顶级投资人雷·达里奥作品《原则》3- 第二章我来自何处

Part 2: My Most Fundamental Life Principles

第二章我最重要的生活原则

Time is like a river that will take you forward into encounters with reality that will require you to make decisions. You can’t stop the movement down this river, and you can’t avoid the encounters. You can only approach these encounters in the best way possible.

时间宛如一条长河，你在顺流而下的过程中邂逅各种现实的经历，并需要你做出各种选择。你无法阻止河水的流动，就像你无法避免各种现实情况不期而遇一样，只能以力所能及的办法化解。

That is what this part is all about.

这就是本章想谈的内容。

Where I’m Coming From

我来自何处

Since we are all products of our genes and our environments and approach the world with biases, I think it is relevant for me to tell you a bit of my background so that you can know where I’m coming from.

我们都是基因和环境的产物，身处的世界充满偏见，我觉得有必要跟你们谈一点我的个人背景，便于各位了解我来自何处。

I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood on Long Island, the only son of a jazz musician and a stay-at-home mom. I was a very ordinary kid, and a less-than ordinary student. I liked playing with my friends— for example, touch football in the street—and I didn’t like the school part of school, partly because I had, and still have, a bad rote memory and partly because I couldn’t get excited about forcing myself to remember what others wanted me to remember without understanding what all this work was going to get me. In order to be motivated, I needed to work for what I wanted, not for what other people wanted me to do. And in order to be successful, I needed to figure out for myself how to get what I wanted, not remember the facts I was being told to remember.

我在长岛的一个中产阶级社区长大，父亲是位爵士音乐家，母亲足不出户，是位家庭主妇。我呢，曾是个很普通的小孩，但在学校里又是个不那么普通的学生。那时我老和一帮朋友们厮混，在街上踢踢足球什么的。并不是很喜欢学校上课的方式，可能是因为我一直不擅长死记硬背教科书上的内容，当然我现在依旧如此，还可能是因为如果别人要我在完全没搞清楚是怎么一回事的情况下就囫囵吞枣，死记硬背，我可真是一点都提不起兴趣。做事要想有干劲，得干些我自己想做的事情，而非他人逼迫我为之。想要做成一件事，我得弄清楚获得成功的过程，而非强记那些没用的知识点。

Rote memory is memory for things that don’t have an intrinsic logic for being what they are, like a random series of numbers, words in a foreign language and people’ s names (all of which I have trouble with). On the other hand, I have a great memory for things that make sense in a context. For example, I can tell you what happened in every year in the economy and markets since the mid-1960s and how many things work.

死记硬背式的记忆是机械记忆，没有实质内容之间的内在逻辑，比如一串随机数字，外语单词，人名（这个我感到最头疼了）。可另一方面，我对语境中有意义的内容记得很清楚，例如我能告诉你自 60 年代中期以来每年在经济和市场方面发生过什么大事，哪些事起到了作用。

One thing I wanted was spending money. So I had a newspaper route, I mowed lawns, I shoveled the snow off driveways, I washed dishes in a restaurant, and, starting when I was 12 years old, I caddied.

我想做的事是花钱，于是我就去赚钱，所以那时我送过报纸、除过草坪、铲过公路上的积雪、在餐馆刷过盘子。12 岁那年，我开始做高尔夫球童。

It was the 1960s. At the time the stock market was booming and everyone was talking about it, especially the people I caddied for. So I started to invest. The first stock I bought was a company called Northeast Airlines, and the only reason I bought it was that it was the only company I had heard of that was trading for less than $5 per share, so I could buy more shares, which I figured was a good thing. It went up a lot. It was about to go broke but another company acquired it, so it tripled. I made money because I was lucky, though I didn’t see it that way then. I figured that this game was easy. After all, with thousands of companies listed in the newspaper, how difficult could it be to find at least one that would go up? By comparison to my other jobs, this way of making money seemed much more fun, a lot easier, and much more lucrative. Of course, it didn’t take me long to lose money in the markets and learn about how difficult it is to be right and the costs of being wrong.

大概是在 60 年代吧，股市行情欣欣向荣，家家户户都在聊炒股，而我做球童时的那些雇主们更是热衷炒股，耳濡目染，我开始了第一笔投资。当时我买的第一支股票叫东北航空公司，选择的原因也只是因为在每股 5 块钱以内的公司里，我就只听说过这家公司。不过也好，至少我能多买几股，行情还是很棒的，因为这家公司刚要破产就被另一家公司收购了，市值瞬间涨到了从前的三倍，我靠这点运气也算小赚一笔，当然那时我还不清楚这些事情背后的具体原因。看起来这游戏不难玩，报纸上登的每天那么多公司都在上市，找家会涨的公司有什么难的？再说了，和我做过的那些工作比起来，这种赚钱方式既有趣又容易，还能赚更多钱，何乐不为？不过没多久我就开始亏钱了，原来选对股票并非易事，选错了代价也挺不菲的。

So what I really wanted to do now was beat the market. I just had to figure out how to do it.

好了，我现在觉得我真正想做的是击败市场，那就得搞清楚怎么来做了。

The pursuit of this goal taught me:

在实现这个目标的过程中，我学到几件事情：

1) It is not easy for me to be confident that my opinions are right. In the markets, you can do a huge amount of work and still be wrong.

1）坚信自己的观点都是对的可不是件容易的事情。股市里，做再多都可能是于事无补。

2) Bad opinions can be very costly. Most people come up with opinions and there’s no cost to them. Not so in the market. This is why I have learned to be cautious. No matter how hard I work, I really can’t be sure.

2）糟糕的意见代价昂贵。很多人给出的观点和看法都是零成本，但在股市里可就不一样了，这就是为什么我已经学会了谨慎。因为再怎么努力，我都无法 100%肯定市场走向。

3) The consensus is often wrong, so I have to be an independent thinker. To make any money, you have to be right when they’re wrong.

3）大家的共识经常都是错的，要做独立的思考者。要想赚钱，那就得在别人都选错时，你选对才行。

So … 因此……

3.1) I worked for what I wanted, not for what others wanted me to do. For that reason, I never felt that I had to do anything. All the work I ever did was just what I needed to do to get what I wanted. Since I always had the prerogative to strive for what I wanted, I never felt forced to do anything.

3.1）我干我自己想做的事情，而非他人要我做的。这样我就不会感到被动，因为我所做的每件事都是为了达成自己想要实现的目标。因为我总是有权利去争取我想要的东西，我从来没有觉得自己被迫做任何事。

3.2) I came up with the best independent opinions I could muster to get what I wanted. For example, when I wanted to make money in the markets, I knew that I had to learn about companies to assess the attractiveness of their stocks. At the time, Fortune magazine had a little tear- out coupon that you could mail in to get the annual reports of any companies on the Fortune 500, for free. So I ordered all the annual reports and worked my way through the most interesting ones and formed opinions about which companies were exciting.

3.2）我把我能想到的最好的、独立的观点汇聚到一起，用以实现我的目标。例如，我想在股市里赚钱，我就得了解公司，从而评估该公司股票的吸引力。那时，《财富》杂志每期都附赠优惠券，可以撕下来邮寄给杂志，免费获取世界 500 强各企业的年度报告。我订了所有企业的年度报告，找出我认为最有趣的公司，形成自己的观点，选出自认为最有吸引力的公司。

The way I learn is to immerse myself in something, which prompts questions, which I answer, prompting more questions, until I reach a conclusion.

我采取浸泡式学习方法，提出问题，给出解答，提出更多问题，直到得到结论。

3.3) I stress-tested my opinions by having the smartest people I could find challenge them so I could find out where I was wrong. I never cared much about others’ conclusions—only for the reasoning that led to these conclusions. That reasoning had to make sense to me. Through this process, I improved my chances of being right, and I learned a lot from a lot of great people.

3.3）我对自己的观点进行压力测试，把我认识的最聪明的人都找来挑毛病，这样才能找出我观点中错误的地方。我不理会他们的结论，我只在意他们得出这些结论的推理过程，这才是对我有意义的地方。通过学习他们的思维过程，我提升了成功的几率，从成功人士身上受益匪浅。

This included my retail stockbroker, the people I was caddying for, even my local barber, who was equally engrossed in the stock market. (It wasn’t as precocious as it sounds. At the time, instead of talking about the Yankees, everyone was talking about stocks. That was the world I grew up in.)

这群人包括我的股票经纪人，做球童时的雇主，甚至当地的理发师，他那时跟我一样专注于股票市场。这不是因为我早熟，因为那个年代大家除了谈论扬基棒球队外，就都是谈论股票了，我就是在这样的环境下长大的。

3.4) I remained wary about being overconfident, and I figured out how to effectively deal with my not knowing. I dealt with my not knowing by either continuing to gather information until I reached the point that I could be confident or by eliminating my exposure to the risks of not knowing.

3.4）我不敢太过自信，而是想办法有效处理我所不知道的事情。处理未知的事物我会不断搜集信息直到我对之胸有成竹，或降低遭遇“不知”情况的风险。

Sometimes when I know that I don’t know which way the coin is going to flip, I try to position myself so that it won’t have an impact on me either way. In other words, I don’t make an inadvertent bet. I try to limit my bets to the limited number of things I am confident in.

有时当我不知道硬币会投向哪面，我会选择重新给自己定位，这样正反都不会有影响。换句话说，我不打不加思考的赌，只对某些十分有信心的事情下赌注。

3.5) I wrestled with my realities, reflected on the consequences of my decisions, and learned and improved from this process.

3.5）我同现实展开斗争，反思所做决定带来的后果，从中学习与提高。

By doing these things, I learned how important and how liberating it is to think for myself.

就这样，我明白了独立思考有多么重要，多么自由。

In a nutshell, this is the whole approach that I believe will work best for you— the best summary of what I want the people who are working with me to do in order to accomplish great things. I want you to work for yourself, to come up with independent opinions, to stress-test them, to be wary about being overconfident, and to reflect on the consequences of your decisions and constantly improve.

简而言之，这是我认为最适合你的方法，这也是我希望工作伙伴想要成功所需做到的：为自己工作，形成独立的观点，对之进行压力测试，不要过度自信，反思所做决定带来的后果，不断提升。

After I graduated from high school, I went to a local college that I barely got in to. I loved it, unlike high school, because I could learn about things that interested me; I studied because I enjoyed it, not because I had to.

高中毕业后我在本地上的大学，差点没考上。我不喜欢我的高中学校，可我很爱大学的生活，因为我能学习我真正感兴趣的东西，我学习，是因为我享受它，而不是被迫去做。

At that time the Beatles had made a trip to India to learn how to meditate, which triggered my interest, so I learned how to meditate. It helped me think more clearly and creatively, so I’m sure that enhanced my enjoyment of, and success at, learning. Unlike in high school, in college I did very well.

那时，披头士乐队在印度旅行，为的是学习如何冥想，我很感兴趣，于是也学了怎么冥想。得益于此，我思考问题时更清晰更富有创造力，也提升了我对于学习的兴趣和成就感。和在高中时截然不同，我在大学表现极佳。

By the way, I still meditate and I still find it helpful.

顺便提一下，我仍在坚持冥想练习，也依旧觉得很有用。

And of course I continued to trade markets. Around this time I became interested in trading commodities futures, though virtually nobody traded them back then. I was attracted to trading them just because they had low margin requirements so I figured I could make more money by being right (which I planned to be).

当然啦，我上大学后依旧在市场中做交易。不过我开始对商品期货交易感兴趣，尽管当时还没有人做这方面的交易。商品期货交易的魅力在于保证金要求不高，所以只要我选对了，就能赚钱（我是这么计划的）。

By the time I graduated college, in 1971, I had been admitted to Harvard Business School, where I would go in the fall. That summer between college and HBS I clerked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. This was the summer of the breakdown of the global monetary system (i.e., the Bretton Woods system). It was one of the most dramatic economic events ever and I was at the epicenter of it, so it thrilled me. It was a currency crisis that drove all market behaviors, so I delved into understanding the currency markets. The currency markets would be important to me for the rest of my life.

1971 年我大学毕业，考入了哈佛商学院，入学是在秋季。大学毕业后的夏天，我在纽约证券交易所里打工做职员。那年夏天，全球货币体系（布雷顿森林体系）崩溃瓦解。这应该是当时最举世关注的经济事件，我作为亲历者，感到兴奋不已。那场货币危机震动了整个市场，我也深入钻研学习了货币市场。货币市场对我此后人生可谓至关重要。

That fall I went to Harvard Business School, which I was excited about because I felt that I had climbed to the top and would be with the best of the best. Despite these high expectations, the place was even better than I expected because the case study method allowed open-ended figuring things out and debating with others to get at the best answers, rather than memorizing facts. I loved the work-hard, play-hard environment.

秋天我去哈佛商学院上学，我非常兴奋，因为我觉得那里都是精英，算是爬到了人才聚集的顶峰。我当时的期待已经很高了，但实际情况比我想得还要好。那里上课引用的案例研究方法是开放式的，也允许大家相互辩论获得最佳答案，从不让大家死记硬背。这里大家拼命学习，又懂得尽情放松，这种环境深得我心。

In the summer between my two years at HBS, I pursued my interest in trading commodities futures by convincing the Director of Commodities for Merrill Lynch to give me a job as his assistant. At the time, commodities trading was still an obscure thing to do.

哈佛商学院的第一年暑假，我继续鼓捣商品期货交易，并成功说服美林证券的商品主管让我做他的助理。在那时，商品交易依旧是一个很模糊的领域。

In the fall I went back to HBS, and in that academic year, 1972-73, trading commodities futures became a hot thing to do. That is because the monetary system’ s breakdown that occurred in 1971 led to an inflationary surge that sent commodity prices higher. As a result of this, the first oil shock occurred in 1973. As inflation started to surge, the Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy to fight it, so stocks went down in the worst bear market since the Great Depression. So, commodities futures trading was hot and stock market investing was not. Naturally, brokerage houses that didn’t have commodities trading departments wanted them, and there was a shortage of people who knew anything about it. Virtually nobody in the commodities futures business had the type of Harvard Business School background that I had. So I was hired as Director of Commodities at a moderate-size brokerage and given an old salt who had lots of commodities brokerage experience to help me set up a commodities division. The bad stock market environment ended up taking this brokerage house down before we could get the commodities futures trading going. I went to a bigger, more successful brokerage, where I was in charge of its institutional/hedging business. But I didn’t fit into the organization well, so I was fired essentially for insubordination.

秋天我回哈佛商学院上学，就在 1972 年到 1973 年的这个学年里，商品期货市场火了起来。因为 1971 年货币体系的瓦解导致了通货膨胀狂潮，物价飞涨。1973 年，第一次石油危机爆发了。通货膨胀加剧，美联储收紧了货币政策，股票市场面临大萧条时期以来最糟糕的熊市。在此背景之下，商品期货交易变得炙手可热，股票市场投资无人问津。证券经济公司也想搞商品期货交易，但公司没人懂这些。事实上，从事商品期货交易的，很少有我这种具备哈佛商学院背景的。我很轻松地应聘上了一家中型经纪公司，担任商品主管，公司里一位在商品经纪领域经验丰富的老手帮助我成立了商品分部。但我们还没来得及维持商品期货交易，股票市场环境就拖垮了这家经纪公司。后来我去了家规模和影响力大点的经纪行，负责机构事务与对冲基金业务，我没能很好地融入到这个公司里，最终因不服从领导被开除了。

So in 1975, after a quick two-year stint on Wall Street after school, I started Bridgewater. Soon after, I got married and began my family.

1975 年，毕业后在华尔街混迹了两年后，我成立了桥水基金公司，结了婚有了孩子。

Through this time and till now I followed the same basic approach I used as a 12 year-old caddie trying to beat the market, i.e., by

working for what I wanted, not for what others wanted me to do;
coming up with the best independent opinions I could muster to move toward my goals;
stress – testing my opinions by having the smartest people I could find challenge them so I could find out where I was wrong;
being wary about overconfidence, and good at not knowing;
wrestling with reality, experiencing the results of my decisions, reflecting on what I did to produce them so that I could improve.

就在上述的这段时期里，从我是个 12 岁的球童开始到现在，我击败市场一直都使用的是同一套方法：