知名投資人沃倫·巴菲特5月初在伯克希爾-哈撒韋公司的年度股東大會上承認，當年他拒絕投資亞馬遜和谷歌（即現在的Alphabet公司），是個“錯誤的決定”。這個錯誤是因為他固守長久以來的投資原則所致。這或許意味著巴菲特被奉為經典的投資理論也需要與時俱進了。

據CNBC報道，巴菲特表示：“我一次見到杰夫·貝佐斯，就非常非常贊賞他的能力。我從一開始就關注著亞馬遜。我認為他的成就幾乎可以用奇跡來形容……問題是，如果我認為某個東西是奇跡的話，我一般就不會把寶押在它上面。”

巴菲特之所以錯過了亞馬遜和谷歌，或許與他本人科技知識較為有限有關。據巴菲特稱，比爾·蓋茨曾建議他放棄不太好用的遠景搜索，轉而投資搜索引擎界的新銳谷歌，只不過他沒有聽進去。巴菲特也承認，正是同樣的“愚蠢”讓他錯過了早期投資微軟的機會。“諸葛一生唯謹慎”這句評語充分詮釋了巴菲特和他的伯克希爾-哈撒韋公司的投資哲學。巴菲特總是警告投資者，只在他們能理解的生意上下賭注。他也坦然表示，在谷歌和亞馬遜身上，“如果我當時對某些業務有些洞察力，當時的機會就會明顯得多。”

巴菲特反復錯失良機的另一個原因，則是他個人的投資方法。他在會上還表示：“我錯就錯在，當我認為遠期前景遠好于當前股票價格時，沒有能夠做出決斷。”這也反映了巴菲特一直奉行的“價值投資”理念的瑕疵——所謂“價值投資”，即要購買當前股價低于公司實際價值的股票。

然而最近這十幾年，科技公司的股票相比于其資產和收益一直處于被高估的狀態，因為人們賭的是這些公司的技術終將主導市場的預期。巴菲特一向喜歡投資那些處于市場壟斷地位的公司，之前他在這方面也有不少成功例子，但在這方面，數據密集型的科技公司與其他行業是有區別的。科技的網絡效應會形成一種“反饋效應”，幫助科技公司在某方面形成類壟斷地位，而要形成這種類壟斷地位，則需要巨額的長期投資。像亞馬遜這種公司的早期投資者，都是在挺過了多年的巨額虧損之后才等來了盈利。當然，只要盈利一來，那就如長江流水，滔滔不絕了。

當然，這種類壟斷地位對投資人雖然是好事，對于社會卻未必是好事。在數字時代，監管機構對于壟斷的新內涵和外延尚未明確界定，但已有越來越多的批評人士開始呼吁對一些大科技公司的規模和權力進行限制，其中首當其沖的就是巴菲特后悔沒有投資的那幾家公司。（財富中文網）

譯者：樸成奎?

Revered investor Warren Buffett admitted at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting Saturday that “I made the wrong decisions” when he passed up investments in Amazon and Google (now Alphabet). It’s a mistake he made because he stuck to his longtime investing principles—and that might mean it’s time to update those ideas.

“I had [a] very very very high opinion of [Jeff Bezos’s] ability when I first met him, and I underestimated him,” Buffett said in comments reported by CNBC. “I’ve watched Amazon from the start. I think what Jeff Bezos has done is something close to a miracle . . . the problem is when I think something will be a miracle, I tend not to bet on it.”

Buffett’s own limited technical savvy might have contributed to the missed opportunity. Bill Gates, according to Buffett, had to personally tell him to switch from the creaky Altavista search engine to Google—and Buffett also admitted that “stupidity” kept him from investing in Microsoft early on. In that light, turning away from Google and Amazon reflects the investing philosophy that has been core to Berkshire Hathaway’s epochal success. Buffett has long cautioned investors to only bet on businesses they understand, and he admitted that when it came to Google and Amazon, “it would have been far better obviously if I had some insights into certain businesses.”

But another aspect of tech investment is more fundamentally at odds with Buffett’s approach. Buffett also said Saturday that “I made the mistake in not being able to come to a conclusion where I really felt that at the present prices that the prospects were far better than the prices indicated.” That’s a summation of Buffett’s emphasis on value investing—buying stocks that underprice the intrinsic value of companies.

But tech companies for at least a decade have been persistently overvalued by the stock market compared to their assets and revenue, on the basis of their potential to totally dominate markets in the future. Buffett has been quite public about the appeal of companies with monopoly-like market positions, but those positions are built differently in the data-driven tech world than in many of the sectors where Buffett has succeeded. Network effects and, more recently, data-backed “feedback effects” act as a new kind of monopolistic moat for tech companies, and building those moats takes huge, long-term spending. Early investors in Amazon had to weather years of deep losses before profits came—but when they arrived, it was in torrents.

Of course, just because pseudo-monopolies are good investments doesn’t mean they’re good for society. Regulators are still catching up with what a monopoly means in the digital age, but a growing number of critics are calling for limits on the size and power of the very giants Buffett wishes he had bet on.