在上周六伯克希爾·哈撒韋公司（Berkshire Hathaway）的年度會議上，首席執(zhí)行官沃倫·巴菲特驚人地坦承了自己的錯誤。這位奧馬哈的先知近日一改長期以來對硅谷公司的厭惡，在蘋果（Apple）股票上押下重注，令投資者大呼意外。如今他承認，自己本應(yīng)抓住機會買下更多科技公司的股份。

蘋果是巴菲特過去一年里最具成效的投資項目，他對這家iPhone制造商增加持股后，光這一項就讓伯克希爾公司在2017年的證券投資收益提高了20億美元。如今，他后悔自己沒有在十幾年前谷歌（Google）上市不久時利用機會購入股票。

這家如今改名Alphabet的科技公司的創(chuàng)始人，在當初首次公開募股后不久甚至還帶著投資說明書來找過巴菲特。但這位傳奇股神拒絕了他們。巴菲特在伯克希爾·哈撒韋的會議上表示?！拔艺J識他們，我也有很多機會問他們問題，進行自我教育。但是我搞砸了?！?/p>

巴菲特的商業(yè)伙伴、伯克希爾·哈撒韋的副董事長查理·芒格對此甚至更加后悔。他在會議上表示：“如果你讓我回顧過去，看看在科技領(lǐng)域最糟糕的決定是哪一個，那就是它了?！?/p>

芒格說：“我認為我們當時足夠聰明可以發(fā)現(xiàn)谷歌——那些廣告在早期的效益遠超其他業(yè)務(wù)——所以我會說我們在那里失敗了。我們足夠聰明，可以去做，卻沒有做。”

實際上，伯克希爾的保險子公司Geico就是谷歌的早期客戶，他們在搜索引擎上以“每次點擊10到11美元”的價格購買廣告，所以他們是這項業(yè)務(wù)增長的早期見證者。巴菲特補充道：“如果你要給一個人10到11美元，他卻只需要做一點不需要成本的事情，這就是個好生意。你之前幾乎從來沒有見過類似的生意。”

巴菲特解釋了為什么在與科技公司劃清界限這么多年后決定投資蘋果。他表示自己認為蘋果更多是一家消費品公司，而不是一家科技公司（與IBM正好相反，巴菲特本周宣布準備拋售IBM股票）。不過巴菲特也指出，市場的根本變化讓他對科技公司有了改觀，他觀察到五家市值最高的美國科技公司如今的價值總和超過了2.5萬億美元。

這五家公司按市值高低順序，分別是蘋果、Alphabet、微軟（Microsoft）、亞馬遜（Amazon）和Facebook。巴菲特說：“如果你擁有了這五家公司，實際上你可以不需要任何股本收益就能經(jīng)營它們。你不用任何錢就能經(jīng)營這五家加起來超過2.5萬億美元市值的公司?！?/p>

他將“資金要求不高”的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)和云計算公司與職業(yè)生涯早期投資的資金密集型工業(yè)和鋼鐵公司進行了對比，補充道：“這與過去的投資領(lǐng)域不太一樣。不過如果你很擅長，這個領(lǐng)域要好得多?！?/p>

考慮到他對那些公司的觀點往往令人嘆服，一名股東在年度會議的問答環(huán)節(jié)問巴菲特：為什么伯克希爾從來沒有投資亞馬遜。巴菲特回答道：“我太麻木了，沒有意識到正在發(fā)生什么”，他說他“甚至從未考慮”購買亞馬遜的股票，盡管他很尊重這家電子商務(wù)公司的創(chuàng)始人杰夫·貝佐斯。巴菲特表示：“我很欣賞杰夫，但我沒想到他居然取得了這樣的成功，”他指的是亞馬遜幾年前成功進軍云服務(wù)市場，贏取了巨大利潤。“我確實低估了他們的執(zhí)行才能?！?/p>

不過對于伯克希爾的高管來說，他們真正錯過的只有Alphabet。芒格說：“錯過亞馬遜一點也不讓我后悔。其他的都很簡單，我認為我們只是搞砸了一點。”巴菲特拒絕評論那些搞砸的事情，芒格又澄清道：“我的意思是谷歌?！?/p>

芒格暗示道，未來伯克希爾很可能會在科技領(lǐng)域加大籌碼。他對巴菲特說：“我認為你購買蘋果的股票是個很好的信號。它表明你要么瘋了，要么在吸取教訓(xùn)。我更喜歡后面那種解釋?！保ㄘ敻恢形木W(wǎng)）

譯者：嚴匡正

At the Berkshire Hathawayannual meeting Saturday, CEO Warren Buffett made a startling admission. After surprising investors recently with his giant bet on Apple stock, the Oracle of Omaha—long averse to Silicon Valley companies—says he now wishes he'd bought more technology stocks when he had the chance.

Apple (aapl) has been Buffett's greatest hit over the past year, boosting Berkshire's portfolio by about $2 billion in 2017 alone after the investor loaded up on more of the iPhone maker's stock. Now, Buffett is kicking himself for not taking advantage of the opportunity to buy stock in Google(googl) shortly after it went public more than a dozen years ago.

The founders of the company now called Alphabet even came to see Buffett shortly after the tech company's IPO with an investment prospectus, but the legendary stock-picker passed. "I knew the guys," Buffett said at the Berkshire Hathaway (brk.a) meeting. "And so I had plenty of ways to ask questions or anything of the sort and educate myself, but I blew it."

Buffett's business partner and Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger regrets that decision even more. "If you asked me in retrospect what was our worst mistake in the tech field," that was it, Munger said at the meeting.

"I think we were smart enough to figure out Google—those ads worked so much better in the early days than anything else—so I would say that we failed you there," Munger said. "We were smart enough to do it, and we didn’t do it."

In fact, Berkshire's insurance subsidiary Geico was an early customer of Google, buying ads on the search engine for "$10 to $11 a click," so the investors had a front row seat seat to the business' growth, Buffett said. "Any time you're paying somebody $10 or $11 when somebody just punches a little thing where you’ve got no cost at all, that’s a good business," he added. "You’ve almost never seen a business like it."

Explaining his decision to invest in Apple after so many years of steering clear of the tech industry, Buffett said he sees the company as less of a technology company than a consumer products company (as opposed to IBM(ibm), whose stock the investor announced that he is selling this week). But Buffett also noted a fundamental change in the market that has made him see tech differently, observing that the five most valuable American companies are now worth a whopping more than $2.5 trillion combined.

Those five companies, in order of market value, are Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft(msft), Amazon(amzn) and Facebook (fb). "And if you take those five companies, essentially you could run them with no equity capital at all," Buffett said. "You literally don’t need any money to run the five companies that are collectively worth more than $2.5 trillion."

"That is a different world than what existed in the past," he added, comparing the "capital-light" nature of Internet and cloud computing companies to the capital-intensive industrial and steel businesses that he invested in earlier in his career. "But this is so much better if you happen to be good at it."

Given his views on the compelling case for those companies, a shareholder asked Buffett during the annual meeting's Q&A why Berkshire had never invested in Amazon. "I was too dumb to realize what was going to happen," Buffett responded, saying he "never even considered" buying Amazon stock, despite his great respect for the e-commerce company's founder, Jeff Bezos. "I admired Jeff but I did not think he’d succeed on the scale that he has," Buffett said, noting that Amazon's lucrative foray into the cloud services business never occurred to him a few years ago. "I really underestimated the brilliance of the execution."

But for Berkshire's executives, the one that got away, so to speak, is really Alphabet. "I don’t feel any regret about missing out on the achievements of Amazon," Munger said. "Other things were easy, and I think we screwed up a little." When Buffett declined to comment on those screw-ups, Munger clarified: "I meant Google."

In the future, though, Berkshire is likely to make more bets on tech, Munger hinted. "I think it’s a very good sign that you bought the Apple stock," Munger told Buffett. "It shows either one of two things: Either you’ve gone crazy or you're learning. I prefer the learning explanation."