“别买谷歌股票”——作为投资专家十年前我为什么会看走眼

    十年前，谷歌（Google）进行了首次公开募股。那时，我认为这里面充满了虚夸成分，并把所有购买谷歌股票的人称为“傻蛋”。我还特意在我为《Money》杂志撰写的文章中单独加了一段文字，并以“我的建议”为题写道“别碰这只股票”。事实证明我错了。

    实际上，从始至终很少有谁给出的投资建议像我错得这么离谱：只有著名经济学家欧文•费舍尔在1929年（大萧条时期）曾称股市前景一片光明，之后便是我了。

    谷歌上市后的股价为50美元，几年后股票“一拆二”。当时我说他们股票的实际价值连这个数的一半都不到，大约在20美元左右——我当时非常肯定谷歌股价将会暴跌到这个价格。但是这种情况却没有发生。

    十年后，谷歌的股价为586美元，回报率高达约1084%，是同期股市回报率的10倍。如果那时你在谷歌投资了一万美元的话，那么现在你的一万美元就变成了118,400美元，比你把钱投给标普500所赚的还要多上97,000美元。听了我的你就亏了！

    为什么我对谷歌的判断错的这么离谱？我能从这件事上学到什么吗？

    首先，试图预估一家公司的确切股价是极其愚蠢的。我之所以给出谷歌每股20美元的价格，是因为我运用了那些华尔街和财经专家所谓的现金流贴现模型。我还向纽约大学经济学教授阿斯沃斯•达摩达兰求教，因为他写了一本如何给公司估值的书。预估公司在以后十年间（因为试着预估更远的时间只能让你显得很蠢）盈利的总额，然后参照未来通胀预期得出现金流当前价值。这样，你很快就能算出谷歌或者其他任何公司的市值。

    好吧，有好多方法可以把计算结果搞得一团糟，而我则都试了个遍。我第一个失误是，预估谷歌销售额将会保持年均30%的稳定增长。在线广告市场在不断增长中，因此我估计谷歌将会从中分一杯羹。但是我万万没有想到的是，谷歌得到的哪里只是一杯羹，它得到的几乎是全部。事实上，谷歌的收入在过去十年间保持了年均50%的增长。

    并且，我一度还认为我很可能高估了谷歌的盈利能力。我曾声称谷歌极有可能和网景公司（Netscape）一样葬身于互联网的发展洪流中。基于它当时的盈利能力，我预计谷歌最多能挣480亿美元，但我断言这几乎不可能实现。而且，通货膨胀将吞噬其大部分利润。因此我用每年15%的折现率，估算出这些利润的价值约为150亿美元。

    这与事实相去甚远。谷歌在过去十年间的实际现金流超过900亿美元，并且通胀基本上不存在。

    Ten years ago, I called anyone buying into Google’s much hyped IPO a “sucker.” My bottom line, which I helpfully broke out into a separate paragraph titled “My Advice” in my Money magazine article was “stay clear.” Man was I wrong.

    In fact, few investing calls, since the beginning of time, have been more wrong. Leading economist Irving Fisher calling stocks cheap in 1929. And then there’s me.

    Google’s shares started trading at $50, adjusted for a2-for-1 splita few years later. I said they were worth less than half that, around $20. And I was pretty sure they would soon nosedive to that price. They never did.

    A decade later, Google’s shares now trade for $586. That’s a 1084% return, roughly 10 times what the stock market did at the same time. If you had invested $10,000 in Google then, you would now have $118,400, or $97,000more than what you would had if you invested the same money in the S&P 500. You’re welcome!

    So why was I so utterly wrong about Google? Can I learn anything about investing from this call?

    First of all, trying to come up with an exact price for what a company is worth is the true suckers game. To come up with my $20 a share for Google, I used what Wall Streeters and finance professors call a discounted cash flow model. And I sought out the advice of New YorkUniversity economics professor Aswath Damodaran, who wrote a textbook about how to value companies, to do it. Estimate all the money you think a company is going to generate over the next decade (because try to estimate beyond that and you are bound to look pretty silly), and then figure out what, based on future inflation, that cash flow would be worth today. And presto, you will know what Google, or any company should be worth.

    Ok, so there were a number of ways to mess this up, and I did all of them. My first mistake was to assume that Google’s sales growth would be a stable 30% a year. Online advertising was increasing, and I figured Google would get a slice of that. What I didn’t understand was that Google wouldn’t just get a slice, but nearly all of it. As a result, Google’s revenue has grown an average of 50% a year over the past decade.

    Also, I thought there was a high probability that I was overestimating how profitable Google could be. I said there was a strong possibility that Google would end up with Netscape in the internet graveyard. Based on its current profitability, I said Google could earn $48 billion over its lifetime. But that, I said, was unlikely. What’s more, inflation would eat up the value of a lot of those profits. So I used a discount rate of 15%, per year, to figure out that the value of those profits was more like $15 billion.

    Not even close. Google’s actual cash flow over the past decade has been just over $90 billion, and inflation has been basically non-existent.