巴菲特致合伙人的信（1965年）③复利的哀伤

The Sorrows of Compounding

Usually, at this point in my letter, I have paused to modestly attempt to set straight the historical errors of the last four or five hundred years. While it might seem difficult to accomplish this in only a few paragraphs a year, I feel I have done my share to reshape world opinion on Columbus, Isabella, Francis I, Peter Minuit and the Manhattan Indians. A by-product of this endeavor has been to demonstrate the overwhelming power of compound interest. To insure reader attention I have entitled these essays "The Joys of Compounding. " The sharp-eyed may notice a slight change this year.

复利的哀伤

在每年的信里，写到这部分的时候，我都要停下来，纠正一下过去四五百年里关于复利投资的错误。每年只有几段的篇幅，这是个艰巨的任务。不过，我觉得我已经尽力了，世人对哥伦布、伊莎贝拉、弗朗西斯一世、彼得·米努伊特和曼哈顿的印第安人应该有了新认识。在分析错误的同时，我们也见证了复利的巨大威力。为了吸引读者的注意，我给这部分选的标题是“复利的喜悦”，眼尖的读者可能发现今年的标题变了。

A decent rate (better we have an indecent rate) of compound -plus the addition of substantial new money has brought our beginning capital this year to $43,645,000. Several times in the past I have raised the question whether increasing amounts of capital would harm our investment performance. Each time I have answered negatively and promised you that if my opinion changed, I would promptly report it.

这些年来我们的复合收益率相当好，另外合伙人还追加了大量投资，今年年初，我们的资金量已经达到43,645,000美元。资金的增加是否会影响我们的业绩？这个问题我之前说过几次。以前每次我都说，不会有影响，而且保证什么时候我不这么想了，一定会立即告诉大家。

I do not feel that increased capital has hurt our operation to date. As a matter of fact, I believe that we have done somewhat better during the past few years with the capital we have had in the Partnership than we would have done if we had been working with a substantially smaller amount. This was due to the partly fortuitous development of several investments that were just the right size for us -big enough to be significant and small enough to handle.

到目前为止，资金的增加并没有降低我们的收益。其实，过去几年里，要是我们的资金量小得多的话，合伙基金的业绩可能会更差一些。因为有几笔投资正好适合我们的体量，它们的规模不算小，能对业绩做出较大贡献，它们的规模又不算大，正好我们能掌控得了。我们运气很好，这几笔投资收益都不错。

I now feel that we are much closer to the point where increased size may prove disadvantageous. I don't want to ascribe too much precision to that statement since there are many variables involved. What may be the optimum size under some market and business circumstances can be substantially more or less than optimum under other circumstances. There have been a few times in the past when on a very short-term basis I have felt it would have been advantageous to be smaller but substantially more times when the converse was true.

现在我觉得我们的资金量已经很大了，可能就快产生不利影响了。这里面涉及很多变量，我也没办法说准。随着市场和商业环境的变化，最合适的规模也会相应变化。一个环境里的最佳规模，换到另一个环境里，可能就完全不一样了。过去几年里，有时候，从非常短的时间看，我觉得要是我们规模更小会更好。但更多时候，我还是觉得我们规模大比较好。

Nevertheless, as circumstances presently appear, I feel substantially greater size is more likely to harm future results than to help them. This might not be true for my own personal results, but it is likely to be true for your results.

现在我们的规模更大了，从当前的环境来看，这样的规模将来拖累业绩的可能性比提升业绩的可能性更大。真正受影响的或许不是我的个人收益，而是各位合伙人的收益。

Therefore, unless it appears that circumstances have changed (under some conditions added capital would improve results) or unless new partners can bring some asset to the Partnership other than simply capital, I intend to admit no additional partners to BPL.

综上所述，除非环境变化了（在有些情况下，新增资金有助于提升业绩）或新合伙人能为合伙基金带来资金以外的贡献，我打算停止接受新合伙人加入巴菲特合伙基金。

The only way to make this effective is to apply it across-the-board and I have notified Susie that if we have any more children, it is up to her to find some other partnership for them.

这项措施要执行到底就必须一视同仁，我已经告诉苏茜，要是我们再有子女想加入，由她为他们寻找其他投资途径。

Because I anticipate that withdrawals (for taxes, among other reasons) may well approach additions by present partners and also because I visualize the curve of expectable performance sloping only very mildly as capital increases, I presently see no reason why we should restrict capital additions by existing partners.

一方面，现有合伙人的资金提取（用于支付税款等）和资金追加规模应当不相上下；另一方面，我预计随着资金增加，预期收益率只会轻微降低。目前，我没任何理由限制现有合伙人追加投资。

The medically oriented probably will interpret this entire section as conclusive evidence that an effective antithyroid pill has been developed.

经常和医学打交道的人，看完这部分会得出结论：一种有效治疗甲亢的新药研发出来了。