Warren Buffett's Letter to Shareholders (1981 年巴菲特致股東信)

Warren Buffett's Letter to Shareholders (1981 年巴菲特致股東信)

Currently, we find values most easily obtained through the open-market purchase of fractional positions in companies with excellent business franchises and competent, honest managements. We never expect to run these companies, but we do expect to profit from them.

We expect that undistributed earnings from such companies will produce full value (subject to tax when realized) for Berkshire and its shareholders. If they don’t, we have made mistakes as to either:

(1)   the management we have elected to join;

(2)   the future economics of the business;

(3)   the price we have paid.

We have made plenty of such mistakes-both in the purchase of non-controlling and controlling interests in businesses. Category (2) miscalculations are the most common. Of course, it is necessary to dig deep into our history to find illustrations of such mistakes-sometimes as deep as two or three months back. For example, last year your Chairman volunteered his expert opinion on the rosy future of the aluminum business. Several minor adjustments to that opinion-now aggregating approximately 180 degrees-have since been required.

For personal as well as more objective reasons, however, we generally have been able to correct such mistakes far more quickly in the case of non-controlled businesses (marketable securities) than in the case of controlled subsidiaries.