投资者应该怎么做(第2部分）

在my column last Friday，我收到了一封来自一位投资者的电子邮件，问他“他妈的”该怎么办，我答应解释一下我们在投资组合上做了什么。我会的，但首先让我给你讲个故事。大学二年级时，我上了五六节课，有一份全职工作和一个全职（更像加班）女友。我快要期末考试了，我要学习很多考试和交作业，更糟的是，我一直拖到最后一分钟。

我感到不知所措，全身瘫痪。我向父亲抱怨我的困境。他的答案很简单：把我的大问题分解成小问题，然后分别找出解决这些问题的方法。成功了。我列出了每一项作业和考试，并按截止日期和重要性排列优先级。突然间，我的问题，一起看起来是无法克服的，一个接一个开始看起来是可以克服的。我忍受了几个不眠之夜，但我交了每一份作业，为每一次考试学习，并取得了不错的成绩。

投资者需要打破看似压倒ing problem of understanding the global economy and markets into a series of small ones, and that is exactly what we do with our research. The appreciation or depreciation of any stock (or stock market) can be explained mathematically by two variables: earnings and price-earnings ratio. We take all the financial-climate-changing risks I wrote about a few days ago — rising interest rates, Japanese debt, the Chinese bubble, European structural problems — and analyze the impact they have on the Es and P/Es of every stock in our portfolio and any candidate we are considering.

Let me walk you through some practical applications of how we tackle climate-changing risks at my firm.

When China eventually blows up, companies that have exposure to hard commodities, directly or indirectly (thinkCaterpillar), will see their sales, margins and earnings severely impaired. Their P/Es will deflate as well, as the commodity supercycle that started in the early 2000s comes to an end.

Countries that export a lot of hard commodities to China will feel the aftershock of the Chinese bubble bursting. The obvious ones are the ABCs: Australia, Brazil and Canada. However, if China takes oil prices down with it, then Russia and the Middle East petroleum-exporting mono-economies that have little to offer but oil will suffer. Local and foreign banks that have exposure to those countries and companies that derive significant profits from those markets will likely see their earnings pressured. (German automakers that sell lots of cars to China are a good example.)

Japan is the most indebted first-world nation, but it borrows at rates that would make you think it was the least indebted country. As this party ends, we’ll probably see skyrocketing interest rates in Japan, a depreciating yen, significant Japanese inflation and, most likely, higher interest rates globally. Japan may end up being a wake-up call for debt investors.

The depreciating yen will further stress the Japan-China relationship as it undermines the Chinese low-cost advantage. So paradoxically, on top of inflation, Japan brings a risk of deflation as well. If you own companies that make trinkets, their earnings will be under assault.

远离日本债券的固定收益投资者可能会在美国债券（至少一开始会压低我们的收益率）和美国股票中找到暂时的避风港。但我们很难展望未来，也很难不押注于未来通胀率大幅上升和利率上升。

A side note: Economic instability will likely lead to political instability. We are already seeing some manifestations of this in Russia.跳进乌克兰是弗拉基米尔·普京将注意力从逐渐摇摇欲坠的俄罗斯经济转向另一个闪亮的目标——乌克兰的方式。试想一下，如果近期油价继续大幅下跌，俄罗斯和中东将多么稳定。国防工业股可能被证明是一个很好的对冲未来全球经济疲软。

在flation and higher interest rates are two different risks, but both cause eventual deflation of P/Es. The impact on high-P/E stocks will be the most pronounced. I am generalizing, but high-P/E growth stocks are trading on expectations of future earnings that are years and years away. Those future earnings brought to the present (discounted) are a lot more valuable in a near-zero interest rate environment than when interest rates are high. Think of high-P/E stocks as long-duration bonds: They get slaughtered when interest rates rise (yes, long-term bonds are not a place to be either). If you are paying for growth, you want to be really sure it comes, because that earnings growth will have to overcome eventual P/E compression.

更高的利率将对成为债券替代品的股票产生显著的线性影响。为获得股息率而不加区别地买入的优质股票将经历巨大的市盈率压缩。这些股票是今天出于绝望而购买的。走投无路的人是不理性的，从众心理也会自暴自弃。当牛群走向出口时，你不想站在门口。

房地产投资信托基金(REITs) and master limited partnerships (MLPs) have a double-linear relationship with interest rates: Their P/Es were inflated because of an insatiable thirst for yield, and their earnings were inflated by low borrowing costs. These companies’ balance sheets consume a lot of debt, and though many of them were able to lock in low borrowing costs for a while, they can’t do so forever. Their earnings will be at risk.

写这篇文章的时候，我一直在想伯克希尔哈撒韦公司副董事长查理·芒格（Charlie Munger）在2013年公司年会上的一句话，他对当时全球经济的现状发表了评论：“如果你不困惑，你就不太了解事情。”一年后，世界的状况再也不清楚了。芒格谈到的这种困惑意味着，我们对未来的认识非常模糊，作为投资者，你应该为非常不同的未来经济体定位你的投资组合。通货膨胀？通货紧缩？也许两者都有？或者可能先通货紧缩，后通胀？

I keep coming back to Japan because it is further along in this experiment than the rest of the world. The Japanese real estate bubble burst, the government leveraged up as the corporate sector deleveraged, interest rates fell to near zero, and the economy stagnated for two decades. Now debt servicing requires a quarter of Japan’s tax receipts, while its interest rates are likely a small fraction of what they are going to be in the future; thus Japan is on the brink of massive inflation.

The U.S. could be on a similar trajectory. Let me explain why.

Government deleveraging follows one of three paths. The most blatant option is outright default, but because the U.S. borrows in its own currency, that will never happen here. (However, in Europe, where individual countries gave the keys to the printing press to the collective, the answer is less clear.) The second choice, austerity, is destimulating and deflationary to the economy in the short run and is unlikely to happen to any significant degree because cost-cutting will cost politicians their jobs. Last, we have the only true weapon government can and will use to deleverage: printing money. Money printing cheapens a currency — in other words, it brings on inflation.

在case of either inflation or deflation, you want to own companies that have pricing power — it will protect their earnings. Those companies will be able to pass higher costs to their customers during a time of inflation and maintain their prices during deflation.

On the one hand, inflation benefits companies with leveraged balance sheets because they’ll be paying off debt with inflated (cheaper) dollars. However, that benefit is offset by the likely higher interest rates these companies will have to pay on newly issued debt. Leverage is extremely dangerous during deflation because debt creates another fixed cost. Costs don’t shrink as fast as nominal revenues, so earnings decline. Therefore, unless your crystal ball is very clear and you have 100 percent certainty that inflation lies ahead, I’d err on the side of owning underleveraged companies rather than ones with significant debt.

A lot of growth that happened since 2000 has taken place at the expense of government balance sheets. It is borrowed, unsustainable growth that will have to be repaid through higher interest rates and rising tax rates, which in turn will work as growth decelerators. This will have several consequences: First, it’s another reason for P/Es to shrink. Second, a lot of companies that are making their forecasts with normal GDP growth as the base for their revenue and earnings projections will likely be disappointed. And last, investors will need to look for companies whose revenues march to their own drummers and are not significantly linked to the health of the global or local economy.

The definition of “dogma” by irrefutable Wikipedia is “a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.” On the surface this is the most dogmatic columns I have ever written, but that was not my intention. I just laid out an analytical framework, a checklist against which we stress test stocks in our portfolio. Despite my speaking ill of MLPs, we own an MLP. But unlike its comrades, it has a sustainable yield north of 10 percent and, more important, very little debt. Even if economic growth slows down or interest rates go up, the stock will still be undervalued — in other words, it has a significant margin of safety even if the future is less pleasant than the present.

最后，我想给你五点建议：首先，走出你的舒适区，扩大你的鱼池，包括美国以外的公司，这将使你在不牺牲增长特征或估值的情况下提高投资组合的质量。它还将提供货币多样化作为额外的好处。

第二，使你的买卖决定脱媒。在一个不断创出新高的高价市场上投资的困难在于，你要卖出的股票会达到你的目标价格(当然，卖出股票会带来一份礼物——现金。随着礼物的不断赠送，你的现金余额开始增加，并产生购买压力。正如父母告诉他们十几岁的孩子的那样，你不想被强迫做决定。在一个估值过高的市场上，你不想被迫购买；如果你这样做了，你将做出妥协，最终拥有你最终会后悔的股票。

安全边际，安全边际，安全边际——这是我最后的三点建议。在Es和P/Es未来不确定的环境中，您希望通过要求投资组合中的股票提供额外的安全边际来解决一些不确定性。