저자: CharlieMunger · 외국인
요약 보기
제약주는 특허·지적자본 중심 산업으로 훌륭한 투자처였다고 평가. 다만 어떤 기업이 10년 후 최고가 될지 구분하기는 어렵다고 함. 과거 제약 산업 전체를 사지 않은 것을 실수로 언급. 장기적으로 좋은 경영진과 좋은 사업을 보유하는 것이 핵심이며, 시장 자금흐름·매크로 지표(M2 등)는 자신의 투자와 무관하다는 입장. 주식 매수 시 시장이 5년간 닫혀도 보유할 만한지 자문하라고 조언. 무역적자와 자본 흐름의 상호 관계도 설명.
다듬은 글
Think of the great drug companies and how small they were 20 years ago and how everything they have is basically intellectual capital. It's the few products that have that really work that have the patents. Pharmaceutical industryy's obviously been a terrific industry to invest in. We have trouble or at least I have trouble distinguishing among the companies in terms of seeing which ones 10 years from now might be the the best ones to be in.
I mean, it's easier for me to figure out that Coca-Cola is the soft drink company to be in or Gilletta is the shaving company to be in or Disney is the entertainment company to be in than it is for me to figure out which one in the pharmaceutical. But that I'm not saying you can't do it. I'm just saying that that's difficult for me.
We have we started buying one of them a couple of years ago. We should and we should have continued but we didn't because it went up an eighth and uh your chairman was a little reluctant to follow it. That terrible mistake but um I would say the biggest we and we could have bought the whole industry and done very well at various times particularly when the uh the threat of uh uh what people thought was the threat of the Clinton health program cast a big cloud over the pharmaceutical industry.
That was a time you could have just bought the whole industry and done very well. We didn't do it. It was a mistake. Charlie, it's hard to think of any industry that's done more good for consumers generally when you think of the way children used to die and now they very seldom die. And uh it's been a fabulous business and it's been one of the glories of American uh civilization.
Patents and copyrights have gotten to be way more valuable as a percentage of the investment assets of the world. And so people are very much more interested in intellectual capital. Bergkshire has a lot of intellectual capital in these very able executives in the various businesses and we hope we've got some intellectual capital in the few hundred square feet at headquarters.
But we are not in the business of designing oil refineries with armies of engineers or developing software with armies uh uh doing complicated uh accounting work all over the world. uh we we just haven't drifted into that kind of a of of a business. And intellectual capital has gotten to be a new buzzword because we've now developed huge businesses like Microsoft which really didn't exist on that scale not so very long ago.
And so people have suddenly realized, my god, there's really a lot of money in in aggregation effects and momentum effects when you get a bunch of really bright people working in the same direction. And that's what's that's what's made the concept so fashionable. By and large, we've avoided the field.
Again, it's hard for us to understand. Yeah. We we've looked for brains and energy and integrity in people that we work with. And if you get that combination and you're in a decent business, you know, you're going to own the world. And you know, whether you call it intellectual capital or anything, you know, you you can you can stick stick the names on.
And that's who who we try to associate with. I mean, it's a lot easier than doing it yourself. And when we get in our own businesses, you saw that group there at the end of the movie. I mean, that's a huge asset to Bergkshire. uh we they talk about getting into accounting for it with that's nonsense in my view.
I mean you don't need to do that but you you you should pay for it and you should pay for it as shareholders. You should pay for it as managers when we get people you know whether it's Tom Murphy or Al Zay Gillette or Roberto Goer or Michael Eisner. I mean those people have added billions of dollars of value and uh it's just you know that's who we want to be associated with and we don't want to be associated with the mediocre managers because uh the difference is just is huge.
But we don't go through an elaborate exercise. We just recognize the people that have got those we think we we try to recognize the people who've got those qualities and then we and then if they're in a good business and they've got those qualities, we want to take a big bite. There's businesses you sort of think of that way as as as their whole being being intellectual capital.
But I would argue that that when Roberto Voyetta 15 years ago saw how to make the future of coke, same product dramatic and basically the same system, although required some changes, but saw how to make that dramatically more valuable uh by doing a lot of little things over a long period of time and doing them consistently and not getting his eye off the ball.
Michael Eisner did the same thing that Disney hadn't gone any place, you know, in the 15 years or so after Walt died. Now, you know, we all knew who Mickey Mouse was and everything, but Michael really saw what the future should be, and he still does be, you know, and how you say it's easy when it's all over, but but how many people were doing something about at the time the place was was languishing basically 15 years ago.
they have the assets. Uh, and to me that's, you know, it's different than what Bill Gates does or Andy Grove does, but it's it's it's our form of intellectual capital. It's one we can understand better. We don't really care who's buying or selling any security. Somebody is buying or selling each one.
So, obviously there's, you know, you could you could focus on the buyers, you could focus on the sellers, but you can say now that there's 20 billion in month or so going into equity funds and all, but it doesn't make any difference to us. We all we're interested in what the is what the business is worth and what people are paying attention to in terms of capital flows or whatever or market signals or whether the Fed's going to move that all changes.
Remember 10 years ago it was, you know, was M2 that every everybody every whatever day of the week it was, you know, what what's M2 this week? I always thought of having a mystery, you know, about whatever happened to M2 here. So, but there's always something that people are talking about. There's so much time to fill with chatter, you know, that and and pages to fill that they write about all these things that to to us don't make much difference because we don't care if the market closes for the next five years.
We care how much Coca-Cola sold 5 years from now and what percentage of the world market they have and what they're charging for it and how many shares are outstanding and that sort of thing, but we just we don't care who's buying or selling it in the least. Except we like it when the company's buying it.
Uh the same way with with Gillette, we care about whether people are trading up in the shaving experience. So capital flows and all of those macro factors that people like to write about a lot just have nothing to do with what we do. We're buying businesses and uh I really think it is not a bad mindset to whenever you buy a stock to say would I be happy buying this stock if the market closed for 5 years because then you're buying a business if you say yes to that if you don't say yes to that you may you may not be focusing on on on on the proper thing uh um by its nature the US is running a substantial trade deficit merchandise trade deficit if if if you buy more from the rest of the world and you're selling them which is what happens when you're running a trade deficit you have to balance the books I mean they get something in exchange and what happens is they get some sort of capital asset in exchange they may get a government bond they may get a piece of the US business or something but you the key thing in economics whenever somebody makes some assertion to you about economics you always want to say and then what in fact it's not a bad idea to say about everything in life but you always have to say and then what so when you read that the merchandise trade deficit is 9 billion.
What else does that mean? Well, it means that somehow we have to have created 9 billion of capital assets claims on our production in the future with somebody else in the world. So, they have to invest. They don't have any choice. When somebody says, "Won't it be terrible if the Japanese sell all their government bonds?
They can't sell all the government bonds without getting something else in exchange." Now, they get some other American asset in exchange because they there's no other way to do it. They can sell it to the French, but then the French have the same problem. to trace through where the transactions go.
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