저자: WarrenBuffett · 외국인
요약 보기
금리는 자산가치의 중력과 같아 금리가 낮을수록 현금흐름 할인가치가 커져 주식이 싸 보인다고 주장. 단기 국채 낙찰금리가 사실상 0에 가까워진 점을 근거로 듦. 버크셔의 국채 이자수입이 팬데믹 전 연 약 15억 달러에서 현 수준 약 2천만 달러로 줄었다고 언급. 재정 부양과 통화정책이 결합된 전례 없는 상황이며 결과는 불확실하다고 경고.
다듬은 글
Well, let me ask a clarifying question about this. It's from Jack Saling, who asks, "What's your approach when you see so many of these companies that have skyrocketed?" Not GME stocks or “mem” stocks, but rather large tech growth stocks that add 50%, 100%, 200%, etc. in a year or less.” “I know you ultimately acquired Apple in 2016 because of the quality of their business and management.
How do you assess whether these skyrocketing stocks are worth your investment, given these insanely high valuations that are muddying the waters? Well , we don't think they're crazy. They ...Well, we don't...At least I, Charlie, I...I feel like I understand Apple and its future with consumers around the world better than some other companies.
But I don't care about...prices, and that brings us back to something fundamental about investing. I mean, interest rates, you know, are essentially to asset values—they're the same thing as gravity is to matter, essentially. And on my way here yesterday, I ripped out a little note from the Wall Street Journal.
I guess I'm the only one who read it. It's so small that I'm having a hard time finding it, but anyway, yes, on Thursday the U.S. Treasury sold eight-week and four-week Treasury bills , and the price was, if you look in your Wall Street Journal in a little corner, on the penultimate page of my newspaper, in the very bottom corner, there it is.
Treasury auction results. Such a tiny thing. They sold...They had bids for 100 billion or so of four-week Treasury bills, they accepted bids for 43 billion. And it says: average price 100,000,000, six zeros. And, essentially, people were giving $40 billion or so to the Treasury, and they were offering to give $130 billion or something, whatever the tender amount was, and the Treasury got the money for zero, and Janet Yellen talked several times about lowering the cost of debt service .
And I think in the last fiscal quarter, the U.S. Treasury, which is the U.S. government, which owes several trillion dollars -- I should say, several trillion dollars more than a year ago -- their interest expense went down 8%. So you have this incredible contraction in what 's called a group of super-risk-free assets, short-term Treasury bills.
And this is the yardstick by which other values are evaluated . I mean, if I could reduce gravity by about 80%. I mean, I would be at the Tokyo Olympics, uh, jumping. And essentially, if interest rates were 10%, valuations would be much So you've got this incredible, uh, change in valuation of everything that makes money, because the risk-free rate gives now a fairly short term, nothing.
This is very interesting. I brought this book because, uh, for 25 or more years, Paul Samuelson's book was the go-to book on economics. It was taught in every school, and Paul was the first, he was the first, he was the first Nobel, uh, prize winner. Er, it's kind of a cousin of the Nobel Prize. They started giving it from economics.
Uh, I think it was the late 60s. He was the first winner from the United States. Paul Samuelson. Oddly enough , the second winner, uh, was Ken Arrow. And they are both Larry Summers' uncles. So, Larry Summers' first two winners were uncles. Uh, but Paul was a great guy. He was a wonderful writer. A defining writer.
And, uh, that's why I got out a '73 economics textbook. And keep in mind that economics probably started as a curious science and became respectable with Adam Smith, let's say. And he wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776. He wrote some books before, but you seem to be dating this from the founding of our country.
And then you had all these famous economists later on. And Paul became the most famous of his time. So I looked at the end of the section on interest rates, I was looking for negative interest rates. There is nothing there. So, I finally found zero interest rates and Paul Samuelson, a brilliant man after a few hundred years of us studying economics, essentially.
He said that, uh , uh, He said that you could imagine, technically, he said, you could imagine, maybe, negative interest rates, but that could never actually happen. And this was, you know, in the 1970s. This wasn't in the dark ages. And it was And no economist wrote and said, "That's a terrible line for a book or something." You know, and here we are in this world where we had zero interest rates last year on I mean last week on or this week on the four-week bill.
And Berkshire Hathaway, which had more than that, but let's say we had a hundred billion dollars in Treasury bills. We have more than that. Before the epidemic, uh, pandemic, we were getting about a billion and a half a year from this. At current rates, if it's two basis points, we'll get 20 million.
Imagine your salary was cut from $15 an hour to 20 cents an hour. So, it was a radical change. And that's exactly how it was meant to be. I mean, that's why the Fed acted the way it did . They wanted to give a powerful push, like Mario Draghi did in Europe, it seems, in 2012, when he said, " We will do everything we can." "And they went to negative rates, and we ...
the Fed said they don't want to go to negative rates, and I think the Treasury actually has some constraints, but if the current rates were acceptable, if the 10- year bond was really priced like that, those companies that were mentioned in the question, they are a real find. I mean, they have the ability to generate cash flow, and if you discount it at current interest rates, the stocks become very, very cheap.
Now the question is what happens to interest rates over time. But there is a vision of what rates are going to be based on the 30-year yield curve and so on. It's an extremely interesting time. We've never seen a fiscal injection of money before, parallel to monetary policy , close to zero interest rates, and that's extremely nice.
But one thing you always have to remember in economics is that you can never one thing. You should always ask, "What next?" ""And we send out huge amounts. The president said Wednesday that 85% of people will receive a check for $1,400. You have to take that 85% into account. And a couple of years ago, we said that 40 % of people could never find $400 in cash.
So, 85% of our people receive such amounts. And so far we haven't experienced any unpleasant consequences from this. People feel better. Those who received the money feel better, and people who borrowed the money don't, but that makes stocks go up. This helps businesses thrive. This makes voters happy.
And we'll see if this leads to anything else. And if nothing else, you can expect this to continue on a grand scale. But in economics, everything has its consequences. But that's why we don't own Google or Apple shares . We do not own Microsoft. We don't own them, but they are incredible companies in terms of return on capital.
They do not require large capital. And they generate more money. And if you're looking for bonds that generate more income, more money from the federal government, we have 100 billion that yields, you know, $30 or $40 million a year, or whatever it comes out to, depending on short-term rates. This, uh, creates pressure, which, of course, is what monetary authorities are seeking.
I mean , they are pushing the economy, and in Europe they are doing it even more radically, they are pushing, and we are helping with fiscal policy , and people are feeling good, but people are becoming indifferent to the numbers. You know, trillions don't mean anything to anyone anymore . You know, but $1,400—it matters to them .
So we'll see where this leads, but Charlie, I think this is the most interesting film we've ever seen economically, do n't you think? Yes, and professional economists, of course, were very surprised by what happened. This reminds me of Churchill's words about Clement Attlee. He said that he was a very modest man, and he had many reasons for modesty.
And that's exactly what happened to professional economists. They were so sure of everything, and then it turned out that the world was more complicated than they thought.
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