Praise for snow 讚揚雪球 2018

 

文章來自於雪球作者在2018年左右的一場演講轉錄，有講到一些巴菲特有趣的軼事，值得花點時間閱讀。

讚揚雪球

It's a great pleasure indeed to welcome to the great last podium, Alice Schroeder. [ Applause and Applause ] Warren Buffett likes to say that when he gets up in the morning and goes to work, he feels like Michael Angela going to paint the sustained chapel. And of course his sustained chapel is Berkshire Hathaway, the company that he has spent decades building, which on the one hand is the standard by which he invests, and on the other hand, is the way that he thinks a business should be run. As he said to me one time, he considers the best argument to be a good example, and that's what he means Berkshire Hathaway to be. But at the same time, you've probably seen Warren on television, you've probably read interviews, you've probably heard him speak, attended at shareholder meetings or read some of his letters, and he likes to describe how he did it. And he always does that in very simple and straightforward terms.
非常榮幸能邀請到艾莉絲·施羅德登上這最後的榮譽講台。[掌聲與喝彩] 華倫·巴菲特喜歡說，當他早晨起床去工作時，感覺就像米開朗基羅要去繪製西斯汀教堂。當然，他的西斯汀教堂就是波克夏·海瑟威，這家他花費數十年建立的公司，一方面是他投資的標準，另一方面也是他認為企業應該如何經營的方式。正如他曾對我說過的，他認為最好的論據就是一個好例子，而這正是他希望波克夏·海瑟威成為的典範。但同時，你可能在電視上看過華倫，讀過他的訪談，聽過他的演講，參加過股東大會或讀過他的一些信件，他喜歡描述他是如何做到的。而他總是用非常簡單明瞭的方式來闡述。

It always seems like something that you ought to be able to emulate, and yet nobody ever has. In all of this time, with all of the teaching and coaching and explaining that Warren Buffett has done, there has never been anyone who has been able to replicate his achievement of creating a company of $300 billion by putting together a conglomerate or investing and compounding at the rate that he's done by buying value investments. So that begs a question, if it seems so simple and straightforward and he can explain it, then why hasn't anyone else done it? And who is this person? It was Michelangelo actually who said, if people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, they wouldn't think it was so wonderful after all. And that is one of the great secrets of Warren Buffett. We're going to talk about how hard he worked because he makes it look easy, and he doesn't want you to see him break a sweat, but he actually has worked incredibly hard, and that is one of the things that I came to learn when I wrote this snowball. I actually first met Warren in 1988, excuse me, 98, it feels like forever, but he was 67 at the time, and we won't talk about how old I was ever. But that was 20 years ago, he is now turning 88 this year. And I met him because Berkshire Hathaway bought a company called General Ray, and I was an analyst on Wall Street, and that was a stock that I covered. So I decided that I would take the opportunity to cover Berkshire Hathaway because now it was going to have a large element of insurance as part of its business, and that was the subject that I was an expert on.
這似乎總是一件你應該能夠效仿的事，然而從未有人真正做到。在這漫長的歲月裡，儘管華倫·巴菲特進行了無數的教學、指導與解釋，卻從未有人能複製他的成就——透過組建企業集團或投資，以他購買價值型投資的速度實現複利增長，最終創造出價值三千億美元的企業。這不禁讓人想問：如果這看起來如此簡單明瞭，而他也能解釋清楚，為何沒有其他人做到？這位傳奇人物究竟是誰？ 事實上，米開朗基羅曾說過：「如果人們知道我為了精通技藝付出了多少努力，他們就不會覺得這有多麼了不起了。」而這正是華倫·巴菲特的重大祕密之一。我們將探討他付出了多少艱辛——因為他總讓一切顯得輕而易舉，從不願讓人見到他汗流浹背的模樣，但實際上他投入了難以想像的努力。這正是我在撰寫《雪球》這本書時領悟到的事情之一。 我初次見到華倫是在 1988 年——抱歉，是 1998 年，感覺彷彿已過了一輩子。當時他 67 歲，至於我那時的年紀，我們就不提了。 但那已經是二十年前的事了，他今年即將滿八十八歲。而我之所以會認識他，是因為波克夏·海瑟威收購了一家名為通用再保險的公司，當時我在華爾街擔任分析師，那正是我負責追蹤的股票。 因此我決定把握機會，開始研究波克夏·海瑟威，因為保險業務將成為其企業營運中重要的一環，而這正是我所專精的領域。

But I knew that Warren Buffett was not going to talk to me because he was very famous. He did not like Wall Street, he did not do interviews, he did not communicate with Wall Street. He said things like, if you want to maintain your integrity, hold your nose when you walk past Wall Street. He was quite sustainable. And so I embarked on this project, not expecting to have the usual access to management that analysts have to ask questions and get their facts straight. But he got wind of what was happening. Someone must have told them that I was working on this project. And one day I was in my office, and my assistant came in and said that I had a message from Warren Buffett and handed me a phone slip with a number to call. I was literally shaking because I couldn't imagine placing a phone call to Warren Buffett, but I knew I had to respond right away. So I called the number and a voice said, yellow. And I said, this is Alice Schroeder, I'm calling for Mr. Buffett. Oh, Alice! Oh, thank you for calling me back. And I realized that it was him. He answers his own phone, and he had given me his direct number, which was astonishing because nobody in his position should be giving out their direct phone number. And I later learned that he does research, and he's very careful, and he only gives his direct number to people that he's sure will not pass it around, irresponsibly because he does answer his own phone, and that he had checked me out. But at the time I had just had no idea, I was just astonished.
但我深知華倫·巴菲特不會接受我的採訪，因為他名氣太大。他不喜歡華爾街，不接受採訪，也不與華爾街往來。他曾說過，若想保持正直，經過華爾街時最好捏住鼻子。他始終如一地堅持這個原則。因此我開始這個專案時，並不預期能像一般分析師那樣獲得與管理層接觸的機會，可以提問並釐清事實。但他還是聽到了風聲。一定有人告訴他我正在進行這個專案。有一天我在辦公室裡，助理進來告訴我有一通華倫·巴菲特留給我的訊息，並遞給我一張寫著回電號碼的電話便條。我當時真的在發抖，因為我無法想像自己竟然要打電話給華倫·巴菲特，但我知道必須立刻回電。於是我撥了那個號碼，一個聲音說：「喂？」我說：「我是愛麗絲·施洛德，我想找巴菲特先生。」「噢，愛麗絲！謝謝你回電給我。」這時我才意識到——接電話的就是他本人。 他親自接聽自己的電話，而且他給了我他的直撥號碼，這實在令人驚訝，因為以他的地位來說，根本不應該給出直撥號碼。後來我才知道，他會事先做調查，而且非常謹慎，只會把直撥號碼給那些他確信不會不負責任地到處散播的人，因為他確實會親自接聽電話，而且他已經調查過我的背景。但當時我完全不知情，只是感到非常震驚。

And on that call he told me that I had taken the initiative and not ask him for anything, which he liked, he loves people who don't ask him for favors. And that he had done some work reading my research, and he likes the way I think. He likes the way I write, and so he would cooperate with me. And he would let me be the only analyst that he would ever work with, who could talk to him, and he invited me to come out to Omaha. He invited me to spend time, see his businesses, interview him, as much time as I needed, and he proposed, that the next time he was in New York a few weeks later, that I fly back to Omaha on his private jet with him and his wife Susie, and interview him on the plane, and then he would give me a tour of Berkshire Hathaway's businesses.
在那通電話中，他告訴我，我主動行事且沒有向他要求任何東西，這點他很欣賞——他喜歡那些不向他討人情的人。他還說他花時間研讀了我的研究報告，並且欣賞我的思考方式。他喜歡我的寫作風格，因此願意與我合作。他承諾讓我成為唯一能與他對話、並與他合作的分析師，同時邀請我前往奧馬哈。他邀請我花時間參觀他的企業、採訪他，時間長短完全由我決定。他還提議，幾週後他來紐約時，我可以與他和妻子蘇西一同搭乘他的私人飛機返回奧馬哈，並在飛機上進行採訪，之後他會帶我參觀波克夏·海瑟威的企業。

So this was my first inkling of what Warren Buffett was like. Was the phone call, and then this opportunity. Why hadn't never flown on a private jet? So I was very nervous, first of all, about how to even behave. And I showed up and met the two of them at their hotel that morning, and then we drove out, and we got on this Gulf Stream 4, which at the time was the world's largest private jet. And I was amazed at this beautiful plane, and then Warren sat down at a table and sat across for me, and then the flight attendant arrived, and said, "What would you like for breakfast?" We can make omelette, pancakes, waffles, and eggs Benedict, and started listing all these things. And I was thinking, "Ah, I would love an omelette."
這是我第一次對華倫·巴菲特有初步的認識。先是那通電話，接著是這個機會。為什麼我從未搭過私人飛機呢？首先，我對於該如何舉止感到非常緊張。那天早上，我到他們下榻的飯店與他們兩人會面，然後我們驅車前往，登上了這架灣流四型飛機，當時那是全球最大的私人飛機。我對這架美麗的飛機感到驚嘆，接著華倫在桌邊坐下，坐在我對面，然後空服員過來問道：「您早餐想吃什麼？我們可以做歐姆蛋、鬆餅、華夫餅，還有班尼迪克蛋。」她開始列舉所有這些選項。我心想：「啊，我好想吃歐姆蛋。」

And Warren said, "I'll have some potato chips in a cherry coke." [laughter] And I said, "Same." [laughter] And for the next floor hours, we flew to Omaha and Warren talked, while eating potato chips steadily, just like this. And so I did too. It was the first inkling had I known it of what was about to happen over the next 10 years, which was that I was going to have many meals with Warren Buffett during which I would gain a lot of weight. [laughter]
而華倫說：「我要一些洋芋片配櫻桃可樂。」[笑聲] 我說：「我也一樣。」[笑聲] 接下來的幾個小時，我們飛往奧馬哈，華倫一邊說話，一邊穩穩地吃著洋芋片，就像這樣。所以我也跟著做了。這是我第一次意識到，在接下來的十年裡將會發生什麼事，那就是我將會與華倫·巴菲特共進許多餐，期間我會增加不少體重。[笑聲]

He held me along in the interview, because I was so nervous that I really was tongue-tied, and my questions were all really idiotic. And with hindsight, once I got to know him very well, I can't even believe how bad it was, but he was actually used to talking to people who were tongue-tied and nervous, and so he helped me along, and we had a good conversation. But the remarkable part of that trip was what happened when we got to Omaha, because he took me first to his office. And in those days, it was that institutional green that very much resembles the Department of Motor Vehicles, or maybe what I imagined a prison would be, it was that kind of dirty green. And the carpet looked as though it had not been cleaned or changed in 20 some on years, but he was just very indifferent to it all. And we spent a few minutes there, and then we went over to the Nebraska furniture mart. Now, Nebraska furniture mart was at the time the largest furniture store in North America. It covers acres. I maybe over 100 acres. And Warren was going to give me a tour. He's about six inches taller than me, and his legs are probably eight inches longer than mine. And so he starts walking, and I started jogging along behind him through these tens of tens and tens of acres. And as we went through the Nebraska furniture mart, he would point things out. And he would say, "So this is the grandfather clock department.
在訪談中他一路引導著我，因為我當時緊張得舌頭打結，提出的問題全都蠢得要命。事後回想起來，等到我真正了解他之後，簡直不敢相信當時表現有多糟糕，但他早已習慣與緊張到說不出話的人交談，就這樣帶著我順利完成了這場不錯的對話。不過那趟旅程最特別的部分，是我們抵達奧馬哈後發生的事——他先帶我去了他的辦公室。那時候的辦公室漆著那種機構常用的綠色，很像監理站的色調，或者我想像中監獄會用的那種髒綠色。地毯看起來像是二十多年沒清潔更換過，但他對這一切毫不在意。我們在那裡待了幾分鐘，接著就前往內布拉斯加家具商城。當時這家店可是北美最大的家具賣場，占地極廣，可能超過百英畝。華倫打算帶我參觀，他比我高了約六英寸，腿長恐怕比我多出八英寸。 於是他開始走動，我則跟在他身後慢跑，穿過這片數十英畝的土地。當我們經過內布拉斯加家具商城時，他會指著各種東西解說。他會說：「這是祖父鐘部門。

We sell 48 of that model a year." And then we'd get to the beds, and he'd say, "This is our best selling mattress. We make $2 a square inch on this mattress in profit margin." And I started to get this sense of the grasp of the detail. And then finally, he said, "Let's go to the carpet warehouse." Now, the Nebraska furniture mart was a company he had bought from a woman named Rose Blumkin, who was a tiny, meaning forfeit, I think, 10. Jewish immigrant who had come from through Siberia and traveled over 2,000 miles to reach the United States during the pogroms. And was extremely elderly. And the carpet department was her special place that she cared deeply about.
我們每年賣出 48 台那種型號。」接著我們走到床鋪區，他會說：「這是我們最暢銷的床墊。這款床墊每平方英寸能帶來 2 美元的利潤。」我開始感受到他對細節的掌握程度。最後他說：「我們去地毯倉庫看看吧。」內布拉斯加家具商城是他從一位名叫蘿絲·布魯姆金的女士手中買下的公司，她是一位身材嬌小、我想身高大約 4 呎 10 吋的猶太移民，在迫害期間穿越西伯利亞，跋涉超過 2000 英里才抵達美國。她年事已高，而地毯部門是她特別珍視、投入極深心血的地方。

Possibly because she grew up sleeping on a bare wood floor covered with straw. So carpet was important to her. So the Nebraska furniture mart sold millions of yards of carpet a year, and they had an enormous warehouse full of carpet. So we went to the carpet warehouse. And as we started going through a warrant is walking along, and I'm jogging along behind him. And he says, "Now, that is our best selling carpet in brown." We sell 2,000 yards of that a week. And our margin on that is about 22%. But this week we're discounting it, and we'll only make about 11%.
或許是因為她從小睡在鋪著稻草的光禿木地板上，所以地毯對她來說格外重要。內布拉斯加家具商場每年銷售數百萬碼的地毯，他們擁有一個堆滿地毯的巨大倉庫。於是我們去了地毯倉庫。當我們開始巡視時，一位主管邊走邊介紹，我則小跑著跟在他身後。他說：「看，那是我們最暢銷的棕色地毯。每週能賣出兩千碼，平時毛利約 22%，但這週我們打折，大概只能賺 11%左右。」

But this one over here, this carpet is not quite as big a seller, but we don't ever have to put it on sale. So we mainly sell 1,500 yards this week, but we'll make our 20% margin. Now, this pile, seeing the quarter here, this stuff that Rose, she didn't ever like to discount anything below her cost. But I persuaded her that it's better to just move the inventory and get it out of here. So we lose about 20% on what we paid for this carpet. This green one here is our worst seller. We really, we have to move this out at about half of what we paid for. And then we continue to move through the carpet warehouse row after aisle after row after aisle.
但這邊這塊地毯，銷量沒那麼好，不過我們從來不需要打折促銷。所以這週我們主要賣出 1,500 碼，但我們還是能維持 20%的利潤。現在看這堆，看到這個季度數據了嗎？這些是蘿絲經手的貨，她從來不願意把價格降到成本以下。但我說服她，與其囤著不如清掉存貨。所以這批地毯我們虧了大概 20%的成本價。這條綠色的則是我們賣得最差的產品。真的，我們得用差不多半價才能清掉它。接著我們繼續穿過地毯倉庫，一排接著一排，一列接著一列。

With him explaining to me the individual roles and styles of carpet and how much they cost, what they sold for, how many yards were sold a week and at what profit margin. And it was at that point that I started to really understand that this was no ordinary human being. Because this was only one of the businesses that Berkshire Hathaway owned. And while we were in the office, he had also shown me some reports from C's candies, which is a chocolate confectionery chain that Berkshire owns. And I had been a bit surprised to see that they showed sales by store by week for all the 100-some odd stores. And he had explained to me why this animonic store was doing better than the Sacramento store on this particular week. And that level of detail multiplied across 47 odd businesses with something that he mastered and just voraciously sucked up information. And I found that very unusual and clearly that was the secret of his success. So I went back to New York, I wrote my report.
他向我解釋地毯的個別角色與風格、成本多少、售價為何、每週銷售多少碼以及利潤率如何。正是在那一刻，我開始真正理解這絕非尋常之人。因為這僅僅是波克夏·海瑟威旗下眾多企業之一。在辦公室時，他還向我展示了 C's candies（波克夏擁有的巧克力糖果連鎖店）的一些報告。我當時有點驚訝地看到，他們列出了所有一百多家門店每週的銷售數據。他還向我解釋了為什麼這家阿尼莫尼克門店在特定週的表現優於沙加緬度門店。這種細節層次乘以 47 家不同的企業，正是他所掌握並如飢似渴吸收資訊的方式。我發現這非常不尋常，顯然這就是他成功的秘訣。於是我回到紐約，寫下了我的報告。

It was somewhat of a sensation because no one had ever really written a big research report on Berkshire Hathaway before. And then five years went by and during that time, I saw Warren usually twice a year. I would go out partly for the Sherholder meeting and then he'd invite me to a party that he has. And then I usually go out at least one other time a year to visit him. And he always said, "Call me anytime, but I never did." Because I thought he must be so busy and on the least important person that could ever want to talk to him. So he would call me and he called me with great regularity and we would talk. And as time passed, he became the person who I most wanted to hear from. And I would occasionally call if something important happened because his opinion would be the thing that I would most want to know. So after five years, something happened and that's something happened on September 11, 2001.
這件事引起了不小的轟動，因為之前從未有人真正撰寫過關於波克夏·海瑟威的大型研究報告。五年過去了，在這段時間裡，我通常每年會見到華倫兩次。我會去參加股東大會，然後他會邀請我參加他的派對。此外，我通常每年至少還會再去拜訪他一次。他總是說：「隨時打電話給我。」但我從未打過，因為我覺得他一定很忙，而我是最不重要、最不該打擾他的人。反而是他會打電話給我，而且非常規律，我們會聊天。隨著時間的推移，他成了我最想聽到聲音的人。如果有重要的事情發生，我偶爾也會打電話給他，因為他的意見是我最想知道的。五年後，發生了一件事，那就是 2001 年 9 月 11 日發生的事件。

I was in New York that day. I actually saw the second tower get hit. I knew a lot of people that were in it and it was not a good day. Obviously for many people is of a lot of bad memories. But the next day, the first person that I called was Warren because I wanted to just hear his thoughts on the whole thing. And what I found was that he was extremely angry. And that was not all what I was expecting. He was one of only two occasions that I've ever seen him be very, very angry. And what had happened was he, of course, had absorbed the terrorist attack. He had thought deeply about it.
那天我在紐約。我親眼目睹了第二座塔被撞擊的瞬間。我認識很多在那棟樓裡的人，那絕不是個好日子。對許多人來說，這顯然充滿了糟糕的回憶。但隔天，我第一個打電話給華倫，因為我想聽聽他對整件事的看法。我發現他極度憤怒，這完全出乎我的意料。這是我僅有的兩次見到他如此、如此憤怒的其中一次。原來他已經消化了這場恐怖攻擊，並對此進行了深刻的思考。

And we would go on to have many, many interesting conversations about terrorism and risk. But why he was angry was that six months earlier. He had spoken to the leaders of the two big insurance companies that Berkshire owned. He was a national indemnity, which was run by a she Jane, who you may have heard of. He just went on the board of directors of Berkshire, Hathaway. And he had spoken to the CEO of General Reed, which was the company that Berkshire bought. Who stock I have followed that had led me ultimately to get involved in the first place. And he had told those two people to go and survey how much insurance exposure that they had. They had in the trade centers. How many customers do they have?
我們後來進行了許多關於恐怖主義與風險的有趣對話。但他之所以憤怒，是因為六個月前，他曾與波克夏持有的兩大保險公司領導層談話。其中一家是國家賠償公司，由一位你可能聽過的女性——簡——經營。他剛加入波克夏·海瑟威的董事會。他也與通用再保險公司的執行長談過，這家公司正是波克夏收購的對象，而我最初正是因為追蹤其股票才涉足其中。他當時指示這兩位負責人去調查他們在貿易中心承保了多少保險風險，以及他們擁有多少客戶。

And if something happened to those two buildings, what did Berkshire have at stake that it could lose? And when he found out the numbers, he told both of those two executives. When July comes, which is a very typical date to renew commercial insurance policies. I want you to cancel and not renew as many of those policies as possible. One of those two people as Jane had done exactly that and his cut his exposure in the trade center very sharply. The other from General Reed did not in ignored Warren's instructions. And the end result was that it cost Berkshire had the way $2.4 billion in property losses. Warren was our proplectic that it was what he calls an unforced error as in baseball. It was something that he had foreseen. He had instructed them not to do this.
如果那兩棟建築發生意外，波克夏會面臨什麼樣的風險損失？當他得知具體數字後，便告訴了那兩位主管。七月是商業保險續約的典型時間點，我要你們盡可能取消並不再續約那些保單。其中一位像珍那樣照做了，大幅降低了在世貿中心的風險敞口。另一位來自通用再保險的人卻沒有聽從，無視了華倫的指示。最終結果是，這讓波克夏蒙受了高達 24 億美元的財產損失。華倫對此早有預見，他稱之為棒球術語中的「非受迫性失誤」——這是他早已預料到、並明確指示不得犯下的錯誤。

They had ignored him. And they had lost what he felt was his money and a large part of it was his money because he was the largest shareholder in Berkshire, halfway. I was astounded by the story not just by the fact that he was so angry because the two times I've seen him angry were both when people ignored instructions and it cost him money. And there was a cold rage that came out on those two occasions. But the other astounding thing about this story was that six months before 9/11 he had thought to do this then. And he would be the first to say that he did not predict 9/11 in any way shape or form. But what he did now is that it had been a terrorist attack before that it did have a large concentration of insurance risks and that the world is generally not a safe place. And so he had this way of thinking about things involving risk that I'd never encountered and I thought was pretty remarkable.
他們忽略了他。而他們損失了他認為是自己的錢，其中很大一部分確實是他的錢，因為他是波克夏最大的股東，幾乎佔了一半。這個故事讓我震驚，不僅僅是因為他如此憤怒——我見過他兩次發怒，都是因為人們無視指示而讓他損失了錢財。那兩次都流露出一種冰冷的怒火。但這個故事另一個令人震驚的地方是，在 9/11 事件發生前六個月，他就已經想到要這麼做了。他會是第一個說他完全沒有以任何形式預測到 9/11 事件的人。但他當時所做的是，考慮到之前發生過恐怖攻擊，保險風險確實高度集中，而且世界總體上不是一個安全的地方。因此，他這種思考風險的方式是我從未遇到過的，我認為這相當了不起。

In the aftermath of 9/11 I ended up becoming kind of an expert on terrorism and ended up doing a whole bunch of things. Terrorism as it pertains to insurance risk, I ended up testifying before Congress and consulting for the CIA and doing all kinds of weird things. And finally Warren said to me, you know you have really done everything that you can do as an analyst and your career is getting larger than that you really should. He said, you all think of something. So we have this conversation at least three times and I just couldn't figure out what he thought I should write about and then one day it dawned on me after seeing him on television. That there really could only be one thing that he would think would be important enough for me to spell it full time writing about. And that would be himself. And so I called him and I said, so Warren, when you suggested that I quit my job and write a book, were you thinking that I might write about you?
在九一一事件之後，我意外地成為了某種恐怖主義專家，並因此做了許多相關工作。從保險風險角度探討恐怖主義，我曾在國會作證、為中情局提供諮詢，處理過各種奇特事務。最後華倫對我說：「你作為分析師能做的都已經做了，你的職涯發展已超出應有範圍。」他建議我該思考些新方向。我們至少進行過三次這樣的對話，而我始終不明白他認為我該寫什麼主題。直到某天在電視上看見他時，我突然領悟——對他而言，唯一值得我全職投入撰寫的重要題材，恐怕只有他自己。於是我打電話問他：「華倫，當初你建議我辭職寫書時，是不是想著我可能會寫關於你的故事？」

And he said, oh, if you'll do that, you can spend as much time here and I'll talk to you and you can have unlimited access to me and I'll give you on my papers and I'll have my friends and my family and I'll my colleagues and I'll interview with you and I'll arrange everything for you and I'll, and I was like, oh, okay. And I decided to do it because it was an important book that needed to be written and he had never given access to any author before. And now he said he chose me because he likes the way I think he likes the way I write. I am also absolutely certain there are two other factors. One is I was not a journalist and I think that he did not want a journalist that had A, an agenda and B, he thought he could probably have a bit more control with someone who'd never written a biography before. The second thing is I was a woman and Warren loves to hang around with women, flirt with women and show off in front of women, that's just his personality. And if you haven't read the snowball, I hope you will because some of the best stories or about Warren's relationships with women and how funny he is around women. And if he was going to sit on his sofa for a year and a half telling stories of his life, it certainly wasn't going to be to a man. So in June of 2003, I flew out to Omaha and set up camp there in the double tree end and I began to work with Warren. Now at the time they had done, they were starting to renovate the office and his office had been renovated. It was a corner office, always had been and he had had it re-done with new brown carpet, new brown wood furniture with brown upholstery, brown walls wallpaper on the walls and corner windows with wooden brown wooden shutters on them, which he keeps closed all the time to block out the view. Because he does not want to be distracted by the sky. So his office feels a little bit like being inside of a kuku clock. And I would spend the next year and a half most of my time there and it was a little bit claustrophobic and to escape, I would go to the file rooms rooms plural. So if you've ever seen a documentary on TV and he does the tour of the office, he doesn't show the file rooms. He keeps, he claims he does not keep everything, but I think his definition of everything is pretty elastic. He has two enormous file rooms. He has files of every investment he's ever made, every company he's ever studied. And there's an entire semi secret wall of files on people that are, they're not like Jay Edgar Hoover's files exactly, but I found a file on myself the first day there. And he keeps, he likes to write letters. So all the correspondence with people goes there. It's a very logical thing to do, but he also was very, very worried about giving me access to the files. And the only thing he said, I couldn't publish that I found was anything he might have written or said that would be critical of someone else. He said, you can write anything critical of me, I don't care, but if I've said something unflattering about another person, please don't put it in the book. And I said, well, it depends on what it is. But there is one thing and I'll tell you a story later where I am keeping the name of secret. So we started and I sat down on the sofa and the very first question I asked him was the big one, which is weren't if you had to really capture the true secret to your success. I honestly dig deep and tell me what it is. And he said, it's only focus focus focus. But what he means by focus is not what you and I mean by focus. And it was more than just going through the carpet warehouse and having spent so much focus that he knew that the shaggy green carpet from 20 years ago had to be marked down. Because what I came to learn is that if Warren Buffett bought a pizza parlor, unlike most people, he would not just look at the financial statements of the pizza parlor and ask questions about them. He would study the price of wheat over time. He would learn how much water went into the pizza doll and how much it cost.
他說，哦，如果你願意這麼做，你可以在這裡待多久都行，我會跟你談話，你可以無限制地接觸我，我會給你我的文件，我會介紹我的朋友、家人和同事給你，我會接受你的採訪，我會為你安排一切，而我當時就想，哦，好吧。我決定這麼做，因為這是一本需要被寫出來的重要書籍，而他以前從未給予任何作者這樣的機會。現在他說他選擇我是因為他喜歡我的思考方式，喜歡我的寫作風格。我也完全確信還有另外兩個因素。一是我不是記者，我認為他不想要一個有議程的記者，而且他可能覺得對一個從未寫過傳記的人能有更多控制權。第二點是我是女性，而華倫喜歡和女性相處，與女性調情，並在女性面前炫耀，這就是他的個性。如果你還沒讀過《雪球》，我希望你會去讀，因為一些最精彩的故事是關於華倫與女性的關係，以及他在女性面前有多麼風趣。 如果他打算坐在沙發上花一年半的時間講述自己的人生故事，那對象肯定不會是男性。於是 2003 年 6 月，我飛往奧馬哈，在雙樹酒店安頓下來，開始與華倫共事。當時他們剛開始整修辦公室，而他的辦公室已經翻新完畢。那是間角落辦公室，向來如此，他重新裝潢鋪了新的棕色地毯，添置棕色木製家具配棕色椅套，牆面貼著棕色壁紙，角落窗戶裝著木製棕色百葉窗——這些百葉窗永遠緊閉以遮蔽窗外景色。因為他不希望被天空分散注意力。所以他的辦公室感覺有點像置身咕咕鐘內部。接下來一年半裡，我大部分時間都待在那兒，空間略帶壓迫感，為求透氣我常躲進檔案室——而且是好幾間檔案室。如果你曾在電視紀錄片看過他導覽辦公室，會發現他從不展示檔案室。他自稱沒有保留所有東西，但我認為他對「所有東西」的定義相當有彈性。他擁有兩間巨大的檔案室。 他擁有自己每一筆投資、研究過的每一家公司的檔案。還有一整面半隱密的檔案牆，存放著關於人物的資料——雖然不完全像傑·埃德加·胡佛的檔案那樣，但我在那裡的第一天就發現了自己的檔案。他習慣保存信件，所有與人的往來信函都收錄其中。這做法非常合乎邏輯，但他當時也非常、非常擔心讓我接觸這些檔案。他唯一的要求是：若我發現任何他可能寫過或說過、批評他人的內容，絕不能公開。他說：「你可以寫任何批評我的話，我不在乎；但如果我曾說過對他人不敬的言論，請不要放進書裡。」我回答：「這得看具體內容而定。」不過確實有一件事——我稍後會告訴你一個故事，其中涉及的名字我會保密。 於是我們開始訪談，我坐在沙發上，第一個問題就直指核心：「如果必須真正揭示你成功的關鍵秘訣，請誠實地深入剖析並告訴我究竟是什麼。」他回答：「只有專注、專注、再專注。」 但他所謂的專注，並非你我理解的那種專注。這不僅僅是走過地毯倉庫時，投入足夠的專注力讓他意識到二十年前那張毛茸茸的綠色地毯必須降價。因為我後來明白，如果華倫·巴菲特買下一家披薩店，他不會像多數人那樣只查看披薩店的財務報表並提出相關問題。他會深入研究小麥價格的長期走勢。他會了解披薩麵團需要多少水，以及這些水的成本是多少。

He would know everything there was to know about pizza sauce and cost of it, cheese, all of the toppings, whether there was a way to make pizza with a bit fewer of them. He would know the price of pizza ovens, all the different kinds of pizza ovens, what it cost to run them, what it cost to repair them, how often they had to be replaced. He would know everything about how much you had to pay employees and delivery people and what the kind of turnover of those employees was, how reliable they were. He would know everything about the leasing terms of the pizza store, the level of detail that he would know before he would own a pizza business would start with the price of wheat. And that's what I mean by focus. It was an incredible amount of focus. It also learned, as I got to know him, the personal side of that focus.
他會對披薩醬及其成本、起司、所有配料瞭若指掌，甚至知道是否能用更少的配料製作披薩。他會清楚披薩烤爐的價格、各式烤爐的差異、運作成本、維修費用，以及多久需要更換。他會完全掌握員工與外送員的薪資水平、員工流動率，以及他們的可靠程度。他會透徹了解披薩店的租賃條款——在他擁有披薩事業前，他會從小麥價格開始掌握每個細節層面。這就是我所謂的專注，一種驚人的極致專注。隨著我對他的認識加深，我也逐漸體會到這種專注背後的個人特質。

One of the people I met fairly early was Ostritt Manks, who is now Ostritt Buffett his second wife. They were living together in Omaha. He was still married to Suzy, his first wife who lived in San Francisco. They lived separate lives. And I also met Suzy, who lived in San Francisco, but I met her out in San Francisco. But Ostritt was one of my better sources because she would tell me stories that were really kind of revealing about Warren in a different way, such as this one. You probably have heard that Warren likes to play bridge on the computer, and he plays three nights a week, typically. In the family room of their house. It's quite a large room. It's the length of this stage in about twice the width. It looks like it was last decorated in the 1970s and probably was. On one wall, let's turn this around. That's the long wall or windows and curtains. And then a TV, an Ostritt watches TV. And then on this wall, is the door, and then here's Warren's computer setup, the table, and then he's got a big monitor, and that's where he plays bridge.
我早期認識的人之一是奧斯特麗特·曼克斯，她現在是奧斯特麗特·巴菲特，也就是他的第二任妻子。他們當時一起住在奧馬哈。他仍與第一任妻子蘇西維持婚姻關係，蘇西住在舊金山。他們過著分居生活。我也見過住在舊金山的蘇西，不過是在舊金山當地見的面。但奧斯特麗特是我較重要的消息來源之一，因為她會告訴我一些從不同角度揭露華倫真實面貌的故事，比如這個。你可能聽說過華倫喜歡在電腦上玩橋牌，通常每週會玩三個晚上。在他們家的家庭房裡。那是個相當大的房間。長度大約是這個舞台的兩倍寬。看起來像是 1970 年代最後一次裝修，很可能確實如此。在一面牆上，讓我們轉個方向。那是長牆或有窗戶和窗簾的地方。然後有台電視，奧斯特麗特會看電視。而在這面牆上，是門，然後這裡是華倫的電腦設備，桌子，他有一個大螢幕，那就是他玩橋牌的地方。

One night, a bat got into the house. And the bat started banging off the walls, getting tangled in the curtains, making all kinds of racket, and Ostritt terrified, started screaming, "Weren't help! Help! There's a bat in here! Help me!" Warren never turned his face away from the computer. Never took his hand off the mouse. It just said, "It's not bothering me, any?" So Ostritt called the Pescentral People. They removed the bat. It all took about an hour to get it done, and during the entire time Warren played bridge never looked away from the monitor. So that's a different kind of focus. Warren and I started to get to know each other a little bit on a personal level. He did something very unusual, which is he began to ease me out of my marriage. He decided that he did not think my husband was right for me, and he did it in a very subtle way, which was to ask me questions, such as,
某天晚上，一隻蝙蝠飛進了屋子裡。那隻蝙蝠開始在牆壁上亂撞，被窗簾纏住，發出各種嘈雜聲響，奧斯特里特嚇壞了，開始尖叫：「救命！救命！這裡有蝙蝠！救救我！」華倫始終沒有把臉從電腦前移開。手也從未離開滑鼠。他只是說：「牠又沒打擾到我，不是嗎？」於是奧斯特里特打電話給害蟲防治人員。他們把蝙蝠弄走了。整個過程大約花了一個小時，而這段時間裡，華倫一直在玩橋牌，眼睛從未離開過螢幕。這就是另一種層次的專注力。華倫和我開始在個人層面上稍微了解彼此。他做了一件非常不尋常的事，那就是他開始讓我逐漸脫離我的婚姻。他認定我的丈夫不適合我，並且以一種非常巧妙的方式來做這件事，就是問我一些問題，像是，

"I wonder if you would treat your husband the way he's treating you, would you?" And I would think, "Hell no, but I never thought of the question that way before." And gently, gently, like the drops of water on a stone, I began to feel empowered that I really needed to get a divorce. Now, in fairness to my own family and my own father, who was also saying some of these things, this was not entirely Warren, but it was very interesting that he wanted to have that influence. He felt very paternal. He felt that I wasn't married to the right person. And later, when I remarried, he did ask for and get approval rights. He loves my second husband and gave us a fantastic wedding gift and sent a video and it feels like I got the right one this time. But he also feels that he taught me a lot about how to choose the right person, which is actually true. And at that time, I decided that I was going to buy a house as I was getting divorced. And I told him, for some reason, I had a lot going on in my life, obviously.
「我在想，如果你丈夫用他對待你的方式來對待你，你會怎麼做？」我當時心想：「當然不會，但我從未以這種角度思考過這個問題。」慢慢地、一點一滴地，就像水滴石穿那樣，我開始感受到力量，意識到自己真的需要離婚。公平地說，這些話並非完全出自華倫之口，我的家人和父親也說過類似的話，但有趣的是他確實想發揮這樣的影響力。他表現得非常像個父親，覺得我嫁錯了人。後來當我再婚時，他確實要求並獲得了認可權。他很喜歡我的第二任丈夫，送了我們一份極棒的結婚禮物，還寄了影片，感覺這次我真的選對人了。但他也認為，他在如何選擇合適伴侶這件事上教了我很多，這倒是事實。那時我正準備離婚，決定要買棟房子。不知為何，我告訴了他這件事——顯然當時我的生活正經歷許多變動。

So I went out, look for a house, made an offer, did a contract, and then, usually we talked about Warren. We didn't talk as much about me. So when I told Warren, he was just quiet for a minute, and then he said, "Is it too late to get out?" And I said, "Well, you know, I've put down a deposit and signed a contract, so while technically I could get out, I would lose my deposit." This was in 2004, and his response was, "Well, there's going to be a housing crash, but if you can hold on for 10 years, you'll be able to sell it for what you paid for it." And later, after the 2008, he said he didn't foresee the housing crash. And I believe he meant that sincerely that he didn't foresee the magnitude of it. He thought there was a bubble in '04. He didn't really think it was going to get so much worse. But I will tell you that I did sell my house 10 years later, for essentially what I paid for. And in between, it was ugly. So he was right, and it was spooky, and it took me back to 9/11 and his way of knowing things.
於是我出門看房子，提出報價，簽了合約，接著我們通常會聊起華倫。我們不太談論我的事。所以當我告訴華倫時，他沉默了片刻，然後說：「現在退出還來得及嗎？」我回答：「嗯，你知道的，我已經付了訂金也簽了合約，所以理論上雖然可以退出，但我會損失訂金。」那是在 2004 年，他的回應是：「好吧，房市將會崩盤，但如果你能撐過 10 年，你就能以原價賣掉它。」後來，在 2008 年之後，他說他並未預見到房市崩盤。我相信他是真誠的，他沒有預見到崩盤的嚴重程度。他認為 2004 年存在泡沫，但沒想到情況會惡化到如此地步。不過我要告訴你，10 年後我確實賣掉了房子，基本上就是當初買入的價格。而這期間的過程相當慘淡。所以他說對了，這令人毛骨悚然，讓我想起 911 事件和他那種洞悉事物的方式。

And while I did not think there's anything released, but supernatural about it, whenever he makes a prediction or says something in public that is like a forecast or suggests that something might happen, and you should be concerned about it. I always take it now as a gospel that is true, and we'll be right. And I've heard a lot of people question and say that he's got some motive or there's some reason why he's saying these things, but I don't think so. Having spent as much time around him as I have, he just is so good at putting dots together. And the interesting thing about this one is that he had absolutely no interest in real estate. He's lived in the same house since 1956, and as I said it, look like it hadn't been remodeled since 1976. He does an invested real estate. He doesn't buy read, it's a whole area of expertise that he's consciously avoided getting any involvement in. And in fact, once I even asked him what color his bedroom walls were, and he said he didn't know. And I actually believe that given that his office is all brown, and I'm not even sure he knows that it's brown.
雖然我並不認為其中有任何超自然或已公開的內容，但每當他做出預測或在公開場合發表類似預測的言論，暗示某些事情可能發生、而你應該對此保持關注時，我現在總是將其視為絕對真實的真理，並且最終總會證明他是對的。我聽過許多人質疑，說他可能有某種動機或原因才說這些話，但我不這麼認為。以我與他相處這麼長時間的經驗來看，他就是如此擅長將各種線索串聯起來。有趣的是，他對房地產毫無興趣——自 1956 年以來他一直住在同一棟房子裡，而且正如我所說，那房子看起來自 1976 年後就沒再裝修過。他從不投資房地產，這是他刻意避免涉足的專業領域。事實上，有一次我甚至問他臥室牆壁是什麼顏色，他說他不知道。而我真的相信，考慮到他的辦公室全是棕色的，我甚至不確定他是否知道那是棕色。

So, but as you can see, he was having an influence on me, and of course, I was his biographer, and my job was to be objective, and I could see then that this is what happens when you write about a living person, as you do become quite captivated by that person, and I become captivated by the whole family. Warren had early on introduced me to Doris, and he had told me that I reminded him of Doris, and my personality, she had a very lively personality. And in fact, he had told me about Doris's divorces, because he thought there was a similarity in the way that the creativity with which she handled her divorces. At one point, Doris's second husband was trying to serve her with some papers or something, and she didn't want to be served, and so she got a nuns habit. And she traveled a lot, she liked to travel, and so she went all around the country dressed as a nun to avoid this person who was trying to serve her with papers.
所以，但正如你所見，他確實對我產生了影響。當然，作為他的傳記作者，我的職責是保持客觀。那時我便意識到，當你為在世之人立傳時，往往會不自覺地深受對方吸引——而我確實被整個家族深深吸引。華倫很早便介紹我認識桃樂絲，還曾說我讓他想起桃樂絲，說我們的性格很像，她擁有非常活潑的個性。事實上，他曾向我提及桃樂絲的離婚經歷，因為他認為她處理離婚時展現的創意方式與我有相似之處。有段時間，桃樂絲的第二任丈夫試圖向她遞送某些法律文件，而她不想被送達，於是弄來一套修女服。她熱愛旅行，經常四處遊歷，那段時間她便穿著修女服走遍全國，只為躲避那個想向她遞送文件的人。

The Buffett children, Doris Warren and their other sister, Bernie, had their IQs tested when they were very young, or their parents had it done. And their IQs are all within one point of each other, and they are very, very high. Some day when they're all gone, I'll say what the number is. I don't want to do it now, because I don't want them to be pester, but they are all well, well up into the genius range, and interestingly, they're all essentially the same. So Doris became a very dear friend, I've come out and stayed with her at her house in Frederick's work. She's talked about this college to me many times, and how much it meant to her, her love of American history, her program with domestic violence victims, with the prisons, teaching history and prisons, I've stayed at her house in Maine. And she's someone that I just consider very special and precious, and she's embossing out with her grandson, Alex, Ruzik, and who is also a fantastic person.
巴菲特的孩子們，多麗絲·華倫和她的其他姐妹伯妮，在他們很小的時候就接受了智商測試，或者說是他們的父母讓他們做的。他們的智商彼此之間相差不到一分，而且都非常非常高。有一天當他們都不在了，我會說出那個數字。我現在不想這麼做，因為我不想讓他們受到困擾，但他們都確實、確實處於天才的範圍內，有趣的是，他們基本上都一樣。所以多麗絲成為了一位非常親密的朋友，我曾去過她在弗雷德里克工作的家並住在那裡。她多次向我談起這所大學，以及它對她有多重要，她對美國歷史的熱愛，她與家庭暴力受害者、與監獄合作的項目，在監獄教授歷史，我也曾住過她在緬因州的房子。她是我認為非常特別和珍貴的人，她正和她的孫子亞歷克斯·魯齊克一起生活，他也是一個非常出色的人。

But I just wanted to say that tonight, because one of the greatest gifts I got from the opportunity to write this book was the opportunity to get to know Doris or Dorito as she's known within the family. And so that was absolutely fantastic. So as you can see, Warren is very, very much someone who influences the people around him, and perhaps the most notable example of when he's done that was with Katherine Graham and the Washington Post. And this is a different kind of focus, because he not only bought the postdoc at a time when it was very depressed, and the company was in trouble, but he saw an opportunity of a company who had a leader that had inherited the business after her husband committed suicide. She had no business experience. She was personally very insecure, despite being a powerful woman in her own way, and he saw that he could make a difference. He could influence through his friendship with her, the success of his own investment, and at the same time she made his life better.
但我今晚特別想說的是，撰寫這本書帶給我最珍貴的禮物之一，就是有機會認識多麗絲——在家裡我們都叫她「多力多滋」。這真的是一段非常美好的緣分。正如各位所見，華倫確實深深影響著身邊的人，而最顯著的例子莫過於他與凱瑟琳·葛蘭姆及《華盛頓郵報》的故事。這次的情況有所不同，因為他不僅在報社經營陷入低谷、公司面臨危機時收購了其股份，更看見了一個獨特的機會：這家公司的領導者是在丈夫自殺後繼承了事業，她毫無商業經驗，儘管本身是位充滿力量的女性，內心卻極度缺乏安全感。華倫意識到自己能帶來改變——透過與她的友誼，他不僅能影響自身投資的成敗，同時也讓她的生命變得更豐盛。

When I interviewed her son, Don, she had already passed away. He took me and gave me something amazing, which was the files of the packages that Warren had sent to him and his mother over the years to teach them about business. Now, Warren and Kay, socialized together a lot. She was here in Washington all the time, and she introduced him to the rich and famous of the world, and introduced him to the world of politics, but what he gave them in return, nobody knows. What it was was a daily package that had articles, newsletters, letters, and bulletins that he had gone through, and annotated, underlined, written marginal notes in, to teach them about how to run a great business, and how the economy works, and how to invest. He had gone on for years, and years, and years, and Don let me make copies of most of it, and so I have it now, and whenever I want a refresher on what truly matters in business and the economy, this is my master class that I got second hand from Warren that he gave to Don and Kay, because he did it once, and it was an immense effort, and he wasn't ever going to do it again.
當我採訪她的兒子唐時，她已經過世了。他帶我進去，給了我一些令人驚嘆的東西，那就是多年來華倫寄給他和母親的包裹文件，用來教導他們商業知識。華倫和凱經常一起社交。她一直待在華盛頓這裡，將他介紹給世界上的富人和名人，並引領他進入政治世界，但他回報給他們什麼，沒有人知道。這些包裹裡裝的是他每天整理的文章、通訊、信件和公告，上面有他的註解、劃線和邊緣筆記，用來教導他們如何經營一家偉大的企業、經濟如何運作以及如何投資。他這樣做了許多年，唐讓我複製了大部分內容，所以我現在擁有這些資料。每當我想重溫商業和經濟中真正重要的東西時，這都是我從華倫那裡二手獲得的碩士課程，他將這些給了唐和凱，因為他只做過一次，付出了巨大的努力，而且他再也不會這樣做了。

So, that was amazing, and the impact of that was that he was on the board of directors of the post, and some even said that he was the shadow CEO of the post, I think that's not true, but he did obviously have any enormous influence on that company's business decisions, and its history, and its future, and as a result, that became one of the most valuable investments that Berkshire Hathaway ever made. Guyco is another one, I'll give a very quick example, in terms of this focus, this unrelenting focus. With Guyco, he encountered it when he was a teenager, reading about it in a library, and he went down to Washington, again, DC, because the company is based here. He went to see the company on a snowy Saturday morning, and found the president was in the office working, and he went in and spent four hours talking to Lorimer Davidson to learn about the auto insurance business, just to learn. Then he went back and bought the stock, and he put 75% of all of the money he had into Guyco. He wrote an article called at the Security that I like best, and published it in the commercial and financial chronicle, which was like the Berins newspaper of its time. And from then on, he owned Guyco's stock, but it was 20 years before there was a situation where he had enough money, and Guyco ran into some trouble , and was cheap enough, that he was able to buy a huge percentage of the company. And in effect, it acquired control, and he did that in 1976. During the entire time, throughout, he kept up his friendship with Lorimer Davidson, he met the other managers, he made regular visits to Guyco, he got to know everything about their operations, and he wanted Guyco, he craved Guyco. Then in 1996, he bought the whole company, he bought the rest of it. And so over a 40-year period, he followed this company, he knew everything about it, and the more he knew, the more he learned, the more he wanted to own it, and now Guyco is the second largest auto insurer in the United States, and I believe probably the most profitable. But at the time that he bought it, it was probably right, number 20. It was so small compared to a company like Allstate, which is now larger than, that it was just almost, it was being dismissed by those kinds of companies, it's not even important. But we're in saw then what it was going to be, and he spent 40 years getting hold of it, and then that was in 1996, so now we're all forward another 22 years, and it's grown enormously since he bought it, and that story to me is absolutely amazing. But with all of this intense focus on business, there was on myopia, and so I had noticed in getting to know where and there was a lot that he did not see, because if you're that focused on narrow things, you can look at things right in front of you and just not see them. So by then I had spent two, three years maybe on the writing, and I had spent a year and a half, either in Omaha or traveling with him, and then I had been to Omaha periodically after that. So maybe a hundred, I don't know how many occasions, I mean days and days and weeks on end, where we had seen each other, and I decided that I would play a trick on warrant. So one day I called him on the phone from my house in Connecticut, and I said, "Weren't?
所以，那真是太驚人了，其影響力讓他進入了郵報的董事會，甚至有人說他是郵報的影子執行長，我認為這不是真的，但他顯然對該公司的業務決策、歷史和未來產生了巨大的影響，因此，這成為波克夏·海瑟威有史以來最寶貴的投資之一。蓋可保險是另一個例子，我會用一個非常簡短的例子來說明這種專注，這種不懈的專注。蓋可保險是他十幾歲時在圖書館讀到相關資料時遇到的，他再次前往華盛頓特區，因為該公司的總部設在這裡。在一個下雪的星期六早晨，他去參觀這家公司，發現總裁正在辦公室工作，他進去花了四個小時與洛里默·戴維森交談，了解汽車保險業務，只是為了學習。然後他回去買了股票，並將他所有的錢的 75%投入了蓋可保險。他寫了一篇名為《我最喜歡的證券》的文章，並發表在《商業與金融紀事報》上，這就像是當時的《華爾街日報》。 從那時起，他擁有了蓋可保險的股票，但直到二十年後，當他累積了足夠資金，而蓋可保險又遇到一些麻煩、股價變得足夠便宜時，他才得以買進公司的大量股份。實際上，他藉此取得了控制權，這發生在 1976 年。在這整個期間，他始終與洛里默·戴維森保持友誼，結識了其他經理人，定期造訪蓋可保險，深入了解公司所有營運細節——他渴望擁有蓋可保險，對此懷抱強烈執念。後來在 1996 年，他買下了整個公司，收購了剩餘股份。就這樣歷經四十年，他持續追蹤這家公司，對其瞭若指掌，而越是了解、越是深入認識，他就越想完全擁有它。如今蓋可保險已是美國第二大汽車保險公司，我認為很可能也是最賺錢的保險企業。但在他當初收購時，它大概僅排名第二十名左右。相較於像好事達保險（現今規模已超越蓋可）這類公司，當時的蓋可實在微不足道，甚至被同業忽視到幾乎無足輕重的地步。 但我們當時就看出它將來的潛力，而他花了四十年時間才掌握它，那是在 1996 年，如今又過了 22 年，自他收購以來這項事業已大幅成長，這個故事對我來說實在令人驚嘆。然而，這種對商業的極度專注也伴隨著視野狹隘的問題，我注意到在深入了解華倫的過程中，有許多事物他並未察覺——因為當你過度聚焦於狹窄領域時，即便眼前的事物也可能視而不見。那時我大概已花了兩三年時間寫作，其中有一年半不是待在奧馬哈就是跟著他四處旅行，之後也定期造訪奧馬哈。我們相處的日子累積起來可能有上百次，說不清具體次數，總之是日復一日、週復週地會面。於是我決定跟華倫開個小玩笑。有天我從康乃狄克州的家中打電話給他，問道：「華倫嗎？」

What color is my hair?" Played a Japanese song. Finally, after the longest silence I think I have ever heard from him, he said, "Not black." It was a very precise answer. He gave me the full extent of his knowledge. By 2006-78, we were starting to dig down into some really deep stuff and talk about the meaning of life and what's it all about. At that point, I asked him the question directly, "What do you think the purpose of life is?" and he said, "To me, the purpose of life is to be loved by as many of the people that you want to have love you." So I had to chew on that a little bit because most people would say the purpose is to be loved by as many people as possible or something like that. But no, he was thinking about how many people do you want to have love you, and then you want to get about 1,000 on that. So if you want three people to love you, you want all three, if you want 50, you want all 50, but maybe you don't want 1,000 people to love you.
「我的頭髮是什麼顏色？」播放了一首日文歌。最終，在經歷了我認為從他那裡聽過最長的沉默後，他說：「不是黑色。」這是一個非常精確的答案。他給出了他所知範圍內的全部資訊。到了 2006-78 年，我們開始深入探討一些非常深刻的問題，談論生命的意義以及這一切究竟是關於什麼。那時，我直接問他：「你認為生命的目的是什麼？」他回答說：「對我來說，生命的目的是被你希望愛你的人中盡可能多的人所愛。」所以我不得不稍微咀嚼一下這句話，因為大多數人會說目的是被盡可能多的人所愛，或類似的說法。但並非如此，他思考的是你希望有多少人愛你，然後你希望達到約 1,000 人。所以，如果你希望三個人愛你，你希望這三個人全部愛你；如果你希望 50 個人愛你，你希望這 50 個人全部愛你，但或許你並不希望 1,000 個人愛你。

One thing I had learned about Warren is that he really did want to be loved, and it's because if you read this novel, you'll see that he wasn't loved as a child at all. And so he had learned to crave that love and try to find it in people as an adult. And he told me a story about how important that love is and what it's like to live in the celebrity world, where if you're rich and famous, particularly both, it's very hard to be loved because people, even people who don't know it, often have an ulterior motive, they have an agenda, and you can get very confused if you're a celebrity, into thinking that people like you, or they're in your friend, when really, it's all just about your money and the position that you have. And so what can end up happening is you get invited to parties, you get invited to dinner at the White House, you get invited to play golf at a gasta , you get invited to be on the 40 list of this and the top 10 list of that, and you're on the cover of a magazine, and you feel very important.
我從華倫身上學到的一件事是，他確實渴望被愛，因為如果你讀過這本小說，就會發現他童年時期完全沒有得到關愛。因此他學會了渴望那份愛，並試圖在成年後的人際關係中尋找它。他告訴我一個關於那份愛有多重要的故事，以及生活在名人世界是什麼樣子——在那個世界裡，如果你既富有又出名，特別是兩者兼具時，很難獲得真愛，因為人們（甚至連他們自己都沒意識到）往往別有用心、懷有目的。身為名人，你可能會感到非常困惑，以為人們喜歡你或把你當朋友，但實際上一切都只是因為你的金錢和地位。最終你可能會不斷受邀參加派對、受邀到白宮共進晚餐、受邀到高爾夫球場打球、入選各種「40 大」或「10 大」榜單，登上雜誌封面——這一切讓你感覺自己非常重要。

But it can be very deceiving and then we're in told me a story and he said you can never tell who this story is about while I'm alive and I promise. But if I do speak again and you come when he's not alive, I'll tell you who this story is about, just not yet. He said, there is this man and if he thinks that he is just a door, by everyone, but everyone actually in this, that he knows it's a no one can stand this person and he doesn't know it. And if he were up on a stage giving his speech and he fell off into the audience and had a heart attack, not one person would dial 911. Not his wife, not his kids, not his colleagues, not his so-called friends. They would all just watch while it happened. And he said, I don't ever want to be, that is not who I want to be. I want to be somebody that is loved. Well, I could see that in him and at the same time it was very interesting because over the course of several years of writing, I had encountered quite a number of people that he had dealt with in business who felt a little roughly treated. And I had learned that among the circle of people that were in Buffet wanted to be loved by were not necessarily everybody he did business with because sometimes money mattered for more. And I had interviewed people that had reason to be angry with him because they felt he had bested them in one business deal or another. And I knew, and if you read the Snowball, you'll read quite a few stories in there about him exacting terms for people that were quite tough and being I would call it ruthless. And yet, I interviewed these people and even the ones that were still mad on some level love Warren Buffet, which I found to be quite extraordinary. Because they just couldn't help it and they would say things like, I'm so mad at him for XYZ that he did in 19 whatever, but I just can't help but I still love the guy. Because he is, he is lovable.
但這可能非常具有欺騙性，然後我們被告知一個故事，他說在我還活著的時候，你永遠無法知道這個故事是關於誰的，我保證。但如果我真的再次開口，而當他不在人世時你來找我，我會告訴你這個故事是關於誰的，只是現在還不行。他說，有這樣一個人，他以為自己只是眾人眼中的一扇門，但實際上在這個圈子裡，每個人都知道他是一個無人能忍受的人，而他卻不自知。如果他站在台上發表演講，突然跌入觀眾席並心臟病發作，沒有一個人會撥打 911。不是他的妻子，不是他的孩子，不是他的同事，也不是他所謂的朋友。他們都會只是眼睜睜地看著這一切發生。他說，我永遠不想成為那樣的人，那不是我想要成為的樣子。我想成為一個被愛的人。嗯，我能從他身上看到這一點，同時這也非常有趣，因為在幾年的寫作過程中，我遇到了不少他在商業上打過交道的人，他們都覺得自己受到了些許粗暴的對待。 而我了解到，在巴菲特希望被喜愛的那個圈子裡，並非所有與他有生意往來的人都必然如此，因為有時候金錢更為重要。我曾採訪過一些有理由對他感到憤怒的人，因為他們覺得在某筆交易中被他佔了上風。我知道，如果你讀過《雪球》，你會在其中讀到不少關於他對人提出相當苛刻條件的故事，我會稱之為冷酷無情。然而，我採訪了這些人，即使是那些在某種程度上仍然生氣的人，也愛著華倫·巴菲特，我發現這相當不尋常。因為他們就是忍不住，他們會說這樣的話：我對他 19XX 年做的 XYZ 事非常生氣，但我就是忍不住，我仍然愛這個傢伙。因為他就是，他就是可愛的。

One of those people was a woman I mentioned earlier named Rose Blumkin. And she was the woman who built, created the Nebraska furniture mart, which was the business that I went jogging through the carpet warehouse at the beginning that I told you about. Rose sold her business to Warren when she was in her 90s and she was still running it. But by age 95, she had had a falling out with her grandsons over how to run the carpet department, which she took a special interest in, and she quit . And she went and bought a warehouse across the street, literally. She started a competing business and she was within a year of trouncing on a square foot basis, the Nebraska furniture mart. And of course, the Omaha World Herald was all over this, because it just made the juiciest fodder you could imagine for a newspaper to have the Blum kin family feuding with each other with two businesses across the street, one of them run by a 96 year old woman at the time.
其中一位是我之前提到的一位名叫蘿絲·布魯姆金的女士。她就是創建內布拉斯加家具商場的那位女性，也就是我一開始告訴你們、我曾慢跑穿過其地毯倉庫的那家企業。蘿絲在 90 多歲時將事業賣給了華倫，當時她仍在經營。但到了 95 歲時，她因地毯部門的經營方式與孫子們發生爭執——她對這個部門特別感興趣——於是辭職離開。她真的在街對面買下一個倉庫，開了一家競爭對手企業，不到一年時間，就以每平方英尺的業績計算，幾乎要擊敗內布拉斯加家具商場。當然，《奧馬哈世界先驅報》對此事大肆報導，因為布魯姆金家族在街對面開設兩家相互競爭的企業，其中一家還由一位當時已 96 歲的女士經營——這簡直是報紙能想像到最精彩的素材了。

So after a little over two years, Warren just cried uncle and he couldn't take anymore. She was not only winning, but it was causing terrible publicity for the furniture mart. And what he may not have fully understood himself was that Rose was still mad at him, because when he bought the furniture mart, he had paid a price for it that she later felt she did. And her family on the record probably will not talk about this, but they told me, several of them, how mad she was with hindsight, that she felt that she had left 30 plus million dollars on the table, which was a very, you know, in the 1980s, that was an incredibly huge amount of money. But at the time, it was amazing. And she felt a bit taken advantage of because Warren was competing against another bidder for this business and the other bidder offered a great deal more money, but she turned them down because they were German. And she sold the Warren. So there were some feelings there and yet, but she still loved Warren, just like everyone else. So after a couple of years of this fight going on,
所以經過兩年多後，華倫終於認輸了，他再也無法忍受。她不僅贏得了這場爭執，還給家具賣場帶來了極差的公眾形象。而他可能自己都沒完全意識到的是，蘿絲仍然對他心懷怨懟——因為當初他收購家具賣場時支付的價格，後來她覺得自己吃了虧。雖然她的家人在公開場合可能不會談論這件事，但好幾位家族成員私下告訴我，事後回想起來她有多憤怒，她覺得自己白白損失了三千多萬美元。要知道在 1980 年代，這可是一筆驚人的巨款。但當時交易達成時，一切看起來都很美好。她覺得自己有點被利用了，因為當時華倫正與另一位競標者爭奪這項生意，對方出價高出許多，但她拒絕了那個德國買家，選擇賣給華倫。所以這裡面摻雜著複雜情緒，但即便如此，她依然像所有人一樣深愛著華倫。就這樣經過兩年的爭執後……

Warren bought two dozen pink roses and went to her house. And she only felt comfortable in a furniture store environment. So her daughters had furnished the house with price tags still hanging on all of the furniture. And that was how she felt comfortable. And so Warren went over there and sat down on the sofa with a price tag hanging off it and there was a lamp with a price tag. And gave her the roses and then flattered her and said, "I can't do this without you. I need you back. Please let me buy your new company for $5 million." And I will, you know, bring you back here. But there was a catch. She was 98 years old at the time and he made her sign a non-computer agreement. Not only that, the non-computer was a five year non-computer and would not start to run until she quit. So if she quit the day after she came back, it would last until she was 103. But if she left at age 100, she would be tied up till 105.
華倫買了兩打粉紅玫瑰，前往她的住處。而她只有在傢俱店的環境中才會感到自在。所以她的女兒們佈置房子時，所有傢俱上都還掛著價格標籤。唯有如此她才能感到舒適。於是華倫到了那裡，坐在一張掛著價格標籤的沙發上，旁邊還有盞同樣掛著標籤的燈。他將玫瑰送給她，接著奉承道：「沒有妳我做不到。我需要妳回來。請讓我用五百萬美元買下妳的新公司。」並表示會帶她回到這裡。但其中有個條件——當時她已 98 歲高齡，而他要求她簽署一份禁止使用電腦的協議。不僅如此，這份禁令為期五年，且要等她離職後才開始計算。也就是說，若她回來隔天就辭職，禁令將持續到她 103 歲；若她 100 歲時離開，則會受約束直到 105 歲。

Or later. And so I knew about this because I found the non-computer in the file room. And nobody had, this story had never been told it. And I found the non-computer and I went and I was like, "What is this?" And she had signed it with an X because she never did learn to read or write English. And she could do math in her head. She was fantastic at that, but English, she just never did get. So we're not told me the story. And I said, "Listen, why did you think you needed a five year non-computer with a 98-year-old woman?" And he said, "You know, I thought she might go on forever." And with Rose, I needed five years beyond forever with her. So the interesting thing about that is that Rose Blumpkin is the one person that Warren feels competitive with now. Because he wants to run Berkshire Hathaway forever. And if you go to him in 10 years when he's 98, and if I could, I'd love to go and offer him a 9- speed, he would sign it in a heartbeat.
或者更晚。所以我會知道這件事，是因為我在檔案室裡發現了那份「非電腦」。而且沒有人——這個故事從未被講述過。我找到了那份「非電腦」，然後我去問她：「這是什麼？」而她用一個「X」簽名，因為她從未學會讀寫英文。她能在腦中做數學運算，這方面她非常厲害，但英文她就是一直沒學會。所以她沒告訴我這個故事。我問：「聽著，你為什麼覺得需要和一位 98 歲的女士簽一份五年的『非電腦』？」他說：「你知道嗎，我以為她可能會永遠活下去。」而對羅斯來說，我需要的是比永遠再多五年的時間。所以有趣的是，羅斯·布倫普金是現在華倫覺得有競爭壓力的人。因為他想永遠經營波克夏·海瑟威。如果你十年後去找他，那時他 98 歲，如果我可以，我很想去給他一份九速的合約，他會毫不猶豫地簽下。

He would love that. He would love to work until he's 103. He would love to be in the situation where he could live five years beyond forever. Nothing would please him more. But just in case that doesn't happen, let's suppose that it was him up here on the stage tonight instead of me. And let's suppose that he fell off the stage, and it was him who had a heart attack. I think that he would have one of the greatest and most fulfilling moments, finding that he had gotten his greatest wish in life, because he would hear hundreds of people grabbing their cellphones, calling 911, and he would know that he was loved by the people who loved him, because that includes all of you. And that's even better than five years bailing forever. Thank you. Yeah, ladies, out of town, so we're ready for questions. Can you give us some examples, where he showed compassion for other people? They sound like to me, the picture you're painting, people die, and the twin towers. And he's worried about a couple of dollars worth of, and he's
他會很喜歡那樣。他會樂意工作到 103 歲。他會很享受那種能比永恆多活五年的狀態。沒有什麼比這更能讓他高興了。但萬一這沒有發生，讓我們假設今晚站在這舞台上的是他而不是我。再假設他從舞台上摔下來，心臟病發作的人是他。我想，那將會是他生命中最偉大、最圓滿的時刻之一，因為他會發現自己實現了此生最大的願望——他會聽到數百人抓起手機撥打 911，他會知道那些愛他的人（這包括在座各位）都深愛著他。這甚至比多活五年還要美好。謝謝。是的，女士們，因為是外地來的，所以我們準備好回答問題了。你能舉幾個他對他人展現同情心的例子嗎？聽起來你描述的畫面是，人們死去，雙子星大樓倒塌，而他卻在擔心價值幾塊錢的……

not worried about the people who have been loved ones, etc. He's a strange sort of guy. He is very left-brained. That is for sure, but I have seen him show compassion a number of times. It is with people he knows, generally that he feels that more, for example, he got very worried back in the 2000s before Obamacare about people that he was close to about the possibility that they might become wiped out by catastrophic medical expenses. And these included people who worked for Bercher Hathaway, people who were retired, people he just knew, and he set up a pool. And he chose individuals, he put $20 million into this pool, and designated people and said that if any of them had some terrible thing before them, health-wise, that he would pay for whatever expenses were not covered by their health insurance. To make sure they got all the medical care they needed, and they would never have to fear being bankrupted by health care costs. And that's the kind of thinking, because that was the time when that was happening regularly to people. If somebody who will, for a friend, land his reputation when it's appropriate, he'll make that phone call, help somebody get the access that they need, he'll do a lot of very kind things and very thoughtful and consider it. I'll tell you when really short story, because I know we have other questions, but there was a woman named Venita May Brown that he dated when he was young. And I didn't put the story in the book, I talked about how he dated her, but she had been missing Nebraska, and she was very beautiful, but she got married to one of his friends. And she, there was something not right about her mentally, I'm not sure what it was, but she got divorced from his friend, they had a crazy, it was an unusual divorce, I'll just say that. And then she started writing, "We're in letters." There were 30, 40, 50 page letters of saying horrible things about you're this terrible, horrible, horrible, you know, that's awful. And then six months later there would be a letter that just was like normal, like, "Dear Warren, I miss you, how are you doing, whatever."
不擔心那些曾經是摯愛的人等等。他是個挺特別的傢伙。非常左腦思考，這點毋庸置疑，但我見過他展現同情心的時刻。通常是對認識的人，他會特別感同身受，比如在 2000 年代歐巴馬醫改之前，他曾非常擔心身邊親近的人可能因災難性醫療費用而破產。這些人包括為波克夏·哈薩威工作的員工、退休人員，以及他認識的人，他設立了一個基金池。他挑選了一些人，投入 2000 萬美元到這個池子裡，指定對象並表示，如果他們中任何人在健康方面遭遇重大變故，他將支付醫療保險未涵蓋的所有費用。確保他們獲得所需的一切醫療照護，永遠不必擔心被醫療費用拖垮。這就是他的思考方式，因為在那個年代，這種事確實經常發生在人們身上。 如果有人願意為了朋友，在適當的時候押上自己的名聲，他會打那通電話，幫人取得需要的門路，他會做許多非常仁慈、體貼周到的事。讓我簡短說個故事，因為我知道我們還有其他問題。他年輕時曾與一位名叫維妮塔·梅·布朗的女子交往。我沒把這故事寫進書裡，但提過他們交往的事。她當時很想念內布拉斯加，長得非常漂亮，後來嫁給了他的一位朋友。她精神狀態有些問題，我不確定具體情況，但後來她與那位朋友離婚了，那是場瘋狂又特別的離婚過程。之後她開始寫信，那種長達三四十頁、甚至五十頁的信，內容盡是惡毒的指控，說你多麼糟糕可怕。但六個月後，又會收到一封完全正常的信，寫著「親愛的華倫，我想念你，近來好嗎」之類的話。"

I think like 99% of us would just cut off a person like that and just say, "I can't afford to have this person in my life, they're crazy, they're sending me abusive mail, whatever." And she decided that he was going to help her. He, every crazy bad letter that she sent, he just ignored. And every good one that was from a normal, not deranged person, he wrote back, "Lovely replies." And I have the whole file, I don't know. Over the years, she changed, and she got fixed somehow. And I'm convinced that similar to animal training behavior, he extinguished her whatever it was that was causing her to be abusive and writing. She ended up coming out for a high school reunion and meeting all of his friends and being perfectly fine. And that was sheer kindness on his part. He didn't have to do that, and she took a lot of his time to do this.
我想大概有 99%的人會直接斷絕與這種人的往來，然後說：「我無法讓這種人出現在我的生活中，他們瘋了，他們寄給我辱罵信件，諸如此類的。」而她卻決定要讓他幫助她。他呢，對於她寄來的每一封瘋狂惡劣的信件，他都置之不理。而對於每一封來自正常、不瘋狂的人的好信件，他都會回覆：「美好的回覆。」我手上有完整的檔案，我也不知道。多年來，她改變了，不知怎麼地，她得到了修復。我確信，類似於動物訓練行為，他消除了她那種導致她辱罵和寫信的東西。她最終參加了一個高中同學會，見了他所有的朋友，表現得完全正常。這純粹是他的善良。他不必這麼做，而她為此佔用了他很多時間。

And he, he guards his time very jealously. I've seen him do, if we had two hours, I could think of 50 more things like that. But he just, you know, yeah, he's very compassionate. Excellent. So how did that become about how did he and Bill get together? So it was Katherine Graham, who introduced him to Bill, before Bill ever even really, really knew Melinda. And right around the time when they were just, I think, just starting today before well before they were married. Katherine Graham had a close friend who had a house on Bayon Rouge Island in Washington, and they went out for a memorial day weekend. And then this friend was friends with Bill Gates's mother, who was a grondon in the Seattle area. Very one of the great social lights of Seattle, who's now deceased. And so the Gates, as we're having a party out at their place on the hood canal, and they insisted that they wanted to meet Warren. The Gates wanted Warren and Bill to meet each other, and Kay wanted Warren and Bill to meet each other.
而他，他非常珍惜自己的時間。我見過他這樣做，如果我們有兩個小時，我還能想出 50 件類似的事情。但他就是，你知道的，是的，他非常有同情心。太棒了。那麼，他和比爾是怎麼認識的呢？是凱瑟琳·葛蘭姆將他介紹給比爾的，那時比爾甚至還不太認識梅琳達。大概就在他們剛開始交往的時候，我想，在他們結婚之前。凱瑟琳·葛蘭姆有一位密友，在華盛頓的巴永魯日島上有棟房子，他們在陣亡將士紀念日週末去了那裡。而這位朋友是比爾·蓋茲母親的朋友，他母親是西雅圖地區的一位社交名流，也是西雅圖社交圈的重要人物之一，現已去世。所以蓋茲一家在胡德運河邊的住所舉辦派對時，他們堅持要見見華倫。蓋茲一家希望華倫和比爾見面，凱也希望華倫和比爾見面。

Warren and Bill did not want to meet each other. Bill said, "Why do I want to meet this investor, ancient investor guy from Omaha?" And Warren said, "I don't care anything about technology. Why do I want to meet this computer guy?" But they went, and Bill said, "I'm only going to talk to him for 10 minutes." And Warren said, "I'm only going to talk to him for 10 minutes." And then we're going to leave. And they met. And Warren said, "Can you explain to me why IBM is a good investment or not?" Should I buy it or not? And Bill started talking. And one of the things about Bill, he's not the most socially fluent person. But if you ask him a question about something that he's knowledgeable about, he is fascinating to talk to. So, Warren had asked him probably the best introductory question anybody ever could. And for the next hours and hours they spent, there's a picture in the book of them walking on the beach next to a seaplane. They were inseparable. And people had to go and try to pry them apart to get them to even show any interest in the other people at the party. And then it went from there. And so Warren, as you can it, Bill about investing, Bill, as you can it, Warren about technology. Warren knows a lot about technology. He never bought technology stocks because he thought that it was too hard to get a sustainable competitive advantage in technology. He thought these companies would be short-lived. And he said at the shareholder meeting last year, he was wrong. He did not understand the power that Facebook and Google and Amazon would have. And their ability to sustain through the network effect, their business and achieve profits from it. Now, with what's happening with Facebook right now, he might reconsider. But I don't think so. And he said, we could have tried harder. We were perfectly capable of understanding it.
華倫和比爾原本都不想見對方。比爾說：「我幹嘛要見這個奧馬哈來的投資人、老古董投資者？」華倫則說：「我對科技一竅不通，幹嘛要見這個搞電腦的傢伙？」但他們還是去了，比爾說：「我只打算跟他聊十分鐘。」華倫也說：「我只打算跟他聊十分鐘，然後我們就走人。」結果他們見面了。華倫問：「你能跟我解釋為什麼 IBM 是項好投資嗎？我該不該買？」比爾開始滔滔不絕。比爾這人有個特點——他並非最擅長社交的人，但如果你問他擅長領域的問題，他的談話會令人著迷。所以華倫問的這個問題，可能是所有人能想到最棒的開場問題了。接下來好幾個小時，他們形影不離——書裡有張照片是他們在海邊一架水上飛機旁散步的畫面。人們得去把他們分開，才能讓他們對派對上其他人產生一點興趣。故事就這麼開始了。 因此，正如你所見，華倫談論投資，比爾談論科技。華倫對科技了解甚多。他從未購買科技股，因為他認為在科技領域要獲得持續的競爭優勢太難了。他認為這些公司會是短命的。而他在去年的股東大會上說，他錯了。他沒有理解到 Facebook、Google 和 Amazon 將會擁有的力量。以及它們透過網絡效應維持業務並從中獲利的能力。現在，考慮到 Facebook 目前的情況，他可能會重新考慮。但我不這麼認為。他說，我們本可以更努力嘗試。我們完全有能力理解它。

And we just didn't, because we just didn't, we felt like we were doing fine. And we were doing just as well with the things that we knew and understood, so we just didn't bother. And it was a mistake. And he called it one of his biggest mistakes. So that's the answer. Well, a question back here, Tom. The relationship between Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger is intriguing. You indicated early on in your book that at times Mr. Munger and Mr. Buffett would stop talking in their conversations and communicate by mental tele pathy. Would you expand on that? Yes, so in their early years Warren and Charlie were known for being glued together and obsessively talking, you know, for ten plus hours of a stretch.
而我們就是沒有，因為我們就是沒有，我們覺得自己做得還不錯。而且我們在熟悉和理解的領域表現得同樣出色，所以我們就懶得去做了。這是一個錯誤。他稱之為自己最大的錯誤之一。這就是答案。好的，這裡有個問題，湯姆。華倫·巴菲特和查理·蒙格的關係很有趣。你在書中早期提到，有時蒙格先生和巴菲特先生會在對話中停止交談，透過心靈感應溝通。你能詳細說明一下嗎？是的，在他們早年，華倫和查理以形影不離和沉迷於交談而聞名，你知道，一次就是十幾個小時。

They know each other so well at this point that they can, and I've seen this happen, they can both predict exactly what the other one will think or say on any given situation. So they tend to not need to talk because they know what the other room will say. And in the case of both of them, they disagree on quite a number of things, particularly philanthropy. They tend to not talk when they know that the other one would say something disapproving of what they're going to do. They don't agree on politics, so they go their own way on that. They're still just as good a friend's as ever, but they're sort of like a friendship where they can do it by osmosis. Went down here in front, and then you. Yes, everyone who plays bridge understand this is a very competitive game. How competitive is Warren with bridge and I understand he plays with Bill Gates sometimes maybe is partner, and also how many master points just Warren have. Okay, so Warren's partner is Sharon Osberg, who is a two-time world champion, and she took his game from being a casual game to being a serious game. And he's played in the national championships before with our, I don't know the point system and I don't know the point. But Sharon is probably also his closest friend. He doesn't say a lot about that in public because it would annoy some other people who think there is closest room, but she has actually the one who is. She also plays with Bill a lot as his partner, and increasingly is playing with Bill more and more internaments. Warren was a better player with Bill than Bill, but now as Bill is devoting more time to it, he's moving up. But I'm afraid I can't tell you numbers because I don't know. Yes, after reading the post, I was fascinated by his relationship with Katherine Graham and how he mentored her.
他們彼此已經熟識到能夠預測對方在任何特定情況下會怎麼想或怎麼說，這點我親眼見證過。因此他們往往不需要交談，因為他們知道對方會說什麼。就他們兩人而言，他們在許多事情上意見相左，尤其是慈善事業。當知道對方會對自己打算做的事表示不贊同時，他們往往選擇不談論。他們在政治立場上也不一致，所以各自走自己的路。他們的友誼依然如故，但這種友誼有點像是透過滲透作用來維繫的。先從這裡下去，然後輪到你。是的，每個玩橋牌的人都明白這是一個競爭非常激烈的遊戲。華倫在橋牌上的競爭力如何？我知道他有時會和比爾·蓋茲一起玩，可能是搭檔，還有華倫有多少大師點數？好的，華倫的搭檔是莎朗·奧斯伯格，她是兩屆世界冠軍，她將他的遊戲從休閒性質提升到了專業水平。 他以前曾與我們的隊伍一起參加過全國錦標賽，我不清楚計分系統，也不知道分數。但莎倫很可能也是他最親密的朋友。他很少在公開場合談論這件事，因為這可能會惹惱一些自認為是最親密朋友的人，但實際上她確實是。她也經常作為比爾的搭檔一起玩，並且越來越多地在更多比賽中與比爾合作。華倫以前比爾玩得更好，但現在隨著比爾投入更多時間，他的水平正在提升。但恐怕我無法告訴你具體數字，因為我不清楚。是的，讀完這篇文章後，我對他與凱瑟琳·葛蘭姆的關係以及他如何指導她深感著迷。

Did he mentor other people and were they all women? Very, did he mentor other people were they all women very few? He's had a few people come in to Berkshire at the way. I've seen this happen twice and he hired them. He gets kind of enthusiastic and infatuated with people. They come in, they think they're going to be mentored and then he gives them a job and he spends half an hour with them and then they never really see him again. He is not a natural one-on-one coach. That's not what he likes to do. He likes to get up in front of an audience and talk with K, it was different. I really believe that was the only time that he's put in that kind of time and devotion. There's some people in the front. Wonderful speech. Thank you. I heard a story about his wallpaper and it went like this. One day he went on vacation and his children decided that he needed new wallpaper.
他是否指導過其他人，而且都是女性？非常少，他指導過其他人嗎？幾乎都是女性？有幾個人曾以某種方式進入波克夏。我見過這種情況發生兩次，他聘用了他們。他對人會產生某種熱情和迷戀。他們進來，以為會得到指導，然後他給了他們一份工作，花半小時與他們相處，之後他們就再也沒真正見過他了。他天生不是一對一的教練。那不是他喜歡做的事。他喜歡站在觀眾面前與 K 交談，那是不一樣的。我真的相信那是他唯一一次投入那種時間和奉獻。前面有一些人。精彩的演講。謝謝。我聽說過一個關於他壁紙的故事，是這樣的。有一天他去度假，他的孩子們決定他需要新的壁紙。

It was money. The wallpaper was printed with money, not real money but it was money. They decided to redo his office and so they took it down. When he returned, it took him a couple of days to figure out what in the world is different and then he realized it was different wallpaper. He made them go out and buy moneyed wallpaper and replace it. That is a true story. That is true. He has his daughter does a lot of this kind of shopping for him and he used to insist that he would shop for his cars and he would make her go to up to 40 dealerships looking for the cheapest car of the same making model and he would find one usually that had been damaged by hail. Let's ask questions. Hi there. I'm Stu and I, UMW. I'm just really like I'm 20 years old right now and I'm really interested in getting into this game. How did Mr. Buffett get away from Benjamin Graham because I know he worked for him for a while and then get into his own company and still get the information and all of the resources that he did to get the success that he did.
那是錢。壁紙上印著錢，不是真鈔但就是錢的圖案。他們決定重新裝修他的辦公室，所以把壁紙撕掉了。他回來後，花了幾天時間才發現到底哪裡不一樣，然後意識到是壁紙不同了。他堅持要他們出去買印有鈔票圖案的壁紙重新貼上。這是真實故事，千真萬確。他常讓女兒幫他處理這類採購事務，以前他堅持要親自選購汽車時，會讓女兒跑遍多達 40 家經銷商，尋找同款車型中最便宜的，通常他最終會挑中一輛被冰雹砸壞過的車。現在來提問吧。大家好，我是 Stu，來自 UMW。我現在才 20 歲，對進入這個領域非常感興趣。巴菲特先生是如何從班傑明·葛拉漢的體系中走出來的？我知道他曾為葛拉漢工作一段時間，後來成立自己的公司，卻仍能獲得那些讓他取得成功的資訊與資源。

Have you read my book? I just bought it and I'm very excited. Great. You will find out. It's a great question. It really is. It's a long answer but he did go through quite a process and so you will find the whole answer in the book. It's been said that it's not an investing book. Actually it is an investing book. It tells you exactly how he did it. All right, but before we say a final thank you to Alice and release her to go back inside. Some of these books don't know many of you want to buy. Let me tell you about the next and last lecture of the season and its own Napoleon by a million person to this audience. Jeremy Black has been a minute tabs on know many of you have enjoyed his presentation. So I hope you'll come back a week from tonight, but Jeremy Black joined me in thanking Alice Schroer.
你讀過我的書嗎？我剛買了它，非常興奮。很好。你會發現的。這是個很棒的問題。確實如此。答案很長，但他確實經歷了相當的過程，所以你會在書中找到完整的答案。有人說這不是一本投資書。實際上它確實是一本投資書。它準確地告訴你他是如何做到的。好的，但在我們最後感謝愛麗絲並讓她回去之前。這些書中有些不知道你們有多少人想買。讓我告訴你們本季最後一場講座，以及這場講座中由百萬人推薦的拿破崙。傑瑞米·布萊克已經簡短地介紹了，知道你們很多人喜歡他的演講。所以我希望你們下週今晚能回來，但傑瑞米·布萊克和我一起感謝愛麗絲·施羅爾。