巴菲特致合伙人的信（1963年）③复利的喜悦

The Joys of Compounding

Now to the pulse-quickening portion of our essay. Last year, in order to drive home the point on compounding, I took a pot shot at Queen Isabella and her financial advisors. You will remember they were euchred into such an obviously low-compound situation as the discovery of a new hemisphere.

复利的喜悦

又到了最激动人心的内容了。去年，为了把复利的概念讲透，我指出了伊莎贝拉女王(Isabella)的错误。大家可能还记得，伊莎贝拉女王以为发现新大陆很赚钱，却不知道这笔投资的复合收益率太低了。

Since the whole subject of compounding has such a crass ring to it, I will attempt to introduce a little class into this discussion by turning to the art world. Francis I of France paid 4,000 ecus in 1540 for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. On the off chance that a few of you have not kept track of the fluctuations of the ecu 4,000 converted out to about $20,000.

很多人在复利这个问题上太蠢了，我打算给大家上一课，这次以艺术界为例。1540年，法兰西的弗朗西斯一世(FrancisIofFrance)花了4,000埃居（译注：法国古货币）买入达芬奇的名画《蒙娜丽莎》。有的合伙人可能不太关注汇率变动，当时的4,000埃居相当于20,000美元。

If Francis had kept his feet on the ground and he (and his trustees) had been able to find a 6% after-tax investment, the estate now would be worth something over $1,000,000,000,000,000.00. That's $1 quadrillion or over 3,000 times the present national debt, all from 6%. I trust this will end all discussion in our household about any purchase or paintings qualifying as an investment.

如果弗朗西斯一世头脑清醒，能找到税后收益率6%的投资，这笔钱现在就值1,000,000,000,000,000.00美元了，这可是1000万亿，是美国当前国债的3000倍，一切都来自每年6%的收益率。相信各位听我讲完，再也不会在家里讨论哪幅画是否值得投资了。

However, as I pointed out last year, there are other morals to be drawn here. One is the wisdom of living a long time. The other impressive factor is the swing produced by relatively small changes in the rate of compound.

不过，我去年说了，我们可以得到两点启发。第一，活得越长越好。第二，复合收益率很小的差别，最终数字就会产生很大的差距。

Below are shown the gains from $100,000 compounded at various rates:

以下是100,000美元按照不同收益率复利累积的结果：（以下数据不包含10万本金）

It is obvious that a variation of merely a few percentage points has an enormous effect on the success of a compounding (investment) program. It is also obvious that this effect mushrooms as the period lengthens. If, over a meaningful period of time, Buffett Partnership can achieve an edge of even a modest number of percentage points over the major investment media, its function will be fulfilled.

显而易见，收益率几个百分点的差距就能左右长期复利投资的最终收益，投资时间越长，这个效应越明显。在相当长的时间内，只要巴菲特合伙基金能适度跑赢大众投资工具几个百分点，我们就尽到了自己的职责。

Some of you may be downcast because I have not included in the above table the rate of 22.3% mentioned on page 3. This rate, of course, is before income taxes which are paid directly by you --not the Partnership. Even excluding this factor, such a calculation would only prove the absurdity of the idea of compounding at very high rates -- even with initially modest sums. My opinion is that the Dow is quite unlikely to compound for any important length of time at the rate it has during the past seven years and, as mentioned earlier, I believe our margin over the Dow cannot be maintained at its level to date. The product of these assumptions would be a materially lower average rate of compound for BPL in the future than the rate achieved to date. Injecting a minus 30% year (which is going to happen from time to time) into our tabulation of actual results to date, with, say, a corresponding minus 40% for the Dow brings both the figures on the Dow and BPL more in line with longer range possibilities. As the compounding table above suggests, such a lowered rate can still provide highly satisfactory long term investment results.

有些合伙人可能会想，为什么没把有限合伙人22.3%的复合收益率放在上面的表格里计算一下？22.3%的复合收益率没扣除所得税，所得税不是合伙基金支付，而是要各位合伙人缴纳。即使扣除所得税，这个复利仍然高得离谱，不能这么算，哪怕初始资金很小。过去七年，道指的复合收益率很高，长期保持下去的可能性很小，我之前也说了，这几年我们跑赢了道指很多，不可能长期跑赢这么多。一言以蔽之，巴菲特合伙基金将来的复合收益率会远远低于现在。如果在业绩对比表格中加上我们下跌30%、道指下跌40%的一年（这种下跌并不少见），我们和道指的业绩就更贴近长期趋势了。如上述复利表格所示，即使复合收益率降低，我们的长期收益仍能非常令人满意。