点评：巴菲特和芒格先生都是智慧超群又诚实的人，能够同时具备这两个优点可以说是凤毛麟角，我们都知道在伯克希尔在投资比亚迪上取得了巨头成功，在2008年以每股8港元认购比亚迪2.25 亿股股份，总对价为18亿港元。一直持有了14年才开始卖出，以下是相关的申报记录：
持股数量也从最初的2.25亿股到现在的8761.31万股，估计卖出共获得270亿港元左右现金，剩余市值接近200亿港元，相对于18亿港元的成本，总收益超过25倍。芒格仍实事求是说：这是人生的意外，自己最大的贡献就是阻止他们进入汽车行业，去年（2022），他们在汽车行业赚了 20 多亿美元。从起步到零，这是闻所未闻的。我们试图说服他不要做如此成功的事情。由此可见，人生难免有意外。
这也是笔者愿意投资伯克希尔的原因，真诚公正地对待股东，几十年来工资就是10万美元，从来没有涨过，也没有什么期权，唯一额外支出就是安保费用。
提问者：我叫 Humphrey Liu，来自弗吉尼亚州夏洛茨维尔。我去年问过这个问题，现在想再次提出。这可以算是后续问题。传统是有道理的。这是同一个问题，但我们身处一个不断变化和不同的世界。纵观全球趋势，越来越明显，零排放汽车可能终于达到了大规模采用的顶峰。您是否认为这个领域有任何机会，无论是在特定的汽车制造商还是在相关技术方面？作为补充，我要指出的是，伯克希尔在能源、飞行员、飞行 J 和比亚迪方面有着非常相关的利益。
沃伦·巴菲特：谢谢。是的，我们会的。我希望你是对的。到目前为止，大规模采用一直是一个移动目标，但我希望我们能实现这一目标。但伯克希尔不会，我不认为我们为该领域带来了任何特殊人才。你有汽车制造商，我当然不知道如何在这样的行业中挑选赢家。但如果有一些赢家，我会很高兴。但不要指望我们能预见谁是赢家，也不要指望我们能预测什么时候会发生某事。到目前为止，这显然是一个不断变化的目标，也是社会面临的一个令人难以置信的问题，而且政府可能在一段时间内不太擅长解决这个问题。整个气候变化，它有一个可怕的问题，因为美国是造成这一问题最多的国家。然后我们要求较贫穷的社会说，好吧，你必须改变你的生活方式，因为我们的生活方式就是那样。但这个问题还没有真正解决。对我来说，这是一个有趣的问题，但我对如何真正切分世界没有什么可以补充的。当我出生于 1930 年时，世界人口统计数字中只有 20 亿人。现在有 80 亿。现在，如果你在 1930 年问任何人，如果你选出世界上最聪明的 50 个人，你会问，世界的最佳人口是多少。当你 93 岁时，他们不会说 80 亿。没有人能接近这个数字。但我们做到了。现在我们正在承受这样做的部分后果，我们在美国也得到了好处。我在这里有些夸张，但发达国家基本上已经明白了。然后我们告诉一大群人，我们希望他们改变生活方式，因为我们的生活方式。所以我们会看看会发生什么。但这是一个在几百个国家之间非常非常难以解决的问题。我真的没有什么可以贡献的。现在我收到了我面前的显示器的指示。我想介绍一个人，你们都知道，因为她来过这里很多次，我的朋友卡罗尔·卢米斯，她现在，嗯，6 月 25 日她就 95 岁了。你可以送礼物，由我们办公室代为转交。卡罗尔从 1977 年开始编辑伯克希尔年报。就是这样。我想提两点。每年我都会送卡罗尔一个小礼物，一只手镯，是当年报告头版的复制品，颜色各异，诸如此类。所以从 1977 年开始，她已经有 47 个手镯了。我想她每只手镯上都放了 10 个。但我一直想知道，如果她把所有手镯都放在一只胳膊上，现在一只胳膊会不会比另一只长四五英寸。但我相信她预见到了这一点。但我想透露另一个问题。我想在卡罗尔在场的时候再问一个问题，因为我相信在座的大多数人都和我一样，知道泰·柯布的终身击球率是 367。我的意思是，他是所有人中的佼佼者，而且这个记录可能永远不会被打破。而泰·柯布，367 是永恒的。但卡罗尔有一个你们大多数人可能不知道的特别之处，那就是她和泰·柯布约会过。卡罗尔的办公室位于第 6 大道和第 50 街的时代生活大厦。NBC 就在街对面的洛克菲勒中心。智力竞赛节目成为了电视上的热门节目。卡罗尔就是这样的人，午餐时间走过街去参加 1950 年代后期的智力竞赛节目。他们给了她关于棒球的问题。卡罗尔都答对了，当然，她对各种事情都了如指掌。所以她知道所有的答案。她继续。当时她是单身。她回到了 Fortune 的办公室。在某个时候，她接到了一个电话，听起来像是一个来自佐治亚州的相当年轻的男人。他说，我叔叔是泰·柯布，他想在 21 点带你去吃午饭。于是卡罗尔在 21 点和泰·柯布一起去吃午饭。我想他后来又吃了一顿午饭。然后她决定取消约会。但是那些关注棒球的人可能已经注意到，在 20 世纪 90 年代，他们发现 Ty Cobb 打球时的统计数据存在错误。他实际上只打了 366 个球，有几个坏球没有被计算在内。所以我真正想从卡罗尔那里知道的问题是，我认为她也许应该告诉我们，如果她不——我的意思是，我知道她不会的。我知道如果 Ty Cobb 的击球率是 300 或类似的水平，她就不会和他约会。但是她会告诉 Ty Cobb 留在亚特兰大，不要来纽约的临界点在哪里？如果卡罗尔愿意的话。如果有人有麦克风，卡罗尔会愿意表达自己对这个问题的看法。这是我和所有好奇的人一直存在的未解问题，只有她知道答案。她和她的女儿在一起。她嫁给了一个很棒的男人，约翰·刘易斯。还有芭芭拉。芭芭拉和她在一起。我相信芭芭拉一直想问这个问题，但当你在家人面前时，这有点难。但我是个不太焦虑的人。年纪大了，在很多人面前。卡罗尔。或者我们要邀请芭芭拉的客人？
芭芭拉：两者都会。她很乐意去。对。谢谢。
沃伦·巴菲特：卡罗尔是最好的商业作家。她来自密苏里州坎普镇。我不知道，大概有一千人。她从未上过会计课。她最终成为美国最好的商业作家。你知道，她其实不想当编辑。我的意思是，她本可以在《财富》杂志做其他事情，但她只是喜欢写商业故事。就像我说的，没有人能接近她。她从零开始。但在 1977 年，我请她编辑我的报告，结果她不仅是一名优秀的编辑，还是一名优秀的作家。今年以来，包括今年在内，卡罗尔一直在编辑伯克希尔报告。只要有人喜欢阅读，我们就帮卡罗尔一把。好的。我被告知在你们去吃午饭之前播放一段视频，因为只有 30 秒左右，然后我们回来时再讨论更多。如果我们把灯光调暗，我们将播放伯克希尔股东前几天向我们出售价值 10 亿美元的股票时所做的事情。你们会遇到某个人，我希望她是原型。她可能有更多的零，但她是许多伯克希尔哈撒韦股东的原型。这将是我们回来时谈论的第一件事。但你们中的一些人可能已经注意到了，几周前，露丝·戈特斯曼给了阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦 10 亿美元来照顾我们所有人，露丝不喜欢引起太多关注。但当他们宣布露丝·戈特斯曼刚刚决定承担阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的所有教育费用，而且将永久承担时，阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的感受是这样的。所以让我们放映这部电影吧。
视频：我很高兴与大家分享，从今年 8 月开始，阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦医学院将免收学费。
沃伦·巴菲特：这就是为什么查理和我在经营伯克希尔时如此开心。她把 10 亿美元转给了其他人。她碰巧用伯克希尔的股票来做这件事，你知道，他们提出以阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的名字重新命名学校，诸如此类。但她说，阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦。这是一个非常好的名字。所以这里面没有自负，什么都没有。她只是决定，她宁愿让 100 多名，最终接近 150 名学生能够摆脱债务，继续生活。她很高兴地做到了，没有人要求她这样做，你知道，把我的名字写在霓虹灯的四面，我向她致敬。所以，我们一起吃午饭，然后我们再回来讨论这件事。谢谢。
Questioner: My name is Humphrey Liu, and I am from Charlottesville, Virginia. I asked the question last year and wish to pose it again. It can be considered a follow up. There is something to be said for traditions. It is the same question, but it is a changing and different world we are in. Looking at global trends, it increasingly does seem that zero emission vehicles may have finally reached the cusp of massive adoption. Do you see any opportunities in this space, either in specific vehicle manufacturers or in related technologies? As an addendum, I will note that Berkshire has very relevant interests in energy, pilot, flying J and BYD.
Warren Buffett: Thank you. Yeah, well, we will. I hope you’re right. And massive adoption has been sort of a moving target so far, but I hope we get there. But Berkshire would not be, I don’t think that we bring any special talent to that field. You’ve got vehicle manufacturers, and I would certainly not know how to pick the winners in an industry like that. But I’ll be delighted if there are some winners. But don’t count on us foreseeing who the winners will be, and don’t count on us for predicting when something will happen. It obviously has been a moving target so far, and it is an incredible problem that society faces, and it may be that governments are not very good at solving it for a while. All of climate change, it’s got a terrible problem just in the fact that the United States particularly has been the one that’s caused the problem the most. And then we’re asking poorer societies to say, well, you’ve got to change the way you live, because we live the way we did. But that really hasn’t been settled yet. It’s a fascinating problem to me, but I don’t have anything to add to how you really slice through the world. When I was born in 1930, there were just essentially 2 billion people in the world population statistic. Now there’s 8 billion. Now, if you’d asked anybody in 1930, if you take the 50 smartest people in the world and you said, what’s the optimum population for the world. When you’re 93 years old, they would have not said 8 billion. There wouldn’t be anybody close to it. But we did it. Now we’re reaping some of the consequences of having done that, and we got the benefits in the United States. I’m exaggerating here to some extent, but the developed world basically got it. And then we’re telling a whole bunch of other people that we want them to change the way they live because of the way we lived. So we will see what happens with it. But that’s a problem that is very, very, very hard to solve among a couple hundred countries. And I really don’t have anything to contribute on it. And now I’ve got instructions from the thing, the monitor in front of me. I would like to introduce one person here that has, you all know, because she’s been here so many times, but my friend Carol Loomis, who is now, well, she’s going to be 95 on June 25. You can send presents, care of our office. And Carol has edited theBerkshire annual report since 1977. There we are. And there’s, there are two points I’d like to mention. Every year I give Carol a little item for a bracelet that is a replica of the front page of the report that year and their different colors and all of that sort of thing. And so she now has, what, since 1977, what, 47 of them. I think she’s put ten on each one. But I’ve always wondered if she put them all on one arm, whether one arm would now be four or five inches longer than the other. But I’m sure she foresaw that. But I want to reveal one other. Well, I want to ask one more question while Carol was here, because I’m sure most everybody in this audience grew up like I did, knowing that Ty Cobb’s lifetime batting average was 367. I mean, he’s the leader among everyone, and it may be that that record is never broken. And Ty Cobb, 367’s immortal. But Carol has adistinction that probably most of you don’t know, but she dated Ty Cobb. And Carol was officed at 6th Avenue and 50th street in the Time Life building. And NBC was right across the street in, in Rockefeller center. And the quiz shows became the hit of tv. And Carol, being the kind of person she is, walked across the street at lunch time and went on the quiz show of the late 1950s. And they gave her the, they gave her the questions regarding baseball. And Carol answered them all correctly, of course, she was encyclopedic on all kinds of things. So she knew all the answers. And she proceeded. And she was single at the time. And she proceeded back to her office at fortune. And at some point she got a phone call from, sounded like a fairly young man in Georgia. And he said, my uncle is Ty Cobb, and he would like to take you to lunch at 21. And so Carol went to lunch with Ty Cobb at 21. And I think he subsequently had one more lunch. And then she decided to call it off. But those of you who follow baseball may have noticed that in the 1990s, they found that the statistics had been faulty when Ty Cobb played. And that he actually only batted 366, that there were a couple of bad bats that didn’t count. So the real question I want to know from Carol, and I think she should maybe tell us, is that would she have dated Ty Cobb if she not - I mean, I know she wouldn’t have. I know she wouldn’t have dated Ty Cobb if his batting average had been 300 or something like that. But where was the cut off point at which she would have told Ty Cobb to stay in Atlanta and forget about coming up to New York? And if Carol would. If anybody has a microphone, Carol would care to express herself on that question. It’s the unanswered question that I’ve had and all inquiring minds have had, and only she knows the answer. And she’s with her daughter. She married a wonderful guy, John Lewis. And Barbara’s. Barbara’s with her. I’m sure Barbara’s been always wanting to ask this question, but it’s kind of tough when you’re in the family. But I’m sort of a non anxious guy. Older, in front of a lot of people. Carol. Or are we gonna have Barbara’s guests?
Barbara: Either one will. She would have been happy to go either. Right. Thank you.
Warren Buffett: Carol is the best business writer. She comes from a town of called Camp, Missouri. I don’t know, around a thousand, probably. She never took an accounting course. And she ended up becoming the best business writer in the United States. You know, she didn’t want to be an editor, actually. I mean, she could have done other things at Fortune, but she just plain liked writing business stories. And like I say, that nobody came close to her. And she started from scratch. But in 1977, I asked her to edit my report, and she turned out to be just a good an editor as she was a writer. And all the way through this year, including this year, Carol has edited the Berkshire report. And to the extent anybody enjoys reading them. Let’s give a hand to Carol. Okay. And I’ve been told to show a video right before you go to lunch, because it’s only 30 some seconds, and then we’ll talk a little bit about more about it when we come. So if we’ll dim the lights, we will have showing what a Berkshire shareholder did when she sold us a billion dollars worth of stock the other day. And you’ll meet somebody that I hope is, I know she is the prototype. She may have more zeroes, but she’s the prototype of a good many Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. It’ll be the first thing we talk about when we come back. But some of you may have noticed whenever it was a few weeks back, when Ruth Gottesman gave $1 billion to Albert Einstein to take care of all of us, and Ruth doesn’t like a lot of attention drawn to herself.But here’s how they felt at Albert Einstein when they announced that Ruth Gottesman had just made a decision to take care of all of the costs of education at Albert Einstein, and it’s going to be in perpetuity. So let’s just show the film.
Video: I’m happy to share with you that starting in August this year, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine will be tuition free.
Warren Buffett: And that’s why Charlie and I have had such fun running Berkshire. She transferred a billion dollars to other people. She happened to do it with Berkshire stock, and, you know, they offered to rename the school after and everything like that. But she said, Albert Einstein. That’s a pretty good name to start with. So there’s no ego involved in it, no nothing. She just decided that she’d rather have 100 plus, closer to 150 eventually, of students be able to start out debt free and proceed in life. And she did it happily, and she did it without somebody asking, you know, name it, you know, put my name on for all four sides of neon lights, and I salute her. So let’s all have lunch, and we’ll come back and talk a little bit more about that. Thanks.