巴菲特致股东信中隐藏的绝佳投资建议

上周末，沃伦•巴菲特公布了致伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司股东的年度信件。和过去一样，这封信妙语连珠，令人难忘，巴菲特也在其中点评了美国的经济现状。但大多数人似乎都没有发现，这位奥马哈先知还在今年的信中提出了一些投资建议，而且堪称他曾写下的最佳建议。

这可能是因为这些建议没有出现在探讨投资或股市的章节，而是放在了和保险相关的部分。在详细介绍伯克希尔旗下通用再保险公司的业绩时，巴菲特用一段有意思的文字提出了保险公司必须遵循的四条原则。他写道：

说到底，情况良好的保险公司需要遵循四条原则：第一，它必须了解所有可能让保单出现损失的风险；第二，它必须保守地评估所有风险真正带来损失的几率以及可能由此产生的成本；第三，扣除潜在损失成本和经营费用后，它设定的保费平均而言必须能产生利润；第四，如果保费无法达到适当水平，它必须愿意放弃这笔生意。

这段话让我想到了投资管理（老实说，它差不多占据了我的全部思绪）。保险和投资的相似度几乎达到100%，这一发现让我深受感触。毕竟，除了作为今后开支和需求的保障，投资还能是什么呢？

现在就让我们逐一探讨这四大原则：

原则1：了解所有可能让保单出现损失的风险。

首先，让我们从长期投资者的角度来定义一下“损失”。它是指永久失去一定数量资金的可能性。债券或股票都可能带来损失。在某些情况下，共同基金也是如此。就连指数基金也可能造成损失，条件是它追踪的指数再也回不到之前的高点。

相反，多元化投资几乎永远也不会带来永久性损失，除非持有人的某些行为导致这种结果。如果在市场底部抛售各类资产，或者在市场中某个不明朗的领域投入过多，投资者的资金绝对会一去不复返。

据我所知，防止发生这种情况的唯一途径就是多元化并进行系统性再平衡。多元化投资不能避免阶段性损失，但这样的损失更有可能是缩水，而不是永久性亏损。对一位把全部资金投入本国股市的日本投资者来说，相对于25年前日经指数的高点，他的投资仍处于缩水状态。如果他进行全球性配置，多元化投资可能早就帮他挽回了损失，眼下的投资表现可能也会好得多。

原则2：保守地评估所有风险真正带来损失的几率以及可能由此产生的成本。

在不利情况或市场动向的影响下，你可能损失多少？出现大幅缩水的几率有多高？情况会变得有多差？在既定回报率下，你愿意承担多少市场波动风险？通过了解以往各类资产下跌的可能性，投资者就应该知道如何构建自己的投资。人们常说，只要能看到自己的风险，上升潜力自然就会浮现。

原则3：扣除潜在损失成本和经营费用后，设定的保费平均而言必须能产生利润。

这一点怎么强调都不过分。有些风险能带来收益，但有些收益并不值得投资者去冒险。

集中投资风险绝对属于后一种。将大笔资金投入少量投资对象确实是生财之道，但这只能是后见之明。对大部分人来说这种做法都行不通，但大家很少听说这样的事。我们听到的许多事例都是过去时，而且内容都是所谓的聪明人把资金集中在某个方面，然后大赚了一笔。

不同的资产类别有不同的风险和回报几率。股票的长期回报最高，但和投资级固定收益资产的持有者相比，持股者经历的考验必定更多。举例来说，就整个投资行为而言，关键就是在潜在风险承受度和未来收益需求度之间求得平衡。按照这样的思路，你的“经营费用”就是退休后的负债，如果你在为子女教育存钱，这些费用就会出现的更快。在各种各样的行情下，你都能承担这些费用吗？如果你自己回答不了这个问题，那就跟金融规划师谈谈。

原则4：如果保费无法达到适当水平，必须愿意放弃这笔生意。

某些情况下，投资风险会远远超过承担这些风险而应得到的“保费”，也就是回报。最近的一个例子是，许多投资者都放弃了通常会购买的债券，转而投资于业主有限合伙制公司。为获得7%的股息收益率，投资者对这些公司趋之若鹜。但随着油价下跌，这些公司的股价在过去一年中平均下降了40%，由此产生的损失相当于这些投资者六年的股息收入。

那些为提高当前收益而承担垃圾债券信用风险的投资者最近也得到了类似的教训。在某个时刻，用高收益必需消费品股和债券建仓，或者承担着长期美国国债利率风险的投资者也会面临投资缩水局面。参与掉期交易或者购买了金融机构发行的债务抵押证券，从而承担了对手方风险的投资者也是如此。

结论：华尔街没有免费午餐，几乎每种资产都有独特的风险。不过，为了今后的回报而承担眼下的风险并没有错，只是要确保自己在这个过程中获得足够的潜在回报。沃伦•巴菲特显然做到了这一点。而且，他得到的回报一直都没有这么低。(财富中文网)

译者：Charlie

校对：詹妮

This weekend, Warren Buffett released his annualletter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. As always, it was full of memorable quips and the Oracle’s take on where the US economy currently stands. But what most people seem to have missed is that this year’s Berkshire BRK.A 0.00% letter also contained some of the best investment advice the Oracle of Omaha has ever written down. That’s perhaps because it was in a portion not devoted to investing or the stock market, but insurance. In the section of the letter detailing the results of Berkshire’s General Re subsidiary, there was an interesting tidbit on the four disciplines that must be adhered to in the insurance business. Buffett wrote:

At bottom, a sound insurance operation needs to adhere to four disciplines. It must (1) understand all exposures that might cause a policy to incur losses; (2) conservatively assess the likelihood of any exposure actually causing a loss and the probable cost if it does; (3) set a premium that, on average, will deliver a profit after both prospective loss costs and operating expenses are covered; and (4) be willing to walk away if the appropriate premium can’t be obtained.

This got me thinking about portfolio management (which is pretty much all I ever think about, let’s be honest) and it struck me that the parallels between insurance and investing were pretty perfect. What else, after all, does a portfolio represent but insurance for the expenses and needs of the future?

Let’s take these four disciplines one by one:

Understand all exposures that might cause a policy to incur losses.

First, let’s define “losses” from the standpoint of a long-term investor: It’s the possibility of having a quantity of money permanently go away. This can happen in a bond or an individual stock. In some cases, it can happen in a mutual fund. It can even happen in an index fund if it tracks an index that makes a high it never returns to.

But a diversified portfolio will almost never incur a permanent loss other than due to the behavior of the investor holding it. By selling asset classes at a market bottom or wagering too heavily in an obscure area of the market, investors can absolutely cause themselves permanent losses.

The only way to guard against this outcome that I am aware of is diversification and systematic rebalancing. A diversified portfolio cannot avoid periods of loss, but these periodic declines are more likely to be drawdowns as opposed to permanent losses. A Japanese investor with a 100% domestic stock portfolio invested in the Nikkei could still be in drawdown from the market’s peak 25 years ago. That same investor with a globally allocated, diversified portfolio would have recouped his losses long ago and would be doing much better today.

Conservatively assess the likelihood of any exposure actually causing a loss and the probable cost if it does.

What is your potential downside should adverse events or market activity hit your portfolio? What is the probability of heavy drawdowns? How bad could it get? How much risk are you willing to endure—in the form of volatility—for a given return? Having an idea of the historical probabilities of asset class declines should inform the way a portfolio is structured. It is said that by seeing to your risks, you can let the potential upside take care of itself.

Set a premium that, on average, will deliver a profit after both prospective loss costs and operatingexpenses are covered.

This cannot be emphasized enough—there are risks that pay and risks that do not pay enough to justify taking them.

Concentrated portfolio risk falls firmly into the latter camp. Betting heavily on a small amount of investments is how fortunes are made, but only in hindsight. It doesn’t work out well for the majority of people, but you rarely hear about them. You will hear a lot, always after the fact, about the supposedly brilliant people who made concentrated bets and hit the lottery.

Different asset classes have different risk and return probabilities. Equities return the most over time, but their holders have to go through more duress than investment grade fixed income, for example. Balancing your tolerance for potential losses against your need for future gains is the key to the whole endeavor. In this analogy, your “operating expenses” would be the future liabilities you’ll have in retirement or even sooner if you’re saving for your children’s’ education. Will these operating expenses be covered under a variety of potential market outcomes? Talk to a financial planner if you can’t answer this question on your own.

Be willing to walk away if the appropriate premium can’t be obtained

Some investments offer a lot more risk than what you’d deserve to earn in “premium,” i.e. returns, for your trouble. A recent example would be the MLPs that many investors had been holding in place of where they’d traditionally be buying bonds. For a 7% pass-through dividend yield, investors piled into MLPs. But as oil prices have dropped, the MLPs have on average dropped 40% in the past year, a lost equivalent to six years worth of the dividend income they were chasing.

Investors increasing their current yield by taking credit risk in junk bonds have recently learned a similar lesson. At some point, investors who are conflating high-yielding consumer staples stocks with bonds or who are taking interest rate risk in long-dated Treasurys will see drawdowns as well. So will investors taking counter-party risk via swaps and collateralized debt securities issued by a financial institution.

Bottom line: There’s no free lunch on Wall Street and just about every asset class carries its own form of idiosyncratic risk. Still, there’s nothing wrong with taking risk today in order to earn future rewards. Just make sure you’re being paid for taking it in the form of an adequate potential return. Warren Buffett clearly does. And his returns haven’t been all that bad.