By then, this group will really lose their heads. They will probably write books on "How I turned a Dollar into a Million in Twenty Days Working Thirty Seconds a Morning." Worse yet, they'll probably start jetting around the country attending seminars on efficient coin-flipping and tackling skeptical professors with, " If it can't be done, why are there 215 of us?"
这时候,这群人可能完全沉迷在自己的成就中:他们可能开始著书立 说:“我如何每天早晨工作30秒,而在二十天之内将—美元变成100万美元。”更糟的是,他们会在全国各地参加讲习会,宣扬如何有效地投掷铜板,并且反驳 持怀疑态度的教授说,“如果这是不可能的事,为什么会有我们这215个人呢?”
By then some business school professor will probably be rude enough to bring up the fact that if 225 million orangutans had engaged in a similar exercise, the results would be much the same - 215 egotistical orangutans with 20 straight winning flips.
但是,某商学院的教授可能会粗鲁地提出—项事实,如果2.25亿只猩猩参加这场大赛,结果大致上也是如此——有215只自大的猩猩将连续赢得20次的投掷。
I would argue, however, that there are some important differences in the examples I am going to present. For one thing, if (a) you had taken 225 million orangutans distributed roughly as the U.S. population is; if (b) 215 winners were left after 20 days; and if (c) you found that 40 came from a particular zoo in Omaha, you would be pretty sure you were on to something. So you would probably go out and ask the zookeeper about what he's feeding them, whether they had special exercises, what books they read, and who knows what else. That is, if you found any really extraordinary concentrations of success, you might want to see if you could identify concentrations of unusual characteristics that might be causal factors.
然而,我必须说明,前述事例和我即将提出 的案例,两者之间存在着若干重大差异。旨先,如果(a)你所选择的2.25亿只猩猩的分布状况大致上和美国的人口分布相同;如果(b)经过20天的竞赛, 只剩下215只赢家;如果(c)你发现其中有40只猩猩来自于奥玛哈的某个动物园,则其中必有蹊跷。于是,你会询问猩猩管理员各种问题,它们吃什么饲料、 是否做特殊的运动、阅读什么书籍……换言之,如果你发现成功案例有非比寻常的集中现象,则你希望判定此异常的特色是否是成功的原因。
Scientific inquiry naturally follows such a pattern. If you were trying to analyze possible causes of a rare type of cancer -- with, say, 1,500 cases a year in the United States -- and you found that 400 of them occurred in some little mining town in Montana, you would get very interested in the water there, or the occupation of those afflicted, or other variables. You know it's not random chance that 400 come from a small area. You would not necessarily know the causal factors, but you would know where to search.
科学的调查也遵循此一形态。如果你试图分析某种罕见的癌症原因——例如,美国每 年只有1500个病例——而你发现蒙大拿州的某个矿区小镇便产生400个病例,则你必然对当地的饮水、病患的职业或其他种种变数产生兴趣。你知道,在—个 小镇中发生400个病例,绝不是随机因素所造成。虽然你未必了解病因,但你知道从哪里着手调查。
I submit to you that there are ways of defining an origin other than geography. In addition to geographical origins, there can be what I call an intellectual origin. I think you will find that a disproportionate number of successful coin-flippers in the investment world came from a very small intellectual village that could be called Graham-and-Doddsville. A concentration of winners that simply cannot be explained by chance can be traced to this particular intellectual village.
除了地理国家,还有其他方式可以界定起源。除了地理的起源,还有我所谓“智力的起源”。我认为各位将在投资领域发现,不 成比例的铜板投掷赢家来自于一个极小的智力村庄.它可以称为“格雷厄姆一多德都市”。这个特殊智力村存在着许多赢家.这种集中现象绝非巧合所能够解释。
Conditions could exist that would make even that concentration unimportant. Perhaps 100 people were simply imitating the coin-flipping call of some terribly persuasive personality. When he called heads, 100 followers automatically called that coin the same way. If the leader was part of the 215 left at the end, the fact that 100 came from the same intellectual origin would mean nothing. You would simply be identifying one case as a hundred cases. Similarly, let's assume that you lived in a strongly patriarchal society and every family in the United States conveniently consisted of ten members. Further assume that the patriarchal culture was so strong that, when the 225 million people went out the first day, every member of the family identified with the father's call. Now, at the end of the 20-day period, you would have 215 winners, and you would find that they came from only 21.5 families. Some naive types might say that this indicates an enormous hereditary factor as an explanation of successful coin-flipping. But, of course, it would have no significance at all because it would simply mean that you didn't have 215 individual winners, but rather 21.5 randomly distributed families who were winners.
在某些情况下,即使非比寻常的集中现象也 可能不重要。或许有100个只是模仿某一位极具说服力的领导者,而依其主张来猜测铜板的投掷结果。当他猜正面,100个追随者也会自动地做相同的猜测。如 果这一位领导者是属于最后215位赢家之一,则这100也便属于同一个智力起源,这项事实便不具有任何意义,因为100个案例实际上只代表一个案例。同 理,假定你生活在一个父权结构极为严密的社会,而美国每一个家庭都恰好以父亲马首是瞻。20天之后,你将发现215位赢家是来自于21.5个家庭。若干天 真的分析师可能因此而认为,成功地猜测钢板投掷的结果,其中具有高度的遗传因素。当然,这实际上不具有任何意义,因为你所拥有的不是215位个别赢家,而 只是21.5个随机分布的家庭。
In this group of successful investors that I want to consider, there has been a common intellectual patriarch, Ben Graham. But the children who left the house of this intellectual patriarch have called their "flips" in very different ways. They have gone to different places and bought and sold different stocks and companies, yet they have had a combined record that simply cannot be explained by the fact that they are all calling flips identically because a leader is signaling the calls for them to make. The patriarch has merely set forth the intellectual theory for making coin-calling decisions, but each student has decided on his own manner of applying the theory.
我所要考虑的这一群成功投资者,共有一位共同的智力族长——本杰明·格雷厄姆。但是,这些离开此智力家族的孩童, 都是依据非常不同的方法猜测他们自己的“铜板”。他们各自前往不同的地方,买卖不同的股票和企业,但他们的综合绩效绝对无法用随机因素加以解释。他们做相 同的猜测,并不是因为领导者下达某一项指令,因此也无法用这种方式解释他们的表现。族知只提供了猜测铜板的智力理论,每位学生都必须自行决定如何运用这项 理论。
The common intellectual theme of the investors from Graham-and-Doddsville is this: they search for discrepancies between the value of a business and the price of small pieces of that business in the market. Essentially, they exploit those discrepancies without the efficient market theorist's concern as to whether the stocks are bought on Monday or Thursday, or whether it is January or July, etc. Incidentally, when businessmen buy businesses, which is just what our Graham & Dodd investors are doing through the purchase of marketable stocks -- I doubt that many are cranking into their purchase decision the day of the week or the month in which the transaction is going to occur. If it doesn't make any difference whether all of a business is being bought on a Monday or a Friday, I am baffled why academicians invest extensive time and effort to see whether it makes a difference when buying small pieces of those same businesses. Our Graham & Dodd investors, needless to say, do not discuss beta, the capital asset pricing model, or covariance in returns among securities. These are not subjects of any interest to them. In fact, most of them would have difficulty defining those terms. The investors simply focus on two variables: price and value.
来自“格雷厄姆一多德都市”的投资者所具备的共同智力结构 是:他们探索企业的价值与该企业市场价格之间的差异。事实上,他们利用其间的差异,却不在意效率市场理论家所关心的问题:股票究竟在星期一或星期—:买 进,或是在一月份或七月份买进……。当企业家买进某家公司时——这正是格雷厄姆一多德都市的投资者透过上市股票所从事的行为——我怀疑有多少人会在意交易 必须发生于某个月份或某个星期的第一天。如果企业的买进交易发生在星期一或星期五没有任何差别,则我无法了解学术界人士为何要花费大量的时间和精力,探讨 代表该企业部分股权的交易发生时的差异。毋庸多说,格雷厄姆一多德都市的投资者并不探讨bate、资本资产定价模型、证券投资报酬本的变异数。这些都不足 他们所关心的议题。事实上,他们大多数难以界定上述学术名词。他们只在乎两项实数:价格与价值。
I always find it extraordinary that so many studies are made of price and volume behavior, the stuff of chartists. Can you imagine buying an entire business simply because the price of the business had been marked up substantially last week and the week before? Of course, the reason a lot of studies are made of these price and volume variables is that now, in the age of computers, there are almost endless data available about them. It isn't necessarily because such studies have any utility; it's simply that the data are there and academicians have [worked] hard to learn the mathematical skills needed to manipulate them. Once these skills are acquired, it seems sinful not to use them, even if the usage has no utility or negative utility. As a friend said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
面对图形分析师所研究的价量行为,我始终感觉惊讶。你 是否会仅仅因为某家公司的市场价格在本周或前一周剧扬.便决定购买该企业呢?在日前电脑化的时代,人们之所以会大量研究价格与成交量的行为,理由是这两项 变数拥有了无数的资料。研究未必是因为其具任何功用;而只是因为资料既然存在,学术界人士便必须努力学习操作这些资料所需要的数学技巧。—旦拥有这些技 巧,不去运用它们便会带来罪恶感,即使这些技巧的运用没有任何功用,或只会带来负面功用.也在所不惜。如同一位朋友所说的,对一位持铁锤的人来说,每—样 事看起来都像是钉子。
I think the group that we have identified by a common intellectual home is worthy of study. Incidentally, despite all the academic studies of the influence of such variables as price, volume, seasonality, capitalization size, etc., upon stock performance, no interest has been evidenced in studying the methods of this unusual concentration of value-oriented winners.
我认为,这一群具有共同智力起源的投资者非常值得我们研究。虽然学术界不断地对价格、成交量、季节性、资本规模以及其他变数,研究它们对股票绩效的影响,但这群以价值为导向赢家的方法却毫不受人关心。
I begin this study of results by going back to a group of four of us who worked at Graham-Newman Corporation from 1954 through 1956. There were only four -- I have not selected these names from among thousands. I offered to go to work at Graham-Newman for nothing after I took Ben Graham's class, but he turned me down as overvalued. He took this value stuff very seriously! After much pestering he finally hired me. There were three partners and four of us as the "peasant" level. All four left between 1955 and 1957 when the firm was wound up, and it's possible to trace the record of three.
关于这一项绩效的研究,我首先要追溯到从1954年到 1956年间,工作于Greham—Newman公司的四位伙伴。我们总共四个人——我并不是从数以千计的对象中挑选这四个人。在我选修本杰明·格雷厄姆 的课程之后,我要求进人Graham—Newman公司担任无给职的工作,但格雷厄姆却以价值高估而拒绝了我的要求。他对价值看得非常严重!经我不断地恳 求,他最后答应雇我。当时公司有三位合伙股东,以及我们四位“学徒”。公司结束经营之后,我们四个人陆续在1955年到1957年间离开公司,目前只能够 追踪其中三个人的投资记录。