假期开始读这本书，第一版是2001年出的，2018年再版，居然还没有中文翻译版。读进去才发现太有意思了，历史上的故事总是比我们想象的精彩，也一遍一遍重复着。读完估计还要一阵子，就把前面1/3的内容先按惯例做些摘要吧。
The results confirmed what many value investors already knew. First, it is better to be in the market than out – over the long-term, world stock markets rise. Secondly, although on average a bull market is four times greater than bear markets, there is no set pattern that allows simple prediction of when a bull market will end.
总是在市场里要比空仓要好，毕竟牛市平均的涨幅是熊市的四倍。市场里混，错过牛市才是最可怕的。
The fact that while the patterns have not been identical in each case they have been very similar. First, a new invention is greeted with scepticism from incumbent technology and potential new investors. That scepticism is gradually replaced with enthusiasm, as businessmen come to appreciate the sales potential of the new technology. Soon, new entrants are flocking to the market, and venture capital funding is made available. Companies are started; almost all do well (in terms of share price) in the market on a tidal wave of enthusiasm. So far, so good; but as the technology begins to mature, a sense of realism sets in. Inevitably, for some, cash runs out. Companies begin to fold, only the strong survive and naive investors lose money in the huge rationalisation. Pessimism begins to pervade the marketplace and stock prices fall across the board. Eventually, the market stabilizes.
市场故事总是相似的，虽不完全一致。新发明总是先被怀疑，也不被投资人认可。慢慢地，这种怀疑随着企业家看到带来收入的巨大潜力而陆续消除，接着新进入者参与进来，VC也进来投资；早期企业出现，投资回报都不错，市场开始热起来；当技术逐步成熟，有人开始套现离场，但企业开始大量出现，仅强者能够生存，傻乎乎的投资人开始亏钱，悲观情绪上来，股价开始跌。最终市场再稳定下来。也就是：新事物出现，普遍怀疑不信——> 有人大胆尝试，看到前景 ——> 新企业和投资出现，发展不错———> 技术成熟，一大批人冲进来 ——> 发现没那么美好，开始下跌、亏钱——> 市场稳定下来。
Technology may have changed the world – but it has not changed human nature. The four most expensive words in the English language are ‘This time it’s different’ ”. As Mark Twain said, history does not repeat itself exactly, but it rhymes.”
技术改变了世界，但并未改变人性。这正是上面规律的来源，也会继续运行下去。
Any technology that necessitates heavy capital expenditure and requires returns to be earned over an extended period is always going to be a high-risk undertaking – unless, that is, there is some form of protection against competition. This protection may take the form of patent, copyright, legal prohibition or simply fundamental competitive advantage (such as a superior cost curve).
任何需要开始时期大量资本投入后面陆续收回成本的技术都是极高风险的，需要许多保护来减少竞争，比如专利、版权、特许经营权，或者非常大的规模效应。非常简答单无比正确的商业常识。
铁路的故事
However, despite early problems with safety, the advance of the railways proved inexorable. The simple economics of their ability to shift large volumes of both passengers and freight at speeds much faster than horse-drawn coach traffic, and much more cheaply than canals, made their expansion assured.
While the economic power of the railways was obvious, and the technology quickly proven, the introduction of railways in Britain was not a simple or smooth process. Like canals before them, land had to be purchased and existing buildings cleared to allow tracks to be laid between existing urban centres. Compulsory purchase of land has always raised public hackles, and the early locomotives were noisy and dangerous.
The railways of Britain and America followed slightly different paths, but there were many similarities. In both cases their economic superiority caused the respective canal networks to gradually fall into disuse.
经济理性往往是最大的理由，安全并不是。铁路发展初期的安全问题更大，但最终决定其胜出的就是其难得的经济效益，这是真正决定性的——也是所谓“看不见的手”的市场的力量源泉。
同样的顾虑正在自动驾驶这个事情上发生，但也是势不可挡的。
It is ironic, then, that the first railways were built as feeder lines for the canal system. The first railway set up to compete directly with a canal was the Liverpool and Manchester in 1826.
新技术常常作为补充角色出现。1826年利物浦和曼彻斯特间的第一条铁路就是如此，有机会去瞻仰下。
Like the mining stocks, the railway stocks were highly geared instruments. Investors made an initial scrip payment of 5%, with an obligation to provide further funding in the future. If the company’s future prospects were well regarded, as they usually were at the time, the scrip would trade at a premium to its issue price. The implied gearing in the scrips – for a 5% scrip, this was 20 times – was similar to the level of gearing in many modern-day traded options.
当年的矿业股、铁路股居然是只需要首付5%的证券，20倍杠杆！——佩服当年的发明和心脏，难怪一度如此疯狂。
The first railways to be built enjoyed what today would be called ‘first-mover advantage’, but one of the clearest lessons of corporate and investment history is that without some barrier to entry, first-mover advantage can be swiftly lost.
没有进入壁垒的话，领先优势会很快消失。已经是反复被证明的真理了。
As with many dot-com companies 150 or so years later, few of these proposals for later lines rested on rigorous analysis of their revenue-generating potential. Few investors attempted to calculate whether revenue would exceed costs by a sufficient margin to provide an adequate return on invested capital。
即便150年后，投资人的本性依然未变。—— 创始人的计划书很少认真分析潜在收入的可能性；投资人也很少去计算公司未来是否有足够的毛利来提供合适的投资回报。
所以做投资人认真一点，把预测算细致一些；创始人把未来也考虑细致些，本身都极难能可贵，也值得长期坚持。
All four are typical of those that help to bring periods of financial excess to a close. First, as a large number of the shares were partly paid, many investors found they were overgeared and unable to make further payments without selling some of their holdings, which put further downward pressure on the price. Secondly, the financial projections with which many companies had raised money proved wildly over-optimistic – critically, they neglected to take account of the increasingly competitive nature of the business. Thirdly, the environment of speculative euphoria encouraged a fair amount of fraud and business practices that later did not stand up to scrutiny. Finally, the economic and interest rate environment began to change. In October 1845, the Bank of England raised interest rates from 2.5% to 3%, and interest rates continued to rise thereafter.
铁路股狂潮的结束是四个原因，一是投资人负债太高，没钱投不动了；二是公司的财务预测太乐观——开始暴露了；三是狂热中欺诈了，并且还没查证了，影响投资人情绪；四是外部环境的变化，比如加息，压到了最后一根稻草。这个模式似乎也一直在重复。投资者没钱+预测实现不了+欺诈被发现+加息，熊市的典型特征。
Many companies end in liquidation after such a phase. Although the promoters usually emerge with positive returns, and the technology itself succeeds in delivering the results that were forecast, the average investor frequently struggles to emerge with significant returns.
投资对技术方向其实并不能确保带来正的投资回报。许多公司在热潮中进入的最终会破产。早期的投资人通常能拿到正回报，虽然后续技术扩散和发展都验证了当初的预言，后续投资人也会亏损。挣个平均回报不容易，投资人好难。
The final and most notable difference was that, as the major financial centre of the world, Britain was an exporter of capital – and, as a developing market, America was an importer.
金融中心总会是资本输出方，新兴经济体是资本流入方，当年的伦敦 vs 纽约，后来是纽约 vs 中国，接下来如何呢。拭目以待。中国建设金融中心未来肯定是要成为输出方的，未来会形成 中国 vs 其他发展中国家的格局。
In the early years, British investors were unwilling to accept railroad stock directly, preferring to purchase state bonds. In order to raise funds, the railroads exchanged bonds with the state and then sold the state bonds to British investors. The other major form of funding came in the shape of barter payment for the iron rails being exported to America.
Later, however, unscrupulous operators were to discover that this provided the perfect backdoor route to issue new equity. It was a tool deployed to great effect by Jay Gould and his cohorts during the scandal of the battles over the Erie Railroad.
太有趣的故事了。可转换债的发明居然是英国投资人只愿意买债券，美国人却想卖股票给他们这么发明出来的。另外，贸易+借款的融资模式今天中国搞的很大，被欧美广泛批评，但却是当年欧美发明的。接下来鸡贼的美国人还把可转债当成了无限增发的后门。
The key to Vanderbilt’s success was his ability to use technology to remain the lowest-cost competitor (although this alone would probably not have been sufficient).
Again, at first the business was dominated by political patronage. The first steamship operator was Samuel Cunard, who persuaded the British government (on the pretext of trade enhancement and national security) to grant him an annual subsidy of $275,000 ($46m). Cunard charged passengers $200 ($32,000) for the journey; mail cost 24 cents ($40) per letter.
In USA, Edward Collins petitioned the government for a payment of $3m ($472m) upfront and an annual subsidy of $385,000 ($60m). ” In 1852, for example, faced with rising costs, Collins managed to obtain congressional agreement for the subsidy to be raised to $858,000 (over $100m). The subsidised model was also followed in creating the mail lines from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Congress authorised loan payments equivalent to $16,000 per mile in flat land and $32,000 per mile for gradients, to subsidise the westwards expansion”
补贴是新技术发展的常态，蒸汽船、铁路当年都是如此，非常有意思的历史故事。但最终还是要竞争，补贴终究会取消，竞争中低成本就很关键，不是充分条件但相当必要。
当下的新能源补贴、过去的太阳能补贴，都是类似的故事。
The main point is that the war allowed him to sell on his shipping interests and turn his attention to a new growth area, the railroads. By 1862 Vanderbilt had a fortune of some $11m ($1.3bn), invested in a range of companies. The attractive growth areas of the time, though, fell into two categories. The two emerging industries were gas lighting and the railroads, both of which were to form important parts of Vanderbilt’s portfolio of interests.
大佬范德比尔特真是高手，趁着战争能从船运生意切换到铁路，毫不犹豫，套现的钱投了一大堆企业，最后集中到两个事情上，煤气灯和铁路，真正成就了他。事后来看，这两个新方向的选择无比正确，准确踏在时代的节奏上。
How did the stock watering work? A simple example would be where stock was issued to the public and the proceeds were then used to purchase bonds on railroad property from one of the insider parties at a greatly inflated price. ”
高价关联并购的恶果就是股价大跌。特别是靠融资干这个事情的时候，毫无例外，历史上很早就说透了。
A railroad is a highly capital-intensive industry and if this is combined with high interest payments then it will always be at risk during an economic downturn.
铁路这种资本密集行业，负债往往很重，一旦经济下行就是死路一条。
今天中国地产发生的一切正是如此。
It would be possible to turn this round and argue the opposite: that when investors were in a period of optimism typically associated with general prosperity, new ventures were put forward, many of which lacked the compelling economic logic of their predecessors.
By the mid-1870s, almost 40% of American railroad bonds were in default and by 1879 some $234m ($19bn) had foreclosed. In the six years up to 1879, it is estimated that European investors alone lost some $600m ($50bn) as a result of bankruptcies and fraud
投资者的不理性导致的后果是极其严重的，特别是在市场情绪高点的时候，不理性往往随之而来。想象当初O2O大热的岁月，简直不可思议。众多的技术创新前，还是要去精选真正能值得考验的和真正有意义的才行。
美国的铁路高潮带来了40%企业的破产，损失了超过200亿美元，欧洲则损失了500亿美元。但历史依然继续重复。
In addition, a number of collective investment vehicles were put in place to allow smaller private investors to spread their risks. Many of these investment companies and investment trusts are still in operation today; in them lie the roots of the modern mutual fund industry.
集合投资工具的出现倒是不错的副产品，到今天，无论是公募还是私募基金。 c