Warren Buffett: Why stocks beat gold and bonds
发表于： 2012-03-10 14:17:29
Warren Buffett: Why stocks beat gold and bonds
February 9, 2012: 5:00 AM ETIn an adaptation from his upcoming shareholder letter, the Oracle of Omaha explains why equities almost always beat the alternatives over time.
By
Warren Buffett
FORTUNE — Investing is often described as the process of laying out money now in the expectation of receiving more money in the future. At Berkshire Hathaway (
BRKA
) we take a more demanding approach, defining investing as the transfer to others of purchasing power now with the reasoned expectation of receiving more purchasing power — after taxes have been paid on nominal gains — in the future. More succinctly, investing is forgoing consumption now in order to have the ability to consume more at a later date.
From our definition there flows an imp
ortant corollary: The riskiness of an investment is not measured by beta (a Wall Street term encompassing volatility and often used in measuring risk) but rather by the probability — the reasoned probability — of that investment causing its owner a loss of purchasing power over his contemplated holding period. Assets can fluctuate greatly in price and not be risky as long as they are reasonably certain to deliver increased purchasing power over their holding period. And as we will see, a nonfluctuating asset can be laden with risk.
Investment possibilities are both many and varied. There are three major categories, however, and it’s imp
ortant to understand the characteristics of each. So let’s survey the field.
Investments that are denominated in a given currency include money-market funds, bonds, mortgages, bank deposits, and other instruments. Most of these currency-based investments are thought of as “safe.” In truth they are among the most dangerous of assets. Their beta may be zero, but their risk is huge.
Over the past century these instruments have destroyed the purchasing power of
investors in many countries
, even as these holders continued to receive timely payments of interest and principal. This ugly result, moreover, will forever recur. Governments determine the ultimate value of money, and systemic forces will sometimes cause them to gravitate to policies that produce inflation. From time to time such policies spin out of control.
Even in the U.S., where the wish for a stable currency is strong, the dollar has fallen a staggering 86% in value since 1965, when I took over management of Berkshire. It takes no less than 1 did at that time. Consequently, a tax-free institution would have needed 4.3% interest annually from bond investments over that period to simply maintain its purchasing power. Its managers would have been kidding themselves if they thought of any portion of that interest as “income.”
For taxpaying investors like you and me, the picture has been far worse. During the same 47-year period, continuous rolling of U.S. Treasury bills produced 5.7% annually. That sounds satisfactory. But if an individual investor paid personal income taxes at a rate averaging 25%, this 5.7% return would have yielded nothing in the way of real income. This investor’s visible income tax would have stripped him of 1.4 points of the stated yield, and the invisible inflation tax would have devoured the remaining 4.3 points. It’s noteworthy that the implicit inflation “tax” was more than triple the explicit income tax that our investor probably thought of as his main burden. “In God We Trust” may be imprinted on our currency, but the hand that activates our government’s printing press has been all too human.
High interest rates, of course, can compensate purchasers for the inflation risk they face with currency-based investments — and indeed, rates in the early 1980s did that job nicely.
Current rates
, however, do not come close to offsetting the purchasing-power risk that investors assume. Right now bonds should come with a warning label.
Warren Buffett: Your pick for Businessperson of the Year
Under today’s conditions, therefore, I do not like currency-based investments. Even so, Berkshire holds significant amounts of them, primarily of the short-term variety. At Berkshire the need for ample liquidity occupies center stage and will never be slighted, however inadequate rates may be. Accommodating this need, we primarily hold
U.S. Treasury bills
, the on
ly investment that can be counted on for liquidity under the most chaotic of economic conditions. Our working level for liquidity is 10 billion is our absolute minimum.
Beyond the requirements that liquidity and regulators impose on us, we will purchase currency-related securities on
ly if they offer the possibility of unusual gain — either because a particular credit is mispriced, as can occur in periodic junk-bond debacles, or because rates rise to a level that offers the possibility of realizing substantial capital gains on high-grade bonds when rates fall. Though we’ve exploited both opportunities in the past — and may do so again — we are now 180 degrees removed from such prospects. Today, a wry comment that Wall Streeter Shelby Cullom Davis made long ago seems apt: “Bonds promoted as offering risk-free returns are now priced to deliver return-free risk.”
The second major category of investments involves assets that will never produce anything, but that are purchased in the buyer’s hope that someone else — who also knows that the assets will be forever unproductive — will pay more for them in the future. Tulips, of all things, briefly became a favorite of such buyers in the 17th century.
This type of investment requires an expanding pool of buyers, who, in turn, are enticed because they believe the buying pool will expand still further. Owners are not inspired by what the asset itself can produce — it will remain lifeless forever — but rather by the belief that others will desire it even more avidly in the future.
The major asset in this category is gold, currently
a huge favorite of investors
who fear almost all other assets, especially paper money (of whose value, as noted, they are right to be fearful). Gold, however, has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative. True, gold has some industrial and decorative utility, but the demand for these purposes is both limited and incapable of soaking up new production. Meanwhile, if you own on
e ounce of gold for an eternity, you will still own on
e ounce at its end.
What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow. During the past decade that belief has proved correct. Beyond that, the rising price has on its own generated additional buying enthusiasm, attracting purchasers who see the rise as validating an investment thesis. As “bandwagon” investors join any party, they create their own truth — for a while.
Over the past 15 years, both
Internet stocks
and
houses
have demonstrated the extraordinary excesses that can be created by combining an initially sensible thesis with well-publicized rising prices. In these bubbles, an army of originally skeptical investors succumbed to the “proof ” delivered by the market, and the pool of buyers — for a time — expanded sufficiently to keep the bandwagon rolling. But bubbles blown large enough inevitably pop. And then the old proverb is confirmed on
ce again: “What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end.”
Today the world’s gold stock is about 170,000 metric tons. If all of this gold were melded together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.) At 9.6 trillion. Call this cube pile A.
Let’s now create a pile B costing an equal amount. For that, we could buy all U.S. cropland (400 million acres with output of about 40 billion annually). After these purchases, we would have about 9.6 trillion selecting pile A over pile B?
Beyond the staggering valuation given the existing stock of gold, current prices make today’s annual production of gold command about $160 billion. Buyers — whether jewelry and industrial users, frightened individuals, or speculators — must continually absorb this additional supply to merely maintain an equilibrium at present prices.
A century from now the 400 million acres of farmland will have produced staggering amounts of corn, wheat, cotton, and other crops — and will continue to produce that valuable bounty, whatever the currency may be. Exxon Mobil (
XOM
) will probably have delivered trillions of dollars in dividends to its owners and will also hold assets worth many more trillions (and, remember, you get 16 Exxons). The 170,000 tons of gold will be unchanged in size and still incapable of producing anything. You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
Admittedly, when people a century from now are fearful, it’s likely many
will still rush to gold
. I’m confident, however, that the $9.6 trillion current valuation of pile A will compound over the century at a rate far inferior to that achieved by pile B.
Our first two categories enjoy maximum popularity at peaks of fear: Terror over economic collapse drives individuals to currency-based assets, most particularly U.S. obligations, and fear of currency collapse fosters movement to sterile assets
such as gold
. We heard “cash is king” in late 2008, just when cash should have been deployed rather than held. Similarly, we heard “cash is trash” in the early 1980s just when fixed-dollar investments were at their most attractive level in memory. On those occasions, investors who required a supportive crowd paid dearly for that comfort.
My own preference — and you knew this was coming — is our third category: investment in productive assets, whether businesses, farms, or real estate. Ideally, these assets should have the ability in inflationary times to deliver output that will retain its purchasing-power value while requiring a minimum of new capital investment. Farms, real estate, and many businesses such as Coca-Cola (
KO
),
IBM
(
IBM
), and our own See’s Candy meet that double-barreled test. Certain other companies — think of our regulated utilities, for example — fail it because inflation places heavy capital requirements on them. To earn more, their owners must invest more. Even so, these investments will remain superior to nonproductive or currency-based assets.
Whether the currency a century from now is based on gold, seashells, shark teeth, or a piece of paper (as today), people will be willing to exchange a couple of minutes of their daily labor for a Coca-Cola or some See’s peanut brittle. In the future the U.S. population will move more goods, consume more food, and require more living space than it does now. People will forever exchange what they produce for what others produce.
Our country’s businesses will continue to efficiently deliver goods and services wanted by our citizens. Metaphorically, these commercial “cows” will live for centuries and give ever greater quantities of “milk” to boot. Their value will be determined not by the medium of exchange but rather by their capacity to deliver milk. Proceeds from the sale of the milk will compound for the owners of the cows, just as they did during the 20th century when the Dow increased from 66 to 11,497 (and paid loads of dividends as well).
Berkshire’s goal will be to increase its ownership of first-class businesses. Our first choice will be to own them in their entirety — but we will also be owners by way of holding sizable amounts of marketable stocks. I believe that over any extended period of time this category of investing will prove to be the runaway winner among the three we’ve examined. More imp
ortant, it will be by farthe safest.
评论
- 虔诚 (2012-03-16 23:25): 今天中国银行业的流动性风险在不断积聚，银行业“利润”再丰厚，也冲销不了这两年由地方债和楼市按揭贷款所造成的日益恶化的银行“资产”。否则，我们无法解释以下两种截然不同的现象： 一方面，据银监会在2月发布的一份报告，去年商业银行净利润为10412亿元，相比2010年增长36.34%，银行日均利润高达28.5亿元。另一组数据是，16家上市银行在2011年前三季度共实现净利润近7000亿元，占沪深两市全部上市公司1.58万亿元净利润的四成以上。但另一方面，中央汇金公司支持工行、建行和中行将2011年分红比例继续下调5个百分点的决定。 从本质上讲，中国银行业近几年的“暴利”源自新增资产扩张过猛，比如为了配合政府应对国际金融危机，放出了10万亿信贷规模。即便眼下地方债和按揭贷款的扩张势头受到了遏制，但基于前几年信贷扩张而构成的庞大资产上的“利差收入”，根本就不受中国经济开始下滑的影响。由此在经济困难情况下带来的银行巨额利润，又怎么不会与其他行业形成了刺目的对比呢？只是，如要深究银行业“资产”的质量以及由此可能带来的流动性风险，那么，这点“暴利”立马就成了“杯水车薪”了。从这个意义上说，限制高薪的作用和敦促银行业分红的性质完全不一样，前者是为了防止套现，对银行业的稳定起着至关重要的作用，而后者看似寻求公平的收入再分配解决方案，却会因为银行利润的流失而造成银行在资产质量不良的情况下流动性风险加剧的格局，甚至今后会使得一些银行出现资不抵债的严重后果。 基于今天中国银行业的最大问题是“资产质量”的事实，政府对房地产的监管思路也将是求稳在先，价格回落在后。一方面政府鼓励各地的银行降低居民首套购房的利率，以促使健康的住房消费增长来“对冲”楼市监管力度过大所可能造成的硬着陆的风险。另一方面，政府又坚定不移地强化楼市的整顿，防止社会闲置的资金继续炒高楼价，由此造成银行资产更加面临泡沫崩盘的风险。
- 木买蚂蚁 (2012-03-11 23:35): 很多老百姓也明白钱投资才能不贬值，但是投资什么产品并不懂，一味追求高收益，没有风险意识。 特别是老年人，在银行存款时，会轻信银行工作人员，买银行发行的理财产品，银行从来都说理财产品绝对没有风险，收益高。 我们这里**银行（4大行之一哦），本月到期的理财产品就不能够兑付，很多老年人在银行门口要说法，有位老年人哭天喊地的，不让银行开门营业，惊动110。本金都亏了很多，根本就不要说收益了。
- 茶水铺 → 木买蚂蚁 (2012-03-15 15:32): 和我想的结果一样，我也在银行门口看到过很多次保证收益的宣传，我就想肯定是骗人，因为银行无力支付这样的收益。其实老百姓不懂投资最好的方法是放在银行存起来，不然乱搞只会加速贬值。
- 香飘两岸 (2012-03-11 00:01): 巴菲特投资的原则一以贯之从未改变。未来现金流折现！现在自己由衷感觉到苹果的确定性了。还有一个公司，耐克，不知道段总和其他朋友有没有人关注。谈点自己对企业应该专注产品、专业化生存和消费升级的体会：自己刚过三十，以前运动鞋随便穿穿国产的，最近第一次去买了一双耐克。一穿起来那脚感完全不是国产所能比的，越发喜欢运动，我想以后不会买国产的。而且买鞋子时耐克的小伙子很专业，学了不少健康运动的知识。 今天看了一下耐克的股票也是长期大牛股啊。 炫耀性消费、追名牌，与真正的高品质，我的观点有改变。买耐克不是炫耀，买奔驰不是炫耀（有认识的人出过车祸后的话），买苹果不是炫耀（段总好像也说过其实IPAD更划算，自己多方对比后也感觉没有一个PAD更值得买）
- 阿文 (2012-03-10 22:58): 最近接触好多银行，还在给客户推黄金和白银，也不方便说什么。
- 张信华 (2012-03-10 22:45): 看完了，感觉好舒服啊~~
- 小沈 (2012-03-10 16:35): （正文翻译，转自财富中文网，感谢！——字数所限，只能转上半段） 投资往往为被描述为这样一个过程，现在投入一些钱，希望未来能收回更多的钱。在伯克希尔哈撒韦（Berkshire Hathaway），我们采用更高的标准，将投资定义为“现在将购买力让渡给他人，合理期待未来支付明义收益税率后，仍能获得更高的购买力”。简言之，投资就是放弃现在的消费，以便将来有能力消费更多。 从我们的定义可以得出一个重要结论：衡量投资风险高低的指标不应是贝塔值（一个基于波动率的华尔街术语，常用于衡量风险），而是持有期满后投资人出现购买力损失的（合理）概率。资产价格可能大幅波动，但只要有理由肯定投资期满后它们带来的购买力能得到提升，这项投资就没有风险。稍后我们还会看到，价格没有波动的资产也可能充满风险。 投资选择林林总总，但大体可分为三类，理解每一类的特点很重要。下面，我们将展开详细的分析。 市场上以特定货币结算的投资包括货币市场基金、债券、按揭、银行存款和其他工具。大多数此类投资都被视为“安全”，但事实上却是可能属于最危险的资产。它们的贝塔值可能是零，但风险巨大。 上个世纪，这类投资工具摧毁了很多国家投资者的购买力，尽管投资者一直能够按时收到支付的本息。而且，这样的糟糕结果将来还会不断重现。政府决定货币的最终价值，而系统性力量有时会推动它们制定导致通胀的政策。这些政策一不留神就会失控。 即使是在美国，政府强烈希望维持本币稳定，但是，我1965年接管伯克希尔哈撒韦以来，美元也已贬值高达86%。当年花1美元能买到的东西，今天至少要花7美元。因此，这些年来，一个免税机构须取得4.3%的债券投资年收益，才能保持购买力不变。假如管理层还将一切利息收入视为“收益”，他们一定是在开玩笑。
- 寒江小笛 (2012-03-10 15:12): 股票和债券是会下蛋的鸡，黄金不会。 虽然巴菲特曾经也投资过贵金属，98年开始大笔买入白银，到06年上涨了约4倍后抛出，巴菲特买入的白银成本比生产成本都低，在通胀环境中，胜出是大概率的，但今天面对已大幅上涨的贵金属，巴菲特说这是在玩火。 “在别人恐惧时贪婪，在别人贪婪时恐惧”的又一个版本。