雪球帽子年底股东信件

有网友问我为何不曾透露雪球主管的公司所握的股票, 为何没有听我提及雪球主管的股票分析, 为何没有报告投资回酬.

其实, 是雪球主管鼓励我开始这部落格的, 而且我事先已经答应雪球主管绝不透露公司的投资组合. 虽然身为小小投资者之一, 我可以定时得到公司的投资状况, 但是保密是有原因的.

雪球主管曾说过, 被炒作的公司不会便宜.
便宜的公司都是不被大多数人看上的.

如果我在此透露, 就等于暴露了行踪, 让人家跟着公司的投资组合来跟随投资.
对公司不见得是件好事.

其一, 如果投资方向有误, 时机不对, 间接害到读者亏钱, 公司承担不起, 说不定还引来官司.

其二, 如果投资得当, 原本公司是可以静悄悄, 神不知鬼不觉地趁低收购便宜的公司, 但是因为消息传开了, 大家都抢着买, 结果价格被炒高了...

其三, 公司的选股持股方针都一直以长期永久持有为中心思想. 
长期永久既是只买不卖, 除非买错, 或公司变质了.

太多在股市打滚的投机份子大多都不会对我们这种投资方法感兴趣. 很多人只关心今年赚多少, 多快可以回本. 但是, 雪球主管关注的是公司长远的远景.
股票投资组合可以在短期里不是很赚钱, 但是长期下去, 股价可以翻几番.
最终, 雪球主管的目标就是成为投资公司的大股东之一, 进入公司的董事部, 然后影响公司的经营方向, 让公司更加赚钱.

所以, 以后不必再套我透露雪球帽子的投资状况.

也恕我无可奉告.

但是, 我会时不时分享什么股票什么企业是雪球主管不会碰的.

希望这资讯对读者会有帮助.

明天就是 2011 年最后一天了, 又刚收到雪球帽子年底股东信件, 就在这分享一部分雪球帽子年底股东信件里, 雪球主管的投资方针, 雪球主管的信念, 雪球主管的经典名句共勉之.

雪球帽子年底股东信件

信件是用英语写的, 为了保留原汁原味, 也避免不小心不必要地画蛇添足, 我也不多做翻译了.

Equity markets reacted negatively to political and macro-economic instability in the second half of the year. In the US we witnessed the debt ceiling debate and in Europe the survival of the European Union appears to be in jeopardy. Against this backdrop, most investors retreated into capital preservation shell, taking risk off until reason re-emerged in the markets. We endured much of the sharp decline throughout the third and fourth quarters, gradually increased our exposure near the market bottom. While we have not generated significant gains year to date, we have protected our capital.

Many investors have dramatically reduced their equity exposures because of a belief that the world is more uncertain now. We all want certainty both in and outside the charts. Problem is certainty is nothing more than hope wrapped in expectation. At the relentless race to the bottom, I've been getting this nagging feeling that everything I touch turns to dirt. Every time I buy a stock that is already down a lot, the one that my analysis leads me to believe is cheaper than dirt, it declines more. Did I completely lose my ability to value stocks?

No, I didn't get dumber, and my stock-picking skills haven't diminished. We were simply a willing participant in the latest cyclical bear market. Bear markets make us feel dumber than we are, the same way bull markets make us feel smarter than we are. Feeling dumb makes us do the opposite of what we should be doing. Fear and pain - yes, continued losses cause a lot of pain - are dangerous things because they can make you and me panic and lose confidence. To alleviate pain we sell, we react, we default to the only asset that made us money so far in the bear market - cash! Cash is only king when other assets are princes. When we cannot find a stock with a long-term superior risk/reward profile, then cash is King with a capital K. However, during a cyclical bear market, cash is slowly demoted to a prince as great companies are thrown out the window with the junky ones. We have to actively remind ourselves of the eight-letter-word T-O-M-O-R-R-O-W! "The sun will come out, tomorrow, so you gotta hand on til tomorrow."

Of course, we don't know if tomorrow is really tomorrow or five years from now. But investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and do not let the bear market turn us into a sprinter. First of all, remind ourselves that we are not as dumb as our portfolio makes us feel. When we feel lonely and miserable, we talk to ourselves, "The cyclical bull market is still there; it is just hiding under the ugly sentiment of the cyclical bear market. Believe me, it will show its happy face. it is just a matter of time." In a bear market, it is easy to forget about buying. Selling is a much easier decision to make. Every time we buy a stock, we look dumb because it usually goes down afterward. We cannot worry about marking the bottom in every buy. Our objective is not to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. No, our objective is to buy a great company when it is cheap and sell it when it is fairly valued. No, i am not as dumb as bear markets make me feel.

This volatility does not concern me. If you have a well-defined investment process, your only real enemy is yourself - not volatility. We focus our attention on the value and business progress of the companies we own rather than their daily market quotations. We want to build offensive strategies towards our long-term strategic compounding goals. Today we are finding great opportunities to own the equity of the some of the best businesses in the world at bargain prices. We have continued to raise our equity exposures as prices fell during the quarters, making some mispriced stocks even more attractive. We feel our allocations will be rewarded handsomely and will in turn be the foundation of future returns.

We made a few tweaks and very pleased with how our holdings have performed in this environment. We sold some positions and added a few new positions during the year. They tend to be predictable companies where the customer isn't super sensitive about price. We look at the reinvestment dynamics of a business. To us, the best businesses in the world earn very good returns on capital and can reinvest that capital at similar rates of return going forward. The second best have good returns on capital and can't reinvest it, but management knows that and is good at acquisitions or paying out dividends or repurchasing its stock. We consider these two as a possible investment.

In recent months, we have had several reminders regarding the inevitability of the market pendulum's swing, the extremes of fluctuations, and the dramatic influence of cash flows. Some years, these transitory influences will benefit us. Other years they are sure to hurt, as they have this year. The reality is that we don't know what is going to happen to the economy. We don't know what is going to happen to interest rates. We don't know which sectors are going to do well in the next few years and we certainly don't know which shares are going to do well in the next few weeks, months or years.

All we do know is that nobody else knows those things either, it is just that most of them haven't realized it yet and that is a big advantage to value investors. Come to think about this. We can try to cope by understanding where the pendulum stands at a point in time and striving to anticipate its future swings. Or we can put our energy into emphasizing long-term value under the assumption that we will able to ride out the fluctuations if we are right about the values. To help us deal with the short-run developments, we have chosen to do some of each in the affected areas. We tell ourselves: we are being very candid about market conditions, and if market conditions don't take a turn for the better, shareholders should expect a reduced ability to profitably employ capital in the markets. As to the long run, we are confident our adherence to value investing will continue to get us through. 

Real value investors don't care about underperformance. That is a fact of life for value investors, where their time horizon is significantly longer than that of average market participants. For the time being, you can either have cheap stocks or you can have good news, but you can't have both.

不懂是不是有一天, 当雪球滚得够大, 滚出大马, 滚向国际时, 这些股东报告信将会被收集并钉成一本书, 就像巴菲特历年来的股东信件都成为了世人想学习投资必看的文章. 会有那么一天的, 我深信. 

雪球主管, 加油噢!

我决定在 2012 年加码雪球帽子!