佳句書摘 - The Snowball (1)
Posted in Investment, Quote on Jan 1st, 2009
靠著每週末一點一點堆雪球，終於在2009年的第一天，看完「滾雪球：華倫‧巴菲特和他的財富人生」、或台灣版書名「雪球–巴菲特傳」(The Snowball Warren Buffett and the Business of Life)。全書70%著墨於”humanity”，寫巴非特與周遭親友間的互動，以及他的內心世界(部份細節東方人來說，甚至是個人隱私等級的秘密，不太可能在一本名人傳記中看見)。剩下30%才是與他的商業智慧、理財觀念有關的片段。如果你抱著看致富秘笈心態來看這本書，可能會有些失望，但對我來說，這些內容不但完整呈現出”the intrinsic value of Buffett”，也讓我有機會從內而外認識一位史上最成功的投資家。
And here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:
以下是他在1999年 (.com/科技股如日中天的年代) Buffett在Sun Valley年度高峰會中，對眾多科技、媒體界大老版發表的壓軸談話，而實際內容更像是為全球網路創業家、網路股投資人所作的呼籲 (He was then criticized by media and some shareholders as the “old-fashioned guy” who missed the opportunity to make investments in Tech/Internet industries.)：
“There were two thousand auto companies: the most important invention, probably, in the fist half of twentieth century. It had an enormous impact on people’ lives. If you had seen at the time of the first cars how this country would develop in connection with autos, you would have said, ‘this is the place I must be.’ But of the two thousand companies, as of a few year ago, only three car companies survived. And at one time of another, all three were selling for less than book value, which is the amount of money that had been put into the company and left there. So autos had an enormous impact on America, but in the opposite direction on investors…”
“Now the other great invention of the first half of the century was the airplane. In this period of 1919 to 1939, there were about two hundred companies. Imagine if you can see the future of the airline industry back there at Kitty Hawk. You would have seen a world undreamed of. But assume you had the insight, and you saw all these people wishing to fly and visit their relatives or runaway from their relatives or whatever you do in an airplane, and you decide this was the place to be… As of a couple years ago, there had been zero money made from the aggregate of all stock investments in the airline industry history.”
“It’s wonderful to promo new industries, because they are very promotable. It’s very hard to promote investment in a mundane product. It’s much easier to promote an esoteric product, even particularly on with losses, because there’s no quantitative guideline.”
- The Snowball, P18 - P19
以上三段話，台下audience聽在耳裡應該是感到有些逆耳 (台下聽眾有Amazon的Jeff Bezos, Yahoo的Jerry Yang, Bill Gates, Andy Grove, Steve Jobs等科技巨擘)，但一年多後也證明歷史總是一再重複，甚至壓縮重複演出的時間。
其餘quotes續待…
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