月的那段期间，有几支股票跌到相当吸引我们的价位，不过我们没有
能够在他们反弹之前买到够多的股份，在1987年底除了永久的持股与
短期的套利之外，我们并没有新增任何主要的股票投资组合(指5,000万美元以上)，
不过你大可以放心，一旦市场先生一定会给我们机会的时候，我们一定会好好把握住的。
At Berkshire, we have found little to do in stocks during
the past few years. During the break in October, a few stocks
fell to prices that interested us, but we were unable to make
meaningful purchases before they rebounded. At yearend 1987 we
had no major common stock investments (that is, over $50 million)
other than those we consider permanent or arbitrage holdings.
However, Mr. Market will offer us opportunities - you can be sure
of that - and, when he does, we will be willing and able to
participate.
至于我们主要的资金避风港-中期的免税债券，在去年我已经解释过其特点，
虽然在1987年间我们也有进出，但整个部位变化不大，总金额约在9亿美元左右，
大部分的债券是属于1986年税务改革法案中祖父级的债券，不同于现在
保险公司新买进的债券，他们享有百分之百免税的优惠。
o In the meantime, our major parking place for money is
medium-term tax-exempt bonds, whose limited virtues I explained
in last year's annual report. Though we both bought and sold
some of these bonds in 1987, our position changed little overall,
holding around $900 million. A large portion of our bonds are
