원문 보기
The basic idea, it was hard to find good stocks and it was hard to find good investments and that you wanted to be in good investments and therefore you just find a few of them that you knew a lot about and concentrate on those seemed to me such an obviously good idea and indeed it's proved to be an obviously good idea.
Yet 98% of the investing world doesn't follow it. That's been good for us. It's been good for you. If you look at the record of the 20th century, you'd say how can anybody have missed, you know, in owning equities during that time and yet, you know, we had all kinds of people wiped out in the 29-32 period.
We had we had all kinds of things that were bad but you if you would just own stocks right straight through, didn't leverage them, you would have gotten a perfectly decent return. Just show us a good business tomorrow and we'll jump at the hook. Charlie? Yeah, I think but it's also true that both of us have said at various times over the last 3 years that we wouldn't be at all surprised if professionally invested money in America had a pretty modest result over a fairly extended period of the future compared to the very dramatically higher returns that it had achieved up to about 3 years ago and so far that's been proved out to be pretty much right.
Yeah, certain stretches are easier than other stretches. Yeah, our expectations were more modest than most people's a few years ago. We wouldn't say the world was coming to an end or anything. We just said that people have gone crazy in certain sectors and that and that anybody that thought that you could, you know, sit at home and day trade and make double digit returns over time or do anything with it you were entitled to that, you know, by just sticking a little money in your 401K or something was really living in a fool's paradise but that was never accompanied by any predictions of disaster for the American economy as a whole or for American business as a whole.
People get crazy notions from time to time in financial markets. You know, we've I commented on this earlier but they just believe things that there's it's hard to understand how they can believe. Now, so some extent they get sold that by other people but American business really is has never let investors down as a group, but investors have done themselves in quite frequently.
If you had a group of television stations, just to pick an example, let's say they were network television station all of a reasonable size, and I would probably figure that a chimpanzee could run the place and have 35% pre-tax margins, and you might want to pay for performance above some number like that.
It's silly to have something that starts at 10% or 15% when you do that, and a lousy manager will always suggest an arrangement like that. Charlie and I have seen all kinds of compensation arrangements where basically you get paid for showing up, but they try to make it look by constructing some mathematics around it like you really had to achieve something.
But in the end, if you get a great manager, you want to pay him very well. We've got great managers, for example, at a place like Mid-America, and somebody mentioned that there's a big carrot out there for them if they achieve the results that we've set out, and and that'll be a check I'll be very happy to write, Charlie.
Yeah, if you want to read one book that will demonstrate really shrewd compensation systems in the whole chain of small businesses, read the autobiography of Les Schwab, who had a bunch of tire shops, has a bunch of tire shops all over the Northwest, and he made a huge fortune in one of the world's really difficult businesses by having shrewd systems, and he can tell you a lot better than we can.
Yeah, and he worked that out himself. I mean, it it's an interesting book, and you know, selling tires, how do you make any money doing that? And uh Hundreds of millions selling tires. Yeah. And people like Sam Walton, I mean, the compensation system I will guarantee you at Walmart or Charlie's involved in Costco, they're going to be rational cuz you had very rational people running them, and they wanted to get the best they wanted to attract good managers, and they wanted to get the best out of them, and uh they had no use in paying for mediocrity.
But that does require a knowledge of the business. I mean, you don't want to let If you don't understand a business, you're going to have a problem with both the manager and the consultant in terms of getting flimflammed on how you pay people. At this meeting many years ago, you Mr. Buffett mentioned your fondness for chapters 8 and 20 of the intelligent investor, the first edition of security analysis, and you said Phil Fisher's first two books.
And you Mr. Munger have also been complimentary of Mr. Fisher's writings and investment approach. I wonder if the two of you would tell us of your experiences with Mr. Fisher, the circumstances of your meeting, etc. And did his writings or your discussions with him start you thinking about the idea of the great business or the franchise company, or was it simply an affirmation of thoughts which you had already begun to have?
And anything else you would like to say about Mr. Fisher? Yeah, Phil Fisher was a great man. He died of maybe a month ago or thereabouts and well into his 90s. His first book, I believe it was common stocks and uncommon profits, was written in 1958 and the second book was written a few years later. Those two books were terrific books and as with Ben Graham, you could really get it all by reading the books.
I met Phil Fisher just once and it was great. I enjoyed it, I loved it. He was nice to me, but similarly actually to my experiences with Ben Graham, I worked for him, I took his classes and everything else. It was in the books. I mean, they were such good writers and the thoughts were so clear that you didn't need to meet him personally.
I enjoyed meeting him personally, obviously, but they got it across in words and the only time I met Phil was sometime after that 1962 book or whatever it was, 61 or 62. And I was in San Francisco. I think it was in the Russ building. I think we were wrong on that. And I just I just went there. I used to do that all the time when I was younger and I'd go to New York and I'd just drop in on all kinds of people and I guess they thought because I was from Omaha that, you know, one time and they'd be rid of me, so and I would usually get in to see him and Phil, I did that with Phil and he was extraordinarily nice to me, but it wasn't like new ideas though however by meeting him cuz I'd already read it in his books.
And Charlie actually I met Charlie in 1959 and Charlie was sort of preaching the Fisher doctrine also to me. A little different form, but his ideas paralleled those of Phil. So I was sort of getting it from both sides and made a lot of sense to me. I don't know what Charlie's experiences were with Phil, but
Well, I always like it when somebody who's attractive to me agrees with me and therefore I've got very fond memories of Phil Fisher. The basic idea that it was hard to find good stocks and it was hard to find good investments and that you wanted to be in good investments and therefore you'd just find a few of them that you knew a lot about and concentrate on those seemed to me such an obviously good idea and indeed it's proved to be an obviously good idea.
Yet 98% of the investing world doesn't follow it. That's been good for us. It's been good for you.
댓글 0