저자: WarrenBuffett,CharlieMunger · 외국인
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공포에 휘둘리지 말고 주식을 사업 지분으로 보라는 장기 투자 철학 강연. 외부 악재가 늘 존재하지만 미국 경제와 기업은 장기적으로 성장해 왔다고 주장. 주가 변동성은 우량 기업에 유리한 기회로 해석. 특정 자산의 단기 가격 방향에 대한 예측은 없음.
다듬은 글
If you have a tendency to be afraid of others, then you yourself will be scared, then you probably won't make much money in securities over time. And what, uh , you know, people really weren't looking at the quotes, but of course the whole world is calling on them to look at the quotes and even more, to do something based on small changes in the quotes.
But if you hadn't thought about how much more rational... We've talked about this before, but think about how much more rational it is to invest in a farm than the way many people buy stocks. And if you are buying a farm, will you get a quote next week? Will you get a quote next month? If you are buying an apartment building, will you get a quote next week or month?
No, you look at an apartment building or a farm and say, "I expect it to produce so many bushels of soybeans and corn, and if it does, it will meet my expectations." But they buy stocks and think that if they go up, that's great, and if they go down, that's bad. We think just the opposite. When the price falls, we like it because we buy more, and if it rises, we buy even more.
Um, and I, you know, all that stuff, you know, Ben Graham wrote about it. This has already been explained. Um, but if you can't tune into that, you're going to be scared when everyone else is scared, and you're going to expect someone else to tell you when to buy and that's how you're going to get your courage back or something , you know, I could really boost this guy's courage by telling him this is a great time to buy, and then a week later he's going to meet someone else who tells him the world is coming to an end, and he's going to sell.
I mean, he's a friend of the broker. Given the war in Iraq, uh, consumer debt that's rising, declining employment growth , uh, declining wages in growing jobs, uh, the prospect of higher interest rates, uh , he's of the opinion that the next 5 to 10 years are going to be very difficult. What would be your opinion on the future of investments for the next 5-10 years, given all these negative factors that are happening?
This is too soft for me. I think Warren should accept it. Well, I would say that at any point in history, including times when stocks were at their cheapest, you could find, um, an equally impressive number of negative factors. I mean, you could sit down in 1974 when stocks were screaming discounts, and you could write down all sorts of things that would make you say, you know, the future is going to be just awful.
And just like that up top, you know, or at any time you can write down a big list of things that would be pretty optimistic. We don't pay any attention...We don't really pay any attention to such things. I mean, we have, uh, you could say that our basic premise, uh, and I think it's a pretty reasonable basic premise, is that this country is going to be very successful.
Uh, and in particular, she will achieve success for business. Business was going really well, you know, the Dow Jones went from 66 to over 10,000 in 100 years of the 20th century, and we had two world wars, nuclear bombings, flu epidemics and everything else, you name it, the Cold War. There are always problems in the future.
There are always opportunities in the future, and in this country, opportunities have over time overcome problems, and I think they will continue to do so in the absence of weapons of mass destruction, which is a separate issue, and business will not matter much unless something truly radical happens in that direction.
So we didn't... I don't know, I don't remember any conversations with Charlie, starting in 1959, where we came to the conclusion at the end that we would have given up a great business opportunity to buy a business because of external conditions. We also never bought anything mediocre that we thought was mediocre simply because we thought the world would be great...in my opinion , it's not the American economy that investors won't notice for five, ten or twenty years.
These will be the investors themselves. If you look at the history of the 20th century , you could say how could someone have missed out on owning stocks during that time, and yet, you know, we had all kinds of people losing their value, you know, in the 29-32 period, we had all kinds of bad things, but if we had just owned stocks right away, not using them, you would have made a pretty decent profit.
So, essentially, we are not affected by the variables you mentioned. Just show us a good business tomorrow and we'll take it. Charlie? Yes, I think so, but it is also true that we have both said repeatedly over the past 3 years that we would not be at all surprised if professionally invested money in America had a fairly modest performance for quite a long period in the future compared to the very impressively high returns it was achieving about 3 years ago.
And so far, it's turned out to be quite correct. Yes. Certain periods are easier than others. Yes, our expectations were more modest than most people's a few years ago. We did n't say the world was coming to an end or anything like that. We were just saying that people were going crazy in certain sectors, and that anyone who thought you could, you know, sit at home and day trade, make double-digit profits over time, or do something that you're entitled to, just by putting some money into your 401k or something, was actually living in a fool's paradise.
Uh, but it was never accompanied by any predictions of disaster for the American economy as a whole or for American business as a whole. Uh, it's people who have crazy ideas in the financial markets from time to time. You know, I've commented on this before, but they just believe in things that are hard to understand how they can believe now.
So, to some extent, they are convinced of this by other people. But American business has never really let investors down as a group, but investors often let themselves down . Big emphasis on volatility in corporate finance, uh. We don't think this is nonsense. We just have, uh, a statistical probability that we put up a million and it turns into, uh.
Yes. Let me say this. As long as the odds are on our side and we're not risking the entire company at once or anything like that, we're not concerned about the volatility of the results, but we want favorable odds. The greater the volatility over time, the better it will resolve itself at Berkshire.
If we have a business for which we are extremely confident in the business results, we would prefer high volatility to low volatility. We will make more money in a business where we know what the end result will be if it fluctuates frequently. I mean, for example, if people were to react to the monthly profits of See's, which can lose money eight months out of the year and make a fortune, you know, in November and December.
If people reacted to this and therefore made its stock as an independent company very volatile, that would be great for us because we would know that it was all nonsense. And we would buy in July and sell in January. Well, obviously that's not the case . But when we see a business that we're very confident about, but the world thinks its fortunes are fluctuating, and so it behaves volatilely with a lot of volatility...
You know, we like that. Well, that's much better than having a lower beta. So we think that we would actually prefer what other people call risk. When they bought the Washington Post, I'll use that as...I fell 50% in a few months. The best thing that could have happened. Well, it does n't get any better than this.
Um, uh, business was fundamentally very volatile by nature. That is , television stations and a strong dominant newspaper, although this is a non-volatile business , but these were volatile stocks. And, you know, it's a great combination from our perspective.
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