A Note About Benjamin Graham by Jason Zweig
本杰明·格雷厄姆札记——杰森·兹威格
Who was Benjamin Graham, and why should you listen to him?
格雷厄姆是谁，你又为什么应该聆听他的教诲呢？
Graham was not only one of the best investors who ever lived; he was also the greatest practical investment thinker of all time. Before Graham, money managers behaved much like a medieval guild, guided largely by superstition, guesswork, and arcane rituals. Graham’s Security Analysis was the textbook that transformed this musty circle into a modern profession.
格雷厄姆不仅是有史以来最好的投资者之一；他也是有史以来最伟大的实用投资思想家。在格雷厄姆之前，基金经理的行为很像中世纪的公会，主要受到迷信、猜测和神秘仪式的引导。而格雷厄姆的《证券分析》就是将这个发霉的圈子转变为现代职业的那本教科书。
And The Intelligent Investor is the first book ever to describe, for individual investors, the emotional framework and analytical tools that are essential to financial success. It remains the single best book on investing ever written for the general public. The Intelligent Investor was the first book I read when I joined Forbes Magazine as a cub reporter in 1987, and I was struck by Graham’s certainty that, sooner or later, all bull markets must end badly. That October, U.S. stocks suffered their worst one-day crash in history, and I was hooked. (Today, after the wild bull market of the late 1990s and the brutal bear market that began in early 2000, The Intelligent Investor reads more prophetically than ever.)
《聪明的投资者》是有史以来第一本为个人投资者描述对财务成功至关重要的情绪框架和分析工具的书。它仍然是到目前为止为公众写的最好的投资指南。《聪明的投资者》是我1987年作为一名初级记者加入《福布斯》杂志时读到的第一本书，格雷厄姆确信所有牛市迟早都会以糟糕的结局结束，这样的言论当时震惊了我。到了那年的10月，当我看到美国股市遭遇了历史上最严重的单日暴跌，我开始100%地相信格雷厄姆的言论。（今天，在经历了20世纪90年代末的疯狂牛市和2000年初开始的残酷熊市之后，《聪明的投资者》比以往任何时候都更有预言性。）
Graham came by his insights the hard way: by feeling firsthand the anguish of financial loss and by studying for decades the history and psychology of the markets. He was born Benjamin Grossbaum on May 9, 1894, in London; his father was a dealer in china dishes and figurines. 2 The family moved to New York when Ben was a year old. At first they lived the good life—with a maid, a cook, and a French governess—on upper Fifth Avenue. But Ben’s father died in 1903, the porcelain business faltered, and the family slid haltingly into poverty. Ben’s mother turned their home into a boardinghouse; then, borrowing money to trade stocks “on margin,” she was wiped out in the crash of 1907. For the rest of his life, Ben would recall the humiliation of cashing a check for his mother and hearing the bank teller ask, “Is Dorothy Grossbaum good for five dollars?”
格雷厄姆的见解来之不易：他亲身感受到了财务损失的痛苦，并研究了几十年的市场历史和心理学。1894年5月9日，格雷厄姆出生于伦敦的格罗斯鲍姆（Benjamin Grossbaum）；他的父亲是瓷器餐具和小雕像的经销商。一岁时全家搬到了纽约。起初，他们在第五大道上与一个女佣、一个厨师和一个法国家庭教师过着美好的生活。但他的父亲于1903年去世后，瓷器生意就一蹶不振了，随后全家陷入贫困之中。格雷厄姆的母亲把他们的家改成了寄宿公寓，然后，她借钱进行融资股票交易，在1907年的经济崩溃中一败涂地。在后来的日子里，格雷厄姆会回忆起为母亲兑现支票时的遭遇的耻辱，他听到银行出纳员问：“多萝西·格罗斯鲍姆能卖五美元吗？”
Fortunately, Graham won a scholarship at Columbia, where his brilliance burst into full flower. He graduated in 1914, second in his class. Before the end of Graham’s final semester, three departments— English, philosophy, and mathematics—asked him to join the faculty. He was all of 20 years old.
幸运的是，格雷厄姆在哥伦比亚大学获得了奖学金，他在那里绽放了他的才华。1914年毕业时，他在班上名列第二。在他的最后一个学期结束前，三个系——英语、哲学和数学——都为他提供了工作机会，邀请他加入学院，那时他20岁。
Instead of academia, Graham decided to give Wall Street a shot. He started as a clerk at a bond-trading firm, soon became an analyst, then a partner, and before long was running his own investment partnership.
但格雷厄姆最终决定到华尔街一试身手，而不是学术界。他最初是一家债券交易公司的职员，很快成为分析师，然后晋升为合伙人，不久之后就开始经营自己的投资合伙企业。
The Internet boom and bust would not have surprised Graham. In April 1919, he earned a 250% return on the first day of trading for Savold Tire, a new offering in the booming automotive business; by October, the company had been exposed as a fraud and the stock was worthless.
互联网的繁荣和萧条不会让格雷厄姆感到惊讶。1919年4月，他在Savold Tire上的第一天交易就获得了250%的回报，这是当时正在蓬勃发展的汽车业务中的一项新产品；而到了10月份，该公司却被揭露为欺诈行为，它的股票也一文不值了。
Graham became a master at researching stocks in microscopic, almost molecular, detail. In 1925, plowing through the obscure reports filed by oil pipelines with the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission, he learned that Northern Pipe Line Co.—then trading at $65 per share—held at least $80 per share in high-quality bonds. (He bought the stock, pestered its managers into raising the dividend, and came away with $110 per share three years later.)
格雷厄姆是股票微观分析的大师。1925年，他翻阅了一系列由输油管道公司向美国州际商业委员会（U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission）提交的晦涩难懂的报告，并从中得知当时以每股65美元交易的北方管道公司持有至少每股80美元的高质量债券。（他买入了这支股票，并纠缠其经理提高股息，然后在三年后以每股110美元的价格卖出。）
Despite a harrowing loss of nearly 70% during the Great Crash of 1929–1932, Graham survived and thrived in its aftermath, harvesting bargains from the wreckage of the bull market. There is no exact record of Graham’s earliest returns, but from 1936 until he retired in 1956, his Graham-Newman Corp. gained at least 14.7% annually, versus 12.2% for the stock market as a whole—one of the best long-term track records on Wall Street history.
尽管在1929年至1932年的大崩盘中，格雷厄姆遭受了将近70%的惨痛损失，但他还是幸存下来了，并且利用大崩盘带来的机会得到了快速成长，从牛市的废墟中大量收割了便宜货。格雷厄姆最早的回报率没有确切的记录，但从1936年到1956年退休，他的格雷厄姆·纽曼公司每年至少上涨14.7%，而整个股市的涨幅为12.2%，这是华尔街历史上最好的长期业绩记录之一。
How did Graham do it? Combining his extraordinary intellectual powers with profound common sense and vast experience, Graham developed his core principles, which are at least as valid today as they were during his lifetime:
格雷厄姆是怎么做到的？格雷厄姆将其非凡的智力、深刻的常识和丰富的经验相结合，发展成了他的核心原则，这些原则在今天仍然至少与他生前一样有效：
• A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.
股票不仅仅是一个股票代码或短期波动；它代表实际企业的所有权，而这一所有权的根本价值并不取决于其股价。
• The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism (which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.
市场是一个钟摆，永远在不可持续的乐观主义（使股票过于昂贵）和不合理的悲观主义（使它们过于廉价）之间摇摆。聪明的投资者应该是一个现实主义者，他向乐观主义者卖出，向悲观主义者买入。
• The future value of every investment is a function of its present price. The higher the price you pay, the lower your return will be.
每一笔投资的未来价值都是其当前价格的函数。你付出的代价越高，你的回报就越低。
• No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the “margin of safety”—never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be—can you minimize your odds of error.
无论你多么小心，任何投资者都无法完全消除出错的风险。只有坚持格雷厄姆所说的“安全边际”——无论那笔投资看起来多么令人兴奋，都不要超出你的支付能力，这样你才能最大限度地降低出错的几率。
• The secret to your financial success is inside yourself. If you become a critical thinker who takes no Wall Street “fact” on faith, and you invest with patient confidence, you can take steady advantage of even the worst bear markets. By developing your discipline and courage, you can refuse to let other people’s mood swings govern your financial destiny. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.
财务成功的秘诀在于你自己。如果你成为一个批判性的思想家，不相信华尔街的所谓“事实”，并带着有耐心的信心去投资，即使是最糟糕的熊市，你也可以稳步利用。通过培养你的纪律和勇气，你可以拒绝让别人的情绪波动来支配你的财务命运。最后，你的投资行为远不如你的整体行为重要。
The goal of this revised edition of The Intelligent Investor is to apply Graham’s ideas to today’s financial markets while leaving his text entirely intact (with the exception of footnotes for clarification). After each of Graham’s chapters you’ll find a new commentary. In these reader’s guides, I’ve added recent examples that should show you just how relevant—and how liberating—Graham’s principles remain today.
《聪明的投资者》修订版的目标是将格雷厄姆的思想应用于当今的金融市场，同时保持其文本的完整性（脚注除外）。在格雷厄姆的每一章之后，你会看到一个新的评论。在这些读者指南中，我添加了最近的例子，这些例子将告诉你，格雷厄姆的原则在今天仍然是多么重要。
I envy you the excitement and enlightenment of reading Graham’s masterpiece for the first time—or even the third or fourth time. Like all classics, it alters how we view the world and renews itself by educating us. And the more you read it, the better it gets. With Graham as your guide, you are guaranteed to become a vastly more intelligent investor.
我会羡慕你第一次甚至第三次、第四次阅读格雷厄姆的杰作所带来的兴奋和启迪。就像所有经典一样，它改变了我们看待世界的方式，并通过教育我们来更新自己。你读得越多，它能带来的好处也就越多。在格雷厄姆的指导下，你一定会成为一个更加聪明的投资者。