马上要发布$伯克希尔-哈撒韦A(BRK.A)$ 一季度持仓的13F了，从一季报可以看出，伯克希尔减持了不少$苹果(AAPL)$ ，刚好在今年伯克希尔股东大会上，老巴就卖出苹果作出了一些解释（其实就是股东问答的第一个问题），本来想写点相关的东西，网上随意搜了一遍，发现基本上都没眼看（可能有翻得好的我没找到），要么是直接全文机翻的，不知所云，句子都读不通，要么是稍微经过了人工的调整，但是很多地方明显和老巴口述的原文内容意思相去甚远，根本说的就不是那回事……
没办法，无奈之下，只能找到股东大会的直播视频，把这一小段再看了一遍，然后再去找到了转译出来的英文（见文末），自己硬着头皮尝试翻译一下吧，顺便补充了一些相关的背景知识帮助理解。
问答如下：
巴菲特：贝基，要不第一个问题就从你这边开始？
Becky：好啊，谢谢，沃伦。那我们开始吧。接着你刚才提到的今天上午发布的一季报中提到的一些信息。
数据显示，伯克希尔在一季度又（yeeyoung注：为什么说是“又”，因为去年四季度减持了约1000万股，占持有苹果总仓位的1%左右）出售了其最大持仓的苹果股票 1.15 亿股。在这个前提下，我们就从谢尔曼·兰姆的问题开始吧。
他是来自马来西亚的伯克希尔B股股东，今年27岁。他问道：去年您提到，可口可乐和美国运通是伯克希尔的长期持有的部分所有权头寸（说人话就是投资但不控股的公司），并且您花了一些时间来谈论这些出色业务的优点。
在您最近的股东信中，我注意到您已将苹果排除在此类业务之外。自 2016 年伯克希尔首次投资苹果以来，您或您的投资经理对苹果业务的经济特性或其投资吸引力的看法是否发生了变化？
巴菲特：没有，我的观点没有发生变化。但是我们确实是卖出了一部分苹果的股票，我想说的是，到今年年底，我认为苹果依然极有可能还是我们的最大持仓股。一件有趣的事情是，查理和我都喜欢研究普通股、有价证券或人们喜欢视为生意的东西。
因此，当我们拥有冰雪皇后（Dairy Queen，简称DQ）或其他任何不管是啥的时候，我们是将其视为一门生意，当我们拥有可口可乐或美国运通时，我们还是将其视为一门生意。
现在，我们可以从市场上买入多家真正优秀的公司（作为一揽子生意）。我们虽然没法全部买下它们，我的意思是，公司的所有股份，甚至没法买下 90%、80% 或其他比例的股份。
但是，当我们审视可口可乐、美国运通和苹果的时候，我们都是将其视为一门生意来对待。现在，虽然说在税收因素、可管理责任等方面都存在差异，但是在资金的运用上面，我们总是将每只股票都视为一门生意。我们没有办法，也不会去尝试预测市场。
我们没有尝试挑选股票。我早年犯过很多错误。我很早就对股票产生了兴趣，并且为之着迷。我没有浪费我的时间，因为我几乎把所有的时间都花在阅读所有可能（和股票或投资有关）的书上面去了，但直到最后，当我在林肯的一家书店里拿起《聪明的投资者》这本书时（yeeyoung注：Lincoln, Nebraska，林肯是美国内布拉斯加州的首府，也是兰开斯特县的县城，另外，看到这本书时的小巴才19岁），里面有几句话，比我能想象得到的任何表达都更有说服力，即：如果你把股票视为一门生意，并选择让市场先生为你服务，而不是指导你投资，那么随着时间的推移，你将会比那些看着图表、听人们讨论移动平均线、看各种新闻公告balabala……的人要做得更好。
所以说，以这种方式来行事对我来说很有意义。当然了，查理经常和我讨论这个。
这些年来，有些事物发生了一些变化，比如我们现在所拥有的资金量，早已不可同日而语。但是，我花了几美元买的那本本杰明·格雷厄姆的书中所阐述的基本原则，仿佛在告诉我，我之前一直就是在浪费时间，但是，好饭不怕晚，既然已经知道了，那么也许可以利用从中学到的东西来更好地指导自己。然后查理也过来不断地告诉我如何更好地利用它。
这就是我们为什么拥有美国运通的原因，它是一门很好的生意，我们拥有可口可乐，因为它同样是一门很好的生意，我们所拥有的苹果，甚至是一门更好的生意。
除非中间发生了极不寻常的事情，否则当格雷格（yeeyoung注：Greg Abel，格雷格·阿贝尔，伯克希尔接班人）接手伯克希尔时，我们将依然拥有苹果、美国运通和可口可乐。这是一个非常简单的道理，但却相当具有欺骗性：对大多数事情来说，如果你越来越努力地工作，那么你就会多学到一点数学上或物理上的知识或者其他的东西，但是在投资中，你真的不必如此。
你真正需要拥有的是正确的心态，因为最终总是会发生一些戏剧性的事情，来导致我们改变资本配置的策略。
我们将继续把苹果作为我们最大的投资，但是在目前的情况下，我完全不介意建立更多的现金头寸。我认为，当我审视现有的股票市场的替代方案，以及这个世界上正在发生的一些事情时，我们发现它（yeeyoung注：“它”指的就是现金）非常有吸引力。
有一件事可能会让你感到惊讶——我认识的几乎每个人都更加地关注如何少缴税的问题——我觉得他们这么做无可厚非。
我们不介意在伯克希尔纳税，如果我们卖出苹果，我们需要为卖出所获得的收益缴纳 21% 的联邦税率。在不久前这个税率是 35%（yeeyoung注：2018年1月1日起，联邦企业所得税率由 35% 降低为 21%），而在我刚工作那会儿，这个数值甚至高达 52%（yeeyoung注：下图为美国近百年来企业所得税率变化图）。
联邦政府不拥有我们企业的资产，但却享有一定比例的企业收益，并且他们可以随时调整该比例。
目前，他们规定的比例是 21%，我想说的是，就目前的财政政策而言，我认为（企业）可能必须要做出一些让步。我认为政府很有可能征收更高的税收，政府希望从你的、我的或者伯克希尔的收入中获得更大的份额，并且他们有能力做到。
他们可能会在某一天决定，不希望财政赤字如此之大，因为这会产生严重的后果，他们可能也不太想大幅减少支出，所以他们可能会决定把目光投向咱们，从我们赚的钱中多分一点过去。
我们愿意支付这笔钱，我们一直希望伯克希尔缴纳大量的联邦所得税。我们认为，作为一家公司——生存在这个国家——这片对所有者们如此慷慨的土地上，付出这些（yeeyoung 注：指多交税），是非常合适的。
能站在这里，我很幸运，伯克希尔也很幸运。如果我们像去年那样寄出支票，我们就向美国联邦政府缴纳了超过 50 亿美元。如果还有其他 800 家公司也做了同样的事情，那么美国就不需要其他任何人再缴纳一毛钱的税了，无论是所得税、社会保障税还是遗产税——现在已经开放了，这就是我所想的。
我希望伯克希尔发展得足够好，我们可以说，我们已经进入了“800 俱乐部”（yeeyoung 注：800 俱乐部指的是 FICO 的信用评分达到 800 分，可以参考支付宝里面的芝麻信用。FICO 评分达到 800 以后，除了可以享有吹牛和装x的情绪价值外，还有诸多实用的经济价值，比如：1. 如果申请新的信贷，被批准的可能性更高；2. 有资格获得更低的利率和更高的信用额度；3. 有资格获得更高级的信用卡和更好的福利，如使用机场休息室、酒店免费早餐、航空里程等等；4.5.6……），甚至可能还会上升几个档次。
开这样一张支票丝毫不会困扰到我，我真心希望，鉴于美国为我们所有人所提供的一切，我们所付出的这些都不会让我们感到困扰。如果我今年以 21% 的比例来做（指缴税），并且来年可能以更高的比例来做，我认为你们应该不会介意我们今年卖出了一点苹果。
以上就是第一个问题的问答，不知道大家看完后，觉得老巴给出的这个卖出苹果的理由是否合理呢？或者可能还有一些其他方面因素的考量没有说出来或者不适合在这种场合公开说……
附根据视频提取转译的文中股东问答英文原文（使用软件生成，难免可能会与老巴实际口述的内容存在细微偏差）：
Becky, you want to start with the first question? Sure. Thanks, Warren. Let’s start. Just given what you mentioned, there was some news that came out in the ten Q this morning.
It shows that Berkshire sold another 115 million shares of Apple in this last quarter. That’s Berkshire’s largest holding. And I think in that vein, we’ll start with a question from Sherman Lamb. He is a 27 year old Berkshire Hathaway class b shareholder from Malaysia. And he asks, last year you mentioned Coca Cola and American Express being Berkshire’s two long duration partial ownership positions, and you spent some time talking about the virtues of both these wonderful businesses.
And your recent shareholder letter, I noticed that you have excluded Apple from this group of businesses. Have you or your investment manager’s views of the economics of Apple’s business or its attractiveness as an investment changed since Berkshire first invested in 2016?
No, I would. But we have sold shares, and I would say that at the end of the year, I would think it extremely likely that Apple is the largest common stock holding we have now. One interesting thing is that Charlie and I looked at common stocks or marketable equities or the things that people love to look at as being businesses.
And so when we own a dairy queen or we own whatever it may be, we look at that as a business. And when we own Coca Cola or American Express, we look at that as a business. Now we can buy really wonderful companies in the market as businesses. We can’t buy all of them. I mean, all of their shares.
We can’t buy 90% or 80% or anything like that. But when we look at Coca Cola and American Express and Apple, we look at them as businesses. Now, there’s differences in taxes, factors, there’s difference in manageable responsibility, a whole bunch of things. But in terms of deploying your money, we always look at every stock as a business, and we don’t. We have no way, no attempt made to predict markets.
We have no attempt made to pick stocks. I went through many, many years doing the wrong thing. I got interested in stocks very early, and I was fascinated by them.
I wasn’t wasting my time, because I was reading every book possible and everything else. But finally, I picked up a copy of the intelligent investor in Lincoln, and there was a few sentences in there that said, much more eloquently than I can say it. If you look at stocks as a business and treat the market as something that doesn’t tell you, isn’t there to instruct you, but it’s there to serve you, you’ll do a lot better over time than if you try to take charts and listen to people talk about moving averages and look at the pronouncements and all of that sort of thing. And so that made a lot of sense to me then, the way I’ve been allowed to deploy it. Charlie and I talked about this, of course, constantly.
It’s changed over the years, is the amount of capital we have and has changed and all that. But the basic principle was laid out by Ben Graham in that book, which I picked up for a couple of dollars, and which basically said to me, you’ve been wasting your time now, but maybe you can use what you’ve learned or been reading about and put it to better use. And then Charlie came along and told me how to put it to even better use. And that’s sort of the story of why we own American Express, which is a wonderful business. We own Coca Cola, which is a wonderful business, and we own apple, which is an even better business.
And we will own, unless something really extraordinary happens, we will own Apple and American Express in Coca Cola when Greg takes over this place. And it’s such a simple approach that it’s almost deceptive. Most things, if you keep working harder and harder at it, you learn a little more math or you learn a little more physics, but investments, you don’t really have to do that. You really have to have your mindset properly. So we will end up something dramatically happens that really changes capital allocation strategy.
We will have Apple as our largest investment, but I don’t mind at all, under current conditions, building the cash position. I think when I look at the alternative of what’s available, the equity markets, and I look at the composition of what’s going on in the world, we find it quite attractive. And one thing that may surprise you, but we.
Almost everybody I know pays a lot more attention to not paying taxes, and I think they should.
We don’t mind paying taxes at Berkshire, and we are paying a 21% federal rate on the gains we’re taking in apple. And that rate was 35% not that long ago, and it’s been 52% in the past when I’ve been operating. And the government owns. The federal government owns a part of the earnings of the business we make. They don’t own the assets, but they own a percentage of the earnings, and they can change that percentage any year.
And the percentage that they’ve decreed currently is 21%. And I would say with the present fiscal policies, I think that something has to give, and I think that higher taxes are quite likely, and the government wants to take a greater share of your income, or mine or Berkshire’s, they can do it. And they may decide that someday they don’t want the fiscal deficit to be this large, because that has some important consequences, and they may not want to decrease spending a lot, and they may decide they’ll take a larger percentage of what we earn and we’ll pay it. We always hope, at Berkshire to pay substantial federal income taxes. We think it’s appropriate that a company, a country that’s been as been as generous to our owners, it’s been the place.
I was lucky. Berkshire was lucky, was here. And if we. If we send in a check like we did last year, we sent in over $5 billion to the US federal government. And if 800 other companies had done the same thing, no other person in the United States would have had to pay a dime of federal taxes, whether income taxes, no Social Security taxes, no.
Estate taxes. It’s open down the line now. That’s.
I would like to. I hope things develop well enough with Berkshire that we say we’re in the 800 club and maybe even move up a few notches. It doesn’t bother me in the least to write that check. I would really hope, with all America has done for all of you, it shouldn’t bother you that we do it. And if I’m doing it at 21% this year and we’re doing it at a higher percentage later on, I don’t think you’ll actually mind the fact that we sold a little apple this year.