氣候變化之所以出現，全因空氣中的二氧化碳增加所致，在近200年以來，特別是最近30年，二氧化碳迅速增加，使地面溫度上升，因而令氣候失去平衡，以致極端天氣出現。
為何二氧化碳會增加呢？因為18世紀初，人們發明了蒸汽機，導致工業革命的出現，大量工廠帶動大批量生產，加上社會城市化，因而促進了貿易發展，再而產生了消費型經濟，以上所說的生產、運輸等過程都要靠能量來支撐，因而浪費了很多能量。
此外，在消費主義下，人類好像中了毒，要不斷消費，造就了物質化生活，人類生活已被物質文明所控制，人與人之間的關係基於物質，人們身上擁有太多不必要的東西，以致失去自我價值，生活得不快樂。
只要大家減少排放二氧化碳，就等於過一些簡樸的生活，當人脫離物質生活後，心情就會開朗些，人與人之間的關係也會好些，簡單生活就會快樂。
2010年10月31日星期日
2010年10月10日星期日
任志剛﹕金融大亂勿入市
警告股價跌三四成 息口升5厘
【明報專訊】在美國狂印銀紙的量化寬鬆貨幣政策下，熱錢持續流入香港，前金管局總裁、現中國金融學會執行副會長任志剛公開警告，現時國際金融市場是百年一遇的混亂情，風險近似1997年和2008年的兩次金融風暴。他呼籲市民避免入市炒賣，要問自己能否承受股票隨時下跌三四成、息口上升5厘的壓力。
任志剛形容，「現在這個世界，尤其是在金融領域上，是百年一遇很混亂的情，我未曾見過在國際金融體系裏出現過這樣的形勢。流動資金非常多，炒到合合，經濟又不好，這個破壞性有可能好大的」。
「百年一遇 破壞可能好大」
任志剛表示現時金融市場和實體經濟已經脫節，就如97年亞洲金融風暴及08和09年金融海嘯般，若脫節到某個階段，當有什麼事情刺激到金融市場內的人們，「便一齊走，bye bye囉，又一次泡沫爆破」。
他特別提醒市民不要炒賣，「我覺得現在市場情是等待有什麼東西刺激它再上升或者刺激它大幅下調。作為一個小投資者或小市民，很難捕捉到那個轉勢，所以小心些為妙」。他說，雖然現時儲錢入銀行沒有利息可收，股價又似乎每天都上升一些，很吸引人。但大家應想想如果資產下調很厲害時，我會蝕30、40％，沒息收總比蝕30、40％好」。
「沒息收總比蝕30、40％好」
任志剛建議政府、企業以至個人都應該為自己做壓力測試，「如果股票跌30、40％，或利息起5％時候，我會否有問題呢？」
任志剛提倡以加息5％作壓力測試，匯豐銀行亞太區業務策略及經濟顧問梁兆基說，金管局早前要求銀行借出按揭時，按加息2％的假設做壓力測試已足夠，因美國短期內加息超過2％的可能不大。他又認為，只要市民認清投機風險很大，超低息環境不會永遠持續，應不致出現任志剛所擔心局面。
新鴻基地產（0016）代理執行董事周國賢稱，在美國量化寬鬆之下，市民將手頭資金投入樓市或其他投資工具實在所難免。只要大家不抱「以小博大」的心態便可以。
對於近日國際財經報刊頻以「貨幣戰爭」形容國際匯率市場，任志剛昨接受商台節目《政經星期六》訪問時表示，「戰爭兩個字比較煽情了些」，他指美國並非刻意「搞亂人檔攤」，而是想搞好本土經濟，但沒考慮自己作為世界儲備貨幣國家及全球最大經濟體，其貨幣政策對其他國家有多大影響。
質疑量化寬鬆「風險愈大」
然而，對於量化寬鬆的做法，任志剛質疑成效不大，因為「愈落得多（藥）風險愈大，因為邊際效果一定會低」。另一個導致量化寬鬆政策無法改善實體經濟的因素，是銀行寧願選擇在高風險的金融市場炒賣賺錢，都不願意辛辛苦苦去找一些信貸能力好的企業，借給他們搞活經濟。
金融唔應該有自己嘅生命
其實金融只係支持經濟，佢唔應該有自己嘅生命。
當佢有咗自己嘅生命，大家喺金融市場裏面炒嚟炒去時，又一次金融市場同實體經濟脫節。
脫節到某一個階段時，大家一齊走，講拜拜，又會嚟一個泡沫爆破。
-- 任志剛 2010.10.10
當佢有咗自己嘅生命，大家喺金融市場裏面炒嚟炒去時，又一次金融市場同實體經濟脫節。
脫節到某一個階段時，大家一齊走，講拜拜，又會嚟一個泡沫爆破。
-- 任志剛 2010.10.10
2010年3月19日星期五
五年後你在幹嘛 - 李恕權的故事
我讓我與你分享一段小故事，或許在這個階段，可以很實際地幫助你我走出目前的困境。
一九七六年的冬天，當時我十九歲，在休士頓太空總署的大空梭實驗室裡工作，同時也在總署旁邊的休士頓大學主修電腦。縱然忙於學校、睡眠與工作之間，這幾乎佔據了我一天二十四小時的全部時間，但只要有多餘的一分鐘，我總是會把所有的精力放在我的音樂創作上。
我知道寫歌詞不是我的專長，所以在這段日子裡，我處處尋找一位善寫歌詞的搭檔，與我一起合作創作。我認識了一位朋友，她的名字叫凡內芮（Valerie Johnson）。
自從二十多年前離開德州後，就再也沒聽過她的消息，但是她卻在我事業的起步時，給了我最大的鼓勵。
僅十九歲的凡內芮在德州的詩詞比賽中，不知得過多少獎牌。她的寫作總是讓我愛不釋手，當時我們的確合寫了許多很好的作品，一直到今天，我仍然認為這些作品充滿了特色與創意。
一個星期六的週末，凡內芮又熱情地邀請我至她家的牧場烤肉。她的家族是德州有名的石油大亨，擁有龐大的牧場。她的家庭踓然極為富有，但她的穿著、所開的車，與她謙卑誠懇待人的態度，更讓我加倍地打從心底佩服她。
凡內芮知道我對音樂的執著。然而，面對那遙遠的音樂界及整個美國陌生的唱片市場，我們一點管道都沒有。此時，我們兩個人坐在德州的鄉下，我們哪知道下一步該加何走。突然間，她冒出了一句話：Visualize What you are doing in 5 years？﹙想像你五年後在做什麼？﹚
我愣了一下。她轉過身來，手指著我說：「嘿！告訴我，你心目中『最希望』五年後的你在做什麼，你那個時候的生活是一個什麼樣子？
我還來不及回答，她又搶著說：「別急，你先仔細想想，完全想好，確定後再說出來。」我沉思了幾分鐘，開始告訴她：
第一：五年後我希望能有一張很受歡迎的唱片在市場上發行，可以得到許多人的肯定。
第二：我要住在一個有很多很多音樂的地方，能天天與一些世界一流的樂師一起工作。
凡內芮說；「你確定了嗎？」我慢慢穩穩地回答，而且拉了一個很長的Yessssss！凡內芮接著說：「好，既然你確定了，我們就把這個目標倒算回來。
「如果第五年，你要有一張唱片在市場上發行，那麼你的第四年一定是要跟一家唱片公司簽上合約。」
「那麼你的第三年一定是要有一個完整的作品，可以拿給很多很多的唱片公司聽對不對？」
「那麼你的第二年，一定要有很棒的作品開始錄音了。」
「那麼你的第一年，就一定要把你所有要準備錄音的作品全部編曲，排練就位準備好。」
「那麼你的第六個月，就是要把那些沒有完成的作品修飾好，然後讓你自己可以逐一篩選。」
「那麼你的第一個月就是要把目前這幾首曲子完工。」
「那麼你的第一個禮拜就是要先列出一整個清單，排出哪些曲子需要修改，哪些需要完工。」
「好了，我們現在不就已經知道你下個星期一要做什麼了嗎?」凡內芮笑笑地說。
「喔，對了。你還說你五年後，要生活在一個有很多音樂的地方，然後與許多一流樂師一起忙、創作，對嗎？」她急忙地補充說。
「如果，你的第五年已經在與這些人一起工作，那麼你的第四年照道理應該有你自己的一個工作室或錄音室。那麼你的第三年，可能是先跟這個圈子裡的人在一起工作。那麼你的第二年，應該不是住在德州，而是已經住在紐約或是洛杉磯了。」
次年(一九七七年)，我辭掉了令許多人羨慕的太空總署的工作，離開了休士頓，搬到洛杉磯。
說也奇怪：不敢說是恰好五年，但大約可說是第六年。一九八三年，我的唱片在亞洲開始暢銷起來，我一天二十四小時幾乎全都忙著與一些頂尖的音樂高手，日出日落地一起工作。
每當我在最困惑的時候，我會靜下來問我自己：恕權，五年後你『最希望』看到你自己在做什麼？
如果，你自己都不知道這個答案的話，你又知何要求別人或上帝為你做選擇或開路呢？
別忘了！在生命中，上帝已經把所有「選擇」的權力交在我們的手上了。
如果，你對你的生命經常在問「為什麼會這樣？」
「為什麼會那樣？」的時候，你不妨試著問一下自己，你曾否很「清清楚楚」地知道你自己要的是什麼？
一九七六年的冬天，當時我十九歲，在休士頓太空總署的大空梭實驗室裡工作，同時也在總署旁邊的休士頓大學主修電腦。縱然忙於學校、睡眠與工作之間，這幾乎佔據了我一天二十四小時的全部時間，但只要有多餘的一分鐘，我總是會把所有的精力放在我的音樂創作上。
我知道寫歌詞不是我的專長，所以在這段日子裡，我處處尋找一位善寫歌詞的搭檔，與我一起合作創作。我認識了一位朋友，她的名字叫凡內芮（Valerie Johnson）。
自從二十多年前離開德州後，就再也沒聽過她的消息，但是她卻在我事業的起步時，給了我最大的鼓勵。
僅十九歲的凡內芮在德州的詩詞比賽中，不知得過多少獎牌。她的寫作總是讓我愛不釋手，當時我們的確合寫了許多很好的作品，一直到今天，我仍然認為這些作品充滿了特色與創意。
一個星期六的週末，凡內芮又熱情地邀請我至她家的牧場烤肉。她的家族是德州有名的石油大亨，擁有龐大的牧場。她的家庭踓然極為富有，但她的穿著、所開的車，與她謙卑誠懇待人的態度，更讓我加倍地打從心底佩服她。
凡內芮知道我對音樂的執著。然而，面對那遙遠的音樂界及整個美國陌生的唱片市場，我們一點管道都沒有。此時，我們兩個人坐在德州的鄉下，我們哪知道下一步該加何走。突然間，她冒出了一句話：Visualize What you are doing in 5 years？﹙想像你五年後在做什麼？﹚
我愣了一下。她轉過身來，手指著我說：「嘿！告訴我，你心目中『最希望』五年後的你在做什麼，你那個時候的生活是一個什麼樣子？
我還來不及回答，她又搶著說：「別急，你先仔細想想，完全想好，確定後再說出來。」我沉思了幾分鐘，開始告訴她：
第一：五年後我希望能有一張很受歡迎的唱片在市場上發行，可以得到許多人的肯定。
第二：我要住在一個有很多很多音樂的地方，能天天與一些世界一流的樂師一起工作。
凡內芮說；「你確定了嗎？」我慢慢穩穩地回答，而且拉了一個很長的Yessssss！凡內芮接著說：「好，既然你確定了，我們就把這個目標倒算回來。
「如果第五年，你要有一張唱片在市場上發行，那麼你的第四年一定是要跟一家唱片公司簽上合約。」
「那麼你的第三年一定是要有一個完整的作品，可以拿給很多很多的唱片公司聽對不對？」
「那麼你的第二年，一定要有很棒的作品開始錄音了。」
「那麼你的第一年，就一定要把你所有要準備錄音的作品全部編曲，排練就位準備好。」
「那麼你的第六個月，就是要把那些沒有完成的作品修飾好，然後讓你自己可以逐一篩選。」
「那麼你的第一個月就是要把目前這幾首曲子完工。」
「那麼你的第一個禮拜就是要先列出一整個清單，排出哪些曲子需要修改，哪些需要完工。」
「好了，我們現在不就已經知道你下個星期一要做什麼了嗎?」凡內芮笑笑地說。
「喔，對了。你還說你五年後，要生活在一個有很多音樂的地方，然後與許多一流樂師一起忙、創作，對嗎？」她急忙地補充說。
「如果，你的第五年已經在與這些人一起工作，那麼你的第四年照道理應該有你自己的一個工作室或錄音室。那麼你的第三年，可能是先跟這個圈子裡的人在一起工作。那麼你的第二年，應該不是住在德州，而是已經住在紐約或是洛杉磯了。」
次年(一九七七年)，我辭掉了令許多人羨慕的太空總署的工作，離開了休士頓，搬到洛杉磯。
說也奇怪：不敢說是恰好五年，但大約可說是第六年。一九八三年，我的唱片在亞洲開始暢銷起來，我一天二十四小時幾乎全都忙著與一些頂尖的音樂高手，日出日落地一起工作。
每當我在最困惑的時候，我會靜下來問我自己：恕權，五年後你『最希望』看到你自己在做什麼？
如果，你自己都不知道這個答案的話，你又知何要求別人或上帝為你做選擇或開路呢？
別忘了！在生命中，上帝已經把所有「選擇」的權力交在我們的手上了。
如果，你對你的生命經常在問「為什麼會這樣？」
「為什麼會那樣？」的時候，你不妨試著問一下自己，你曾否很「清清楚楚」地知道你自己要的是什麼？
2010年1月24日星期日
女人要的不是禮物，是感動
說到底，女人要的不是驚喜，不是驚嚇，要的只是溫暖和感動。
所以，還是抒情吧！這樣的話，一切禮物都是值得珍惜的。
每年2月15日，女友間的八卦電話就特別頻繁，誰都想知道自己收到的情人節禮物，到底是不是全宇宙最奇妙的那個。只有小女生才會攀比禮物的價格，女人不過是想看看男人肯不肯對自己用心思而已。
基本上，情人節禮物這種東西很難帶來驚喜，最好也不過是搔到癢處。比如，這位姑娘正缺一套天價的面霜或某款限量版皮包，或有物質之外的某種寄托感情的東西會深深震撼到她。如果禮物正中下懷，就少了幾分驚喜，因爲那時男人平素旁敲側擊得來的滿意結果。其實我們不指望驚喜，而且大部分情況下，禮物都是驚嚇。因爲女人的邏輯完全不明白他爲什麽會選擇這樣的東西當禮物：送我圍裙或洗碗機，是說我有當全職主婦的潛質嗎，但爲什麽要在今天送呢？送我WII和遊戲機，根本是你自己想玩吧？至於那種小小的紅線玉石挂墜，我知道泥石流用心挑選的，可我真的不喜歡啊！
這些話都是内心獨白。就算受了驚嚇也要咬緊牙關面容抽搐地說：“謝謝你，親愛的，我很喜歡。”因爲，其實男人能想起在這天送禮物就相當不錯了。總比那種堅持“本人不過一切沒有意義的洋節”或者“形式主義是不必要的，只要我感情好就夠了”的強。當然，希望在這天把姑娘拖上床的男人會在禮物上格外用心，因爲禮物本身就是引誘至關重要得一環。誰不希望這是個全程浪漫的夜晚呢？從精美的大束鮮花開始，到全城最高點俯瞰夜景的豪華餐廳，席間再掏出一只頂級珠寶的小盒子，然後攜手奔赴五星級酒店的豪華套房…… 假如剛好這個男人也是你中意的，又有誰不會被擊倒呢？
所謂失望，通常是因爲期望太高。很多時候，都是把情人節的意義看得過於重大，才會導致情緒起伏。要是平日受到這些禮物，沒準也真得開心。要知道女人彆扭起來是不得了的：禮物是昂貴的名牌，他會覺得你只用前來表達卻不肯花費心思；是日常用品的話，哪怕是當下正需要的東西，她又會覺得你不夠浪漫太過實際；要是別出心裁的小禮物，她又會對著其他虎年受到名牌發酸，人威尼斯捨不得給她花錢…… 並不是禮物可以促進感情，而是只要有感情，送什麽都會覺得是麥琪的禮物，反之，一律不合心意。
所以，千百年來，女人要的不過就是一顆男人的真心。說到底，女人要的不是驚喜，不是驚嚇，要的只是溫暖和感動。所以，還是抒情吧！這樣的話，一切禮物都是值得珍惜的。
所以，還是抒情吧！這樣的話，一切禮物都是值得珍惜的。
每年2月15日，女友間的八卦電話就特別頻繁，誰都想知道自己收到的情人節禮物，到底是不是全宇宙最奇妙的那個。只有小女生才會攀比禮物的價格，女人不過是想看看男人肯不肯對自己用心思而已。
基本上，情人節禮物這種東西很難帶來驚喜，最好也不過是搔到癢處。比如，這位姑娘正缺一套天價的面霜或某款限量版皮包，或有物質之外的某種寄托感情的東西會深深震撼到她。如果禮物正中下懷，就少了幾分驚喜，因爲那時男人平素旁敲側擊得來的滿意結果。其實我們不指望驚喜，而且大部分情況下，禮物都是驚嚇。因爲女人的邏輯完全不明白他爲什麽會選擇這樣的東西當禮物：送我圍裙或洗碗機，是說我有當全職主婦的潛質嗎，但爲什麽要在今天送呢？送我WII和遊戲機，根本是你自己想玩吧？至於那種小小的紅線玉石挂墜，我知道泥石流用心挑選的，可我真的不喜歡啊！
這些話都是内心獨白。就算受了驚嚇也要咬緊牙關面容抽搐地說：“謝謝你，親愛的，我很喜歡。”因爲，其實男人能想起在這天送禮物就相當不錯了。總比那種堅持“本人不過一切沒有意義的洋節”或者“形式主義是不必要的，只要我感情好就夠了”的強。當然，希望在這天把姑娘拖上床的男人會在禮物上格外用心，因爲禮物本身就是引誘至關重要得一環。誰不希望這是個全程浪漫的夜晚呢？從精美的大束鮮花開始，到全城最高點俯瞰夜景的豪華餐廳，席間再掏出一只頂級珠寶的小盒子，然後攜手奔赴五星級酒店的豪華套房…… 假如剛好這個男人也是你中意的，又有誰不會被擊倒呢？
所謂失望，通常是因爲期望太高。很多時候，都是把情人節的意義看得過於重大，才會導致情緒起伏。要是平日受到這些禮物，沒準也真得開心。要知道女人彆扭起來是不得了的：禮物是昂貴的名牌，他會覺得你只用前來表達卻不肯花費心思；是日常用品的話，哪怕是當下正需要的東西，她又會覺得你不夠浪漫太過實際；要是別出心裁的小禮物，她又會對著其他虎年受到名牌發酸，人威尼斯捨不得給她花錢…… 並不是禮物可以促進感情，而是只要有感情，送什麽都會覺得是麥琪的禮物，反之，一律不合心意。
所以，千百年來，女人要的不過就是一顆男人的真心。說到底，女人要的不是驚喜，不是驚嚇，要的只是溫暖和感動。所以，還是抒情吧！這樣的話，一切禮物都是值得珍惜的。
2009年9月22日星期二
股票的買賣到底是以多長為周期？
股市每天都有起起跌跌，消息每天也變幻無窮，聽著別人的故事更讓自己寢食不安，人一進入市場中就顯得很躁動。
華爾街市場給人最深刻的觀感恐怕就是交易員繁忙的手勢，無法讓人平靜下來，難道進入股市就只讓人心浮氣躁嗎？
浮躁的人往往是買在頂部，卻拋在底部。缺乏的就是對一個公司價值的判斷，更多的卻是“貪婪與恐懼”。有一個很好的辦法，可以幫助改善“浮躁型”的投資模式，只要對股市的波動引入“周期”的概念，往往會很好地克服股市中的“低拋高吸”。
眾所周知，在我們市場中，最小的交易周期是“天”，在美國，最少的交易周期是“秒”，就是上一秒買入，下一秒就可以賣出。但是上一秒買入的，哪怕下一秒就漲1%，這個操作結果就很快讓人變成世界首富。所以，股票的買賣倒底是以日為周期，還是以“周”“月”“年”為周期？決定了人在股市中的心態。
買了就想漲停板的人肯定是以“日”為周期，這樣的投資者在市場上跑進跑出相當累，但往往是券商佣金和證券印花稅的貢獻人，以年為周期可以參考一年的定期存款利率，選擇幾個好股票，一放一年，從A股的經驗看跑贏定期存款的年份十有八九，即使是一年套住了，兩年扳回還是賺，心態好做得還輕松。
我個人最推崇的周期是“季”，一年4次左右的操作，最符合A股市場利潤最大化的規律。據新東風無憂價值網行業決策平台統計，去年A股換手率最高的行業是“其他交通設備制造業”，一年換手大約12.7次，但整個行業過去一年下跌25%，而換手最低的石化行業，一年平均漲幅37%，再次驗證了以前的一個總結，即炒的不漲，漲得不炒，而換手4次左右的行業，如鋼鐵、公共服務、傳媒、轎車等一年漲幅都在35%左右，其中轎車達到148%。
周期太短不好，太長呢？個人認為，只有看清長周期，才能有更長遠的眼界，目前的A股，放到一個新經濟周期，5-8年的這個長周期去看，雖然現在會有起伏，但卻是處在一個長周期的“原點”位置，現在25倍市盈率均值，60倍市盈率中值，放到動態的長周期去看，也處在起飛的原點。去年10月底我說，這樣便宜的股票今後幾年可能都看不到了，但即使指數漲了70%，只是修正了一段不該下跌的錯誤而已，現在仍然是長周期的起始位置。可能每輪經濟周期頭兩年的市場上上下下比較難熬，但之後一定是牛市的繁榮。
所以投資要講周期，我個人最為推崇的是三個月的中度周期加上五年的長周期，就像三個月定期存款加上五年定期存款相結合的投資。
2009年9月9日星期三
Market crisis 'will happen again'
The world will suffer another financial crisis, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan has told the BBC.
"The crisis will happen again but it will be different," he told BBC Two's The Love of Money series.
He added that he had predicted the crash would come as a reaction to a long period of prosperity.
But while it may take time and be a difficult process, the global economy would eventually "get through it", Mr Greenspan added.
"They [financial crises] are all different, but they have one fundamental source," he said.
"That is the unquenchable capability of human beings when confronted with long periods of prosperity to presume that it will continue."
Speaking a year after the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers, which was followed by a worldwide financial crisis and global recession, Mr Greenspan described the behaviour as "human nature".
He said the current crisis was triggered by the trade in US sub-prime mortgages - home loans given to people with bad credit histories - but he added that any factor could have been the catalyst.
If it were not the problem of these toxic debts "something sooner or later would have emerged", Mr Greenspan said.
Risks
Mr Greenspan, who when he ran the US central bank was hailed as a man who could move markets, also warned that the world's financial institutions should have seen the looming crisis.
"The bankers knew that they were involved in an under-pricing of risk and that at some point a correction would be made," he said.
"I fear too many of them thought they would be able to spot the actual trigger point of the crisis in time to get out."
He also warned that Britain, with its globally-focused economy, would be harder hit than the US by the current recession and collapse in world trade.
"Obviously we've both suffered very considerably but ... Britain is more globally oriented as an economy and the dramatic decline in exports globally and trade generally following the collapse of Lehman Brothers had dramatic effects in the financial system of Britain," Mr Greenspan said.
"It's going to take a long while for you [Britain] to work your way through this."
Road to recovery
In order to prevent the situation arising again financiers and governments should look to clamp down on fraud and increase capital requirements for banks, the former central banker said.
Greenspan view on global economy
Regulations targeting the latter would mean banks would be forced to hold enough money to cover their normal operations and honour withdrawals.
However despite his belief in a brighter future, the former Fed chief did warn that the path to recovery should steer clear of protectionism as applying strict regulations could hamper recent developments that have opened up global trade.
"The most recent endeavour to re-regulate is a reaction to the crisis. The extraordinary impact of these global markets is making a lot of financial people feeling they have lost control.
"The problem is you cannot have free global trade with highly restrictive, regulated domestic markets."
Historic event
During the interview for BBC Two's The Love of Money series, the former Fed chief said the current economic crisis was a "once in a century type of event", and one that he did not expect to witness.
Blamed by some for not doing more to prevent the crisis, Mr Greenspan denied any responsibility for the problems gripping the global economy.
"It's human nature, unless somebody can find a way to change human nature, we will have more crises and none of them will look like this because no two crises have anything in common, except human nature."
"The crisis will happen again but it will be different," he told BBC Two's The Love of Money series.
He added that he had predicted the crash would come as a reaction to a long period of prosperity.
But while it may take time and be a difficult process, the global economy would eventually "get through it", Mr Greenspan added.
"They [financial crises] are all different, but they have one fundamental source," he said.
"That is the unquenchable capability of human beings when confronted with long periods of prosperity to presume that it will continue."
Speaking a year after the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers, which was followed by a worldwide financial crisis and global recession, Mr Greenspan described the behaviour as "human nature".
He said the current crisis was triggered by the trade in US sub-prime mortgages - home loans given to people with bad credit histories - but he added that any factor could have been the catalyst.
If it were not the problem of these toxic debts "something sooner or later would have emerged", Mr Greenspan said.
Risks
Mr Greenspan, who when he ran the US central bank was hailed as a man who could move markets, also warned that the world's financial institutions should have seen the looming crisis.
"The bankers knew that they were involved in an under-pricing of risk and that at some point a correction would be made," he said.
"I fear too many of them thought they would be able to spot the actual trigger point of the crisis in time to get out."
He also warned that Britain, with its globally-focused economy, would be harder hit than the US by the current recession and collapse in world trade.
"Obviously we've both suffered very considerably but ... Britain is more globally oriented as an economy and the dramatic decline in exports globally and trade generally following the collapse of Lehman Brothers had dramatic effects in the financial system of Britain," Mr Greenspan said.
"It's going to take a long while for you [Britain] to work your way through this."
Road to recovery
In order to prevent the situation arising again financiers and governments should look to clamp down on fraud and increase capital requirements for banks, the former central banker said.
Greenspan view on global economy
Regulations targeting the latter would mean banks would be forced to hold enough money to cover their normal operations and honour withdrawals.
However despite his belief in a brighter future, the former Fed chief did warn that the path to recovery should steer clear of protectionism as applying strict regulations could hamper recent developments that have opened up global trade.
"The most recent endeavour to re-regulate is a reaction to the crisis. The extraordinary impact of these global markets is making a lot of financial people feeling they have lost control.
"The problem is you cannot have free global trade with highly restrictive, regulated domestic markets."
Historic event
During the interview for BBC Two's The Love of Money series, the former Fed chief said the current economic crisis was a "once in a century type of event", and one that he did not expect to witness.
Blamed by some for not doing more to prevent the crisis, Mr Greenspan denied any responsibility for the problems gripping the global economy.
"It's human nature, unless somebody can find a way to change human nature, we will have more crises and none of them will look like this because no two crises have anything in common, except human nature."
2009年8月9日星期日
中國國情
有一種理論，對中國的民主、人權前景表示樂觀。理論的根據是，歷史上，歐洲在資本主義興起之後，產生了中產階級，中產階級力量逐漸增大，導致了民主、政治革命。理論說，中國經濟發展，也湧現中產階級，所以歷史會循跡前進，中國的民主政治改革，也就有厚望焉。
這種理論十分「想當然」，以為歷史上在歐洲發生過的事，在中國也會發生。卻不理會歐洲是歐洲，中國是中國。「什麼事情中國鬼一上身，就不一樣了。」（林語堂語，大意），最常聽到的「中國國情不同」，確然顛撲不破。
讀侯文詠評《金瓶梅》鴻文，其中一節，極明白地說明了這個問題：「……商人一旦開始發財，他們想到的，不是如何向統治者爭取『人權』、『財產權』，反過來，只是被動地附庸在封建制度的權力結構底，試圖得到庇護並且分享權力的一杯羮。在這樣的情況下，商業動力不但沒有促進社會制度，反而只是更加鞏固了原先那個封建社會裏不公平的一切……」
文章評的是西門慶，因為精采，所以放在當今來看，正是如今的現實寫照。如今在「經濟起飛」中「先富起來」的那一群新階級，不是本來就是封建權力上層的關係群，就是依附權力才取得利益的奴群，最好的情形，不屬於以上兩種，也在取得利益之後，忙不迭依附權勢。形態雖然不同，而「西門慶」則一，那是典型的中國國情，中國特色的表現。
所以，歐洲歷史上發生過的中產階級壯大，導致民主自由人權的大發展，不會在中國出現。這一點，其實只消看看香港那些厚顏無恥依附權勢者的嘴臉，就能明白了。那些，大多數還是根本不必向權勢屈膝的，可是，奴性，正也是國情啊！
這種理論十分「想當然」，以為歷史上在歐洲發生過的事，在中國也會發生。卻不理會歐洲是歐洲，中國是中國。「什麼事情中國鬼一上身，就不一樣了。」（林語堂語，大意），最常聽到的「中國國情不同」，確然顛撲不破。
讀侯文詠評《金瓶梅》鴻文，其中一節，極明白地說明了這個問題：「……商人一旦開始發財，他們想到的，不是如何向統治者爭取『人權』、『財產權』，反過來，只是被動地附庸在封建制度的權力結構底，試圖得到庇護並且分享權力的一杯羮。在這樣的情況下，商業動力不但沒有促進社會制度，反而只是更加鞏固了原先那個封建社會裏不公平的一切……」
文章評的是西門慶，因為精采，所以放在當今來看，正是如今的現實寫照。如今在「經濟起飛」中「先富起來」的那一群新階級，不是本來就是封建權力上層的關係群，就是依附權力才取得利益的奴群，最好的情形，不屬於以上兩種，也在取得利益之後，忙不迭依附權勢。形態雖然不同，而「西門慶」則一，那是典型的中國國情，中國特色的表現。
所以，歐洲歷史上發生過的中產階級壯大，導致民主自由人權的大發展，不會在中國出現。這一點，其實只消看看香港那些厚顏無恥依附權勢者的嘴臉，就能明白了。那些，大多數還是根本不必向權勢屈膝的，可是，奴性，正也是國情啊！
2009年7月30日星期四
狎玩才女
好一篇擊中要害的文章啊！
2009年07月30日
A貨才女的問世，是對葉公好龍式社會的救贖。在一個追求形式主義男女平等的社會裏，男人們本質上仍是大男人，認定女人是較次等的生物，供男性狎玩，女性的身體可以像貨物那樣合法買賣，論次計價，或者買斷。由援交女生，到娛樂版上賣身或者賣子宮的名人，做的都是皮肉生意，所以，嫁人等於尋找一張長期飯票，是男人與女人的共識。
明明是一個未開化的農業社會，卻偏偏要包裝成國際都會，營造男女平等的假象，明明由睾丸素決定巿場，硅膠比智慧更受歡迎，卻偏偏要裝出開明的樣子，允許女人以食腦的方式跟男人逐鹿中原。表面上我們高呼男女平等，內心深處，女人有着找個男人來依賴、「我要嫁個有錢人」的情意結，而男人，對比自己聰明的女人充滿揮之不去的恐懼和忌憚。
有了這樣的社會背景， A貨才女應運而生。這才是男人們真正想要的才女，她們幹的是才女的勾當，比如出書寫歌，腦袋空無一物，連小學生作文的至低要求：寫正確的字都沒能做到，更遑論獨立思考。男人們捧着才女的著作，像玩尋寶遊戲那樣玩着尋找錯別字的遊戲，胸中湧起複雜的情愫，掃盲的豪氣和憐香惜玉的柔情糾結纏綿，他們的腎上腺素極速分泌，確信自己仍是世界的主人。
做男人的最高境界，不是狎玩女人的身體，而是狎玩才女的腦袋。
2009年6月19日星期五
The last and the Best
2009年06月19日
去新開的美國漢堡包店，餐牌上的宣傳字句寫： the last great hamburger。最後的好東西，此一家之後別無更好的。敢於聲稱自己是最後的，牙擦擦，信心爆棚，不怕貨比貨。有一些食店，喜歡說自己是 the best in town，全城最佳，鶴立雞群。時常就慕這些最佳美名，摸進去試味，看看是否名副其實。
比起來， the last比 the best更高招。即如說，最後一個情人與最佳情人的分別。最佳當然是好，但不是例必留得住芳心。也許過後想起來，還是覺得你最好，走過千山萬水，回頭縱是恍然大悟，也已經不是岸。
然而，「最後」則有一點警嚇性，這裏已經是蘇州啦，再錯過就冇艇搭。那是不是最好？你話呢，總之你也可以去試試看別的。就因為心裏有了這層顧忌，難免有點忐忑。 The last像是一種悠長的嘆息，彷彿前面已無去路，就算有，風景已經是另一回事。最後的皇帝承接了整個帝國的餘暉，獨自享用末日的美麗與蒼涼，其精神境界開闊而唏噓。最後的情人，修成正果，陪君最後一段路。
年輕時意氣用事，覺得要做就做最佳，地位超然：還是你最好。稍年長，發現做「神主牌」被封聖真沒甚麼好，四野無人無敵最寂寞。做最後，長相廝守到盡頭，埋單計數還是有賺。不要做你的「最佳」，偏要做你的「最後」，在我之後，已沒有別的人，別的包。
去新開的美國漢堡包店，餐牌上的宣傳字句寫： the last great hamburger。最後的好東西，此一家之後別無更好的。敢於聲稱自己是最後的，牙擦擦，信心爆棚，不怕貨比貨。有一些食店，喜歡說自己是 the best in town，全城最佳，鶴立雞群。時常就慕這些最佳美名，摸進去試味，看看是否名副其實。
比起來， the last比 the best更高招。即如說，最後一個情人與最佳情人的分別。最佳當然是好，但不是例必留得住芳心。也許過後想起來，還是覺得你最好，走過千山萬水，回頭縱是恍然大悟，也已經不是岸。
然而，「最後」則有一點警嚇性，這裏已經是蘇州啦，再錯過就冇艇搭。那是不是最好？你話呢，總之你也可以去試試看別的。就因為心裏有了這層顧忌，難免有點忐忑。 The last像是一種悠長的嘆息，彷彿前面已無去路，就算有，風景已經是另一回事。最後的皇帝承接了整個帝國的餘暉，獨自享用末日的美麗與蒼涼，其精神境界開闊而唏噓。最後的情人，修成正果，陪君最後一段路。
年輕時意氣用事，覺得要做就做最佳，地位超然：還是你最好。稍年長，發現做「神主牌」被封聖真沒甚麼好，四野無人無敵最寂寞。做最後，長相廝守到盡頭，埋單計數還是有賺。不要做你的「最佳」，偏要做你的「最後」，在我之後，已沒有別的人，別的包。
2009年6月8日星期一
麥樸思：大牛市年底才來
2009-06-08 05:03:41
「新興市場之父」料短期大上大落【明報專訊】「新興市場之父」麥樸思（Mark Mobius），在今年3月說環球股市的牛市已在成形中，但至近期，他卻說真正的牛市要至年底才重臨。那麼到底現在是不是牛市呢？身為鄧普頓資產管理董事總經理的麥樸思，上周接受本報訪問時說，真正的大牛市年底才出現，未來半年股市仍會大上大落，投資者的策略應是每遇調整便趁低吸納。
「大家必須要小心，即使是牛市，也不會不停地上揚，總會有大幅波動，波動市中會吸引人買買賣賣。」
最快明年重上30000
麥樸思說，新興市場自去年底的低位，已升了超過一倍，而大部分市場距離2007年底的歷史高位，仍低了四成至五成，意味上升的空間不小。他估計新興市場股市，在一至兩年後將可以升破07年的高位。
「股市每個周期一般為3至4年，便可以升破之前的高位。」港股在07年10月底見頂，若3至4年後可重返高位，即在明年或2011年便有機會再見32000點。「反映市場情緒最好的指標，是新興市場政府債券孳息率，與美國國庫券孳息率之間的息差。在07年大牛市時，息差低至1.5厘，在金融海嘯最高峰時，曾升至8.5厘，現在已逐步回落至7厘，這直接反映信心已在恢復。」
預計明年底通脹降臨
麥樸思估計年底前大牛市會重現，主要是因為屆時大家會更相信通脹將重臨。「現時全球都擔心通縮，於是不斷放鬆貨幣政策，通脹總有一天會出現，我認為這將會是明年年底。股市往往走前一年，所以我相信真正的牛市會在年底出現。」
麥樸思一向看好在港掛牌的中資股。他特別看好資源股及消費股。「例如鋁、鋼、水泥股份，又或者與消費者有關的，如電訊股及食品供應商等。」
他認為港股的估值並不昂貴。「仍有不少股票的市盈率是單位數字，市帳率亦只有1.5倍，股息率仍有3至4厘。」「中國內地的銀行不斷向市場大手提供資金，這些資金已經流來香港買房地產。香港一家零售商的老闆向我說，以往只有10%至15％的營業額是來自內地旅客，現在卻多達50％。」
看好中資股 內地資金湧進香港
除了中國以外，全球政府都在「開水喉」，美國的M1貨幣供應（一般指流通現金加上活期存款），按年大升13％。當銀行開始有信心放貸之後，M2（廣義貨幣供應，即M1+定期存款、儲蓄存款等）亦會大幅增長，為市場提供所需資金。
雖然麥樸思相信港股毋須再下試3月的低位11300點，但在年底之前，仍會有大幅波動。「市場仍會有很多不明朗的因素，朝鮮會否再發射火箭、流感會否大爆發，復蘇的趨勢是否那麼穩固等，都可能會令到股市出現調整。」但他相信牛市大勢已成，所以每次調整，都是投資者趁低吸納的時候。
對於一般散戶來說，麥樸思認為最好的做法是把準備投資到股市的資金，分成12份，在未來一年內分階段平均入市，這樣可以拉勻入市成本，然後持有一段長時間，將可以有不俗的回報。
當頭起? 真的假的？
我再看自己以前寫文章，發現一些有趣的東西，會不會有點什麼啓示呢？
二、一浪高于一浪（即喺次低點才入市）；
三、50天移動平均線重返250天線之上；
四、當頭起喺熊三出現后先出現（熊三P/E喺八至十二倍之間）。
2009年5月13日星期三
激勵達人 -- Luis Scola
“我不害怕姚明缺席比賽，我甚至不害怕輸球。我害怕的是沒有努力去打球，沒有打出競爭性，沒有去戰鬥，沒有全力以赴去比賽。
只要你全力以赴的投入比賽去，好的事情就會發生。如果你全力以赴，即使輸球，因為總要有一支球隊會輸掉比賽，那樣也沒有遺憾，因為我們已經竭盡所能。”
-- 在姚明宣佈因傷退出NBA季候賽後，他的隊友Luis Scola在ABC訪問中說了這番話。
只要你全力以赴的投入比賽去，好的事情就會發生。如果你全力以赴，即使輸球，因為總要有一支球隊會輸掉比賽，那樣也沒有遺憾，因為我們已經竭盡所能。”
-- 在姚明宣佈因傷退出NBA季候賽後，他的隊友Luis Scola在ABC訪問中說了這番話。
2009年3月30日星期一
氣質，是最耐看的名牌
什麼是最好最耐看的名牌呢？
是香奈兒的衣服？皮爾卡登的褲子？Gucci的背心？Hermes的圍巾？還是Fendi的鞋子？
底下提供您一個「不標準的正確答案」。
相信很多人都聽過一個老故事，是講到有一次林肯總統面試一位新進的人員， 後來，他並沒有錄取那位應徵者，幕僚問他原因， 豈料他竟然說：「我不喜歡他的長相！」
幕僚非常不服，問道：「難道一個人天生長得不好看，也是他的錯嗎？」
林肯回答：「一個人四十歲以前的臉是父母決定的， 但一個人四十歲以後的臉卻是自己決定的，一個人要為自己四十歲以後的長相負責任。」
我很讚同林肯答的這句話，它跟古人「相由心生」的論調不謀而合。
人，常會花很多的時間去shopping，花很多的金錢去購買名牌服飾， 但，卻很少人願意花等量的精力去修身養性。
殊不知，「氣質」才是最耐看的”名牌”！
一個人若臉上有氣質，遠比穿上香奈兒的衣服、皮爾卡登的褲子、 Gucci的背心、Hermes的圍巾、Fendi的鞋子…等，更美，更帥，更受人肯定與尊敬。
而想擁有它也很簡單！您甚至不必花一毛錢，只需注意自己的脾氣，端正自己的品格，淨化自己的思想，充實自己的內在…，則無形之中，您的談吐、態度、舉止…， 全都會披戴上一股清新而脫俗的氣息。
氣質，是最好的名牌！
如果您希望在社會上獲得人們發自內心的敬重，真正的關鍵不在於所穿衣物的價格，而是在於您整個人所流露出的氣質
2008年11月15日星期六
保 護 主 義
黃 金 冒 險 號 08 年 11 月 15 日
格 林 斯 潘 認 錯 ， 說 他 本 來 以 為 ， 不 要 干 預 規 管 銀 行 ， 銀 行 為 了 利 益 ， 絕 對 不 會 胡 亂 借 貸 。 錯 在 什 麼 地 方 ？
錯 在 所 謂 銀 行 ， 只 是 一 幢 大 廈 ， 不 是 一 個 人 。 決 定 借 貸 批 款 的 ， 不 是 銀 行 ， 而 是 在 銀 行 工 作 的 人 。 人 是 有 私 心 的 ， 他 會 先 想 到 自 己 的 佣 金 ， 想 到 年 終 花 紅 ， 他 也 想 在 三 十 二 歲 退 休 ， 在 南 太 平 洋 的 大 溪 地 擁 有 一 座 海 濱 別 墅 ， 擁 抱 幾 個 土 女 。
格 林 斯 潘 以 為 ， 銀 行 為 了 利 益 ， 必 然 對 無 力 還 款 的 人 有 所 制 約 ， 不 會 輕 易 批 放 貸 款 ， 政 府 不 要 指 導 銀 行 怎 樣 做 生 意 ， 此 一 意 念 ， 本 來 是 對 的 ， 但 當 「 政 府 不 要 指 導 銀 行 怎 樣 做 生 意 」 ， 成 為 一 種 所 謂 「 意 識 型 態 」 ， 叫 做 「 自 由 市 場 經 濟 」 ， 就 演 變 為 災 難 。
意 念 （ Idea ） 是 人 類 的 創 作 ， 但 當 意 念 變 成 「 意 識 型 態 」 （ Ideology ） ， 就 僵 化 為 條 。 意 念 可 以 挑 戰 ， 一 旦 硬 結 成 「 意 識 型 態 」 ， 則 不 容 異 議 ， 就 變 成 可 蘭 經 的 原 旨 。
「 意 識 型 態 」 是 一 個 很 討 厭 的 名 詞 。 自 由 市 場 是 意 念 ， 變 成 「 意 識 型 態 」 的 時 候 ， 就 變 成 宗 。 格 林 斯 潘 沒 有 想 到 過 ： 聖 經 本 來 也 導 人 向 善 ， 但 中 世 紀 的 廷 ， 執 行 聖 經 ， 卻 執 行 出 一 個 火 燒 異 端 的 黑 暗 時 代 。
當 一 個 意 念 ， 變 成 「 主 義 」 的 時 候 ， 就 要 小 心 了 。 社 會 主 義 和 共 產 主 義 ， 都 變 成 吃 人 的 條 。 當 前 也 有 一 樣 ， 叫 做 「 保 護 主 義 」 ─ ─ 連 彭 定 康 也 向 美 國 叫 喊 ： 不 要 搞 保 護 主 義 ， 這 樣 會 令 世 界 蒙 受 損 失 。
然 而 ， 當 美 國 已 經 不 再 是 霸 主 ， 關 起 大 門 ， 也 是 很 自 然 的 事 。 從 前 全 球 出 口 都 靠 美 國 ， 因 為 美 國 人 擁 有 強 大 的 消 費 力 。 就 像 一 家 富 豪 ， 他 有 錢 ， 他 打 開 大 門 ， 夜 夜 宴 客 ， 你 把 廉 價 貨 品 輸 出 給 他 ， 他 獨 力 通 殺 ， 讓 你 也 賺 錢 。
現 在 ， 富 豪 破 產 了 ， 他 不 再 請 客 ， 大 家 以 後 要 各 散 東 西 ， 你 指 他 的 大 門 罵 街 ， 問 他 為 什 麼 不 請 客 了 。
請 客 是 天 公 地 道 的 嗎 ？ 中 國 崛 起 ， 如 果 想 取 代 美 國 ， 不 妨 也 像 戰 後 六 十 年 的 美 國 一 樣 ， 不 要 搞 「 保 護 主 義 」 好 了 ─ ─ 但 中 國 對 荷 里 活 電 影 有 配 額 ， 對 澳 門 的 美 資 賭 場 ， 心 情 不 好 ， 也 一 樣 關 閘 阻 撓 官 員 和 國 民 來 威 尼 斯 人 賭 錢 ， 這 不 是 保 護 主 義 是 什 麼 ？
自 家 快 要 破 產 ， 保 護 家 小 ， 是 一 種 本 能 。 保 護 還 成 為 「 主 義 」 ， 輸 打 贏 要 的 人 發 明 這 個 名 詞 。 美 國 衰 落 了 ， 他 只 能 保 護 自 己 ， 沒 有 義 務 照 顧 別 人 ， 保 護 本 國 的 失 業 者 ， 他 連 勒 緊 褲 頭 愛 國 的 自 由 也 沒 有 ， 美 國 讓 人 欺 負 得 多 慘 ？ 不 請 客 就 不 請 ， 欠 誰 的 ？ 大 難 臨 頭 ， 各 自 討 食 ， 阿 爺 不 管 用 了 ， 這 是 一 個 亂 世 。
格 林 斯 潘 認 錯 ， 說 他 本 來 以 為 ， 不 要 干 預 規 管 銀 行 ， 銀 行 為 了 利 益 ， 絕 對 不 會 胡 亂 借 貸 。 錯 在 什 麼 地 方 ？
錯 在 所 謂 銀 行 ， 只 是 一 幢 大 廈 ， 不 是 一 個 人 。 決 定 借 貸 批 款 的 ， 不 是 銀 行 ， 而 是 在 銀 行 工 作 的 人 。 人 是 有 私 心 的 ， 他 會 先 想 到 自 己 的 佣 金 ， 想 到 年 終 花 紅 ， 他 也 想 在 三 十 二 歲 退 休 ， 在 南 太 平 洋 的 大 溪 地 擁 有 一 座 海 濱 別 墅 ， 擁 抱 幾 個 土 女 。
格 林 斯 潘 以 為 ， 銀 行 為 了 利 益 ， 必 然 對 無 力 還 款 的 人 有 所 制 約 ， 不 會 輕 易 批 放 貸 款 ， 政 府 不 要 指 導 銀 行 怎 樣 做 生 意 ， 此 一 意 念 ， 本 來 是 對 的 ， 但 當 「 政 府 不 要 指 導 銀 行 怎 樣 做 生 意 」 ， 成 為 一 種 所 謂 「 意 識 型 態 」 ， 叫 做 「 自 由 市 場 經 濟 」 ， 就 演 變 為 災 難 。
意 念 （ Idea ） 是 人 類 的 創 作 ， 但 當 意 念 變 成 「 意 識 型 態 」 （ Ideology ） ， 就 僵 化 為 條 。 意 念 可 以 挑 戰 ， 一 旦 硬 結 成 「 意 識 型 態 」 ， 則 不 容 異 議 ， 就 變 成 可 蘭 經 的 原 旨 。
「 意 識 型 態 」 是 一 個 很 討 厭 的 名 詞 。 自 由 市 場 是 意 念 ， 變 成 「 意 識 型 態 」 的 時 候 ， 就 變 成 宗 。 格 林 斯 潘 沒 有 想 到 過 ： 聖 經 本 來 也 導 人 向 善 ， 但 中 世 紀 的 廷 ， 執 行 聖 經 ， 卻 執 行 出 一 個 火 燒 異 端 的 黑 暗 時 代 。
當 一 個 意 念 ， 變 成 「 主 義 」 的 時 候 ， 就 要 小 心 了 。 社 會 主 義 和 共 產 主 義 ， 都 變 成 吃 人 的 條 。 當 前 也 有 一 樣 ， 叫 做 「 保 護 主 義 」 ─ ─ 連 彭 定 康 也 向 美 國 叫 喊 ： 不 要 搞 保 護 主 義 ， 這 樣 會 令 世 界 蒙 受 損 失 。
然 而 ， 當 美 國 已 經 不 再 是 霸 主 ， 關 起 大 門 ， 也 是 很 自 然 的 事 。 從 前 全 球 出 口 都 靠 美 國 ， 因 為 美 國 人 擁 有 強 大 的 消 費 力 。 就 像 一 家 富 豪 ， 他 有 錢 ， 他 打 開 大 門 ， 夜 夜 宴 客 ， 你 把 廉 價 貨 品 輸 出 給 他 ， 他 獨 力 通 殺 ， 讓 你 也 賺 錢 。
現 在 ， 富 豪 破 產 了 ， 他 不 再 請 客 ， 大 家 以 後 要 各 散 東 西 ， 你 指 他 的 大 門 罵 街 ， 問 他 為 什 麼 不 請 客 了 。
請 客 是 天 公 地 道 的 嗎 ？ 中 國 崛 起 ， 如 果 想 取 代 美 國 ， 不 妨 也 像 戰 後 六 十 年 的 美 國 一 樣 ， 不 要 搞 「 保 護 主 義 」 好 了 ─ ─ 但 中 國 對 荷 里 活 電 影 有 配 額 ， 對 澳 門 的 美 資 賭 場 ， 心 情 不 好 ， 也 一 樣 關 閘 阻 撓 官 員 和 國 民 來 威 尼 斯 人 賭 錢 ， 這 不 是 保 護 主 義 是 什 麼 ？
自 家 快 要 破 產 ， 保 護 家 小 ， 是 一 種 本 能 。 保 護 還 成 為 「 主 義 」 ， 輸 打 贏 要 的 人 發 明 這 個 名 詞 。 美 國 衰 落 了 ， 他 只 能 保 護 自 己 ， 沒 有 義 務 照 顧 別 人 ， 保 護 本 國 的 失 業 者 ， 他 連 勒 緊 褲 頭 愛 國 的 自 由 也 沒 有 ， 美 國 讓 人 欺 負 得 多 慘 ？ 不 請 客 就 不 請 ， 欠 誰 的 ？ 大 難 臨 頭 ， 各 自 討 食 ， 阿 爺 不 管 用 了 ， 這 是 一 個 亂 世 。
2008年9月28日星期日
股神巴菲特18億入股比亞迪股份
新浪財經訊
據海外媒體披露，“股神”巴菲特今日將斥資18億港元入股內地在港上市公司比亞迪股份(1211.HK)。這也是股神在繼大手筆投資中石油(12.84,-0.17,-1.31%,吧)之後再次出手內地在港上市公司，同時，此次投資也是巴菲特在美國次貸危機轉為信貸危機之後，進行的第二筆重大投資。上周巴菲特所屬的伯克希爾•哈撒韋公司公司剛剛宣佈以至少50億美元的代價入股美國第一大投行高盛。
“股神”再度出手，並在此嚴峻形勢下選擇入股中資公司，意欲何為？比亞迪股份以充電電池以及汽車業務為主，在電動汽車領域的開拓亦較優秀。此番入股無疑顯示了巴菲特對此行業的信心。
BusinessWire報導稱，日前，美國著名投資者、“股神”巴菲特的投資旗艦伯克希爾-哈撒韋公司旗下附屬公司MIDAMERICAN ENERGY HOLDINGS COMPANY(“MIDAMERICAN”)與比亞迪股份有限公司(“比亞迪”1211.HK)簽署了策略性投資及股份認購協定，根據協定，MIDAMERICAN將以每股港幣8元的價格認購2.25億股比亞迪公司的股份，約占比亞迪本次配售後10%的股份比例，本次交易價格總金額約為港幣18億元。
伯克希爾-哈撒韋公司CEO巴菲特先生表示：能夠作為比亞迪和中國人的合作夥伴，我們對此非常興奮，王傳福先生具備獨特的管理運營能力和優良記錄，我們盼望著和他的合作。
MidAmerican主席 David Sokol先生表示：非常高興能有機會投資像比亞迪這樣優秀的企業, 他們的產品對於環境保護作出了傑出的貢獻。比亞迪的創新技術在全球持續探討的全球氣候轉變及環保方面的課題上，均擔當重要的角色。
比亞迪主席王傳福先生非常欣喜地表達了謝意，稱比亞迪非常歡迎像Berkshire Hathaway和MidAmerican這樣的長期投資戰略夥伴，該投資將幫助比亞迪新能源汽車及其它環保產品在全球的推動具備戰略意義。
2008年9月29日，MIDAMERICAN將和比亞迪公司共同召開新聞發佈會，MIDAMERICAN主席David L. Sokol先生將親臨香港與比亞迪主席王傳福先生聯合主持該新聞發佈會並向媒體進行詳細說明協定的內容以及本次認購的相關資訊。
比亞迪公司
比亞迪創立於一九九五年，並於二零零二年在香港上市，目前主要擁有IT、汽車兩大產業。比亞迪在廣東、北京、上海和西安等地區建有七大生產基地，總面積將近1,000萬平方米，並在美國、歐洲、日本、韓國、印度、臺灣、香港等地設有分公司或辦事處，員工總數已超過13萬人。特別是電動汽車領域，比亞迪具有全球領先的電池技術優勢和整車生產平臺。
http://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/hkstock/ggscyd/20080927/12145350510.shtml
據海外媒體披露，“股神”巴菲特今日將斥資18億港元入股內地在港上市公司比亞迪股份(1211.HK)。這也是股神在繼大手筆投資中石油(12.84,-0.17,-1.31%,吧)之後再次出手內地在港上市公司，同時，此次投資也是巴菲特在美國次貸危機轉為信貸危機之後，進行的第二筆重大投資。上周巴菲特所屬的伯克希爾•哈撒韋公司公司剛剛宣佈以至少50億美元的代價入股美國第一大投行高盛。
“股神”再度出手，並在此嚴峻形勢下選擇入股中資公司，意欲何為？比亞迪股份以充電電池以及汽車業務為主，在電動汽車領域的開拓亦較優秀。此番入股無疑顯示了巴菲特對此行業的信心。
BusinessWire報導稱，日前，美國著名投資者、“股神”巴菲特的投資旗艦伯克希爾-哈撒韋公司旗下附屬公司MIDAMERICAN ENERGY HOLDINGS COMPANY(“MIDAMERICAN”)與比亞迪股份有限公司(“比亞迪”1211.HK)簽署了策略性投資及股份認購協定，根據協定，MIDAMERICAN將以每股港幣8元的價格認購2.25億股比亞迪公司的股份，約占比亞迪本次配售後10%的股份比例，本次交易價格總金額約為港幣18億元。
伯克希爾-哈撒韋公司CEO巴菲特先生表示：能夠作為比亞迪和中國人的合作夥伴，我們對此非常興奮，王傳福先生具備獨特的管理運營能力和優良記錄，我們盼望著和他的合作。
MidAmerican主席 David Sokol先生表示：非常高興能有機會投資像比亞迪這樣優秀的企業, 他們的產品對於環境保護作出了傑出的貢獻。比亞迪的創新技術在全球持續探討的全球氣候轉變及環保方面的課題上，均擔當重要的角色。
比亞迪主席王傳福先生非常欣喜地表達了謝意，稱比亞迪非常歡迎像Berkshire Hathaway和MidAmerican這樣的長期投資戰略夥伴，該投資將幫助比亞迪新能源汽車及其它環保產品在全球的推動具備戰略意義。
2008年9月29日，MIDAMERICAN將和比亞迪公司共同召開新聞發佈會，MIDAMERICAN主席David L. Sokol先生將親臨香港與比亞迪主席王傳福先生聯合主持該新聞發佈會並向媒體進行詳細說明協定的內容以及本次認購的相關資訊。
比亞迪公司
比亞迪創立於一九九五年，並於二零零二年在香港上市，目前主要擁有IT、汽車兩大產業。比亞迪在廣東、北京、上海和西安等地區建有七大生產基地，總面積將近1,000萬平方米，並在美國、歐洲、日本、韓國、印度、臺灣、香港等地設有分公司或辦事處，員工總數已超過13萬人。特別是電動汽車領域，比亞迪具有全球領先的電池技術優勢和整車生產平臺。
http://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/hkstock/ggscyd/20080927/12145350510.shtml
2008年9月18日星期四
Warren Buffett said at 2008 AGM of Berkshire Hathaway ...
In fact, that was one of the interesting things that was said in testimony before the Senate finance committee. I think two of the witnesses (Bear Stearns) said: "We understood we couldn't borrow money unsecured if people started looking at us askance. But we never dreamed that we couldn't borrow money secured." Well we found that out at Solomon 17 years earlier, when we were having trouble borrowing money secured.
When the world doesn't want to lend you money, 10 or 20 or 50 basis points - or a bigger haircut on collateral - doesn't do much. They'll only lend you money if they want to lend you money.
And if you're dependent on borrowed money every day, you have to wake up in the morning hoping the world thinks well of you. And there was a period a couple of months ago when almost every investment bank in the United States was plenty worried about whether people were going to think well of them the next morning.
When the world doesn't want to lend you money, 10 or 20 or 50 basis points - or a bigger haircut on collateral - doesn't do much. They'll only lend you money if they want to lend you money.
And if you're dependent on borrowed money every day, you have to wake up in the morning hoping the world thinks well of you. And there was a period a couple of months ago when almost every investment bank in the United States was plenty worried about whether people were going to think well of them the next morning.
大 龜 潛 水
什 麼 是 貧 富 懸 殊 ？ 就 是 雷 曼 兄 弟 和 AIG 破 產 ， 可 以 向 美 國 聯 邦 儲 備 局 呼 救 ， 當 你 閣 下 經 營 的 那 家 雲 吞 店 因 業 主 加 租 無 以 為 生 ， 叫 政 府 出 手 相 救 ？ 政 府 不 會 睬 你 ！
這 就 叫 「 竊 者 誅 ， 竊 國 者 侯 」 。 雷 曼 兄 弟 倒 下 ， 就 是 全 球 的 金 融 崩 潰 了 。 雷 曼 兄 弟 銀 行 發 放 的 貸 款 ， 主 要 限 於 美 國 ， 但 倫 敦 的 金 融 城 ， 由 於 與 「 國 際 」 掛 上 了 號 ， 雷 曼 兄 弟 完 了 蛋 ， 金 融 城 有 五 千 名 精 英 要 裁 員 。
這 五 千 人 ， 全 是 牛 津 劍 橋 和 哈 佛 MBA 的 驕 子 ， 貌 似 曉 格 蘭 或 伊 雲 麥 葵 格 ， 在 泰 晤 士 河 邊 有 一 座 高 瞰 河 景 的 Penthouse ， 一 個 模 特 兒 同 居 女 友 ， 一 輛 開 篷 平 治 加 一 輛 保 持 捷 ， 午 膳 時 解 開 領 帶 結 ， 豪 邁 地 飲 盡 一 杯 喜 力 啤 ， 去 上 海 公 幹 開 一 次 會 ， 當 夜 就 搭 上 一 件 貌 似 章 子 怡 的 中 國 女 人 共 上 君 悅 酒 店 的 行 政 套 房 的 那 種 人 。
每 十 位 這 樣 的 金 融 精 英 失 業 ， 據 統 計 ， 還 有 圈 外 另 外 七 個 職 位 也 跟 裁 掉 ， 像 辦 公 室 的 吸 塵 機 女 工 和 餐 廳 侍 應 。 精 英 們 沒 得 喝 啤 酒 豪 氣 了 ， 附 近 的 酒 吧 和 壽 司 店 跟 關 門 ， 要 出 售 河 畔 的 豪 宅 ， 室 內 設 計 師 也 跟 失 業 。
英 國 倫 敦 百 萬 鎊 價 格 的 房 地 產 ， 一 向 由 金 融 精 英 居 住 ， 已 經 慘 跌 了 五 成 ， 因 為 雷 曼 兄 弟 事 件 ， 明 年 底 之 前 ， 倫 敦 的 房 價 還 會 下 跌 二 成 五 ， 英 鎊 跟 跌 ， 未 來 兩 年 ， 可 以 買 進 英 鎊 ， 等 到 樓 價 下 挫 五 成 時 ， 再 在 倫 敦 房 地 產 「 執 平 貨 」 ， 看 二 ○ 一 二 年 的 倫 敦 世 運 會 。
問 題 是 ： 未 來 一 兩 年 ， 誰 還 會 有 現 金 ？ 早 就 跟 大 潮 流 「 入 市 」 了 。 兩 個 月 前 拋 了 貨 的 ， 今 天 就 做 了 金 錢 之 王 。 貧 富 懸 殊 ， 這 個 世 界 本 來 就 是 一 場 不 公 平 的 遊 戲 ─ ─ 同 樣 是 美 國 的 藍 籌 企 業 ， 聯 儲 局 不 救 雷 曼 兄 弟 ， 卻 出 手 救 AIG ， 因 為 雷 曼 兄 弟 的 房 地 產 借 貸 投 資 ， 主 要 在 美 國 ， 但 AIG 保 險 卻 是 美 國 在 全 球 的 生 意 。 內 外 有 別 ， AIG 垮 台 ， 香 港 也 會 爆 發 擠 提 。
企 業 越 大 ， 生 意 王 國 的 版 圖 越 寬 廣 ， 越 可 以 不 負 責 任 ， 因 為 他 可 以 與 你 同 歸 於 盡 。 明 擺 的 道 理 ： 不 是 人 人 都 說 ， 中 國 奧 運 之 後 會 「 爆 煲 」 嗎 ？ 一 點 也 沒 錯 ， 北 京 奧 運 結 束 ， 是 美 國 帶 頭 爆 煲 ， 從 陰 謀 論 來 看 ， 外 有 俄 國 侵 略 格 魯 吉 亞 ， 內 有 金 融 風 暴 ， 美 國 人 的 愛 國 心 激 發 起 來 ， 就 會 選 軍 人 麥 堅 當 總 統 。
一 石 二 鳥 ， 也 給 中 國 一 點 顏 色 ： 美 國 人 自 顧 不 暇 ， 消 費 在 衰 退 中 下 降 ， 中 國 的 出 口 堵 塞 ， 加 上 毒 奶 粉 風 暴 ， 來 得 正 好 。 美 國 這 隻 大 烏 ， 現 在 要 潛 水 了 ， 在 背 上 的 小 動 物 ， 也 要 跟 閉 氣 下 水 。 曾 蔭 權 政 府 懂 水 性 嗎 ？
摘自《黃金冒險號》2008/9/18
這 就 叫 「 竊 者 誅 ， 竊 國 者 侯 」 。 雷 曼 兄 弟 倒 下 ， 就 是 全 球 的 金 融 崩 潰 了 。 雷 曼 兄 弟 銀 行 發 放 的 貸 款 ， 主 要 限 於 美 國 ， 但 倫 敦 的 金 融 城 ， 由 於 與 「 國 際 」 掛 上 了 號 ， 雷 曼 兄 弟 完 了 蛋 ， 金 融 城 有 五 千 名 精 英 要 裁 員 。
這 五 千 人 ， 全 是 牛 津 劍 橋 和 哈 佛 MBA 的 驕 子 ， 貌 似 曉 格 蘭 或 伊 雲 麥 葵 格 ， 在 泰 晤 士 河 邊 有 一 座 高 瞰 河 景 的 Penthouse ， 一 個 模 特 兒 同 居 女 友 ， 一 輛 開 篷 平 治 加 一 輛 保 持 捷 ， 午 膳 時 解 開 領 帶 結 ， 豪 邁 地 飲 盡 一 杯 喜 力 啤 ， 去 上 海 公 幹 開 一 次 會 ， 當 夜 就 搭 上 一 件 貌 似 章 子 怡 的 中 國 女 人 共 上 君 悅 酒 店 的 行 政 套 房 的 那 種 人 。
每 十 位 這 樣 的 金 融 精 英 失 業 ， 據 統 計 ， 還 有 圈 外 另 外 七 個 職 位 也 跟 裁 掉 ， 像 辦 公 室 的 吸 塵 機 女 工 和 餐 廳 侍 應 。 精 英 們 沒 得 喝 啤 酒 豪 氣 了 ， 附 近 的 酒 吧 和 壽 司 店 跟 關 門 ， 要 出 售 河 畔 的 豪 宅 ， 室 內 設 計 師 也 跟 失 業 。
英 國 倫 敦 百 萬 鎊 價 格 的 房 地 產 ， 一 向 由 金 融 精 英 居 住 ， 已 經 慘 跌 了 五 成 ， 因 為 雷 曼 兄 弟 事 件 ， 明 年 底 之 前 ， 倫 敦 的 房 價 還 會 下 跌 二 成 五 ， 英 鎊 跟 跌 ， 未 來 兩 年 ， 可 以 買 進 英 鎊 ， 等 到 樓 價 下 挫 五 成 時 ， 再 在 倫 敦 房 地 產 「 執 平 貨 」 ， 看 二 ○ 一 二 年 的 倫 敦 世 運 會 。
問 題 是 ： 未 來 一 兩 年 ， 誰 還 會 有 現 金 ？ 早 就 跟 大 潮 流 「 入 市 」 了 。 兩 個 月 前 拋 了 貨 的 ， 今 天 就 做 了 金 錢 之 王 。 貧 富 懸 殊 ， 這 個 世 界 本 來 就 是 一 場 不 公 平 的 遊 戲 ─ ─ 同 樣 是 美 國 的 藍 籌 企 業 ， 聯 儲 局 不 救 雷 曼 兄 弟 ， 卻 出 手 救 AIG ， 因 為 雷 曼 兄 弟 的 房 地 產 借 貸 投 資 ， 主 要 在 美 國 ， 但 AIG 保 險 卻 是 美 國 在 全 球 的 生 意 。 內 外 有 別 ， AIG 垮 台 ， 香 港 也 會 爆 發 擠 提 。
企 業 越 大 ， 生 意 王 國 的 版 圖 越 寬 廣 ， 越 可 以 不 負 責 任 ， 因 為 他 可 以 與 你 同 歸 於 盡 。 明 擺 的 道 理 ： 不 是 人 人 都 說 ， 中 國 奧 運 之 後 會 「 爆 煲 」 嗎 ？ 一 點 也 沒 錯 ， 北 京 奧 運 結 束 ， 是 美 國 帶 頭 爆 煲 ， 從 陰 謀 論 來 看 ， 外 有 俄 國 侵 略 格 魯 吉 亞 ， 內 有 金 融 風 暴 ， 美 國 人 的 愛 國 心 激 發 起 來 ， 就 會 選 軍 人 麥 堅 當 總 統 。
一 石 二 鳥 ， 也 給 中 國 一 點 顏 色 ： 美 國 人 自 顧 不 暇 ， 消 費 在 衰 退 中 下 降 ， 中 國 的 出 口 堵 塞 ， 加 上 毒 奶 粉 風 暴 ， 來 得 正 好 。 美 國 這 隻 大 烏 ， 現 在 要 潛 水 了 ， 在 背 上 的 小 動 物 ， 也 要 跟 閉 氣 下 水 。 曾 蔭 權 政 府 懂 水 性 嗎 ？
摘自《黃金冒險號》2008/9/18
2008年9月14日星期日
2008年8月28日星期四
反彈同當頭起有咩分別？
一、當頭起升幅最少20%；
二、一浪高于一浪（即喺次低點才入市）；
三、50天移動平均線重返250天線之上；
四、當頭起喺熊三出現后先出現（熊三P/E喺八至十二倍之間）。
摘錄自28/08/08信報《投資者日記》
二、一浪高于一浪（即喺次低點才入市）；
三、50天移動平均線重返250天線之上；
四、當頭起喺熊三出現后先出現（熊三P/E喺八至十二倍之間）。
摘錄自28/08/08信報《投資者日記》
2008年8月26日星期二
冬天嚟到，春天仲會遠咩？
油價終於由7月18日嘅147美元回落，美國經濟三股頂頭風其中一股已減弱；至於信貸危機相信喺9月底前兩房問題應有定案；最後只餘下樓市呢股頂頭風。最終問題必須解決，作為投資者需要嘅係耐性。
例如1982年9月中國政府宣布，喺1997年7月收番香港主權、到1984年7月中英雙方簽訂聯合聲明，時間上總共二十三個月。
1997年7月亞洲金融風暴到1998年9月東南亞亦開始解決，需時十四個月。
2000年3月科網股泡沫爆破到2002年10月納指止跌回升，需時三十一個月。
去年11月開始嘅次按危機，最終必須解決。問題係要幾耐，同埋點樣收科。
冬天嚟到，春天仲會遠咩？
如大家已及時止蝕、冇溝落，唔係只着條泳褲過冬季，便可以耐心地等；可能係明年第一季，又可能再長一D，但春天一定會番嚟；反之，只有一條泳褲就凍死都未天光。
摘錄自26/08/08信報《投資者日記》
例如1982年9月中國政府宣布，喺1997年7月收番香港主權、到1984年7月中英雙方簽訂聯合聲明，時間上總共二十三個月。
1997年7月亞洲金融風暴到1998年9月東南亞亦開始解決，需時十四個月。
2000年3月科網股泡沫爆破到2002年10月納指止跌回升，需時三十一個月。
去年11月開始嘅次按危機，最終必須解決。問題係要幾耐，同埋點樣收科。
冬天嚟到，春天仲會遠咩？
如大家已及時止蝕、冇溝落，唔係只着條泳褲過冬季，便可以耐心地等；可能係明年第一季，又可能再長一D，但春天一定會番嚟；反之，只有一條泳褲就凍死都未天光。
摘錄自26/08/08信報《投資者日記》
2008年8月19日星期二
An Inspirational Speech that is Worth Keeping in Mind
I don't know what to say really.
我不曉得該說什麼
Three minutes
三分鐘
to the biggest battle of our professional lives,
到我們職業生涯中最大的戰役
all comes down to today.
都在今天
And either
除非
we heal
我們團結 (因為劇情裡球隊有被弄得四分五裂, 所以用heal(治療)來當團結的字)
as a team
成一個團隊
or we are going to crumble.
不然我們將會被擊倒
Inch by inch,
一吋又一吋
play by play,
一次又一次
till we're finished.
直到我們完全失敗
We are in hell right now, gentlemen.
我們現在在地獄裡, 紳士們
Believe me.
相信我
And
而且
we can stay here
我們可以留在這裡
get the shit kicked out of us
慘敗
or
或是
we can fight our way back
我們可以一路打回去
into the light.
回到光明裡
We can climb out of hell.
我們可以從地獄裡爬出來
One inch, at a time.
一次一寸的爬
Now, I can't do it for you.
聽這, 我沒辦法幫你.
I'm too old.
我太老了
I look around and I see these
我向四周看了一下, 我看到這些
young faces and I think
年輕的面孔, 我在想
I mean
我的意思是
I made every wrong choice a middle age man can make.
一個中年人全部能犯的錯誤的選擇我都犯了
I uh.....
我.....
I pissed away all my money.
我把我的錢都浪費光了
Believe it or not.
不管你信不信
I chased off anyone who has ever loved me.
我把所有曾經愛我的人都嚇走了
And lately,
然後最近,
I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror.
我無法忍受我在鏡子裡看到的那張臉
You know when you get old in life things get taken from you.
你知道, 當你變老的時候, 你的東西會被一件一件的拿走
That's ..... that's part of life.
那是人生的必經過程
But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff.
可是, 你只有在失去東西以後才會領悟到
You find out that life is a game of inches.
人生是一個為英吋奮鬥的遊戲
So is football.
美式足球也是
Because in either game
因為在任何一個比賽
life or football
人生或是美式足球
the margin for error is so small.
對於犯錯的容忍度是多麼小
I mean
我的意思是
one half step too late or too early
半步太慢或太快
you don't quite make it.
你到達不了你的目標
One half second too slow or too fast
半秒太慢或太快
and you don't quite catch it.
你接不到球
The inches we need are everywhere around us.
我們所需要來贏的英吋在我們的周遭
They are in ever break of the game
它們在每一場比賽的關鍵時刻
every minute, every second.
在每一分, 每一秒
On this team, we fight for that inch
在這個團隊裡, 我們為那個英吋奮鬥
On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us to pieces for that inch.
在這個團隊裡, 我們為了那個英吋我們可以撕裂我們自己跟周遭的人
We CLAW with our finger nails for that inch.
我們用我們的指甲抓那個英吋
Because we know when we add up all those inches
因為我們知道當我們把那些英吋加起來的時候,
that's going to make the fucking difference
那將會決定
between WINNING and LOSING
成功或失敗
between LIVING and DYING.
生存或死亡
I'll tell you this
我可以肯定的告訴你
in any fight
在任何戰鬥裡
it is the guy who is willing to die
永遠是那個願意戰到死的人
who is going to win that inch.
能爭取到那個英吋
And I know if I am going to have any life anymore
而且我知道, 假如我還活著
it's because, I am still willing to fight,
是因為我還願意去奮鬥,
and die for that inch
而且願意為了贏到那個英吋而死
because that is what LIVING is.
因為那就是人生的意義
The six inches in front of your face.
那個在你面前的六英吋
Now I can't make you do it.
我不能強迫你去戰鬥
You gotta look at the guy next to you.
你必須看看你旁邊的人
Look into his eyes.
看這他們的眼睛
Now I think you are going to see a guy who will go that inch with you.
我想你會看到一個願意跟你一起為那個英吋奮鬥的人
You are going to see a guy
你將會看到一個
who will sacrifice himself for this team
願意為這個團隊犧牲的人,
because he knows when it comes down to it,
因為他知道當時候來臨時,
you are gonna do the same thing for him.
你也會為他犧牲
That's a team, gentlemen
那就是團隊, 紳士們
And either we heal now, as a team,
除非我們現在團結成一個團隊
or we will die as individuals.
我們將會一個個獨自的死去
That's football guys.
這就是美式足球
That's all it is.
就是這樣而已
Now, whattaya gonna do?
那現在, 你們要怎麼做?
我不曉得該說什麼
Three minutes
三分鐘
to the biggest battle of our professional lives,
到我們職業生涯中最大的戰役
all comes down to today.
都在今天
And either
除非
we heal
我們團結 (因為劇情裡球隊有被弄得四分五裂, 所以用heal(治療)來當團結的字)
as a team
成一個團隊
or we are going to crumble.
不然我們將會被擊倒
Inch by inch,
一吋又一吋
play by play,
一次又一次
till we're finished.
直到我們完全失敗
We are in hell right now, gentlemen.
我們現在在地獄裡, 紳士們
Believe me.
相信我
And
而且
we can stay here
我們可以留在這裡
get the shit kicked out of us
慘敗
or
或是
we can fight our way back
我們可以一路打回去
into the light.
回到光明裡
We can climb out of hell.
我們可以從地獄裡爬出來
One inch, at a time.
一次一寸的爬
Now, I can't do it for you.
聽這, 我沒辦法幫你.
I'm too old.
我太老了
I look around and I see these
我向四周看了一下, 我看到這些
young faces and I think
年輕的面孔, 我在想
I mean
我的意思是
I made every wrong choice a middle age man can make.
一個中年人全部能犯的錯誤的選擇我都犯了
I uh.....
我.....
I pissed away all my money.
我把我的錢都浪費光了
Believe it or not.
不管你信不信
I chased off anyone who has ever loved me.
我把所有曾經愛我的人都嚇走了
And lately,
然後最近,
I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror.
我無法忍受我在鏡子裡看到的那張臉
You know when you get old in life things get taken from you.
你知道, 當你變老的時候, 你的東西會被一件一件的拿走
That's ..... that's part of life.
那是人生的必經過程
But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff.
可是, 你只有在失去東西以後才會領悟到
You find out that life is a game of inches.
人生是一個為英吋奮鬥的遊戲
So is football.
美式足球也是
Because in either game
因為在任何一個比賽
life or football
人生或是美式足球
the margin for error is so small.
對於犯錯的容忍度是多麼小
I mean
我的意思是
one half step too late or too early
半步太慢或太快
you don't quite make it.
你到達不了你的目標
One half second too slow or too fast
半秒太慢或太快
and you don't quite catch it.
你接不到球
The inches we need are everywhere around us.
我們所需要來贏的英吋在我們的周遭
They are in ever break of the game
它們在每一場比賽的關鍵時刻
every minute, every second.
在每一分, 每一秒
On this team, we fight for that inch
在這個團隊裡, 我們為那個英吋奮鬥
On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us to pieces for that inch.
在這個團隊裡, 我們為了那個英吋我們可以撕裂我們自己跟周遭的人
We CLAW with our finger nails for that inch.
我們用我們的指甲抓那個英吋
Because we know when we add up all those inches
因為我們知道當我們把那些英吋加起來的時候,
that's going to make the fucking difference
那將會決定
between WINNING and LOSING
成功或失敗
between LIVING and DYING.
生存或死亡
I'll tell you this
我可以肯定的告訴你
in any fight
在任何戰鬥裡
it is the guy who is willing to die
永遠是那個願意戰到死的人
who is going to win that inch.
能爭取到那個英吋
And I know if I am going to have any life anymore
而且我知道, 假如我還活著
it's because, I am still willing to fight,
是因為我還願意去奮鬥,
and die for that inch
而且願意為了贏到那個英吋而死
because that is what LIVING is.
因為那就是人生的意義
The six inches in front of your face.
那個在你面前的六英吋
Now I can't make you do it.
我不能強迫你去戰鬥
You gotta look at the guy next to you.
你必須看看你旁邊的人
Look into his eyes.
看這他們的眼睛
Now I think you are going to see a guy who will go that inch with you.
我想你會看到一個願意跟你一起為那個英吋奮鬥的人
You are going to see a guy
你將會看到一個
who will sacrifice himself for this team
願意為這個團隊犧牲的人,
because he knows when it comes down to it,
因為他知道當時候來臨時,
you are gonna do the same thing for him.
你也會為他犧牲
That's a team, gentlemen
那就是團隊, 紳士們
And either we heal now, as a team,
除非我們現在團結成一個團隊
or we will die as individuals.
我們將會一個個獨自的死去
That's football guys.
這就是美式足球
That's all it is.
就是這樣而已
Now, whattaya gonna do?
那現在, 你們要怎麼做?
2008年7月12日星期六
Warren Buffett MBA Talk
Video of Warren Buffett talk at University of Florida. Enjoy!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6231308980849895261
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6231308980849895261
2008年6月29日星期日
Wanniski.com has come to an end.....
Jude Wanniski is one of my greatest teachers. I learnt a lot of fundamental knowledge in financial history, such as gold standard and inflation, from his website, http://www.wanniski.com. After his death a few years ago, the website continued to run until it has stopped recently.
Fortunately, his essays and teaching are still available on a new website: http://www.polyconomics.com/ssu.html
Please spend some time and check it out.
Fortunately, his essays and teaching are still available on a new website: http://www.polyconomics.com/ssu.html
Please spend some time and check it out.
2008年6月28日星期六
2008年6月6日星期五
多 難 豆 腐 渣
胡 錦 濤 是 幹 實 事 的 ， 並 非 演 藝 界 一 員 ， 遣 詞 造 句 ， 政 治 100% 正 確 到 不 得 了 ， 所 以 永 遠 不 會 向 災 民 許 下 「 認 定 了 這 是 一 輩 子 的 承 諾 」 。 反 觀 溫 家 寶 ， 左 一 句 政 府 會 管 好 你 們 ， 右 一 句 政 府 會 照 顧 你 們 ， 讓 人 差 點 以 為 ， 512 關 愛 行 動 那 首 主 題 曲 是 他 老 人 家 幕 後 操 刀 填 詞 。 溫 總 在 黑 板 奮 書 「 多 難 興 邦 」 ， 滿 懷 書 生 悲 國 難 的 熱 血 腔 ， 胡 主 席 沒 這 麼 浪 漫 ， 他 一 言 九 鼎 的 是 「 一 方 有 難 ， 八 方 支 援 ， 自 力 更 生 ， 艱 苦 奮 鬥 」 。 用 廣 東 話 解 讀 ， 就 是 叫 你 自 己 執 生 ！ 油 尖 潮 語 講 法 ， 就 是 請 閣 下 「 食 自 己 」 ， 自 己 看 辦 ， 阿 爺 射 唔 住 你 ！
多 難 興 邦 ， 難 免 落 入 日 劇 化 的 對 白 的 窠 臼 ， 追 本 溯 源 ， 多 難 的 源 頭 是 豆 腐 渣 工 程 ， 讓 辛 苦 把 孩 子 送 入 學 校 念 書 的 家 長 ， 希 望 瞬 間 化 為 烏 有 。 是 誰 讓 邦 國 多 難 ？ 就 是 一 方 有 難 ， 自 己 率 先 逃 離 現 場 的 那 批 豆 腐 渣 工 程 主 謀 人 。 育 部 沒 有 負 責 人 因 為 九 千 多 條 學 童 的 人 命 而 丟 官 ， 多 難 興 旺 了 的 ， 是 不 要 臉 的 幹 部 和 跟 他 們 有 裙 帶 關 係 包 攬 豆 腐 渣 工 程 直 接 殺 害 學 童 的 這 些 人 。 孩 子 死 了 ， 家 長 捧 遺 照 在 校 外 守 了 三 日 三 夜 的 靈 ， 哪 裏 見 到 有 關 領 導 人 去 向 問 候 一 聲 ？ 中 央 台 集 中 重 播 的 是 「 陳 堅 最 後 72 小 時 」 和 解 放 軍 戰 士 救 災 扶 危 的 報 道 ， 陳 堅 遭 救 援 人 員 心 外 壓 時 壓 得 胸 腔 怪 響 的 鏡 頭 叫 人 看 得 會 倒 背 了 ， 中 央 台 幾 時 才 會 對 豆 腐 渣 下 的 亡 魂 ， 有 個 「 說 法 」 ？
陳也 - 蘋果日報
多 難 興 邦 ， 難 免 落 入 日 劇 化 的 對 白 的 窠 臼 ， 追 本 溯 源 ， 多 難 的 源 頭 是 豆 腐 渣 工 程 ， 讓 辛 苦 把 孩 子 送 入 學 校 念 書 的 家 長 ， 希 望 瞬 間 化 為 烏 有 。 是 誰 讓 邦 國 多 難 ？ 就 是 一 方 有 難 ， 自 己 率 先 逃 離 現 場 的 那 批 豆 腐 渣 工 程 主 謀 人 。 育 部 沒 有 負 責 人 因 為 九 千 多 條 學 童 的 人 命 而 丟 官 ， 多 難 興 旺 了 的 ， 是 不 要 臉 的 幹 部 和 跟 他 們 有 裙 帶 關 係 包 攬 豆 腐 渣 工 程 直 接 殺 害 學 童 的 這 些 人 。 孩 子 死 了 ， 家 長 捧 遺 照 在 校 外 守 了 三 日 三 夜 的 靈 ， 哪 裏 見 到 有 關 領 導 人 去 向 問 候 一 聲 ？ 中 央 台 集 中 重 播 的 是 「 陳 堅 最 後 72 小 時 」 和 解 放 軍 戰 士 救 災 扶 危 的 報 道 ， 陳 堅 遭 救 援 人 員 心 外 壓 時 壓 得 胸 腔 怪 響 的 鏡 頭 叫 人 看 得 會 倒 背 了 ， 中 央 台 幾 時 才 會 對 豆 腐 渣 下 的 亡 魂 ， 有 個 「 說 法 」 ？
陳也 - 蘋果日報
2008年5月21日星期三
地震雲
Today I found another interesting article on pre-earthquake phenomenon, known as EARTHQUAKE CLOUD.
早在17世紀中國古籍中就有“晝中或日落之後，天際晴朗，而有細雲如一綫，甚長，震兆也”的記載，1935年我國寧夏的隆德縣《重修隆德縣志》中記載有“天晴日暖，碧空清淨，忽見黑雲如縷，婉如長蛇，橫臥天際，久而不散，勢必爲地震”
但是，世界各國對于地震雲的研究還是最近幾年的事，其中以我國和日本處于領先地位，我國對地震雲的研究始于1976年唐山大地震之後，目前成功的例證有十餘個，日本利用地震雲預報地震成功的例證有上百個，有趣的是，首先提出“地震雲”這個名字的不是地震學者，而是一政治家，他就是日本前福岡市市長鍵田忠三郎，他曾經親身經曆過日本福岡1956年的7級地震，幷且在地震時親眼看到天空中有一種非常奇特的雲，以後只要這種雲出現，總有地震相應發生，所以他就把這樣的雲稱爲“地震雲”。
那麽，什麽樣的雲才是地震雲呢？這種雲的最大特點在于“奇”，與一般的雲有著明顯的區別。
蔚藍的天空中有時會留下一條飛機的尾迹，常見的條帶狀地震雲很像飛機的尾迹，不過更加厚實和豐滿些，它一般預示震中處于雲向的垂直綫上。
另外有一種輻射狀的地震雲，則有數條的帶狀雲同時相交在一點，猶如一把沒有扇面的扇骨鋪在空中，雲的交點垂直于地面就是震中所在地。
此外還有一種條紋狀地震雲，形似人的兩排肋骨，根據此雲判斷震中較爲複雜。
地震雲出現的時間以早上和傍晚居多，地震雲持續的時間越長，則對應的震中就越近，地震雲的長度越長，則距離發生地震的時間就越近，地震雲的顔色看上去越令人KB，則所對應的地震强度就越强。
目前，對于地震雲的形成原因衆說紛談，雖然各有道理，但是都不能完整的解釋地震前出現的這種現象，所以至今還是個謎，而且地震本身是個非常複雜的過程，所以預報地震，最好采用綜合法。
http://www.takungpao.com/news/08/05/13/ZM-904496.htm
早在17世紀中國古籍中就有“晝中或日落之後，天際晴朗，而有細雲如一綫，甚長，震兆也”的記載，1935年我國寧夏的隆德縣《重修隆德縣志》中記載有“天晴日暖，碧空清淨，忽見黑雲如縷，婉如長蛇，橫臥天際，久而不散，勢必爲地震”
但是，世界各國對于地震雲的研究還是最近幾年的事，其中以我國和日本處于領先地位，我國對地震雲的研究始于1976年唐山大地震之後，目前成功的例證有十餘個，日本利用地震雲預報地震成功的例證有上百個，有趣的是，首先提出“地震雲”這個名字的不是地震學者，而是一政治家，他就是日本前福岡市市長鍵田忠三郎，他曾經親身經曆過日本福岡1956年的7級地震，幷且在地震時親眼看到天空中有一種非常奇特的雲，以後只要這種雲出現，總有地震相應發生，所以他就把這樣的雲稱爲“地震雲”。
那麽，什麽樣的雲才是地震雲呢？這種雲的最大特點在于“奇”，與一般的雲有著明顯的區別。
蔚藍的天空中有時會留下一條飛機的尾迹，常見的條帶狀地震雲很像飛機的尾迹，不過更加厚實和豐滿些，它一般預示震中處于雲向的垂直綫上。
另外有一種輻射狀的地震雲，則有數條的帶狀雲同時相交在一點，猶如一把沒有扇面的扇骨鋪在空中，雲的交點垂直于地面就是震中所在地。
此外還有一種條紋狀地震雲，形似人的兩排肋骨，根據此雲判斷震中較爲複雜。
地震雲出現的時間以早上和傍晚居多，地震雲持續的時間越長，則對應的震中就越近，地震雲的長度越長，則距離發生地震的時間就越近，地震雲的顔色看上去越令人KB，則所對應的地震强度就越强。
目前，對于地震雲的形成原因衆說紛談，雖然各有道理，但是都不能完整的解釋地震前出現的這種現象，所以至今還是個謎，而且地震本身是個非常複雜的過程，所以預報地震，最好采用綜合法。
http://www.takungpao.com/news/08/05/13/ZM-904496.htm
2008年5月20日星期二
Study Warned of China Quake Risk Nearly a Year Ago
I think it is more appropriate for me to talk about geopraphic rather than economics.
Kevin Holden Platt in Beijing for National Geographic News
May 16, 2008
Just ten months before a deadly earthquake struck Sichuan Province's Beichuan county on May 12, a scientific study warned that the Chinese region was ripe for a major quake.
After examining satellite images and conducting on-the-ground inspections of deep, active faults in Sichuan Province for more than a decade, scientists issued a warning.
"The faults are sufficiently long to sustain a strong ground-shaking earthquake, making them potentially serious sources of regional seismic hazard," the Chinese, European, and U.S. geoscientists wrote in the mid-July 2007 edition of the journal Tectonics.
They concluded that clashing tectonic forces were growing in Beichuan, ready to burst in an explosion of seismic energy.
With precision and what now seems like eerie foresight, the researchers charted the active faults on multicolored maps of Beichuan, which turned out to be the epicenter of the recent earthquake.
"As far as I know, this is the only investigation of these active faults," said study co-author Michael Ellis of the Center for Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis in Tennessee.
(Related: "China Quake Delivered Seismic One-Two Punch" [May 15, 2008].)
The magnitude 7.9 quake that struck on May 12 almost entirely leveled parts of Sichuan Province. Chinese officials today estimated that the death toll would reach 50,000 and that nearly five million people are homeless.
(See photos of the earthquake's destruction.)
"Locked in a Journal"
There is little reason to believe Chinese officials were aware of the July 2007 report, or that it would have made much difference if they had been.
"We had certainly identified the potential of these active faults," Ellis said. "But that information was effectively locked in an academic journal."
Ellis hopes that replacing the collapsed buildings with earthquake-proof structures could prevent future tragedies.
"I've been to these little towns [before the quake]," Ellis said. "Most of the houses are built of unreinforced masonry, and you can see little brick factories all around this area.
"It is more expensive to build earthquake-proof structures," he added. And the vast majority of people in Sichuan Province are anything but rich.
The Science Behind the Quake
Earthquake activity is nothing new in Beichuan.
"We have shown evidence for surface-rupturing earthquakes along the Beichuan fault since 12,000-13,000 years ago," Ellis and colleagues reported last summer.
Speaking with National Geographic News, Ellis said, "Ultimately, the [2008] earthquake is related to the continuing and inexorable collision of India with Asia, which is occurring at a rate of about 20 to 22 milimeters [just under an inch] per year."
This collision started more than 50 million years ago, when the tectonic plate beneath India crashed into the Eurasian plate. (Watch how the plates slammed into each other.)
"The Himalayas and all of Tibet was created by this collision," Ellis added.
As the Indian plate continues its slow-motion crash into Asia—sometimes in jerks marked by earthquakes—it is pushing the entire Tibetan Plateau northward.
"This earthquake was the Tibetan mountains moving east over the plains of Chengdu [the capital of Sichuan Province]," said Roger Bilham, a geoscientist at the University of Colorado who was not involved in the July 2007 study.
Not Just Sichuan's Problem
Study co-author Ellis said that, as the Tibetan Plateau moves northward, "the interior parts of Tibet are collapsing, rather like a soufflé taken out of the oven into cold air."
Faults along the southern, Himalayan edge of Tibet present hazards as great as those underlying the Sichuan temblor, Ellis said.
"Risk associated with the loss of collateral and lives is very high along the Himalaya, because so many people live there or immediately downstream," Ellis added.
"The risk is similarly high in Sichuan [to the east], because of the population and, like India and Nepal, the relatively poor building standards," he said.
And as India continues to pound into Tibet, "it is still creating new fault lines"—and new dangers.
Kevin Holden Platt in Beijing for National Geographic News
May 16, 2008
Just ten months before a deadly earthquake struck Sichuan Province's Beichuan county on May 12, a scientific study warned that the Chinese region was ripe for a major quake.
After examining satellite images and conducting on-the-ground inspections of deep, active faults in Sichuan Province for more than a decade, scientists issued a warning.
"The faults are sufficiently long to sustain a strong ground-shaking earthquake, making them potentially serious sources of regional seismic hazard," the Chinese, European, and U.S. geoscientists wrote in the mid-July 2007 edition of the journal Tectonics.
They concluded that clashing tectonic forces were growing in Beichuan, ready to burst in an explosion of seismic energy.
With precision and what now seems like eerie foresight, the researchers charted the active faults on multicolored maps of Beichuan, which turned out to be the epicenter of the recent earthquake.
"As far as I know, this is the only investigation of these active faults," said study co-author Michael Ellis of the Center for Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis in Tennessee.
(Related: "China Quake Delivered Seismic One-Two Punch" [May 15, 2008].)
The magnitude 7.9 quake that struck on May 12 almost entirely leveled parts of Sichuan Province. Chinese officials today estimated that the death toll would reach 50,000 and that nearly five million people are homeless.
(See photos of the earthquake's destruction.)
"Locked in a Journal"
There is little reason to believe Chinese officials were aware of the July 2007 report, or that it would have made much difference if they had been.
"We had certainly identified the potential of these active faults," Ellis said. "But that information was effectively locked in an academic journal."
Ellis hopes that replacing the collapsed buildings with earthquake-proof structures could prevent future tragedies.
"I've been to these little towns [before the quake]," Ellis said. "Most of the houses are built of unreinforced masonry, and you can see little brick factories all around this area.
"It is more expensive to build earthquake-proof structures," he added. And the vast majority of people in Sichuan Province are anything but rich.
The Science Behind the Quake
Earthquake activity is nothing new in Beichuan.
"We have shown evidence for surface-rupturing earthquakes along the Beichuan fault since 12,000-13,000 years ago," Ellis and colleagues reported last summer.
Speaking with National Geographic News, Ellis said, "Ultimately, the [2008] earthquake is related to the continuing and inexorable collision of India with Asia, which is occurring at a rate of about 20 to 22 milimeters [just under an inch] per year."
This collision started more than 50 million years ago, when the tectonic plate beneath India crashed into the Eurasian plate. (Watch how the plates slammed into each other.)
"The Himalayas and all of Tibet was created by this collision," Ellis added.
As the Indian plate continues its slow-motion crash into Asia—sometimes in jerks marked by earthquakes—it is pushing the entire Tibetan Plateau northward.
"This earthquake was the Tibetan mountains moving east over the plains of Chengdu [the capital of Sichuan Province]," said Roger Bilham, a geoscientist at the University of Colorado who was not involved in the July 2007 study.
Not Just Sichuan's Problem
Study co-author Ellis said that, as the Tibetan Plateau moves northward, "the interior parts of Tibet are collapsing, rather like a soufflé taken out of the oven into cold air."
Faults along the southern, Himalayan edge of Tibet present hazards as great as those underlying the Sichuan temblor, Ellis said.
"Risk associated with the loss of collateral and lives is very high along the Himalaya, because so many people live there or immediately downstream," Ellis added.
"The risk is similarly high in Sichuan [to the east], because of the population and, like India and Nepal, the relatively poor building standards," he said.
And as India continues to pound into Tibet, "it is still creating new fault lines"—and new dangers.
2008年5月7日星期三
Buffett advice: Buy smart...and low
Warren Buffett said investors should think independently when making buying choices. The Korean market trumps American banks.
Jason Zweig, Money Magazine senior writer/columnist
Last Updated: May 6, 2008: 1:15 PM EDT
OMAHA (Money Magazine) -- On Sunday, May 4, I attended the press conference where Berkshire Hathaway Chief Executive Warren Buffett and vice chairman Charlie Munger took questions from print reporters for two hours, then went off and did more interviews for TV.
Buffett, who composes his thoughts at blazing speed and speaks in long and complex paragraphs, spent the entire weekend talking. Munger, who is as laconic as Buffett is loquacious, saves his voice - speaking, as always, only a handful of words at a time.
Buffett and Munger, aged 77 and 84 respectively, have the mental energy and sharpness of someone half their age.
Here are some highlights.
Building a philosophy
In response to a question from Barbara Kiviat of Time on how he and Munger control their emotions, Buffett replied: "[It] comes about from having an investment philosophy grounded in the idea that a stock is a piece of a business. If you look at it that way, there's no reason to get excited whether some analyst is recommending it or the company is splitting the shares two-for-one, or whatever. The only way to drive the extraneous thoughts out of your mind is to have a philosophy. And for us that philosophy comes from Benjamin Graham and The Intelligent Investor, especially chapters 8 and 20. It's not very complicated stuff."
"You have to have the right temperament. I tell the students who come visit me that if you have more than 120 or 130 I.Q. points, you can afford to give the rest away. You don't need extraordinary intelligence to succeed as an investor. You need a philosophy and the ability to think independently...It doesn't make any difference what other people think of a stock. What matters is whether you know enough to evaluate the business," he opined.
"You should be able to write down on a yellow sheet of paper, 'I'm buying General Motors at $22, and GM has [566] million shares for a total market value of $13 billion, and GM is worth a lot more than $13 billion because _______________." And if you can't finish that sentence, then you don't buy the stock. [Note: Buffett mentioned GM for illustrative purposes only.] All this requires some temperamental detachment from other people's behavior. Both Charlie and I have a natural instinct in that direction. We value our opinions more than others' -- perhaps to an extreme!"
Kiviat followed up by asking whether they mind being regarded as "a bastion of calm" by others. Buffett simply stated, "I think they're probably right," while Munger was more loquacious: "Not only are they right, but it's a huge advantage to us to get the reputation of being wiser and stronger than other places. Would any of you object to being considered wiser and stronger when you're trying to get anything in life? The key is not to be seduced by crazy ideas, but instead just stick to the fundamentals year after year. Academia doesn't get too interested in us -- we're too simple. What would the professors do? A great many of the formulas [they use to analyze securities and markets] are dead wrong. They exist purely to give the intellectual class something to do. We don't do anything just exercise our intellectual proclivity for mathematical formulas."
Then Buffet said one of the most remarkable things I've ever heard him say: "There's no reason we should become fearful if a stock goes down. If a stock goes down 50%, I'd look forward to it. In fact, I would offer you a significant sum of money if you could give me the opportunity for all of my stocks to go down 50% over the next month."
Look at that sentence again. What Buffett is actually saying is that most people's emotions work backwards: They get greedy when stock prices go up and fearful when they go down. Instead, if you are a true investor, you should shop for stocks the same way you shop for anything else: Look for sale prices, and never regard falling prices as inherently bad news. Instead, falling prices create the opportunity to buy even more of something that was already worth owning.
In that single sentence Buffett captured the difference between investing and speculating: An investor, like Buffett, wants the price of a stock to fall below the value of its underlying business so he can buy even more and hold for as long as possible. A speculator (like Jim Cramer) only wants the price of a stock to go up, with no regard for the value of the underlying business at all, so he can sell as fast as possible. To the investor, the market's opinions do not matter. To the speculator, they are the only thing that matters.
Bond insurers beware
In what may spell trouble for bond insurers MBIA and AMBAC, Buffett said, "We see every day that people are coming to us and paying more than they paid the original bond insurer to see that they have an insurer." Berkshire wrote $400 million in municipal-bond insurance in the first quarter of 2008 and is already licensed to operate in 49 states. "This is entirely a secondary-market business," said Buffett, "where people are telling us, 'We'll pay you just to back them up.' "
Note carefully what is going on here: People who already have insurance on a very low-risk investment (municipal bonds) are coming to Buffett and asking him to ensure that their existing insurance will be adequate. It is like a man who is already wearing a belt paying you to put a pair of suspenders on him. This is the kind of business that Buffett loves. Without naming names, he criticized MBIA and AMBAC for ravaging their own capital by insuring too much dicey mortgage debt: "If they keep writing the business at any price, eventually the secondary market is likely to reflect that in the price [of bonds that carry their insurance]. And if you're writing business to pay for yesterday's losses, you'll be sorry."
Then Buffett marveled at the fact that "You have one bond insurer whose stock went from $96 to $4 [AMBAC (ABK)] and they're still rated AAA. The other one issued 14% paper with Treasuries at 4% [MBIA (MBI)] and they're still rated AAA." At that point, Munger elicited laughter from the room by intoning, "The rating agencies, with 20-20 hindsight, could have done better."
Korea and China vs. U.S. regional banks
When a Korean journalist asked whether Berkshire would buy any other Korean companies in addition to its existing holding in steelmaker Posco, Buffett revealed that he had bought "a number of" Korean stocks for his personal portfolio "a few years ago," when "that stock market got about as cheap as any market I've seen in my lifetime."
But most Korean stocks are too small to have a significant impact on Berkshire's portfolio, so Buffett and Munger don't expect to put much money there. Nevertheless, "Korea represents sound value," said Munger, and Buffett added: "It's one of the better stock markets in the world."
Later, in answering a question about whether the credit crisis has turned regional bank stocks into good values, Buffett said: "It's hard to get much conviction on how [the management] will behave and whether they tell the truth. There's a lot of leeway [in the accounting procedures and the reported financial statements]. Talking to the CEOs isn't very useful. When they're lying, they believe it themselves a lot of the time. I want to see how people behave in different situations."
In short, Buffett is not bullish on regional banks. Munger, however, was more upbeat: "For somebody who's very diligent, you've identified a prospecting territory that has some promise. It wouldn't necessarily work for us [because BRK needs to buy very large blocks of stock], but it might work for others."
Buffett wasn't done criticizing the impervious financial statements of US banks: "If you had $1 million," he retorted to Munger, "it would be easier to go through a manual of Korean stocks than to select a few good American banks." This time Munger agreed: "I'd take the Korean stock market so much faster than the American banks that it'd make your head spin."
I don't think, by the way, that Buffett and Munger were trying to say that the Korean stock market is a steal. They were, instead, merely pointing out that investors need to think for themselves and to cast a wide net. If you run out today and buy a bunch of Korean stocks without researching them first, you're not following Buffett and Munger's advice, you're violating it.
A Chinese reporter asked whether Berkshire will be buying more stocks in China now that its market has fallen by almost half, and what the next year will hold for Chinese investors. Buffett's answer held a lesson for investors based anywhere. "We're not in the business of forecasting what the market will do in the next year," said Buffett. "But if a market goes down, we like that. There's no way Charlie and I get upset when stocks go down. We like it, because falling prices give us the opportunity to buy more good businesses at better prices."
"We don't predict stock prices," he went on to day. "All we know is, the lower they go, the more interesting they get. I think it was Agatha Christie, who was married to an archeologist, who said: 'I don't mind getting older, because the older I get, the more interested my husband becomes in me.' Well, the lower stock prices go, the more interested we get in them...We are not looking at any stocks in China now, but China will always be on our radar screen."
Valuing stocks
Asked how he evaluates financial stocks when so many have balance sheets complicated by derivatives, Buffett said: "There are some that I can't value. I probably couldn't value them even if I worked there, even if I were in charge, and even if I had a year to do it. It's just too complicated [with such large positions in complex derivatives]....Most of them, I'm agnostic. I guess that means I don't trust them. When you're buying stock in a financial institution, you should have a reason to be quite comfortable with the risk-assessment capabilities of the people in charge...to have a real fix on the people running the institution. We can't do that with a lot of [banks]. We just can't figure out what they're doing most of the time.... [the accounting doesn't] really spell out where the institution stands. So you'd better know more about the people running it than any set of figures can give you."
Buffett added that not long ago, he read the 270-page 10-K annual report of a bank he was curious about. "After a couple of hours," he said, "I had about 25 pages marked with big question marks that I couldn't answer." (This raises the obvious question: If Warren Buffett can't understand the financial statements of big banks with derivatives, who can?)
Munger summed up the complexity of derivatives this way: "Wall Street is always going to go where the money is and not worry about the consequences. First they invent things they shouldn't sell to anybody, then they end up selling them to their grandmothers."
Munger commented later, "Many of the present troubles were richly deserved. A lot of financial institutions behaved with a combination of stupidity and over-reaching, and that's not a good combination. I think the world is right to exact a large penalty. Capitalism wouldn't exist without failure."
Added Buffett: "Capitalism without failure is like Christianity without hell. These institutions not only brewed the Kool-Aid but drank it. [Some of the banks and mortgage companies] were like an arsonist who got caught in the house after he set it on fire."
Munger's final word on the subject: "In some of these institutions, the main product is not banking, it's testosterone."
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/05/news/companies/buffet.pm.wrap/
Jason Zweig, Money Magazine senior writer/columnist
Last Updated: May 6, 2008: 1:15 PM EDT
OMAHA (Money Magazine) -- On Sunday, May 4, I attended the press conference where Berkshire Hathaway Chief Executive Warren Buffett and vice chairman Charlie Munger took questions from print reporters for two hours, then went off and did more interviews for TV.
Buffett, who composes his thoughts at blazing speed and speaks in long and complex paragraphs, spent the entire weekend talking. Munger, who is as laconic as Buffett is loquacious, saves his voice - speaking, as always, only a handful of words at a time.
Buffett and Munger, aged 77 and 84 respectively, have the mental energy and sharpness of someone half their age.
Here are some highlights.
Building a philosophy
In response to a question from Barbara Kiviat of Time on how he and Munger control their emotions, Buffett replied: "[It] comes about from having an investment philosophy grounded in the idea that a stock is a piece of a business. If you look at it that way, there's no reason to get excited whether some analyst is recommending it or the company is splitting the shares two-for-one, or whatever. The only way to drive the extraneous thoughts out of your mind is to have a philosophy. And for us that philosophy comes from Benjamin Graham and The Intelligent Investor, especially chapters 8 and 20. It's not very complicated stuff."
"You have to have the right temperament. I tell the students who come visit me that if you have more than 120 or 130 I.Q. points, you can afford to give the rest away. You don't need extraordinary intelligence to succeed as an investor. You need a philosophy and the ability to think independently...It doesn't make any difference what other people think of a stock. What matters is whether you know enough to evaluate the business," he opined.
"You should be able to write down on a yellow sheet of paper, 'I'm buying General Motors at $22, and GM has [566] million shares for a total market value of $13 billion, and GM is worth a lot more than $13 billion because _______________." And if you can't finish that sentence, then you don't buy the stock. [Note: Buffett mentioned GM for illustrative purposes only.] All this requires some temperamental detachment from other people's behavior. Both Charlie and I have a natural instinct in that direction. We value our opinions more than others' -- perhaps to an extreme!"
Kiviat followed up by asking whether they mind being regarded as "a bastion of calm" by others. Buffett simply stated, "I think they're probably right," while Munger was more loquacious: "Not only are they right, but it's a huge advantage to us to get the reputation of being wiser and stronger than other places. Would any of you object to being considered wiser and stronger when you're trying to get anything in life? The key is not to be seduced by crazy ideas, but instead just stick to the fundamentals year after year. Academia doesn't get too interested in us -- we're too simple. What would the professors do? A great many of the formulas [they use to analyze securities and markets] are dead wrong. They exist purely to give the intellectual class something to do. We don't do anything just exercise our intellectual proclivity for mathematical formulas."
Then Buffet said one of the most remarkable things I've ever heard him say: "There's no reason we should become fearful if a stock goes down. If a stock goes down 50%, I'd look forward to it. In fact, I would offer you a significant sum of money if you could give me the opportunity for all of my stocks to go down 50% over the next month."
Look at that sentence again. What Buffett is actually saying is that most people's emotions work backwards: They get greedy when stock prices go up and fearful when they go down. Instead, if you are a true investor, you should shop for stocks the same way you shop for anything else: Look for sale prices, and never regard falling prices as inherently bad news. Instead, falling prices create the opportunity to buy even more of something that was already worth owning.
In that single sentence Buffett captured the difference between investing and speculating: An investor, like Buffett, wants the price of a stock to fall below the value of its underlying business so he can buy even more and hold for as long as possible. A speculator (like Jim Cramer) only wants the price of a stock to go up, with no regard for the value of the underlying business at all, so he can sell as fast as possible. To the investor, the market's opinions do not matter. To the speculator, they are the only thing that matters.
Bond insurers beware
In what may spell trouble for bond insurers MBIA and AMBAC, Buffett said, "We see every day that people are coming to us and paying more than they paid the original bond insurer to see that they have an insurer." Berkshire wrote $400 million in municipal-bond insurance in the first quarter of 2008 and is already licensed to operate in 49 states. "This is entirely a secondary-market business," said Buffett, "where people are telling us, 'We'll pay you just to back them up.' "
Note carefully what is going on here: People who already have insurance on a very low-risk investment (municipal bonds) are coming to Buffett and asking him to ensure that their existing insurance will be adequate. It is like a man who is already wearing a belt paying you to put a pair of suspenders on him. This is the kind of business that Buffett loves. Without naming names, he criticized MBIA and AMBAC for ravaging their own capital by insuring too much dicey mortgage debt: "If they keep writing the business at any price, eventually the secondary market is likely to reflect that in the price [of bonds that carry their insurance]. And if you're writing business to pay for yesterday's losses, you'll be sorry."
Then Buffett marveled at the fact that "You have one bond insurer whose stock went from $96 to $4 [AMBAC (ABK)] and they're still rated AAA. The other one issued 14% paper with Treasuries at 4% [MBIA (MBI)] and they're still rated AAA." At that point, Munger elicited laughter from the room by intoning, "The rating agencies, with 20-20 hindsight, could have done better."
Korea and China vs. U.S. regional banks
When a Korean journalist asked whether Berkshire would buy any other Korean companies in addition to its existing holding in steelmaker Posco, Buffett revealed that he had bought "a number of" Korean stocks for his personal portfolio "a few years ago," when "that stock market got about as cheap as any market I've seen in my lifetime."
But most Korean stocks are too small to have a significant impact on Berkshire's portfolio, so Buffett and Munger don't expect to put much money there. Nevertheless, "Korea represents sound value," said Munger, and Buffett added: "It's one of the better stock markets in the world."
Later, in answering a question about whether the credit crisis has turned regional bank stocks into good values, Buffett said: "It's hard to get much conviction on how [the management] will behave and whether they tell the truth. There's a lot of leeway [in the accounting procedures and the reported financial statements]. Talking to the CEOs isn't very useful. When they're lying, they believe it themselves a lot of the time. I want to see how people behave in different situations."
In short, Buffett is not bullish on regional banks. Munger, however, was more upbeat: "For somebody who's very diligent, you've identified a prospecting territory that has some promise. It wouldn't necessarily work for us [because BRK needs to buy very large blocks of stock], but it might work for others."
Buffett wasn't done criticizing the impervious financial statements of US banks: "If you had $1 million," he retorted to Munger, "it would be easier to go through a manual of Korean stocks than to select a few good American banks." This time Munger agreed: "I'd take the Korean stock market so much faster than the American banks that it'd make your head spin."
I don't think, by the way, that Buffett and Munger were trying to say that the Korean stock market is a steal. They were, instead, merely pointing out that investors need to think for themselves and to cast a wide net. If you run out today and buy a bunch of Korean stocks without researching them first, you're not following Buffett and Munger's advice, you're violating it.
A Chinese reporter asked whether Berkshire will be buying more stocks in China now that its market has fallen by almost half, and what the next year will hold for Chinese investors. Buffett's answer held a lesson for investors based anywhere. "We're not in the business of forecasting what the market will do in the next year," said Buffett. "But if a market goes down, we like that. There's no way Charlie and I get upset when stocks go down. We like it, because falling prices give us the opportunity to buy more good businesses at better prices."
"We don't predict stock prices," he went on to day. "All we know is, the lower they go, the more interesting they get. I think it was Agatha Christie, who was married to an archeologist, who said: 'I don't mind getting older, because the older I get, the more interested my husband becomes in me.' Well, the lower stock prices go, the more interested we get in them...We are not looking at any stocks in China now, but China will always be on our radar screen."
Valuing stocks
Asked how he evaluates financial stocks when so many have balance sheets complicated by derivatives, Buffett said: "There are some that I can't value. I probably couldn't value them even if I worked there, even if I were in charge, and even if I had a year to do it. It's just too complicated [with such large positions in complex derivatives]....Most of them, I'm agnostic. I guess that means I don't trust them. When you're buying stock in a financial institution, you should have a reason to be quite comfortable with the risk-assessment capabilities of the people in charge...to have a real fix on the people running the institution. We can't do that with a lot of [banks]. We just can't figure out what they're doing most of the time.... [the accounting doesn't] really spell out where the institution stands. So you'd better know more about the people running it than any set of figures can give you."
Buffett added that not long ago, he read the 270-page 10-K annual report of a bank he was curious about. "After a couple of hours," he said, "I had about 25 pages marked with big question marks that I couldn't answer." (This raises the obvious question: If Warren Buffett can't understand the financial statements of big banks with derivatives, who can?)
Munger summed up the complexity of derivatives this way: "Wall Street is always going to go where the money is and not worry about the consequences. First they invent things they shouldn't sell to anybody, then they end up selling them to their grandmothers."
Munger commented later, "Many of the present troubles were richly deserved. A lot of financial institutions behaved with a combination of stupidity and over-reaching, and that's not a good combination. I think the world is right to exact a large penalty. Capitalism wouldn't exist without failure."
Added Buffett: "Capitalism without failure is like Christianity without hell. These institutions not only brewed the Kool-Aid but drank it. [Some of the banks and mortgage companies] were like an arsonist who got caught in the house after he set it on fire."
Munger's final word on the subject: "In some of these institutions, the main product is not banking, it's testosterone."
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/05/news/companies/buffet.pm.wrap/
2008年4月18日星期五
Buffett's on "Mr. Market"
Whenever Charlie and I buy common stocks for Berkshire's insurance companies (leaving aside arbitrage purchases, discussed later) we approach the transaction as if we were buying into a private business. We look at the economic prospects of the business, the people in charge of running it, and the price we must pay. We do not have in mind any time or price for sale. Indeed, we are willing to hold a stock indefinitely so long as we expect the business to increase in intrinsic value at a satisfactory rate. When investing, we view ourselves as business analysts - not as market analysts, not as macroeconomic analysts, and not even as security analysts.
Our approach makes an active trading market useful, since it periodically presents us with mouth-watering opportunities. But by no means is it essential: a prolonged suspension of trading in the securities we hold would not bother us any more than does the lack of daily quotations on World Book or Fechheimer. Eventually, our economic fate will be determined by the economic fate of the business we own, whether our ownership is partial or total.
Ben Graham, my friend and teacher, long ago described the mental attitude toward market fluctuations that I believe to be most conducive to investment success. He said that you should imagine market quotations as coming from a remarkably accommodating fellow named Mr. Market who is your partner in a private business. Without fail, Mr. Market appears daily and names a price at which he will either buy your interest or sell you his.
Even though the business that the two of you own may have economic characteristics that are stable, Mr. Market's quotations will be anything but. For, sad to say, the poor fellow has incurable emotional problems. At times he feels euphoric and can see only the favorable factors affecting the business. When in that mood, he names a very high buy-sell price because he fears that you will snap up his interest and rob him of imminent gains. At other times he is depressed and can see nothing but trouble ahead for both the business and the world. On these occasions he will name a very low price, since he is terrified that you will unload your interest on him.
Mr. Market has another endearing characteristic: He doesn't mind being ignored. If his quotation is uninteresting to you today, he will be back with a new one tomorrow. Transactions are strictly at your option. Under these conditions, the more manic-depressive his behavior, the better for you.But, like Cinderella at the ball, you must heed one warning or everything will turn into pumpkins and mice: Mr. Market is there to serve you, not to guide you. It is his pocketbook, not his wisdom, that you will find useful. If he shows up some day in a particularly foolish mood, you are free to either ignore him or to take advantage of him, but it will be disastrous if you fall under his influence. Indeed, if you aren't certain that you understand and can value your business far better than Mr. Market, you don't belong in the game. As they say in poker, "If you've been in the game 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy."
Ben's Mr. Market allegory may seem out-of-date in today's investment world, in which most professionals and academicians talk of efficient markets, dynamic hedging and betas. Their interest in such matters is understandable, since techniques shrouded in mystery clearly have value to the purveyor of investment advice. After all, what witch doctor has ever achieved fame and fortune by simply advising "Take two aspirins"?
The value of market esoterica to the consumer of investment advice is a different story. In my opinion, investment success will not be produced by arcane formulae, computer programs or signals flashed by the price behavior of stocks and markets. Rather an investor will succeed by coupling good business judgment with an ability to insulate his thoughts and behavior from the super-contagious emotions that swirl about the marketplace. In my own efforts to stay insulated, I have found it highly useful to keep Ben's Mr. Market concept firmly in mind.
Following Ben's teachings, Charlie and I let our marketable equities tell us by their operating results - not by their daily, or even yearly, price quotations - whether our investments are successful. The market may ignore business success for a while, but eventually will confirm it. As Ben said: "In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine." The speed at which a business's success is recognized, furthermore, is not that important as long as the company's intrinsic value is increasing at a satisfactory rate. In fact, delayed recognition can be an advantage: It may give us the chance to buy more of a good thing at a bargain price.
Our approach makes an active trading market useful, since it periodically presents us with mouth-watering opportunities. But by no means is it essential: a prolonged suspension of trading in the securities we hold would not bother us any more than does the lack of daily quotations on World Book or Fechheimer. Eventually, our economic fate will be determined by the economic fate of the business we own, whether our ownership is partial or total.
Ben Graham, my friend and teacher, long ago described the mental attitude toward market fluctuations that I believe to be most conducive to investment success. He said that you should imagine market quotations as coming from a remarkably accommodating fellow named Mr. Market who is your partner in a private business. Without fail, Mr. Market appears daily and names a price at which he will either buy your interest or sell you his.
Even though the business that the two of you own may have economic characteristics that are stable, Mr. Market's quotations will be anything but. For, sad to say, the poor fellow has incurable emotional problems. At times he feels euphoric and can see only the favorable factors affecting the business. When in that mood, he names a very high buy-sell price because he fears that you will snap up his interest and rob him of imminent gains. At other times he is depressed and can see nothing but trouble ahead for both the business and the world. On these occasions he will name a very low price, since he is terrified that you will unload your interest on him.
Mr. Market has another endearing characteristic: He doesn't mind being ignored. If his quotation is uninteresting to you today, he will be back with a new one tomorrow. Transactions are strictly at your option. Under these conditions, the more manic-depressive his behavior, the better for you.But, like Cinderella at the ball, you must heed one warning or everything will turn into pumpkins and mice: Mr. Market is there to serve you, not to guide you. It is his pocketbook, not his wisdom, that you will find useful. If he shows up some day in a particularly foolish mood, you are free to either ignore him or to take advantage of him, but it will be disastrous if you fall under his influence. Indeed, if you aren't certain that you understand and can value your business far better than Mr. Market, you don't belong in the game. As they say in poker, "If you've been in the game 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy."
Ben's Mr. Market allegory may seem out-of-date in today's investment world, in which most professionals and academicians talk of efficient markets, dynamic hedging and betas. Their interest in such matters is understandable, since techniques shrouded in mystery clearly have value to the purveyor of investment advice. After all, what witch doctor has ever achieved fame and fortune by simply advising "Take two aspirins"?
The value of market esoterica to the consumer of investment advice is a different story. In my opinion, investment success will not be produced by arcane formulae, computer programs or signals flashed by the price behavior of stocks and markets. Rather an investor will succeed by coupling good business judgment with an ability to insulate his thoughts and behavior from the super-contagious emotions that swirl about the marketplace. In my own efforts to stay insulated, I have found it highly useful to keep Ben's Mr. Market concept firmly in mind.
Following Ben's teachings, Charlie and I let our marketable equities tell us by their operating results - not by their daily, or even yearly, price quotations - whether our investments are successful. The market may ignore business success for a while, but eventually will confirm it. As Ben said: "In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine." The speed at which a business's success is recognized, furthermore, is not that important as long as the company's intrinsic value is increasing at a satisfactory rate. In fact, delayed recognition can be an advantage: It may give us the chance to buy more of a good thing at a bargain price.
2008年4月4日星期五
Warren Buffett MBA Talk
This is essentially similar to Warren Buffett's philosophy from the books on my recommended book list.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DfuXKpMFUjc
Enjoy it!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DfuXKpMFUjc
Enjoy it!
2008年2月24日星期日
Notes From Buffett Meeting 2/15/2008
Note: Students from Emory's Goizueta Business School and McCombs School of Business at UT Austin were invited to come visit Mr. Buffett for a Q&A session. These notes were reproduced to the best of my ability as I heard and as I could recall them from a collection of mine and other students' notes. There is no guarantee that this was exactly what was said, but the intent was to preserve the spirit of the message. Enjoy.
Emory:
With the popularity of "Fortune's Formula" and the Kelly Criterion, there seems to be a lot of debate in the value community regarding diversification vs. concentration. I know where you side in that discussion, but was curious if you could tell us more about your process for position sizing or averaging down.
With the popularity of "Fortune's Formula" and the Kelly Criterion, there seems to be a lot of debate in the value community regarding diversification vs. concentration. I know where you side in that discussion, but was curious if you could tell us more about your process for position sizing or averaging down.
Buffett:
I have 2 views on diversification. If you are a professional and have confidence, then I would advocate lots of concentration. For everyone else, if it's not your game, participate in total diversification. The economy will do fine over time. Make sure you don't buy at the wrong price or the wrong time. That's what most people should do, buy a cheap index fund and slowly dollar cost average into it. If you try to be just a little bit smart, spending an hour a week investing, you're liable to be really dumb.
I have 2 views on diversification. If you are a professional and have confidence, then I would advocate lots of concentration. For everyone else, if it's not your game, participate in total diversification. The economy will do fine over time. Make sure you don't buy at the wrong price or the wrong time. That's what most people should do, buy a cheap index fund and slowly dollar cost average into it. If you try to be just a little bit smart, spending an hour a week investing, you're liable to be really dumb.
If it's your game, diversification doesn't make sense. It's crazy to put money into your 20th choice rather than your 1st choice. "Lebron James" analogy. If you have Lebron James on your team, don't take him out of the game just to make room for someone else. If you have a harem of 40 women, you never really get to know any of them well.
Charlie and I operated mostly with 5 positions. If I were running 50, 100, 200 million, I would have 80% in 5 positions, with 25% for the largest. In 1964 I found a position I was willing to go heavier into, up to 40%. I told investors they could pull their money out. None did. The position was American Express after the Salad Oil Scandal. In 1951 I put the bulk of my net worth into GEICO. Later in 1998, LTCM was in trouble. With the spread between the on-the-run versus off-the-run 30 year Treasury bonds, I would have been willing to put 75% of my portfolio into it. There were various times I would have gone up to 75%, even in the past few years. If it's your game and you really know your business, you can load up.
Over the past 50-60 years, Charlie and I have never permanently lost more than 2% of our personal worth on a position. We've suffered quotational loss, 50% movements. That's why you should never borrow money. We don't want to get into situations where anyone can pull the rug out from under our feet.
In stocks, it's the only place where when things go on sale, people get unhappy. If I like a business, then it makes sense to buy more at 20 than at 30. If McDonalds reduces the price of hamburgers, I think it's great.
Austin:
What industry will be the next growth driver in the 21st century and what do you see that supports that?
Buffett:
We don't worry too much about that. If you'd look at the 1930s, nobody could have predicted how much the automobile and airplane would transform the world. There were 2000 car companies, but now only 3 left in the US and they are hanging on barely. It was tremendous for society, but horrible for investors. Investors would have had to not only identify the right companies, but also identify the right time. The net wealth creation in airlines since Orville Wright has been next to zero. If a capitalist had been at Kitty Hawk and shot him down, would have done us a huge favor. Or look at TV manufacturers. There are hundreds of millions of TV's, RCA & GE used to produce them, but now there are no American manufacturers left.
We don't worry too much about that. If you'd look at the 1930s, nobody could have predicted how much the automobile and airplane would transform the world. There were 2000 car companies, but now only 3 left in the US and they are hanging on barely. It was tremendous for society, but horrible for investors. Investors would have had to not only identify the right companies, but also identify the right time. The net wealth creation in airlines since Orville Wright has been next to zero. If a capitalist had been at Kitty Hawk and shot him down, would have done us a huge favor. Or look at TV manufacturers. There are hundreds of millions of TV's, RCA & GE used to produce them, but now there are no American manufacturers left.
If you want a great business, take Coca-Cola. The product is unchanged, they sell 1.5 billion 8 ounce servings per day 122 years later. They have a moat; if you have a castle, someone's going to come after you.
Gillette accounts for 70% of razor sales at 80% gross margins and it is the same over time. Men don't change much. Shaving might be the only creative thing they do, like painting the Sistine Chapel.
Snickers has been the #1 candy bar for the past 40 years. If you gave me $1 billion to knock off Snickers, I can't do it. That's the test of a good business. You don't knock off Coke or Gilette. Richard Branson is a marketing genius. He came in with Virgin Cola, we're not sure what the name means, perhaps it turns you back into one, but he couldn't knock off Coke. We look for wide moats around great economic castles. Growth is good too, but we prefer strong economics. In the upcoming annual report I have a section titled "The Great, the Good, and the Gruesome" where I talk about these.
Emory:
How do you define happiness and what about your life makes you most happy? When you make good on an investment, do you allow yourself to enjoy that success by getting excited - and on the flip-side, when an investment turns down, do you find yourself equally disappointed - or do you try to remove emotion from your work, as much as possible?
Buffett:
I enjoy what I do, I tap dance to work every day. I work with people I love, doing what I love. The only thing I would pay to get rid of is firing people. I spend my time thinking about the future, not the past. The future is exciting. As Bertrand Russell says, "Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get." I won the ovarian lottery the day I was born and so did all of you. We're all successful, intelligent, educated. To focus on what you don't have is a terrible mistake. With the gifts all of us have, if you are unhappy, it's your own fault.
I enjoy what I do, I tap dance to work every day. I work with people I love, doing what I love. The only thing I would pay to get rid of is firing people. I spend my time thinking about the future, not the past. The future is exciting. As Bertrand Russell says, "Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get." I won the ovarian lottery the day I was born and so did all of you. We're all successful, intelligent, educated. To focus on what you don't have is a terrible mistake. With the gifts all of us have, if you are unhappy, it's your own fault.
I know a woman in her 80's, a Polish Jew woman forced into a concentration camp with her family but not all of them came out. She says, "I am slow to make friends because when I look at people, I have one question in mind; would they hide me?" If you get to be my age, or younger for that matter, and have a lot of people that would hide you, then you can feel pretty good about how you've lived your life. I know people on the Forbes 400 list whose children would not hide them. "He's in the attic, he's in the attic." Some of them keep compensating by joining board seats or getting honorary degrees, but it doesn't change the fact that no one will give a damn when they are gone. The most powerful force in the world is unconditional love. To horde it is a terrible mistake in life. The more you try to give it away, the more you get it back. At an individual level, it's important to make sure that for the people that count to you, you count to them.
What if you could buy 10% of one of your classmates and their future earnings? You wouldn't buy the ones with the highest IQ, the best grades, etc, but the most effective. You like people who are generous, go out of their way, straight shooters. Now imagine that you could short 10% of one of your classmates. This part is usually more fun as you start looking around the room. You wouldn't choose the ones with the poorest grades. Look for people nobody wants to be around, that are obnoxious or like to take all the credit. If you have a 500 HP engine and only get 50 HP out of it, you'll be beat by someone else that has a 300 HP engine but gets 250 HP output. The difference between potential and output comes from human qualities. You can make a list of the qualities you admire and those you despise. To turn the tables, think if this is the way I react to the qualities on the list, which is the way the world will react to me. You can learn to turn on those qualities you want and turn off those qualities you wish to avoid. The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. You can't change at 60; the time to look at that list is now.
Austin:
Why do you think that despite making your methods publicly available, that relatively few people have been able to emulate your success?
Buffett:
I asked Graham the same question. Everyone took his class at Columbia Business School. He used current examples, and by the end of the semester you would have a portfolio that would've made you money. Graham lived a life of sharing. He may have had more money hoarding, but lived happier because of it. The money's just a figure in the paper, perhaps he would've died with 86 million instead of 42 million, but it doesn't really matter. 90% of the people that took his class ended up doing something else.
I asked Graham the same question. Everyone took his class at Columbia Business School. He used current examples, and by the end of the semester you would have a portfolio that would've made you money. Graham lived a life of sharing. He may have had more money hoarding, but lived happier because of it. The money's just a figure in the paper, perhaps he would've died with 86 million instead of 42 million, but it doesn't really matter. 90% of the people that took his class ended up doing something else.
At age 11 I started investing, purchasing three shares of Cities Service Preferred. I had read every book on investing in the Omaha library. I was really into charting and technical analysis. I loved it, but didn't make any money from it. At 19 I read Graham's "The Intelligent Investor" and it changed my world. Did Ben lose because I read his book? Maybe we competed and he made less money, but it didn't matter to Graham.
The philosophy either takes immediately or it doesn't at all. The reason gets down to temperament. People want to make money fast, but it doesn't happen that way. Graham's philosophy doesn't promise enough for many people. You don't know when it will happen, but you just wait for the fat pitches within your circle of competence. It's not as exciting as guessing whether the stock price will go up the next day. Most investors in internet companies didn't know the market cap. They were buying because they thought the stock would move, but if you asked them to write "I would buy XYZ company for $6 billion because", they wouldn't get halfway through the sentence. It's the classic tortoise versus hare, bound to work over time. Charlie and I have educated competitors. Most don't compete with us, though. It's fine, we have more than enough money.
Emory:
What qualities in managers set them apart as great leaders, in essence, where do you find the right balance between "hard" and "soft" skills?
Buffett:
We have 45 managers. Some of them we communicate with once a year, some once a month, some everyday. I usually have dinner with the Blumkins every month, and we go on vacation, because we're friends. What we look for in managers is a passion for the business. They usually come to us. I've never bought from a financial seller. We can't run the business so I am counting on them to behave well; we have very little in the form of contracts. The business needs to continue just the same after I hand them the check as before. My big question is whether he will still get up at 6 AM just the same with $500 million, and continue to send money to Omaha. I have to look them in the eye and decide whether they love the business or they love the money. It's fine if they love the money, but they have to love the business more. Why do I come in at 7 every morning, can't wait to get to work. It's because I get to paint my own painting and I like applause.
We have 45 managers. Some of them we communicate with once a year, some once a month, some everyday. I usually have dinner with the Blumkins every month, and we go on vacation, because we're friends. What we look for in managers is a passion for the business. They usually come to us. I've never bought from a financial seller. We can't run the business so I am counting on them to behave well; we have very little in the form of contracts. The business needs to continue just the same after I hand them the check as before. My big question is whether he will still get up at 6 AM just the same with $500 million, and continue to send money to Omaha. I have to look them in the eye and decide whether they love the business or they love the money. It's fine if they love the money, but they have to love the business more. Why do I come in at 7 every morning, can't wait to get to work. It's because I get to paint my own painting and I like applause.
We bought a jeweler, Ben Bridge. It was a 4th generation company, with over 100 stores. They were only interested in selling to us. The family didn't want to sell to others, the employees didn't want it. I never met him. He didn't want to sell either, but the family needed it.
At Borsheims we have a woman from Zimbabwe. She didn't even have the benefit of an MBA. We didn't look at a resume, or grades, or HR recommendations, but were looking for passion and we'll pay fairly because we don't want the resent that comes with unfairness. We want people that will work regardless.
I got a fax from Pete at Forest River saying this is the type of business you would like to own. He didn't want to worry about if he died tomorrow, and left his wife and daughter behind. After we made the deal, we had dinner and I brought up the topic of salary. I told him to name whatever number he wanted and I would sign the check. He asked me what I made. I told him $100,000 and he said he didn't want to make more than me, so we settled on $100,000. Pete called yesterday, and said he wanted to make an offer for another business. We talked for five minutes, I gave him some advice, but I really give them a lot of freedom. I've spent $1.7 billion and I've never even been to the company, at least I hope it's there.
I can't look at this group and tell you which 3 are going to be great managers. I can see it after they've been doing it for a while. Look at Mrs. B. She had one son involved in the business and 3 daughters not involved. She wanted a way to fairly distribute the proceeds of the business and this solved her problem. She worked until she was 103, and died at 104. She lived two blocks from the store. She left price tags on the furniture at her home because it made her feel more comfortable, like she was in the store. She left Russia and landed in Fort Dodge, Iowa. She saved $500 for 16 years to start this business that has the top 2 furniture stores in the nation. You can't hire those kinds of people, no matter what you pay them. We've been lucky that we've never lost a manager to competitors since 1965. Some retire, some were fired, but we give them the opportunity to paint their own canvas.
Austin:
If you could have lunch with one person you have never met, who would it be and why?
Buffett:
I would have to say Isaac Newton or Benjamin Franklin. I've met a lot of interesting people and some uninteresting ones, too. The two men had a bigger grasp of the world they lived in. But I don't think I would pass up an opportunity with Sophia Loren.
Emory:
Mr. Buffett, do you believe that the Federal Reserve is fostering moral hazard thereby leading to the misallocation of capital and subsequent asset bubbles? If so, what are the long term risks?
I would have to say Isaac Newton or Benjamin Franklin. I've met a lot of interesting people and some uninteresting ones, too. The two men had a bigger grasp of the world they lived in. But I don't think I would pass up an opportunity with Sophia Loren.
Emory:
Mr. Buffett, do you believe that the Federal Reserve is fostering moral hazard thereby leading to the misallocation of capital and subsequent asset bubbles? If so, what are the long term risks?
Buffett:
There is always some introduction of moral hazard when government decides to act in favor of the common good versus letting someone fail. There was moral hazard with the bailout of LTCM and there is some aspect of that with the current situation. But it's hard to measure because the consequences are 15-20 years out. During the 1987 market crash, Greenspan was new to the job and unsure of what would happen. The specialist system got hit, most of them operated on very little capital and were broke. The Fed provided them with more capital. Will that change future behavior? Maybe, but at the time it was the right call. It's also resulted in the "Too Big to Fail" doctrine. The big banks, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae figured the US Government wouldn't allow them to fail and the managements of those companies knew that. I would be disinclined to second guess the Fed, they have more information and are trying to do what's right.
There is always some introduction of moral hazard when government decides to act in favor of the common good versus letting someone fail. There was moral hazard with the bailout of LTCM and there is some aspect of that with the current situation. But it's hard to measure because the consequences are 15-20 years out. During the 1987 market crash, Greenspan was new to the job and unsure of what would happen. The specialist system got hit, most of them operated on very little capital and were broke. The Fed provided them with more capital. Will that change future behavior? Maybe, but at the time it was the right call. It's also resulted in the "Too Big to Fail" doctrine. The big banks, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae figured the US Government wouldn't allow them to fail and the managements of those companies knew that. I would be disinclined to second guess the Fed, they have more information and are trying to do what's right.
Austin:
Given your business success, your immense fortune, and your celebrity status, how do you stay so down to earth and humble? Are there specific people or lessons you have learned throughout your life that enable you to maintain this outlook?
Buffett:
I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and I'll tell you how you'll turn out to be. One of your most important jobs in life will be raising your children. They will learn more from you than they will in graduate school. My father was a huge influence, and later on Graham came along. I was also never let down by my heroes.
I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and I'll tell you how you'll turn out to be. One of your most important jobs in life will be raising your children. They will learn more from you than they will in graduate school. My father was a huge influence, and later on Graham came along. I was also never let down by my heroes.
I had nothing to do with my own success. My father was a securities broker and after the Great Crash, he had no one to call. Consequently, I was born in 1930 in the United States during the time of one of the greatest capital markets. I was born with the wiring for capital asset allocation. I had the right wiring at the right time. Temperament is a large part of my wiring. I was naturally good at it, and I used some feedback to develop it better. There is nothing to be arrogant about. Gates says if I had been born earlier, I would've been some animal's lunch. I can't run, I can't climb. I'd be talking about allocating capital and the animal would think, "Those are the kind that taste the best." You have all won the ovarian lottery. There is no reason to feel guilty about it.
I have never given away a dime that has any meaning on how I live. There are people that go to church and they put money in the offering plate that truly makes a difference in how they will live their lives, what they will eat, what presents they will buy for their children. There's no reason to get puffed up over things you didn't control.
Emory:
Due to the credit crisis and consequently large write-downs, banks have made it more difficult to lend healthy businesses capital for increasing efficiency, expansion, new projects, etc., thereby potentially becoming the primary agents restricting growth. What are your thoughts on liquidity in the marketplace and the possibly of it contributing to a recession? Also, do you see a potential for financial institutions not currently in the lending business stepping in to take advantage of the reduced supply of capital?
Buffett:
What we are seeing is a huge repricing and evaluation of risk, correcting for problems of the past. I don't know of good credit propositions that are going unfulfilled. There's lots of cheap credit for sensible deals, which I don't define as anything that happened over the last 12, 18 months. A lot of things that didn't make sense are being washed out of the system. It is painful for bad decisions. Comparatively, this is not a credit crunch. In 1982 the prime rate was 22% and money was very expensive. In the late 60's, we made a sound deal there wasn't any money to be had. That's not the case now. The Fed has opened the window, and rates are down. It doesn't mean there won't be a major recession.
What we are seeing is a huge repricing and evaluation of risk, correcting for problems of the past. I don't know of good credit propositions that are going unfulfilled. There's lots of cheap credit for sensible deals, which I don't define as anything that happened over the last 12, 18 months. A lot of things that didn't make sense are being washed out of the system. It is painful for bad decisions. Comparatively, this is not a credit crunch. In 1982 the prime rate was 22% and money was very expensive. In the late 60's, we made a sound deal there wasn't any money to be had. That's not the case now. The Fed has opened the window, and rates are down. It doesn't mean there won't be a major recession.
Austin:
What are some of your biggest mistakes or regrets?
Buffett:
We've made lots of mistakes, but they don't bother me. We've had no regrets. We are in the business of making many decisions and there are bound to be mistakes. There are $10 billion mistakes of omission that no one knows about; they don't show up in the accounting. In 1994 we paid $400 worth of Berkshire stock for a shoe company. The company is now worth 0, but the stock is worth $3.5 billion. So now, I'm happy to see Berkshire go down since it reduces the size of my mistake. In 1973 Tom Murphy offered us NBC for $35 million, but we turned it down. That was a huge mistake of omission.
We've made lots of mistakes, but they don't bother me. We've had no regrets. We are in the business of making many decisions and there are bound to be mistakes. There are $10 billion mistakes of omission that no one knows about; they don't show up in the accounting. In 1994 we paid $400 worth of Berkshire stock for a shoe company. The company is now worth 0, but the stock is worth $3.5 billion. So now, I'm happy to see Berkshire go down since it reduces the size of my mistake. In 1973 Tom Murphy offered us NBC for $35 million, but we turned it down. That was a huge mistake of omission.
In my personal life, there are always things I could've done differently. But so many good things have happened. It just doesn't pay to dwell on the bad things. Finding the right spouse is 90% of it. If you are lucky on health and lucky on your spouse, you are a long way home. Getting turned down by HBS was one of the best things that could have happened to me, bad luck can turn out to be good.
Emory:
Could you comment on the current rise of sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East and Asia and how they are playing an increasing role in how corporations raise capital. Is competition from these sources for the cash flows of corporations affecting your investment strategies or opportunities?
Buffett:
Any competition is competition. The situation of sovereign wealth funds is interesting. A lot of it is China bashing, OPEC bashing and plays right into politician's hands. Today, the US will buy $2 billion more from the world than they buy from us. In exchange we give them little pieces of paper and they have to buy assets. As long as we consume more than we produce we have to let the rest of the world invest in us. We created sovereign wealth funds and that $2 billion gains interest. US funds feel they can get the best terms from these foreign investors and lately, enticed them into buying equity. China wanted to buy Unocal, a 3rd rate oil producer with production overseas in places like India. US Congress went ape and 395 representatives signed an anti-Chinese resolution to block the deal. For 100 years the US companies went around buying the world's assets and bribing officials, but told China they couldn't buy Unocal. The Chinese took it, but they didn't like it. It doesn't make sense that we are buying foreign assets, and giving them pieces of paper and then telling them what they can't do with that money. We have created them and I have no objection to them. I recommend an index fund for these sovereign wealth funds. It gives them exposure to the US market, but they won't get taken by salespeople with bad deals. In economics you always want to say "And then what?"
Any competition is competition. The situation of sovereign wealth funds is interesting. A lot of it is China bashing, OPEC bashing and plays right into politician's hands. Today, the US will buy $2 billion more from the world than they buy from us. In exchange we give them little pieces of paper and they have to buy assets. As long as we consume more than we produce we have to let the rest of the world invest in us. We created sovereign wealth funds and that $2 billion gains interest. US funds feel they can get the best terms from these foreign investors and lately, enticed them into buying equity. China wanted to buy Unocal, a 3rd rate oil producer with production overseas in places like India. US Congress went ape and 395 representatives signed an anti-Chinese resolution to block the deal. For 100 years the US companies went around buying the world's assets and bribing officials, but told China they couldn't buy Unocal. The Chinese took it, but they didn't like it. It doesn't make sense that we are buying foreign assets, and giving them pieces of paper and then telling them what they can't do with that money. We have created them and I have no objection to them. I recommend an index fund for these sovereign wealth funds. It gives them exposure to the US market, but they won't get taken by salespeople with bad deals. In economics you always want to say "And then what?"
Austin:
Is the individual investor even capable of assessing the riskiness of securities given the large number of institutions/hedge funds in the market?
Buffett:
I don't think there is much being overlooked now, but I'm forced to look at big things. That's the advantage you have over me. A few years ago a friend of mine mentioned that I should look at Korea. We bought Posco for 3-4 times post-tax earnings. I found 20 other companies selling at 2-3 times earnings and strong balance sheets. I diversified because I didn't know the Korean market as well. We are looking for the very unusual. Occasionally things will happen in a securities market that are extraordinary. I like shooting fish in a barrel, but I like to make sure the water's drained out.
We had that situation a few years ago with the 30 year versus 29 ?year Treasury bonds. Because of less liquidity, the off-the-run bonds were selling for 30 basis points less, which translates into 3% of principal value. LTCM entered the trade at 10 basis points originally, but they overleveraged and were forced to unwind the position. If you went long/short you could make money really quickly.
I don't think there is much being overlooked now, but I'm forced to look at big things. That's the advantage you have over me. A few years ago a friend of mine mentioned that I should look at Korea. We bought Posco for 3-4 times post-tax earnings. I found 20 other companies selling at 2-3 times earnings and strong balance sheets. I diversified because I didn't know the Korean market as well. We are looking for the very unusual. Occasionally things will happen in a securities market that are extraordinary. I like shooting fish in a barrel, but I like to make sure the water's drained out.
We had that situation a few years ago with the 30 year versus 29 ?year Treasury bonds. Because of less liquidity, the off-the-run bonds were selling for 30 basis points less, which translates into 3% of principal value. LTCM entered the trade at 10 basis points originally, but they overleveraged and were forced to unwind the position. If you went long/short you could make money really quickly.
Markets are efficient most of the time about most things. But for these opportunities, nobody will tell you about them. They won't be on CNBC and they won't be in brokerage reports. You have to go find them yourself. In 1951, after I graduated from school, I used Moody's and S&P manuals as my sources of information. I went through them page by page. I was like a basketball coach looking for 7-footers. I still have to find out if he's coordinated, and can stay in school. But if someone comes up to me that's 5'6" and says, "Wait 'til you see me handle the ball", I say "No thanks". On page 1443 of Moody's, I found Western Insurance Securities. It had earned $21.66 per share 2 years ago, and earned $29.09 last year. Over the past year the stock was selling for between $3 and $13 per share. I still had to do the work to make sure the earnings were valid. The markets will get it right eventually. But they are there. You don't have to find too many. Finding 10 of these opportunities in your lifetime will make you so rich. But you can't be wrong. You can't have any zeroes. A list of big numbers multiplied by zero will equal zero. You can't go back to "Go".
Emory:
What do you think of aggregate infrastructure investment to stimulate the economy?
Buffett:
I think the best way to stimulate the economy is to give money to the poor. They will spend it. Don't give it to guys like me. Infrastructure investment makes sense, but we haven't done it in a while and it won't do anything for the next 6-12 months. Infrastructure is not big relative to GDP. We are a consumer-driven society, spending 106% of production.
I think the best way to stimulate the economy is to give money to the poor. They will spend it. Don't give it to guys like me. Infrastructure investment makes sense, but we haven't done it in a while and it won't do anything for the next 6-12 months. Infrastructure is not big relative to GDP. We are a consumer-driven society, spending 106% of production.
Austin:
Who do you think will be one of the next greatest investors and are you partial to favoring someone with a similar investment style as yours?
Buffett:
We just finished looking for someone. The Board has 3 candidates to replace me as CEO and 4 candidates to replace me as investor. They are all doing fine where they are, but they would be willing to come over to Berkshire for less pay.
We just finished looking for someone. The Board has 3 candidates to replace me as CEO and 4 candidates to replace me as investor. They are all doing fine where they are, but they would be willing to come over to Berkshire for less pay.
In 1969, I wound up my partnership and I had to help people find someone to manage their money. I recommended Bill Ruane of Sequoia Fund, Sandy Gottesman, who is currently on the board at Berkshire, and Walter Schloss, who I wrote about in "The Superinvestors of Graham and Dodds-ville". There's no way they could miss.
But I don't know many of the newer investors, they're not my contemporaries. It's not enough to just look at track records. They aren't predictive and there will always be a few people that do well. I know guys who can make 50% a year with $5 million, but not with $1 billion. The problem with guys that do well is they attract so much money that it neutralizes their advantage. It's hard to identify them, and even harder to make a deal to keep them from attracting other capital. It's like betting on a 12 year old horse that won at 3 years old. It's also important to avoid managers who use leverage. It's the reason that investors with 160 IQs flame out.
Emory:
At the Wesco annual meeting last year, Charlie said, "The best way to get success is to deserve success". Do you recall anything from your experience which best demonstrates how you were able to position yourself to deserve success, and do you have any advice for students on how they can position themselves to deserve success as well?
Buffett:
Behaving decent is a large part of it. Out of school I offered to work for Graham for free and he said I was overpriced. I tried to be useful and visible to him. I gave him stock tips and kept up with him. Almost always good things come from good behavior. Don't keep score in life. Tom Murphy does not keep score. He keeps doing 20 things for me and I can only hope to return the favor. Keeping score is terrible in marriage and terrible in business. I put myself in the seller's shoes. With most humans there is a great desire to reciprocate. If you do something for them, they will do 2X for you. How rare is it to work during lunch hours and be the first one there in the morning. You'll get noticed if you do something extra. It's good to have a willingness to pitch in when you aren't going to get credit for it. Charlie and I partnered up in 1959. We always both think we're right. We disagree but we've never fought. And we've never held past mistakes over each other's heads. I recommend reading "Poor Charlie's Almanack". It's amazing, has sold 50,000 copies and it's still sold independently.
Behaving decent is a large part of it. Out of school I offered to work for Graham for free and he said I was overpriced. I tried to be useful and visible to him. I gave him stock tips and kept up with him. Almost always good things come from good behavior. Don't keep score in life. Tom Murphy does not keep score. He keeps doing 20 things for me and I can only hope to return the favor. Keeping score is terrible in marriage and terrible in business. I put myself in the seller's shoes. With most humans there is a great desire to reciprocate. If you do something for them, they will do 2X for you. How rare is it to work during lunch hours and be the first one there in the morning. You'll get noticed if you do something extra. It's good to have a willingness to pitch in when you aren't going to get credit for it. Charlie and I partnered up in 1959. We always both think we're right. We disagree but we've never fought. And we've never held past mistakes over each other's heads. I recommend reading "Poor Charlie's Almanack". It's amazing, has sold 50,000 copies and it's still sold independently.
Austin:
Have there been instances in your career where you have been tempted to deviate from your strategy and if so, how did you handle that?
Buffett:
I'm not that type. I'm not disciplined. I just naturally want to do things that make sense. In my personal life too, I don't care what other rich people are doing. I don't want a 405 foot boat just because someone else has a 400 foot boat. Some of my friends have big boats where 55 people are serving 14. Of those 55, some will be stealing from you, some will be sleeping with each other, and I just don't want to deal with that. My friends have the boats, so I'm the ultimate freeloader. I don't need multiple houses. If I wanted to do something wild & crazy I could do it, but Anna Nicole Smith is gone. Reminds me of the story of the 60 year old man that got a 25 year old to marry him. When his friends asked how he did it, he replied, "I told her I was 90."
I'm not that type. I'm not disciplined. I just naturally want to do things that make sense. In my personal life too, I don't care what other rich people are doing. I don't want a 405 foot boat just because someone else has a 400 foot boat. Some of my friends have big boats where 55 people are serving 14. Of those 55, some will be stealing from you, some will be sleeping with each other, and I just don't want to deal with that. My friends have the boats, so I'm the ultimate freeloader. I don't need multiple houses. If I wanted to do something wild & crazy I could do it, but Anna Nicole Smith is gone. Reminds me of the story of the 60 year old man that got a 25 year old to marry him. When his friends asked how he did it, he replied, "I told her I was 90."
Emory:
It seems that the worldwide trend is towards lower corporate tax rates. Do you think that the US risks becoming less competitive if it maintains its current corporate tax rate?
Buffett:
Relative to GDP, government taxation is 18.5% and spending is 20%, so we borrow the balance. The national debt should not be a scary topic and the fact that it's gone up is fine as long as it's proportional to GDP. Where do we get that 18.5%? There's 2.7 trillion in government revenues. 2.2 trillion comes from individuals, and less than 1% of that comes from the estate tax. 1.1 trillion comes from income taxes, with payroll taxes consisting of 900 billion, but it's capped at the first $100,000 of salary. We want a tax system that encourages greater prosperity, but it needs to take care of the family.
Relative to GDP, government taxation is 18.5% and spending is 20%, so we borrow the balance. The national debt should not be a scary topic and the fact that it's gone up is fine as long as it's proportional to GDP. Where do we get that 18.5%? There's 2.7 trillion in government revenues. 2.2 trillion comes from individuals, and less than 1% of that comes from the estate tax. 1.1 trillion comes from income taxes, with payroll taxes consisting of 900 billion, but it's capped at the first $100,000 of salary. We want a tax system that encourages greater prosperity, but it needs to take care of the family.
We did an informal office survey by looking at the total tax footprint versus the total income. I earned 46 million and paid a tax rate of 17.5%. My rate was the lowest, the average was 33%, and my cleaning lady paid 40%. The system is tilted towards the rich. The Forbes 400 total net worth has gone from 220 billion to 1.54 trillion, an increase of 7-to-1. You see in legislature that there is lobbying carried on by the powerful over issues such as the estate tax and carried interest for private equity investments. We need to flatten income and payroll taxes, and those making under $30,000 shouldn't be bothered.
Let's imagine that 24 hours before you are born, a genie comes to you and tells you devise a social and economic system. The only catch is that after you designed the system, you would choose a paper from a barrel which would determine your demographics. What objectives would you want? You need to devise a system that creates prosperity. It needs to be a meritocracy, to put the right people in the right place. It needs to have a strong education system, and throw off lots of goods and services. It also needs to not discriminate against women or minorities. Even though the per capita GDP is $47,000, 20% of the population makes less than $20,000. We need to eliminate that fear of sickness or old age. A tax code is the codification of a country's values. But you can't kill the golden goose of prosperity.
Austin:
There is always mention that some of your success could be attributed to not buying in to the Wall Street mania b/c you are in Omahahat importance do you give to balance as it pertains to work and life and what do you do to maintain your appropriate balance?
Buffett:
I have so much fun that it's not work. I get to do what I want, where I want ?on a boat, wherever. My wife was responsible for bringing up the children. Neither of us had problems with that arrangement, and it made sense from an Adam Smith "division of labor" perspective. It will be a much tougher choice for women, and always be somewhat unequal. In my own life I did virtually no social functions or meetings that I didn't want to do. In my adult business life I have never had to make a choice of trading between professional and personal. I have simple pleasures. I play bridge online for 12 hours a week. Bill and I play, he's "chalengr" and I'm "tbone".
After a talk at Harvard, I told them to work for who they admired the most, so they all become self-employed. It's important to go to work for someone or some organization you admire. I've not seen many males having to make tough choices. But women are the ones who have tough situations.
I have so much fun that it's not work. I get to do what I want, where I want ?on a boat, wherever. My wife was responsible for bringing up the children. Neither of us had problems with that arrangement, and it made sense from an Adam Smith "division of labor" perspective. It will be a much tougher choice for women, and always be somewhat unequal. In my own life I did virtually no social functions or meetings that I didn't want to do. In my adult business life I have never had to make a choice of trading between professional and personal. I have simple pleasures. I play bridge online for 12 hours a week. Bill and I play, he's "chalengr" and I'm "tbone".
After a talk at Harvard, I told them to work for who they admired the most, so they all become self-employed. It's important to go to work for someone or some organization you admire. I've not seen many males having to make tough choices. But women are the ones who have tough situations.
2007年12月15日星期六
Charlie Munger's 10 Rules for Investment Success
By Morgan Housel December 13, 2007
Those of you lucky enough to attend a Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) annual shareholder meeting have undoubtedly heard Charlie Munger say, "I have nothing to add."
In reality, the guy has quite a bit to add. Thankfully for us, Munger is almost as forthcoming with his investment thoughts as his pal Warren Buffett. In his must-read book, Poor Charlie's Almanac, Munger puts forth a 10-step checklist that even the most inexperienced investors could benefit from.
1. Measure risk
All investment evaluations should begin by measuring risk, especially reputational.
It's crucially important to understand that from time to time, your investments won't turn out the way you wanted. To protect your portfolio, don't set yourself up for complete failure in the first place. Giving yourself a large margin of safety, avoiding people of questionable character, and only taking on risk when you can be sure you'll be satisfactorily rewarded are all steps in the right direction. Companies like Chipotle (NYSE: CMG) might have perfectly bright futures, but when their shares are priced for perfection, they might nonetheless prove too risky for savvy investors.
2. Be independent
Only in fairy tales are emperors told they're naked.
With stockbrokers often rewarded for activity, not successful investments, it's critically important to make sure you believe that what you're doing is right. Chasing others' opinions may seem logical, but investors like Munger and Buffett often succeed by going against the grain. Big Berkshire investments such as Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), and more recently Petrochina (NYSE: PTR), were largely ignored by the masses when they were first made.
3. Prepare ahead
The only way to win is to work, work, work, and hope to have a few insights.
It shouldn't surprise you that the best investments aren't the ones we typically read about in the paper. The diamonds in the rough are out there, but finding them requires effort. Buffett reads thousands of annual reports to cultivate ideas -- even if he only comes up with a few candidates each year. Munger advocates a constant curiosity for nearly everything in life. If you never stop asking the "whys" in what you do, you won't have trouble staying motivated.
4. Have intellectual humility
Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom.
Perhaps most crucially to Berkshire's success, its leaders never stray away from their comfort zones. In investing, a clear idea of what the business will look like in the future counts most. If you struggle to comprehend what the business does today, you might as well be throwing darts. While companies like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) are certainly titans in their own right today, they might look drastically different in five to 10 years.
5. Analyze rigorously
Use effective checklists to minimize errors and omissions.
The numbers don't lie. When researching investments, Buffett and Munger like to try to estimate the security's worth before they even look at its price. They are businessmen, not stock-market junkies. They focus their brainpower on the value of businesses, not convoluted economic forecasts or intricate market-timing techniques. Munger is incredibly brilliant, but the analytical rigor of his investment decisions is based around simplicity, not complexity.
6. Allocate assets wisely
Proper allocation of capital is an investor's No. 1 job.
In the early days of Munger's investment partnership, he held very few securities. When good ideas came, he poured significant capital into them; otherwise, he simply enjoyed the California sun. The amount of money employed in each of your investments should relate directly to its attractiveness. When you find a great investment, don't be afraid to bet big on it.
7. Have patience
Resist the natural human bias to act.
Munger said it best himself: "Half of Warren's time is sitting on his ass and reading; the other half is spent talking on the phone or in person to a highly gifted person that he trusts and trust him." While it can be tempting to jump in and out of the market, true fortunes are made from big commitments in quality companies, held indefinitely. When you're done with that, find a hobby. Spending all day watching stock tickers won't do you much good.
8. Be decisive
When proper circumstances present themselves, act with decisiveness and conviction.
This also goes back to not following the herd. When others are jubilant, you should be scared, and vice versa. Don't let others' emotions sway you; the market masses should help you find opportunities in their absence, not guide you down their own path to mediocrity.
9. Be ready for change
Accept unremovable complexity.
Investing success requires us to accept inevitable changes. Munger and Buffett hated railroads for decades, but as the times changed, they threw their old thoughts out the door and invested billions. The world around us won't always conform to our preferences and prejudices, and sometimes our best ideas will prove incorrect. If you aren't willing to roll with a changing market, you may find yourself fighting a lost cause.
10. Stay focused
Keep it simple and remember what you set out to do.
In chasing little, unimportant things, we often overlook huge and critical factors. But by keeping it simple , we can fixate on what really matters: buying good companies at a good price, and holding them until they're fully priced.
Charlie Munger often gets overshadowed by his more famous partner, but don't assume that's any reflection of Munger's own genius. He's undoubtedly been a guiding light for Buffett himself, and by any count, he should go down as one of the greatest investors of all time.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/12/13/charlie-mungers-10-rules-for-investment-success.aspx
Those of you lucky enough to attend a Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) annual shareholder meeting have undoubtedly heard Charlie Munger say, "I have nothing to add."
In reality, the guy has quite a bit to add. Thankfully for us, Munger is almost as forthcoming with his investment thoughts as his pal Warren Buffett. In his must-read book, Poor Charlie's Almanac, Munger puts forth a 10-step checklist that even the most inexperienced investors could benefit from.
1. Measure risk
All investment evaluations should begin by measuring risk, especially reputational.
It's crucially important to understand that from time to time, your investments won't turn out the way you wanted. To protect your portfolio, don't set yourself up for complete failure in the first place. Giving yourself a large margin of safety, avoiding people of questionable character, and only taking on risk when you can be sure you'll be satisfactorily rewarded are all steps in the right direction. Companies like Chipotle (NYSE: CMG) might have perfectly bright futures, but when their shares are priced for perfection, they might nonetheless prove too risky for savvy investors.
2. Be independent
Only in fairy tales are emperors told they're naked.
With stockbrokers often rewarded for activity, not successful investments, it's critically important to make sure you believe that what you're doing is right. Chasing others' opinions may seem logical, but investors like Munger and Buffett often succeed by going against the grain. Big Berkshire investments such as Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), and more recently Petrochina (NYSE: PTR), were largely ignored by the masses when they were first made.
3. Prepare ahead
The only way to win is to work, work, work, and hope to have a few insights.
It shouldn't surprise you that the best investments aren't the ones we typically read about in the paper. The diamonds in the rough are out there, but finding them requires effort. Buffett reads thousands of annual reports to cultivate ideas -- even if he only comes up with a few candidates each year. Munger advocates a constant curiosity for nearly everything in life. If you never stop asking the "whys" in what you do, you won't have trouble staying motivated.
4. Have intellectual humility
Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom.
Perhaps most crucially to Berkshire's success, its leaders never stray away from their comfort zones. In investing, a clear idea of what the business will look like in the future counts most. If you struggle to comprehend what the business does today, you might as well be throwing darts. While companies like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) are certainly titans in their own right today, they might look drastically different in five to 10 years.
5. Analyze rigorously
Use effective checklists to minimize errors and omissions.
The numbers don't lie. When researching investments, Buffett and Munger like to try to estimate the security's worth before they even look at its price. They are businessmen, not stock-market junkies. They focus their brainpower on the value of businesses, not convoluted economic forecasts or intricate market-timing techniques. Munger is incredibly brilliant, but the analytical rigor of his investment decisions is based around simplicity, not complexity.
6. Allocate assets wisely
Proper allocation of capital is an investor's No. 1 job.
In the early days of Munger's investment partnership, he held very few securities. When good ideas came, he poured significant capital into them; otherwise, he simply enjoyed the California sun. The amount of money employed in each of your investments should relate directly to its attractiveness. When you find a great investment, don't be afraid to bet big on it.
7. Have patience
Resist the natural human bias to act.
Munger said it best himself: "Half of Warren's time is sitting on his ass and reading; the other half is spent talking on the phone or in person to a highly gifted person that he trusts and trust him." While it can be tempting to jump in and out of the market, true fortunes are made from big commitments in quality companies, held indefinitely. When you're done with that, find a hobby. Spending all day watching stock tickers won't do you much good.
8. Be decisive
When proper circumstances present themselves, act with decisiveness and conviction.
This also goes back to not following the herd. When others are jubilant, you should be scared, and vice versa. Don't let others' emotions sway you; the market masses should help you find opportunities in their absence, not guide you down their own path to mediocrity.
9. Be ready for change
Accept unremovable complexity.
Investing success requires us to accept inevitable changes. Munger and Buffett hated railroads for decades, but as the times changed, they threw their old thoughts out the door and invested billions. The world around us won't always conform to our preferences and prejudices, and sometimes our best ideas will prove incorrect. If you aren't willing to roll with a changing market, you may find yourself fighting a lost cause.
10. Stay focused
Keep it simple and remember what you set out to do.
In chasing little, unimportant things, we often overlook huge and critical factors. But by keeping it simple , we can fixate on what really matters: buying good companies at a good price, and holding them until they're fully priced.
Charlie Munger often gets overshadowed by his more famous partner, but don't assume that's any reflection of Munger's own genius. He's undoubtedly been a guiding light for Buffett himself, and by any count, he should go down as one of the greatest investors of all time.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/12/13/charlie-mungers-10-rules-for-investment-success.aspx
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