2009年伯克希尔股东会问答：
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Jack Benben (PH) from Haworth, New Jersey. First, I’d like to thank you. This is — I’ve been to about a dozen meetings. This is probably the best one.
听众：Jack Benben (PH)来自新泽西的霍沃斯。首先，我要感谢你。这是——我参加过很多会议。这可能是最好的一个。
So thank you very much for the new format. And thank you very much to the journalists who’ve really helped out a lot. (Applause)所以非常感谢你的新形式。非常感谢那些帮了大忙的记者们。(掌声)
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, thank you.沃伦·巴菲特:是的，谢谢你。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: At past meetings, you and Mr. Munger have talked at great length about opportunity cost. Excuse me. The past year has presented you with many unusual opportunities.听众：在过去的会议上，您和芒格先生详细地讨论了机会成本。原谅我。过去的一年给你带来了许多不同寻常的机会。
Can you discuss some of the more important opportunity cost decisions of the past year? And were those decisions at all affected by the macroeconomic picture? Thank you.你能谈谈去年一些更重要的机会成本决策吗?这些决定是否受到宏观经济形势的影响?谢谢你！
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, certainly opportunity cost has been much more in the forefront of mind in the last 18 months.沃伦•巴菲特:当然，在过去18个月里，机会成本成为人们关注的焦点。
When things are moving very fast, when both prices are moving, and in certain cases, intrinsic business value is moving at a pace that’s far greater than we’ve seen for a long time, it means that in terms of calibrating A versus B, versus C, it’s tougher.当事情发展得非常快的时候，当两个价格都在变化的时候，在某些情况下，内在商业价值的变化速度远远超过了我们很长一段时间以来所看到的，这意味着在校准A与B，与C方面，变得更加困难。
It’s more interesting. It’s more challenging. But it’s — and it can be way more profitable, too. But it’s a different task then when everything was moving at a more leisurely pace.它更有趣。它更具挑战性。但它也可以更赚钱。但当一切都以更悠闲的节奏进行时，这是一个不同的任务。
And I described earlier, you know, we face that problem. And it’s a good problem to have. We faced that problem in September and October. Because we want to always keep a lot of money around.我之前说过，我们面临这个问题。这是个很好的问题。我们在9月和10月就遇到了这个问题。因为我们想要保持大量的资金。
We have all kinds of levels — extra levels of safety — that we follow at Berkshire. And we will never get so we’re dependent on banks or other people’s money or anything else. We’re just not going to run the company that way.我们伯克希尔拥有各种级别的——额外的安全级别——我们遵循这些级别。我们永远不会变得依赖银行或其他人的钱或其他任何东西。我们就是不会以那种方式经营公司。
So we were seeing things happen. I mean, we got a call — we got lots of calls. But, most of them, we ignored. But the calls that we got that we ignored helped us calibrate the calls that we paid attention to, too.所以我们看到事情发生了。我是说，我们接到了一个电话，很多电话。但是，我们忽略了其中的大部分。但我们忽略的电话也帮助我们校准了我们关注的电话。
And if we got a call from a Goldman Sachs, I think it was on a Wednesday, maybe, you know, that was a transaction that couldn’t have been done the previous Wednesday and might not be done the next Wednesday.如果我们在周三接到了高盛的电话，也许，你知道，这是一笔在前一个周三无法完成的交易，也可能在下一个周三无法完成。
And we’re talking real sums, 5 billion in that case. And we had certain commitments outstanding. We had a $3 billion commitment out on Dow Chemical. I think at that point, I could be wrong exactly on the day when we made it.我们谈论的是真正的大数目，在那起案例中是50亿美元。我们还有一些未兑现的承诺。我们在陶氏化学上有30亿美元的承诺。我想在那个点上，我可能记不清楚具体是哪一天了。
We had a $5 billion commitment out on Constellation Energy. We had 6 1/2 billion we were going to have to come up with in early October on the Wrigley-Mars deal. So we were faced with opportunity cost-type considerations.我们对联合能源公司有50亿美元的承诺。10月初，我们需要在箭牌和玛氏的交易中拿出65亿美元。所以我们面临着机会成本类型的考虑。
And as I said earlier, we actually sold something that under normal circumstances we wouldn’t have thought about selling if it was 10 or 15 points higher, in Johnson & Johnson. But we just didn’t want to get uncomfortable.正如我之前所说，我们实际上出售了一些在正常情况下，如果它的股价高出10或15点，我们是不会考虑出售的资产，比如在强生公司。但我们只是不想让自己感到不舒服。
So you are faced, in a chaotic market, particularly where people needs large sums — so you’re not talking about buying a hundred million dollars’ worth of something that, you know, one day and a hundred million the next day — but all of a sudden you’re called on for billions, if you’re going to play at all.所以你面对的是一个混乱的市场，特别是当人们需要大笔资金的时候——所以你不是说今天买一个价值一亿美元的东西，第二天又买一个亿——但突然之间，如果你想玩的话，你就需要数十亿美元。
We faced that opportunity cost calculation frequently during that period. I mean, when we decided to commit to buy Constellation Energy, we had to be willing to come up with $5 billion seven or eight months down the line. And you didn’t know exactly when because it would be subject to public utility commission approval.在那段时间里，我们经常面临机会成本计算。我的意思是，当我们决定承诺收购星座能源公司时，我们必须愿意在七八个月后拿出50亿美元。你不知道确切的时间因为这需要公共事业委员会的批准。
But if something chaotic happened in the market next week, we would get phone calls. Or we would see stocks selling or bonds selling at prices we liked. And if the relative values, against what we held, were interesting, we might sell things.但如果下周市场出现了混乱，我们会接到电话。或者我们会看到股票或债券以我们喜欢的价格出售。如果相对于我们持有的资产，这些资产的相对价值很有趣，我们可能会出售一些东西。
Now, it’s harder to sell things in huge quantities than it is to buy things in huge quantities during a period like that. So you have to measure whether you can actually get the offsetting transaction done to move from one to another.现在，在那种时期，大量出售东西比大量购买东西要困难。所以你必须衡量你是否真的能够完成对冲交易，从而从一个资产转移到另一个资产。
We have a much — if we’re going to move billions from one to another, it’s much different than the problem you may have in moving hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars from one holding to another. We really can have big transactional costs unless we’re careful.如果我们要将数十亿美元从一个地方转移到另一个地方，这与你将数十万或数万美元从一个地方转移到另一个地方所遇到的问题大不相同。如果我们不小心，交易成本真的会很高。
But that’s the kind of calculation we go through. And we love the fact we get the opportunity to make those calculations. It’s a sign of opportunity around.但这就是我们要做的计算。我们很高兴我们有机会做这些计算。这是一个机会的信号。
And you know, we’ll — we haven’t had the flurry of activity like we had last year for a long time. So it was the first time we really faced the question, you know, can we raise a couple billion dollars in a hurry, to be sure that we’ve offset the cash needs of what we’re committing to on the purchase side.你知道，我们——我们已经很久没有像去年那样繁忙的活动了。所以这是我们第一次真正面临这个问题，你知道，我们能否迅速筹集数十亿美元，以确保我们能够抵消我们在购买方面所承诺的现金需求。
On the Johnson & Johnson we sold, we actually made a deal where we got — I had a floor price on what we sell that for, just because the markets were so chaotic, that we wanted to be absolutely sure that we would not end up a couple billion dollars less than comfortable when we got all through.对于我们出售的强生公司，我们实际上做了一个交易，我对我们出售的价格有一个底价，只是因为市场太混乱了，我们想要绝对确定，当我们完成交易时，我们不会少赚几十亿美元。
Our definition of comfortable is really comfortable. We want to have billions and billions and billions around. And then we’ll think about what we do with the surplus.我们对“舒适”的定义是真正的舒适。我们希望身边有数十亿、数十亿、数十亿的资金。然后我们才会考虑如何处理剩余的资金。
查理？
CHARLIE MUNGER: Again, I’ve got nothing to add.查理·芒格：再一次，我没有什么要补充的。
卖出时需要考虑相对价值、机会成本，也就是是否出现了明显更好的机会（能力圈内）；如果资产规模比较大，还需要考虑能否以合适的价格进行出售。当真正的金融危机发生时，会出现不寻常的投资机会，这将使机会成本的计算变得更为困难。巴菲特说这更有挑战，但也可以更赚钱。关于机会成本的考量，这对于巴菲特和芒格来说其实是老生常谈了。如果用一句话归纳总结，投资仍然是一种相对选择的训练。由此而产生的一个推论是，所谓的股票买卖点并不能基于excel的精确计算（这种精确由于依赖主观预测，并不牢靠），因为机会成本时刻在变化。声明: 本文不构成投资建议
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