在今年的伯克希爾-哈撒韋公司年會上，價值投資大師巴菲特說出的一番話，與他以往的投資哲學(xué)相悖甚遠(yuǎn)。難道巴菲特也成了他曾經(jīng)摒棄的“異端”了嗎？

巴菲特已經(jīng)縱橫投資界將近70年了。最初他投資的是一些死氣沉沉瀕臨破產(chǎn)的公司，這些公司的交易價格甚至低于他們的破產(chǎn)清算價值。精于此道的巴菲特就這樣將伯克希爾-哈撒韋公司從一家破敗的紡織廠一步步打造成了自己的投資帝國。后來巴菲特將投資重點(diǎn)轉(zhuǎn)向了那些能帶來較高回報(bào)率的品牌公司和保險公司，這些公司雖然沒什么噱頭，卻能帶來可以用于再投資的現(xiàn)金流。最近幾十年，巴菲特投資的主要是一些人們覺得可靠和熟悉的品牌，比如可口可樂和蓋可保險等。很多將巴菲特奉為神明的投資者自然也不例外。

不過在今年的年會上，巴菲特當(dāng)著4萬多名股東和粉絲的面暗示道，我們應(yīng)該接受一個“新常態(tài)”：世界正在變化，“價值投資者”們歷來敬而遠(yuǎn)之的科技公司，并不會像他們一貫相信的那樣“其興也勃焉，其亡也忽焉”，而是會一直存在下去，而且有著巨大的價值。

巴菲特指出：“當(dāng)今市值最高的四家公司并不需要任何有形資產(chǎn)。他們不像AT&T、通用汽車或?？松梨谝粯樱枰罅抠Y本來產(chǎn)生收益。我們已經(jīng)進(jìn)入了‘輕資產(chǎn)’經(jīng)濟(jì)?！卑头铺靥钩校讼?哈撒韋沒有收購谷歌的母公司Alphabet是一個失誤。他還談到了自己從2016年年初開始持有的蘋果公司股份，這筆股份現(xiàn)在價值500億美元左右，是巴菲特持有的最大單筆股份。

不過在隨后的雞尾酒會上，我卻聽到很多人都在談?wù)撘灰顿Y保險公司。保險公司以往倒是價值投資者的專寵，但巴菲特剛剛才說過，這種成熟的資本密集型企業(yè)必然會走向衰退。作為一名專業(yè)理財(cái)經(jīng)理和伯克希爾-哈撒韋的股東，我突然想到：難道大家剛才都沒聽到，他們的導(dǎo)師剛剛教育他們要向前看，不要向后看嗎？

投資界近來正在進(jìn)行一場深遠(yuǎn)而重要的辯論，它對職業(yè)理財(cái)顧問及其客戶都將產(chǎn)生深遠(yuǎn)的影響。有些人認(rèn)為巴菲特是正確的——我們已經(jīng)進(jìn)入了“輕資產(chǎn)”經(jīng)濟(jì)，價值投資者必須適應(yīng)這種變化。比如Markel Corp.公司的湯姆·蓋納、Oakmark基金的比爾·尼格倫等知名價值投資者就把亞馬遜和Alphabet作為首要持倉資產(chǎn)。這些股票經(jīng)常以高于市場的價格交易，這一點(diǎn)曾一度令價值投資者敬而遠(yuǎn)之，但現(xiàn)在他們卻欣然接受了這種“潛規(guī)則”，因?yàn)檫@些公司的前景十分光明，值得這些溢價。

不過還有一些價值投資者依然堅(jiān)持巴菲特的老一套策略，比如綠光資本的大衛(wèi)·艾因霍恩和費(fèi)爾霍姆基金的布魯斯·伯克維茨等。伯克維茨在2000年至2010年間曾在晨星資本擔(dān)任國內(nèi)證券經(jīng)理，最近10年由于重倉持有AT&T和已在今年秋天破產(chǎn)的西爾斯百貨，導(dǎo)致他的業(yè)績下滑不少。艾因霍恩的表現(xiàn)也不理想，他持有最多的股份是通用汽車，他還表示，他最近一直在做空他所謂的“泡沫籃子”，其中就包括特斯拉、Netflix和亞馬遜等科技股。

所有價值投資者都認(rèn)同價格是價值的重要組成部分——這也是為什么我們這些人被稱為“價值投資者”，因此大家對這一點(diǎn)是沒有爭議的。人們爭論的焦點(diǎn)，是到底什么才是價值的驅(qū)動因素，到底什么構(gòu)成了21世紀(jì)經(jīng)濟(jì)中的價值——還有在接下來幾十年，到底什么將推動經(jīng)濟(jì)和市場繼續(xù)向前發(fā)展。

At this year’s annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting in Omaha, ?Warren Buffett, the high priest of value investing, uttered words that would have been grounds for excommunication if they had come from anyone but him.

Buffett began his career nearly 70 years ago by investing in drab, beaten-up companies trading for less than the liquidation value of their assets—that’s how he came to own Berkshire Hathaway, a rundown New England textile mill that became the platform for his investment empire. Buffett later shifted his focus to branded companies that could earn good returns and also to insurance companies, which were boring but generated lots of cash he could reinvest. Consumer products giants like Coca-Cola, insurers like Geico—reliable, knowable, and familiar—that’s what Buffett has favored for decades, and that’s what for decades his followers have too.

Now, in front of roughly 40,000 shareholders and fans, he was intimating that we should become familiar with a new reality: The world was changing, and the tech companies that value investors used to haughtily dismiss were here to stay—and were immensely valuable.

“The four largest companies today by market value do not need any net tangible assets,” he said. “They are not like AT&T, GM, or Exxon Mobil, requiring lots of capital to produce earnings. We have become an asset-light economy.” Buffett went on to say that Berkshire had erred by not buying Alphabet, parent of Google. He also discussed his position in Apple, which he began buying in early 2016. At roughly $50 billion, that Apple stake represents Buffett’s single largest holding—by a factor of two.

At the cocktail parties afterward, however, all the talk I heard was about insurance companies—traditional value plays, and the very kind of mature, capital-intensive businesses that Buffett had just said were receding in the rearview mirror. As a professional money manager and a Berkshire shareholder myself, it struck me: Had anyone heard their guru suggesting that they look forward rather than behind?

There is a deep and important debate going on in the investment community, one with profound repercussions for both professional money managers and their clients. Some believe that Buffett is right—that we have become an asset-light economy and that value investors need to adapt to accommodate such changes. Noted value managers like Tom Gayner of Markel Corp. and Bill Nygren of Oakmark Funds, for instance, count companies like Amazon and Alphabet among their top holdings. The fact that these stocks often trade at above-?market valuations—a factor that once scared away orthodox value investors—hasn’t deterred them, because the companies’ futures are so bright that they’re worth it.

Other value managers like David Einhorn at Greenlight Capital and Bruce Berkowitz at Fairholme are betting on the very same old-economy companies that Buffett long favored. Berkowitz, Morningstar’s domestic equities Manager of the Decade from 2000–10, has seen his performance suffer this decade, thanks to positions in AT&T and, most notably, Sears Holdings, which declared bankruptcy earlier this fall. Einhorn’s performance has also suffered; his largest position is GM, and he says he has been short what he calls a “bubble basket” that includes Tesla, Netflix, and Amazon.

All value investors continue to agree that price is an important component of value—that’s why we’re called value investors. What’s happening now is a debate about what the drivers of value are—of what constitutes value in the 21st-century economy—and what will drive both the economy and the market forward over the next generation.

價值投資者就是這樣的。我們追求價值，關(guān)注一家公司的價格與價值之比，從這一點(diǎn)上，就可以很容易地將我們與其他投資者區(qū)分開來。比如動量投資者只關(guān)心他們能不能把買進(jìn)的資產(chǎn)以更高的價格賣出，這是典型的“找接盤俠”策略。此外還有所謂的“增長型投資”，也就是說比起價格，投資者更關(guān)注一家公司的增長前景。不過由于價值投資者總是權(quán)衡價格與價值之比，因此他們也有了一個打算長遠(yuǎn)、克己吝嗇的名聲。

真正的價值投資之父，是一百年前的本·格雷漢姆。在他的時代，道瓊斯工業(yè)平均指數(shù)還是貨真價實(shí)的“工業(yè)平均指數(shù)”——100%都是工業(yè)股，亞納康達(dá)銅業(yè)、國家鉛業(yè)等公司靠的都是硬資產(chǎn)，而這時的消費(fèi)經(jīng)濟(jì)還處于襁褓階段。1915年，道瓊斯指數(shù)里最接近消費(fèi)品公司的就是通用汽車了（要么就是American Beet Sugar公司）。

那年，格雷漢姆以全班第二名的成績從哥倫比亞大學(xué)畢業(yè)，由于成績優(yōu)異，哥大的哲學(xué)、數(shù)學(xué)和英文系都為他提供了教職。不過由于自幼家境貧寒，格雷漢姆最終還是選擇投身金融業(yè)。那個年代的金融業(yè)充斥著情報(bào)販子、陰謀家和投機(jī)者。1907年，他們試圖操縱聯(lián)合銅業(yè)的股票“干票大的”，最終卻導(dǎo)致了股市大恐慌，連格雷漢姆的寡母一輩子的積蓄都賠了個干凈。格雷漢姆非常厭惡這種投機(jī)行為，但他也被股票的優(yōu)點(diǎn)吸引了。因?yàn)樗吹搅斯善钡谋举|(zhì)：你可以買到一家公司業(yè)務(wù)的一部分所有權(quán)。

憑借深厚的學(xué)術(shù)功底，加之實(shí)際需求的驅(qū)使，格雷漢姆開始研究一套可預(yù)測的、系統(tǒng)性的股票投資方法。通過研究上市公司的財(cái)務(wù)文件以及其中反映的有形資產(chǎn)，格雷漢姆發(fā)現(xiàn)，股票價格的短期漲落往往受市場波動影響，但一家公司的有形資產(chǎn)——比如設(shè)備、廠房、存貨等，則有確定可知的價值。格雷漢姆便開始用精確的數(shù)學(xué)方法計(jì)算這個價值。他問自己：如果一家企業(yè)清算了所有資產(chǎn)，償還了所有債務(wù)，那么它還能值多少錢？企業(yè)清算是時有發(fā)生的事，更多時候，它是在格雷漢姆的想象中完成的，這種計(jì)算使格雷漢姆在購買一支股票時獲得了所謂的“安全邊際”。

通過量化價值并與價格進(jìn)行對比，格雷漢姆發(fā)現(xiàn)，他對股市有了更深理解。證券分析法價值投資就此誕生了。

從一開始，價值投資重點(diǎn)關(guān)注的是一家公司的量化資產(chǎn)和有形資產(chǎn)。格雷漢姆是一個抽象總結(jié)型的知識分子，他并不關(guān)心那些公司生產(chǎn)了什么產(chǎn)品。格雷漢姆的助手歐文·卡恩曾對巴菲特傳記的作者羅杰·洛溫斯坦回憶道，如果有人向格雷漢姆描述一家公司是怎樣經(jīng)營的，他就會覺得很無聊，然后把頭望向窗外。由于格雷漢姆很重視一家公司的清算價值，因此他總喜歡買入那些別人覺得雞肋的公司——就好比撿煙頭，只要你肯用力砸吧，它總還是能冒兩口煙的。有一位名叫沃爾特·施洛斯的分析師專門研究格雷漢姆的投資行為，他本人后來也成了一位傳奇的價值投資者。施洛斯曾向格雷漢姆推薦過哈羅伊德公司（Haloid）的股票，這家公司當(dāng)時擁有一項(xiàng)非常有前景的技術(shù)，后來的施樂影印機(jī)就是基于它設(shè)計(jì)的。雖說當(dāng)時沒有留下格雷漢姆望向窗外的記錄，但格雷漢姆還是表示了拒絕。

格雷漢姆道：“沃爾特，它還是不夠便宜?！?/p>

Value investors are just that—we hunt for value, and our focus on price in relation to a business’s value makes us easily distinguishable from other investors. Momentum investors, for example, care about price only insofar as they can sell whatever they’ve bought to someone else at a higher one—the so-called greater-fool approach. Then there’s growth investing, in which price takes a distant second place to a business’s prospects for rapid expansion. Because weighing price vs. value is paramount in value investing, those in this school have a reputation of being long-term-oriented, self-denying cheapskates.

The father of value investing was Ben ?Graham, who gave birth to it roughly 100 years ago, when 100% of the components of the Dow Jones industrial average were just that—industrials. Hard assets were what drove companies like Anaconda Copper and National Lead. Consumer marketing was in its infancy; in 1915, the closest thing the Dow had to a consumer products company was General Motors (or maybe American Beet Sugar).

The year before, Graham had graduated second in his class from Columbia University with such a gifted intellect that he was offered teaching positions in three departments: philosophy, mathematics, and English. Acquainted with poverty at an early age, however, Graham chose a career in finance. The market of his day was dominated by tipsters, schemers, and speculators; stock operators trying to corner the market in United Copper had caused the Panic of 1907, which wiped out Graham’s widowed mother’s savings. Graham loathed such speculations, but he was attracted to the upside of equities. He saw them for what they were: a fractional ownership of a company’s business.

Driven by both his academic temperament and practical necessity, Graham set about trying to figure out a predictable, systematic way to make money in stocks. For an answer, he turned to corporate financial statements and the tangible assets represented therein. Graham saw that while equities went up and down in the short run according to the whims of the market, a company’s tangible assets—its forges and its foundries and the inventory they produced—had a solid, knowable value. Graham began to calculate that value in a precise, mathematical way. He asked himself: What would a company be worth if it were to liquidate its assets and pay off its liabilities? Sometimes the liquidation would actually occur; other times it would be a theoretical exercise that gave Graham what he termed a “margin of safety” when buying a security.

By quantifying value and then juxtaposing it with price, Graham found he could make sense of markets. Thus was born security analysis and, with it, value investing.

From the beginning, value investing focused on the quantitative and tangible aspects of a business. Graham was an intellectual who lived in abstractions; he didn’t want to know about the products the companies made. Irving Kahn, one of Graham’s assistants, told Buffett biographer Roger Lowenstein that if someone began to describe to Graham what a company actually did, he would get bored and look out the window. With his focus on liquidation value, Graham tended to buy boring, beaten-down businesses—cigar butts, they came to be known, good for only a few extra puffs. Walter Schloss, a Graham analyst who later became a legendary value investor in his own right, once pitched Graham on Haloid, which owned the rights to a promising technology that would one day become the Xerox machine. While there is no record as to whether Graham looked out the window, he nevertheless said no.

“Walter,” he said, “it’s just not cheap enough.”

格雷漢姆有一名助手，是一位來自奧馬哈的年輕人，他生于大蕭條時期，但他成年時，正是二戰(zhàn)后美國經(jīng)濟(jì)飛速擴(kuò)張的年代。從十幾歲時起，巴菲特就試圖通過研究圖表和技術(shù)指標(biāo)了解股市。他讀到格雷漢姆的著作后，好比“在去大馬士革路上（見到耶穌異象）的保羅”，有一種撥云見日之感。后來巴菲特便進(jìn)入商學(xué)院，師從當(dāng)時正在哥大教書的格雷漢姆，畢業(yè)后還短暫地為格雷漢姆工作了一陣子。不過作為一個典型的美國中部地區(qū)的男孩，巴菲特不久便離開了紐約，回到了他鐘愛的家鄉(xiāng)。

利用自己的關(guān)系對50年代中期的經(jīng)濟(jì)進(jìn)行了研究后，巴菲特發(fā)現(xiàn)，當(dāng)時的股市與格雷漢姆年輕時已經(jīng)有了很大不同。道指雖然仍以工業(yè)股為主流，但也包括了寶潔、西爾斯羅巴克和通用食品等消費(fèi)品公司。這些公司與工業(yè)公司有著本質(zhì)上的區(qū)別，他們的商業(yè)價值與硬資產(chǎn)的關(guān)系很小，而是主要取決于公司的品牌，取決于消費(fèi)者對香皂、果凍等消費(fèi)品的忠誠度和熟悉度。這種情感上的聯(lián)結(jié)，加之市場營銷手段的烘托，可以使企業(yè)將相對普通的商品賣出高價。

國家級電視臺的興起，也間接促進(jìn)消費(fèi)品行業(yè)的崛起。電視既發(fā)端于一種同質(zhì)化的文化，反過來又加強(qiáng)了這種文化。市場領(lǐng)先的消費(fèi)品品牌也是靠規(guī)模經(jīng)濟(jì)打開市場，在這一點(diǎn)上與工業(yè)企業(yè)大同小異。一個在市場上主導(dǎo)地位的啤酒、洗發(fā)水或可樂品牌，可能在三大電視網(wǎng)絡(luò)上打的廣告遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超過了他們的競爭對手，但如果算算廣告支出占絕對銷售額的比例，則他們的廣告支出甚至還要低于競爭對手。這樣一來，占有市場主導(dǎo)地位的品牌就形成了一個良性循環(huán)，占市場次要地位的品牌則形成了惡性循環(huán)。百威啤酒越做越大，而像納拉干西特啤酒這種一度在新英格蘭地區(qū)銷量第一的地區(qū)性知名品牌，卻緩慢而必然地走了下坡路。

在合伙人查理·芒格的幫助下，巴菲特通過悉心研究，最終深入理解了股市這個生態(tài)系統(tǒng)——當(dāng)然“生態(tài)系統(tǒng)”這個詞那時還沒有被發(fā)明出來。在接下來的幾十年里，他和芒格投資了不少品牌公司、電視網(wǎng)絡(luò)和廣告公司，并獲得了豐厚的回報(bào)。雖然巴菲特也遵循著格雷罕姆的“撿煙頭”投資法，但他知道，要想掙大錢，還得到別處尋找。巴菲特在1967年寫道：“雖然我認(rèn)為自己主要是定量學(xué)派的，但這些年，我最好的投資理念很大程度上近似于定性派，我在這方面擁有‘高概率的洞察力’。這才是讓我們一直賺錢的主要原因。”

巴菲特闡發(fā)的這種新理念，被埃塞克斯公司CEO、東海岸資產(chǎn)管理公司理財(cái)經(jīng)理克里斯·貝格稱為“價值2.0”投資法。即：尋找優(yōu)質(zhì)企業(yè)，然后以合理的價格購入。價值2.0投資法的安全邊際不在企業(yè)的有形資產(chǎn)，而在于業(yè)務(wù)本身的可持續(xù)性。這種投資方法的關(guān)鍵，就是“高概率的洞察力”——如果一家公司在市場上占主導(dǎo)地位，未來非常穩(wěn)定，而且以后市盈率還會有增無減，那么就值得入手。這種見解在當(dāng)時是革命性的，但在巴菲特看來只是個簡單的數(shù)學(xué)問題：未來的利潤越確定，你現(xiàn)在付出的價格就會越高。

這也就解釋了這么多年來，巴菲特為什么一直避免持有科技股?？萍脊傻母咴鲩L特性是毫無疑問的，但科技板嚴(yán)重缺乏確定性，一波波浪潮來得快去得也快，只有當(dāng)潮水落去時才知道誰在裸泳。在一波波潮起潮落間，誰還能有“高概率的洞察力”？1967年，巴菲特曾寫道：“我對半導(dǎo)體或集成電路的了解，跟我對一種叫Chrzaszcz的波蘭甲蟲的交配習(xí)性的了解程度差不多。”30年后，有一個朋友建議他考慮一下微軟，巴菲特表示：“你讓我把對未來20年的確定性調(diào)低到80%甚至55%，這是很愚蠢的?！?/p>

然而現(xiàn)在，蘋果卻成了巴菲特最大的一筆投資，且規(guī)模比他的第二大倉位——美國銀行大了一倍以上。

這是為什么？并不是巴菲特變了，而是世界變了。

僅僅10年前，全球市值最高的四家公司還是?？松梨?、中石油、通用電氣和俄羅斯天然氣公司，其中有三家是能源公司，一家是工業(yè)巨頭。而現(xiàn)在，全球市值最高的四家公司全部是科技公司——蘋果、亞馬遜、微軟、Alphabet。但他們的這種“科技”，并不能和半導(dǎo)體、集成電路那種“科技”劃等號。他們更類似于二戰(zhàn)后崛起的消費(fèi)品行業(yè)，他們的產(chǎn)品和服務(wù)已經(jīng)融入了數(shù)十億人的日常生活?，F(xiàn)在人們已經(jīng)離不開他們了，只要人類的習(xí)慣依然如故，這些科技產(chǎn)品與人的生活的融合只會隨著時間繼續(xù)加深。

在接受CNBC采訪時，巴菲特曾解釋了他為什么要投資蘋果：有一次他帶著他的曾孫子和他們的小伙伴們?nèi)コ訢Q冰淇淋，結(jié)果孩子們一個個沉浸在iPhone手機(jī)里，甚至連點(diǎn)哪種冰淇淋都顧不上了。

巴菲特在今年的年會上表示：“我投資蘋果并非因?yàn)樗且恢豢萍脊?，而是因?yàn)樗麄兊纳鷳B(tài)系統(tǒng)的價值，以及這個生態(tài)系統(tǒng)將存在多久?！?/p>

One of Graham’s acolytes was a young man from Omaha who was born into the Depression but came of age during America’s large, optimistic postwar expansion. As a teenager, Warren Buffett tried to understand the stock market by studying charts and other technical indicators; when he came upon Graham’s writings, he said that he felt “l(fā)ike Paul on the road to Damascus.” Buffett came East for business school to study under Graham, who by then was teaching at Columbia, and he briefly worked for Graham after graduation. The classic middle-American boy, however, Buffett soon quit New York for his beloved hometown.

Surveying the economy of the mid-1950s with his own partnership, Buffett saw that it was vastly different from the one Graham had encountered as a young man. While the Dow Jones industrial average was still dominated by industrials, it also contained Procter & Gamble, Sears Roebuck, and General Foods. These companies were fundamentally different from an industrial company: The primary driver of their business value had little to do with hard assets. Rather, the value had to do with the company’s brands—with the loyalty and familiarity that customers felt for Ivory Soap and Jell-O gelatin. These emotional ties, encouraged and cemented by mass marketing, allowed businesses to charge high prices for relatively mundane goods.

The great enabler of such businesses was the rise of national television, which both emanated from and reinforced a culture of homogeneity. Market-leading brands used scale in a very different but no less effective way than manufacturing companies. A beer, shampoo, or cola brand with dominant share could flood the three major TV networks with more advertising than their competition, yet still spend less than the competition as a percentage of absolute sales dollars. This set up a virtuous circle for dominant brands and a vicious circle for those less fortunate. Brands like Budweiser went from strength to strength; strong regional brands like Narragansett beer, once the No. 1 seller in New England, slowly but surely withered away.

With the help of his partner Charlie Munger, Buffett studied and came to deeply understand this ecosystem—for that’s what it was, an ecosystem, even though there was no such term at the time. Over the next several decades, he and Munger engaged in a series of lucrative investments in branded companies and the television networks and advertising agencies that enabled them. While -Graham’s cigar-butt investing remained a staple of his trade, Buffett understood that the big money lay elsewhere. As he wrote in 1967, “Although I consider myself to be primarily in the quantitative school, the really sensational ideas I have had over the years have been heavily weighted toward the qualitative side, where I have had a ‘high-probability insight.’ This is what causes the cash register to ?really sing.”

Thus was born what Chris Begg, CEO of Essex, Mass., money manager East Coast Asset Management, calls Value 2.0: finding a superior business and paying a reasonable price for it. The margin of safety lies not in the tangible assets but rather in the sustainability of the business itself. Key to this was the “high-probability insight”—that the company was so dominant, its future so stable, that the multiple one paid in terms of current earnings would not only hold but perhaps also expand. Revolutionary though the insight was at the time, to Buffett this was just math: The more assured the profits in the future, the higher the price you could pay today.

This explains why for decades Buffett avoided technology stocks. There was growth in tech, for sure, but there was little certainty. Things changed too quickly; every boom was accompanied by a bust. In the midst of such flux, who could find a high-probability insight? “I know as much about semiconductors or integrated circuits as I do of the mating habits of the chrzaszcz,” Buffett wrote in 1967, referring to an obscure Polish beetle. Thirty years later, writing to a friend who recommended that he look at Microsoft, Buffett said that while it appeared the company had a long runway of protected growth, “to calibrate whether my certainty is 80% or 55%?…?for a 20-year run would be folly.”

Now, however, Apple is Buffett’s largest investment. Indeed, it’s more than double the value of his No. 2 holding, old-economy stalwart Bank of America.

Why? Not because Buffett has changed. The world has.

And quite suddenly: Ten years ago, the top four companies in the world by market capitalization were Exxon Mobil, PetroChina, General Electric, and Gazprom—three energy companies and an industrial conglomerate. Now they are all “tech”—Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet—but not in the same way that semiconductors and integrated circuits are tech. These businesses, in fact, have much more in common with the durable, dominant consumer franchises of the postwar period. Their products and services are woven into the everyday fabric of the lives of billions of people. Thanks to daily usage and good, old-fashioned human habit, this interweaving will only deepen with the passage of time.

Explaining his Apple investment to CNBC, Buffett recalled making such a connection while taking his great-grandchildren and their friends to Dairy Queen; they were so immersed in their iPhones that it was difficult to find out what kind of ice cream they wanted.

“I didn’t go into Apple because it was a tech stock in the least,” Buffett said at this year’s annual meeting. “I went into Apple because?…?of the value of their ecosystem and how permanent that ecosystem could be.”

如果說，二戰(zhàn)后是消費(fèi)品行業(yè)崛起的時代，那么21世紀(jì)初期就是數(shù)字平臺的時代。和之前的品牌企業(yè)一樣，科技公司也能成為一個好的長期價值投資選擇。創(chuàng)新學(xué)學(xué)者卡洛塔·佩雷斯曾在文章中指出，新技術(shù)的爆發(fā)，往往引起投機(jī)的狂潮，隨后帶來泡沫的破滅，經(jīng)過一輪震蕩調(diào)整，才會進(jìn)入一段較長的穩(wěn)定期。這個過程在西方世界至少發(fā)生過五次。我們經(jīng)歷過高科技爆炸，經(jīng)歷過“.com”泡沫，現(xiàn)在，我們正處于《沒有資本的資本主義》（Capitalism Without Capital）一書的作者喬納森·哈斯克爾和斯蒂安·韋斯特萊克所說的“睡覺”階段。

與品牌公司不同，數(shù)字企業(yè)通常受益于網(wǎng)絡(luò)效應(yīng)。消費(fèi)者喜歡標(biāo)準(zhǔn)化的單一平臺，這反過來也強(qiáng)化了消費(fèi)者偏好和平臺價值。正因?yàn)槿绱?，這些平臺公司的市場份額令消費(fèi)品巨頭們相形見絀。這樣的軟件公司要么獨(dú)霸市場，要么吃下了大部分市場，其他競爭對手只能跟在它后面吃剩下的。再加上科技公司的增長只需要很少的實(shí)物資本，我們就得到了“價值3.0”投資法——投資全新的、有巨大價值的商業(yè)模式。

Oakmark基金的尼格倫持有的最高倉位是Alphabet，他表示：“在過去，企業(yè)要想達(dá)到全球化的規(guī)模，需要大量的資本。但是現(xiàn)在，這些公司需要做的只是寫代碼，然后點(diǎn)擊‘發(fā)送’鍵就行了?！?/p>

與以前所有成功的品牌公司一樣，這些科技平臺公司不僅將巨額利潤再投資于其核心業(yè)務(wù)，也投資于全新的技術(shù)平臺。以Alphabet為例，它是做搜索起家的，這是一個典型的兩面通吃的市場，一方面消費(fèi)者可以在谷歌上尋找商品和服務(wù)，另一方面又可以將廣告主與有需要的消費(fèi)者進(jìn)行匹配。谷歌憑借卓越的算法，最早樹立了搜索引擎市場的統(tǒng)治地位，目前已占據(jù)了所有移動搜索的95%，以至于“谷歌”這個詞在日常生活中基本上成了一個動詞。為了保持自己在搜索上的領(lǐng)先地位，谷歌每天都要對算法進(jìn)行兩次調(diào)整。而作為一個“輕資產(chǎn)”平臺，它的現(xiàn)金是非常充裕的，它甚至可以每年投入200億美元進(jìn)行研發(fā)。光是這筆錢就比可口可樂和美國運(yùn)通的年收入總和還多。它不僅緊盯核心業(yè)務(wù)，也打造了YouTube（用戶生成視頻內(nèi)容）、Android（智能手機(jī)操作系統(tǒng)）和Waymo（無人駕駛汽車）等新興平臺。這些業(yè)務(wù)目前還賺不了多少錢，但離賺錢已經(jīng)不遠(yuǎn)了。目前這些業(yè)務(wù)的經(jīng)費(fèi)主要由搜索平臺支撐。無怪乎亞馬遜創(chuàng)始人杰夫·貝佐斯曾對一位同事說過：“要把谷歌當(dāng)作一座山對待。你可以去爬這座山，但你不能移走這座山。”

與此同時，貝佐斯自己也建起了幾座山。作為美國電商市場的領(lǐng)軍者，他建立了一個龐大的倉儲物流網(wǎng)絡(luò)，能夠讓1億多亞馬遜Prime會員在兩天以內(nèi)收到網(wǎng)購的包裹。他也將亞馬遜的利潤以多種方式再投資給公司的業(yè)務(wù)，比如為顧客提供更低的價格，推出Prime視頻等附加服務(wù)。另外它還推出了亞馬遜網(wǎng)絡(luò)服務(wù)等全新產(chǎn)業(yè)，為下一代的數(shù)字化創(chuàng)業(yè)公司提供了外包服務(wù)和強(qiáng)大的計(jì)算工具。而作為亞馬遜的核心業(yè)務(wù)，它的零售業(yè)務(wù)收入只占了美國零售商業(yè)總量的5%，但這個占有率已經(jīng)保持至少20年了。亞馬遜的目前的股價可能被有所高估了，但憑借極高的客戶忠誠度，以及它的低價供應(yīng)商地位，毫無疑問它還是一家非常有價值的企業(yè)。

If the postwar era was about consumer brands operating at scale, the early 21st century is about what we might call digital platforms. Like the branded enterprises before them, they have the permanence and probability that make for a good long-term value investment. Innovation scholar Carlota Perez has written about how at least five times in Western civilization, new technologies have erupted, gone through a speculative frenzy, and then busted, only to settle down after a shakeout into a long, protracted period of stability. We’ve had the high-tech eruption, we’ve had the frenzy of the dotcom boom, and we’ve had the bust. Now we are in what Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake, authors of Capitalism Without Capital, call the “bedding-in” phase.

Unlike branded companies, digital businesses often benefit from network effects: the tendency of consumers to standardize on a single platform, which reinforces both consumer preference and the platform’s value. Because of this, the market shares of these platform companies dwarf those of the consumer products giants; software businesses like these are often characterized by a “winner take all” or “winner take most” dynamic. Combine this with the fact that they require little to no capital to grow, and you have Value 3.0—business ?models that are both radically new and enormously valuable.

“In the past you would’ve needed a tremendous amount of capital to achieve global scale,” says Oakmark’s Nygren, whose top position in his Oakmark Fund is Alphabet, “but these companies have done it just by writing code and pressing ‘send.’?”

Like their branded predecessors, the platform companies are wisely reinvesting their vast profit streams into not only their core business but entirely new platforms as well. Take Alphabet, which my fund also owns: It began with search, a classic two-sided market in which consumers looking for goods and services are paired with advertisers who want to reach them. Google gained an early edge thanks to a superior search algorithm; with the word “google” now routinely used as a verb, it commands 95% of all mobile search. Google tweaks its algorithm twice a day to maintain its search superiority; meanwhile, the cash flow from this asset-less platform is so abundant that the parent can afford to spend $20 billion a year on research and development. That’s more than the annual earnings of Coca-Cola and American Express combined. It’s going into not only the core franchise but also nascent platforms like YouTube (user-generated video content), Android (smartphone operating systems), and Waymo (driverless cars). None of these businesses earns much now, but they may soon do so, and they are funded entirely by Google’s search platform. Little wonder that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once told a colleague, “Treat Google like a mountain. You can climb the mountain, but you can’t move it.”

Meanwhile, Bezos has built a mountain or two of his own. As the first big mover in ?e-commerce, he created a network of warehouses and logistics capabilities that now allows him to deliver packages to more than 100 million Prime customers in two days or less. He too has chosen to reinvest Amazon’s profits back into the business in various forms: lower prices for customers, ancillary services like Prime Video, and entirely new industries like Amazon Web Services, which provides outsourced, essential computational “plumbing” for the next generation of digital startups. In its core retail business, Amazon still has only a roughly 5% share of U.S. retail commerce despite being at it for more than 20 years. Amazon’s stock may be overvalued today—but with its dual moats of immense customer loyalty and low-cost provider status, there is no argument that it is very valuable.

在這些平臺公司創(chuàng)造成百上千億美元價值的同時，他們也在逐步瓦解巴菲特所理解并從中獲益的“戰(zhàn)后生態(tài)系統(tǒng)”。目前，整個經(jīng)濟(jì)領(lǐng)域都存在著風(fēng)險，投資者要想有不錯的理財(cái)表現(xiàn)，不僅要考慮“價值3.0”的問題，還要看看自己“價值2.0”投資籃子里有哪些風(fēng)險。

有些風(fēng)險是顯而易見的，比如零售業(yè)面臨的風(fēng)險（沒錯，說的就是你，西爾斯百貨），不過更值得關(guān)注的是，所謂的媒體消費(fèi)品工業(yè)指數(shù)正在緩慢而穩(wěn)定地下滑。大約20年前，大品牌還可以通過電視接觸到千百萬美國觀眾，因?yàn)樗麄兌紩谕粫r間坐在電視前收看《老友記》和《家居裝飾》。自從有了有線電視網(wǎng)絡(luò)，大家有了更多選擇權(quán)，“廣播電視”就變成了“窄播電視”。而現(xiàn)在谷歌和Facebook甚至可以把廣告精確定位到個人。也就是說，僅僅用了一代人時間，我們已經(jīng)從“廣播電視”、 “窄播電視”進(jìn)化到了“獨(dú)播電視”。

因此，電視生態(tài)系統(tǒng)的網(wǎng)絡(luò)效應(yīng)基本上已不復(fù)存在了。這不僅對傳統(tǒng)媒體公司沖擊極大，也嚴(yán)重影響到了靠電視生存的各大品牌?！扒ъ淮爆F(xiàn)在已是美國社會最大的年齡群體，他們既不看靠廣告生存的電視，也不接受超級品牌的洗腦。比如強(qiáng)生公司的嬰兒產(chǎn)品，包括它經(jīng)典的不傷眼洗發(fā)水，近五年已經(jīng)失去了10%的市場份額，與以往的風(fēng)光相比，差距不可謂不大。而與此同時，亞馬遜等網(wǎng)商則提供了透明的價格和流暢的網(wǎng)購體驗(yàn)。近些年人，美國人也變得更加注重健康，更注重地方特色，這一趨勢無疑對小眾品牌有利。就連納拉干西特啤酒也卷土重來了。現(xiàn)在，那些大型消費(fèi)品牌還有多少增長空間，還有多少定價權(quán)，最重要的是對我們所有人還有多少影響力，這些都值得重新審視，因此我們有必要發(fā)問了：一個消費(fèi)品牌，它真正合理的價格應(yīng)該是多少？

需要強(qiáng)調(diào)的是，一些關(guān)于數(shù)字化顛覆的言論有些言過其實(shí)了。數(shù)字貨幣會取代銀行系統(tǒng)嗎？不太可能。大衛(wèi)·埃因霍恩不看好特斯拉和Netflix，他可能是對的，并非因?yàn)檫@兩家公司的股票太貴，而是因?yàn)檫@兩家公司面臨的競爭越來越激烈。至于炒得火熱的無人駕駛汽車，實(shí)際上還處于八字沒一撇的階段。不過用不了半代人的時間，很多事情就會改變。如果你在谷歌上搜一搜“1900年紐約感恩節(jié)游行”，再搜搜“1913年紐約感恩節(jié)游行”，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)，1900年時，紐約滿大街100%跑的都是馬車；而到了1913年，街上100%跑的都是汽車了。另外，等到無人駕駛汽車真的能上路了，汽車行業(yè)會發(fā)生什么變化？汽車保險行業(yè)又會發(fā)生什么變化？要知道，汽車保險作為一個資本密集型行業(yè)，可是價值投資者們在雞尾酒會上很愛談?wù)摰囊粋€話題呢！

作為長期投資者，這些變化都是需要考慮的，并且有必要根據(jù)這些因素調(diào)整投資組合。Markel公司的蓋納表示，達(dá)爾文經(jīng)常會被后人誤解。他認(rèn)為：“適者生存，不是說最適合環(huán)境者生存，而是最適應(yīng)變化者生存?！保ㄘ?cái)富中文網(wǎng)）

本文作者亞當(dāng)·希塞爾于1991年榮獲喬治波爾卡新聞獎。他是引力資本管理公司的創(chuàng)始人及CEO，他的基金持有文中出現(xiàn)的部分公司的股份。

本文的另一版本刊于2018年12月1日的《財(cái)富》雜志，作為“2019年投資者指南”的一部分。

譯者：樸成奎

As these platform companies create billions in value, they are simultaneously undermining the postwar ecosystem that Buffett has understood and profited from. Entire swaths of the economy are now at risk, and investors would do well not only to consider Value 3.0 prospectively but also to give some thought to what might be vulnerable in their Value 2.0 portfolios.

Some of these risks, such as those facing retail, are obvious (RIP, Sears). More important, what might be called the Media-?Consumer Products Industrial Complex is slowly but surely withering away. As recently as 20 years ago, big brands could use network television to reach millions of Americans who tuned in simultaneously to watch shows like Friends and Home Improvement. Then came specialized cable networks, which turned broadcasting into narrowcasting. Now Google and Facebook can target advertising to a single individual, which means that in a little more than a generation we have gone from broadcasting to narrowcasting to mono-casting.

As a result, the network effects of the TV ecosystem are largely defunct. This has dangerous implications not only for legacy media companies but also for all the brands that thrived in it. Millennials, now the largest demographic in the U.S., are tuning out both ad-based television and megabrands. Johnson & Johnson’s baby products, for example, including its iconic No More Tears shampoo, have lost more than 10 points of market share in the last five years—an astonishingly sharp shift in a once terrarium-like category. Meanwhile, Amazon and other Internet retailers have introduced price transparency and frictionless choice. Americans are also becoming more health conscious and more locally oriented, trends that favor niche brands. Even Narragansett beer is making a comeback. With volume growth, pricing power, and, above all, the hold these brands once had on us all in doubt, it’s appropriate to ask: What’s the fair price for a consumer “franchise”?

To be sure, some of the digital-disruption rhetoric is overdone. Cryptocurrency replacing the bank system? Not likely. David Einhorn’s bearish calls on Tesla and Netflix may well be right, not because the stocks are expensive but because they face rising competition. And for all the hype about autonomous vehicles, they’re not anywhere close to being here—yet. But a lot can change in half a generation. If you google “Easter Day Parade, New York City 1900” and then “Easter Day Parade, New York City 1913” and look at the pictures that appear, you will see that the former has nearly 100% horse-drawn carriages while the latter has nearly 100% horseless carriages—i.e., automobiles. And when driverless cars do arrive, what happens to the auto industry? What happens to the auto-insurance industry—that cuddly, capital-intensive commodity business that value investors love to talk about at cocktail parties?

Long-term investors need to be thinking about such shifts, and they need to position their portfolios in accordance with them rather than against them. Darwin is often misunderstood, says Markel’s Gayner, who counts both Amazon and Alphabet among his holdings. “It’s not survival of the fittest, but those who are most adaptable to change, that make it through.”

Adam Seessel, who won journalism’s George Polk Award in 1991, is founder and CEO of Gravity Capital Management. His fund owns positions in some of the companies mentioned here.

A version of this article appears in the December 1, 2018 issue of Fortune, as part of the “2019 Investor’s Guide.”