每年的5月份初夏，在美国小镇奥马哈，沃伦巴菲特和查理芒格都会举行长达6小时的伯克希尔哈撒韦公司年会。年会上有个传统环节，由股东现场提问，巴菲特和芒格现场回答。这个环节占用了年会绝大部分时间，里面很多问题都非常有趣。
我读完了目前能搜罗到的伯克希尔年会问答实录，从1994年到2023年，读的是中文翻译版。读完之后我立刻想再读一遍，但既然再读为何不直接读英文原版呢，于是开始读英文原版。同时，做一些精彩的摘录。
当然了，并不是其他部分不精彩，只是我对这些摘录更有共鸣，你去读这份年会问答实录感到的共鸣的部分很可能是不一样的。所以，适合所有想在生活中和工作中获得长久的独立、充实、理性、愉悦的人，特别是那些对公司和世界的运作感兴趣的朋友去读一读。
能找到一个品行卓越的老师，并且你还相信他的方法论，是人一辈子最幸运的事情。沃伦巴菲特找到了本格雷厄姆，查理芒格找到了本杰明富兰克林。
以下是摘录的形式，我把某个问题的原文原封不动摘录下来，然后某些段落后面加上我自己的一些感想。关于摘录的问题前面的数字序号，直接对应的是当年年会上的第几个问题，标题的序号也是一样，方便对应回去寻找。
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39.You don’t have to do exceptional things to get exceptional results
WARREN BUFFETT: Some businesses are a lot easier to understand than others. And Charlie and I don’t like difficult problems. I mean, we — if something is hard to figure, you know, we’d rather multiply by three than by pi. I mean it’s just easier for us. (Laughter)
巴菲特和芒格经常说，他们专门挑“软柿子捏”，他们也真的是这样实践的，他们专选那些看得懂、有把握的事情去做。从不寻找7尺高的栏去跨，转而专注去找那些1尺高的栏去跨。而现在很多人（在二级市场上）追求的是看哪家公司能研发出多么创新的技术、克服多么巨大的挑战，本质上有点走到追求高风险低回报的路上去了。关于这块是这样的，投资的收益看的是现在的市场估值和未来（有一定把握的）价值的差距，一来往往这些偏创新技术的公司都比较热门，热门代表着未来的空间会被过度想象市场估值也被炒的很高了，因而大幅地减小了与未来价值之间的差距，二来又因为这类公司的核心是需要技术创新的或者是需要克服挑战的，从本质上就很难站在现在对未来进行多少有把握的价值判断。结合这两个因素，那么投资这类公司自然很难有好的收益了。
Charlie, you have any —?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, that is such an obvious point. And yet so many people think if they just hire somebody with the appropriate labels they can do something very difficult. That is one of the most dangerous ideas a human being can have.
All kinds of things just intrinsically create problems. The other day I was dealing with a problem and I said, this thing — it’s a new building — and I said this thing has three things I’ve learned to fear: an architect, a contractor, and a hill. (Laughter)
And — if you go at life like that, I think you, at least, make fewer mistakes than people who think they can do anything by just hiring somebody with a label.
WARREN BUFFETT: We don’t comment — excuse me, go ahead.
CHARLIE MUNGER: You don’t have to hire out your thinking if you keep it simple.
WARREN BUFFETT: You don’t have to do — we’ve said this before — but you don’t have to do exceptional things to get exceptional results.
And some people think that if you jump over a seven-foot bar that the ribbon they pin on you is going to be worth more money than if you step over a one-foot bar. And it just isn’t true in the investment world, at all.
So, you can do very ordinary things. I mean, what is complicated about this? But, you know, we’re $3 billion pretax better off than we were a few years ago because of it.
There’s nothing that I know about that product, or its distribution system, its finances, or anything, that, really, hundreds of thousands — or millions — of people aren’t capable of, that they don’t already know. They just don’t do anything about it.
And similarly, if you get into some complicated business, you can get a report that’s a thousand pages thick and you got Ph.D.s working on it, but it doesn’t mean anything.
You know, what you’ve got is a report but you don’t — it — you won’t understand that business, what it’s going to look like in 10 or 15 years.
The big thing to do is avoid being wrong. (Laughter)
CHARLIE MUNGER: There are some things that are so intrinsically dangerous. Another of my heroes is Mark Twain, who looked at the promoters of his day and he said, “A mine is a hole in the ground owned by a liar.” (Laughter)
And that’s the way I’ve come to look at projections. I mean, basically, I can remember, Warren and I were offered $2 million worth of projections once in the course of buying a business and the book was this thick.
WARREN BUFFETT: For nothing.
CHARLIE MUNGER: And, if we were given it for nothing, and we wouldn’t open it.
WARREN BUFFETT: We almost paid 2 million not to look at it. (Laughter)
搞清楚顾问是依靠佣金生存的，为了收交易佣金他们就会每天琢磨写些啥能促成交易呢。所以，巴菲特说没有见过任何一份第三方顾问出的报告里面关于未来收入预测的数字不是向上的，只是向上多少的问题。那这个攥写这份报告的一方动机有问题，看这份东西不就是浪费时间吗，还可能影响自己本来的判断。如果买公司还要顾问来给建议，那建议就不要买了。动机在很多事情里面都是第一位需要考虑的事情，往往拥有正确的动机才能有正确的结果。
It’s ridiculous. I do not understand why any buyer of a business looks at a bunch of projections put together by a seller or —
CHARLIE MUNGER: Or his agent.
WARREN BUFFETT: — or his agent.
I mean, it — you can almost say that it’s naive to think that that has any utility whatsoever. We just are not interested.
If we don’t have some idea ourselves of what we think the future is, to sit there and listen to some other guy who’s trying to sell us the business or get a commission on it tell us what the future’s going to be — it — like I say, it’s very naïve.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, and five years out.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. We had a line in the report one time, “Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut.” And — (laughter) — it’s quite applicable to projections of — by sellers — of businesses.
“永远别问你的理发师，你需不需要理发”——哈哈，睿智又幽默的巴菲特。
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