巴菲特：股市长期回报优于黄金和债券（上）

    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。

    对于像你我这样的应税投资者，情况就更糟了。过去的四十七里，美国国债不断地滚动，年回报率5.7%。听起来好像还不错。但对于个人所得税率平均为25%的的个人投资者而言，这5.7%的回报率所能带来的实际收益是零。投资者缴纳的、可见的所得税将拿走上述回报率中的1.4个百分点，通胀因素这个隐形的“税种”将吞噬其余4.3个百分点。值得指出的是，尽管投资者可能认为显性的所得税是主要的负担，但其实，隐形的通胀“税”是 所得税的三倍还多。没错，每张美元上都印着“我们信仰上帝”这句话，但启动美国政府印钞机的是凡夫俗子的手。

    当然，高利率能弥补依托于货币的投资工具所带来的通胀风险。而且，20世纪80年代初时的利率确实很好地做到了这一点。不过，要抵消消费者购买力面临的风险，当前的利率水平还差得远。因此，眼下应谨慎投资债券。

    在目前的环境下，我不看好依托于货币的投资。不过，伯克希尔持有的这类投资仍然达到了相当的数额，其中主要是短期品种。不管实际利率水平是多么低，在伯克希尔，对充足流动性的需求总是被置于极其重要的地位，将来其重要性也不会降低。为满足这一需求，我们主要持有美国国债——即便是在最混乱的经济环境下，美国国债也是唯一靠得住的投资品种。我们正常的流动性水平是200亿美元；100亿美元是我们的绝对下限。

    抛开流动性和监管要求，我们一般不愿购买基于货币的证券，除非它们有可能提供超乎寻常的收益——原因可能是在间歇的垃圾债券暴跌期，某只公司债定价过低；也可能是因为利率已升至高位，如果利率下跌，高评级债券有可能实现大幅资本升值。过去，这两类机会我们都抓到过——未来也可能再次抓住这样的机会——但当前我们与这样的前景显然背道而驰。今日的情形正如华尔街人士谢尔比•库洛姆•戴维斯多年前的一句俏皮话所言：“以如今的价格，宣称提供无风险回报的债券实际提供的是无回报的风险。

    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 $7 today to buy what $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.

    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 only investment that can be counted on for liquidity under the most chaotic of economic conditions. Our working level for liquidity is $20 billion; $10 billion is our absolute minimum.

    Beyond the requirements that liquidity and regulators impose on us, we will purchase currency-related securities only 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."