Flat Earth Society will flourish

重讀Ben Graham的The Intelligent Investor，發現有一篇附錄裏的文章從未讀過，感覺如獲至寶。那是畢菲特的“The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville”。文章的内容源於他1984年於哥倫比亞大學為紀念“Security Analysis”面世五十周年所作的演講。

他提到一個有趣的觀察：

"One sidelight here: it is extraordinary to me that the idea of buying dollar bills for 40 cents takes immediately to people or it doesn't take at all. It's like an inoculation. If it doesn't grab a person right away, I find that you can talk to him for years and show him records, and it doesn't make any difference. They just don't seem able to grasp the concept, simple as it is. A fellow like Rick Guerin, who had no formal education in business, understands immediately the value approach to investing and he's applying it five minutes later. I've never seen anyone who became a gradual convert over a ten-year period to this approach. It doesn't seem to be a matter of IQ or academic training. It's instant recognition, or it is nothing."

不單是價值投資法，一些對我有深切影響的思想，如李天命、張五常的著作，我經常推薦給朋友或同事，可是讀後有深刻感受的人不多。少數有緣人，一讀之下感覺有如被雷電擊中；無緣的人，或不認同，或沒感覺，跟聰明與否及教育背景關係全無。看來一個人先天的性情決定了他能否接收某些信息，沒有慧根是沒法得道了。

文章的總結很是精彩：

“In conclusion, some of the more commercially minded among you may wonder why I am writing this article. Adding many converts to the value approach will perforce narrow the spreads between price and value. I can only tell you that the secret has been out for 50 years, ever since Ben Graham and Dave Dodd wrote “Security Analysis”, yet I have seen no trend toward value investing in the 35 years that I've practiced it. There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. The academic world, if anything, has actually backed away from the teaching of value investing over the last 30 years. It's likely to continue that way. Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace, and those who read their Graham & Dodd will continue to prosper.”

各位有緣人大可放心。