金钱心理学

摩根-豪泽尔

关于财富、贪婪和幸福的永恒课程

The Psychology of Money

Morgan Housel

Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness

内容简介 [ 心理学 ] [ 金钱与投资 ]

What's it about? [ Psychology ] [ Money & Investments ]

《金钱心理学》（2020 年）探讨了现实世界中金钱的运作方式。财务决策很少受经济学家的理论和会计师整洁的电子表格所驱动。相反，从个人经历到自尊甚至嫉妒等无数因素都会影响我们的决策。结果往往出人意料，而且总是让人着迷。

The Psychology of Money (2020) looks at the way money works in the real world. Financial decisions are rarely driven by the theories of economists and the neat spreadsheets of accountants. Instead, a myriad of factors, from personal history to pride and even envy, shape our decision-making. The results are often surprising– and always fascinating.

关于作者

About the author

摩根-豪塞尔（Morgan Housel）是合作基金（Collaborative Fund）的合伙人，也是一名财经记者，曾为《莫特利傻瓜》（Motley Fool）和《华尔街日报》撰稿。他常驻西雅图，曾多次获奖，包括《纽约时报》西德尼奖和美国商业编辑与作家协会颁发的最佳商业奖。

Morgan Housel is a partner at the Collaborative Fund and a financial journalist who has written for the Motley Fool and the Wall Street Journal. Based in Seattle, he has won multiple awards for his writing, including the New York Times Sidney Award and the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

1, Introduction [简介]

阅读本文的意义：了解财务决策背后的心理因素。

What’s in it for me? Understand the psychology behind financial decisions.

股市是如何运作的？何时是购买或抛售资产的最佳时机？每年需要储蓄多少钱才能在某个年龄退休？

How does the stock market work? When’s the best time to buy or dump assets? And how much do you need to save every year to retire by a certain age?

这些都是个人理财讨论中的主要问题。然而，有一些重要的因素往往被忽略了。这就是人的因素，换句话说，就是现实中的人和他们的钱之间的关系。

These are the kinds of questions that dominate discussions of personal finance. There’s often something important left out of the equation, however. This is the human factor – in other words, the relationship between real people and their money.

摩根-豪泽尔（Morgan Housel）认为，这个因素是理解财务决策的关键。如果你想知道为什么人们会负债累累或挥霍无度，你不需要研究利率，你需要深入了解人类嫉妒、贪婪和乐观的历史。这正是我们接下来要做的。

Morgan Housel argues that this factor is key to understanding financial decision-making. If you want to know why people bury themselves in debt or squander fortunes, you don’t need to study interest rates – you need to delve into the all-too-human history of envy, greed, and optimism. And that’s precisely what we’ll be doing in the following blinks.

通过本文，你还会了解到

* 个人经历如何影响投资策略；

* 为什么找到一件毕加索的作品可能意味着获得 99 件次品；以及

* 妒忌如何让投资者甘冒倾家荡产的风险。

Along the way, you’ll also learn

* how personal experiences shape investment strategies;

* why finding a single Picasso might mean acquiring 99 duds; and

* how envy makes investors risk everything they already have.

2, Everyone has their own experience of the economy and money. 

[ 对于经济和金钱，每个人都有自己的经验 ]

大萧条的故事众所周知。

The story of the Great Depression is well-known.

在 1929 年灾难性的股市崩盘之后，全球经济进入了持续衰退的十年。

After a disastrous stock market crash in 1929, the global economy entered a decade of sustained decline.

在美国，"咆哮的二十年代 "戛然而止。企业倒闭，家庭失去了农场和家园，辛辛苦苦攒下的积蓄化为乌有。贫困和失业率急剧上升，而对明天会比昨天更好的信心却一落千丈。

In the United States, the “roaring twenties” came to an abrupt halt. Businesses folded, families lost their farms and homes, and hard-earned savings disappeared into thin air. Poverty and joblessness skyrocketed, while faith that tomorrow would be better than yesterday plummeted.

如今，这一版本的事件已成为标准说法。这也在情理之中--毕竟，它确实描述了数百万美国人的经历。但它也忽略了一些重要的东西。

Today, this version of events has become the standard narrative. That stands to reason – it does, after all, describe the experience of millions of Americans. But it also leaves something important out of the picture.

这里的关键信息是：每个人都有自己的经济和金钱经历。

The key message in this blink is: Everyone has their own experience of the economy and money.

1960 年，约翰-肯尼迪竞选总统时，有人问他在大萧条中的经历。他的回答让许多选民大吃一惊。

When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he was asked about his experience of the Great Depression. His answer surprised many voters.

他说，肯尼迪家族在 1929 年就已经很富有了。而在接下来的十年中，他们的财富并没有化为乌有，反而有了增长。到 1939 年，他们家的仆人比十年之初更多，住的房子也更大。直到他进入哈佛大学，读到关于大萧条的书，他才意识到许多同胞遭受了多么严重的苦难。

The Kennedys, he said, were already wealthy in 1929. And over the next ten years, their fortune wasn’t wiped out – it actually grew. By 1939, the family had more servants and lived in a bigger house than it had at the start of the decade. It was only when he went to Harvard and read about the Depression that he realized how badly many of his fellow citizens had suffered.

事实证明，并非所有美国人都在同一条船上。肯尼迪希望改变这种状况，这也是他说服选民相信他不只是一个不合群的精英主义者，而是一个值得尊敬的总统的部分原因。但是，并非只有富人和穷人才有截然不同的经济生活经历，我们每个人都是如此。

Not all Americans, it turned out, had been in the same boat. Kennedy wanted to change that, which is partly how he convinced voters that he wasn’t just an out-of-touch elitist, but a worthy president. But it’s not only the rich and the poor who have contrasting experiences of economic life – we all do.

一个失业农夫的儿子和一个成功的曼哈顿股票经纪人的儿子不仅来自不同的生活阶层，而且在金钱方面，他们对风险和回报等问题的认识也大相径庭。但是，正如我们稍后会看到的，同样富裕的人也会因个人生活经历的不同而有不同的经历。

The son of an unemployed farmhand and the son of a successful Manhattan stockbroker don’t just come from different walks of life – they also learn profoundly different lessons about things like risk and reward when it comes to money. But, as we’ll see later on, the same applies to equally well-off people depending on their individual life experiences.

例如，一个在高通胀时期长大的富人，与一个只经历过稳定物价的同样富有的人相比，会有不同的理财世界观。这些不同视角所带来的经验教训决定了我们如何对待金钱。

For example, a wealthy individual who grew up during periods of high inflation will have a different financial worldview than a similarly wealthy person who’s only ever experienced stable prices. The resulting lessons of these different perspectives shape what we do with money.

我们都喜欢自以为是地认为自己了解这个世界是如何运作的，但我们通常只经历了现实中的一小部分。说到金钱心理学，首先要明白的就是：我们知道的比我们想知道的要少。

We all like to think we know how the world works, but we usually only experience a small sliver of that reality. And that’s the first thing to understand when it comes to the psychology of money: we know less than we’d like to think we do.

3, Personal experience drives financial decision-making.

[ 个人经验驱动金融决策 ]

当经济学家对金融行为进行建模时，他们往往依赖于一种方便的虚构--理性的个人做出利己的决策，使其收益最大化。

When economists model financial behavior, they often rely on a convenient fiction – rational individuals who make self-interested decisions that maximize their returns.

当然，现实比这一简单的想法要混乱一些。以彩票为例。美国低收入家庭每年平均花费 411 美元购买乐透彩票。与此同时，约有 40% 的家庭在紧急情况下很难找到 400 美元。不足为奇的是，这 40% 的家庭就是在乐透彩票上花费 400 多美元的低收入家庭。

Reality, of course, is a bit messier than this neat idea. Consider, for example, the lottery. The average low-income household in the United States spends $411 on lotto tickets every year. At the same time, around 40 percent of all households struggle to find $400 in an emergency. Unsurprisingly, this 40 percent is made up of the same low-income households who spend just over $400 on lottery tickets.

这种行为合理吗？很难说。但也并非不合逻辑。如果你靠一份薪水过活，你不可能有足够的钱购买必需品，更不用说度假等奢侈品了。玩彩票的机会虽然渺茫，但也比没有办法强，期望靠它来获得富人们认为理所当然的好东西。

Is this behavior rational? Hardly. But it’s not illogical, either. If you’re living from one paycheck to the next, you’re unlikely to have enough money for essentials, let alone luxuries like vacations. Playing the lottery is a long shot, but it beats the alternative – not having any shot at getting the good stuff wealthier folks take for granted.

从中得出的关键信息在于：个人经验是财务决策的驱动力。

The key message in this blink is: Personal experience drives financial decision-making.

这类非理性的选择比你想象的更常见。经济学家 Ulrike Malmendier 和 Stefan Nagel 在 2006 年进行了一项研究。他们梳理了《消费者财务状况调查》（Survey of Consumer Finances）50 年来的数据--这是一个长期研究美国人如何理财的项目。马尔门迪尔和纳格尔希望找出决定人们如何投资自己的钱的因素。

These kinds of irrational calls are more common than you might think. Take it from a 2006 study by economists Ulrike Malmendier and Stefan Nagel. They combed through 50 years of data compiled by the Survey of Consumer Finances – a long-running research project that examines what Americans do with their money. Malmendier and Nagel wanted to find out what determines how people invest their money.

他们的答案是什么？投资者年轻时的经济状况。换句话说，个人经历决定了我们对风险的态度。就像买乐透彩票一样，这不是经济学教科书中的那种理性，但却符合直觉逻辑。

Their answer? What the economy was doing when the investors were young adults. Personal history, in other words, determines our attitude to risk. Like buying lotto tickets, this isn’t the kind of rationality found in economics textbooks, but it is intuitively logical.

举例来说，如果投资者在十多岁到二十多岁之间通货膨胀率较高，那么他们在以后的生活中就不太可能投资债券。与此相反，如果在这些成长时期通货膨胀率较低，那么随着年龄的增长，投资者会乐于继续将资金投入债券--无论通货膨胀率是否会随之增长。

If inflation was high between investors’ late teens and early twenties, for example, they were highly unlikely to invest in bonds later in life. If inflation was low during these formative years, by contrast, investors were happy to continue to put their money into bonds as they grew older – no matter if inflation grew along the way.

类似的模式也适用于股票。如果在成年早期股市表现良好，投资者就会继续投资；如果在同一年龄段股市表现疲软，投资者就会回避。

A similar pattern holds for stocks. If the stock market was doing well in early adulthood, investors went on to invest in it; if it was weak at the same age, they avoided it.

假设你出生于 1970 年。在你十多岁到二十多岁之间，标准普尔 500 指数上涨了十倍。凡是把钱投入该股票上市公司的人都赚得盆满钵满。1950 年出生的人对市场的体验则截然不同，在他们的一生中，市场几乎处于休眠状态。重要的是，即使市场本身发生了变化，投资与否的决定也没有改变，这表明现实世界的证据未能改变人们早年形成的直觉决定。

Say you were born in 1970. Between your mid-teens and early twenties, the S&P 500 increased ten-fold. Anyone who put their money into companies listed in that stock made a killing. People born in 1950 had a very different experience of the market, which was pretty much dormant during this period in their lives. Vitally, decisions to invest or not didn’t change even when the market itself did, suggesting that real-world evidence failed to change gut decisions formed early on in life.

4, The economic concepts we use today are still historical infants. 

[ 我们今天使用的经济概念从历史上看还是小儿科 ]

宠物贵宾犬和它的野生祖先长得并不像，而它们的祖先又和狼没有太大区别。

A toy poodle doesn’t look much like its wild ancestors, who, in turn, weren’t all too different from wolves.

这本不应该让我们感到惊讶--今天的狗种背后有着上万年的驯化历史。然而，当狗主人发现松鼠或猫时，往往会对宠物本能的嗜血反应感到惊讶。事实证明，十万年的驯化并没有完全根除这些根深蒂固的野性。

This shouldn’t surprise us – today’s dog breeds have a ten-thousand-year history of domestication behind them. And yet dog owners are often surprised at the instinctual, bloodthirsty responses of their pets when they spot a squirrel or a cat. Ten millennia, it turns out, haven’t completely eradicated these deep-rooted wild traits.

狗的驯化与金钱心理学有什么关系呢？事实上，关系可大了。

What does the domestication of dogs have to do with the psychology of money, though? Quite a lot, actually.

这里的关键信息是：我们今天使用的经济概念从历史上看还很幼稚。

The key message in this blink is: The economic concepts we use today are still historical infants.

为什么我们这么多人不善于处理金钱？其中一个答案是，从整体上看，它是很新的事物。

Why are so many of us so bad at handling money? One answer is that it’s pretty new in the grand scheme of things.

公元前 600 年左右，吕底亚--今天土耳其境内的一个铁器时代王国--的阿利亚特斯国王铸造了自己的硬币，这才发行了第一种货币。与更复杂的经济概念相比，这还不算什么。

The first currency was only issued around 600 BC, when King Alyattes of Lydia – an Iron-Age kingdom in today’s Turkey – minted his own coins. And that’s nothing compared to more complex economic concepts.

就拿退休来说吧。第二次世界大战前，大多数美国人工作到死。当然，那时的预期寿命较低--即便如此，在 20 世纪 40 年代，65 岁以上的男性中仍有半数参与劳动力市场。

Take retirement. Before the Second World War, most Americans worked until they died. Life expectancy was lower back then, of course – and even then, half of all men above the age of 65 still participated in the labor market in the 1940s.

二战后，随着社会保障制度的引入，情况开始发生变化，但对大多数美国工人来说，退休仍是一个遥不可及的理想，直到 20 世纪 80 年代--在这 10 年中，经通货膨胀调整后，平均每月的社会保障支票超过了 1,000 美元。在此之前，只有少数特权阶层有能力在 60 多岁时辞去工作。

Things started changing with the introduction of Social Security after World War II, but retirement remained an unattainable ideal for most American workers until the 1980s – the decade in which the average monthly Social Security check rose above $1,000, adjusted for inflation. Before that, only a privileged minority could afford to quit work in their mid-sixties.

这意味着，我们在当今世界使用的最基本的经济概念之一还不到两代人的历史。401(k) --退休资金的主要筹措方式 --甚至直到 1978 年才出现，而罗斯 IRA 退休计划直到 1998 年才推出！

That means that one of the most basic economic concepts we use in today’s world is less than two generations old. The 401(k) – the principle method of funding retirement – didn’t even exist until 1978, while the Roth IRA retirement scheme was only introduced in 1998!

其他关键理念和做法的历史也并不悠久。对冲基金在四分之一世纪前才真正兴起，而指数基金只有 50 年的历史。就连抵押贷款、汽车贷款和信用卡等消费债务--美国经济增长的主要驱动力之一--也是在 1944 年美国大兵法案（GI Bill）使普通美国人更容易借到钱之后才变得普遍的。

Other key ideas and practices aren’t much older. Hedge funds only really took off a quarter of a century ago, and index funds are just 50 years old. Even consumer debt like mortgages, car loans, and credit cards – one of the primary drivers of economic growth in the United States – only became commonplace after the GI Bill made it easier for average Americans to borrow money in 1944.

如果我们不擅长财务规划和决策，那不是因为我们疯了，而是因为我们是新手！

If we’re bad at financial planning and decision-making, it’s not because we’re crazy – it’s because we’re greenhorns!

5, Luck plays a bigger role in financial successes than you might think.

[ 运气在财务成功中的作用比你想象的要大 ]

几年前，笔者曾问诺贝尔经济学奖得主罗伯特-席勒，关于投资，他最想知道什么是无法完全知晓的。席勒的回答是："运气在成功结果中的确切作用"。

A couple of years back, the author asked the Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Schiller what he’d most like to know about investing that can’t be fully known. Schiller’s answer: the “exact role of luck in successful outcomes.”

运气是一个棘手的话题。很少有投资者和企业家会否认运气在理论上的作用，但很难量化运气在多大程度上导致一家公司成功，而另一家公司失败。我们还倾向于认为，将他人的成功归因于不可预见的机遇是不礼貌的。因此，在财务决策时，我们往往会忽视运气的作用。这是一个错误。

Luck is a tricky topic. Few investors and entrepreneurs would deny that it plays a role in theory, but it’s hard to quantify the extent to which it’s responsible for one firm prospering – and another failing. We also tend to think that it’s rude to attribute others’ successes to blind chance. As a result, we often end up ignoring the role of luck when it comes to financial decision-making. That’s a mistake.

以下是关键信息： 运气在财务成功中的作用比你想象的要大。

Here’s the key message: Luck plays a bigger role in financial successes than you might think.

经济学家巴什卡尔-马祖姆德认为，兄弟姐妹两人的收入通常很接近，这比身高或体重对收入的影响关系更大。换句话说，如果你的兄弟既富有又高大，那么你富有的可能性比你高大的可能性更大。

According to the economist Bhashkar Mazumder, the income of two siblings is more closely correlated than either height or weight. Put differently, if your brother is rich and tall, you’re more likely to be rich than you are to be tall.

这种相关性很容易解释。来自同一家庭的兄弟姐妹很可能享有同样的特权和机会。父母送一个孩子上好学校，通常也会送他的弟弟上好学校。不过，如果找到一对富有的兄弟，你会发现两个人都不相信马祖德的研究适用于他们的家庭。

It’s easy enough to explain this correlation. Siblings from the same household are likely to enjoy the same privileges and opportunities. Parents who send one child to a good school usually do the same for his brother. Find a pair of rich brothers, though, and you’ll find two people who don’t believe that Mazumder’s study applies to their family.

这就是人类的心理。我们通常会低估或高估运气在结果中的作用。如果我们做得好，那是因为我们努力了；如果我们失败了，那是因为我们运气不好。但如果其他人失败了，我们就不会这么慷慨了。在这种情况下，我们不会把失败归咎于运气不好，而是归咎于懒惰或目光短浅等性格缺陷。

That’s down to human psychology. We typically either underestimate or overestimate the role of luck in outcomes. If we do well, it’s because we worked hard; if we fail, it’s because we were unlucky. If others fail, though, we aren’t nearly as generous. In those cases, we don’t attribute failure to bad luck but to character flaws like laziness or shortsightedness.

不幸的是，我们的文化沉迷于成功，只以成败论英雄。《福布斯》不会歌颂那些因为运气不好、市场突然大跌而破产的杰出投资者。不过，《福布斯》倒是会歌颂那些运气好、赚了大钱的二流或鲁莽投资者。

Our culture, which is obsessed with success, isn’t much help here, unfortunately. Forbes doesn’t celebrate brilliant investors who went broke because they were unlucky and the market took a sudden nosedive. It does celebrate second-rate or reckless investors who got lucky and made a fortune, however.

这让我们陷入了困境。说到金钱，我们不仅需要弄清什么可行，什么不可行，我们还需要一种将随机性纳入模型的方法。我们可能无法实现席勒的梦想，也无法解释偶然性的 "确切作用"，但正如我们将会看到的，我们可以掌握运气。

That leaves us in a pickle. When it comes to money, we don’t just need to figure out what works and what doesn’t – we also need a way of building randomness into our models. We might not be able to fulfill Schiller’s dream and account for the “exact role” of chance, but – as we’ll see – we can get a handle on luck.

6, Focusing on broad patterns rather than specific cases can help you make better calls.

[ 关注广泛的模式而不是具体的案例可以帮助你做出更好的判断。 ]

比尔-盖茨曾经说过，成功是一个糟糕的老师。

Bill Gates once quipped that success is a lousy teacher.

在盖茨看来，成功会让聪明人忽视运气的作用，进而让他们认为自己不会输。矛盾的是，这是确保你输掉比赛的万无一失的方法。

As Gates sees it, success tricks smart people into overlooking the role of luck, which in turn makes them think that they can’t lose. Paradoxically, that’s a pretty surefire way of ensuring that you do lose.

那么，你应该如何将机会和运气融入你的理财行为中呢？那么，你不应该这样做：沉迷于具体个人的例子。当我们研究非常成功的人时，我们通常最终会挑选出异常值--那些改变了世界运作方式的亿万富翁--这可能会把我们引入歧途。

So how should you build chance and luck into your financial behavior? Well, here’s what you shouldn’t do: obsess over the examples of specific individuals. When we study highly successful people, we usually end up picking outliers – the billionaires who’ve changed the way the world works – and that can lead us astray.

这里的关键信息是： 关注广泛的模式而不是具体的案例，可以帮助你做出更好的决策。

The key message in this blink is: Focusing on broad patterns rather than specific cases can help you make better calls.

约翰-洛克菲勒是历史上最成功的企业家之一。当他开始建立自己的石油工业时，他遇到了一个问题。美国的法律不允许他做他想做的事。他的解决办法很简单--无视法律。事实上，他对法律惯例的漠视是如此之深，以至于一位法官说他的企业 "比普通小偷好不了多少"。

Take John D. Rockefeller, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history. When he started building his petroleum industry, he faced a problem. The laws of the United States didn’t permit him to do what he wanted to do. His solution was simple – ignore them. His disregard for legal conventions was so great, in fact, that one judge said his business behaved “no better than a common thief.”

洛克菲勒的成功塑造了我们对这种行为的看法。回顾过去，我们很容易赞美他的远见卓识，说他拒绝让过时的法律阻碍创新。但是，如果他失败了--我们还会认为洛克菲勒是我们应该学习的榜样吗？也许不会。充其量，我们会把他看作是一个不成功的罪犯，是他教会了我们什么是不应该做的。

Rockefeller’s success shapes the way we think about this behavior. Looking back, it’s easy to celebrate his vision and say that he refused to let outdated laws stand in the way of innovation. But what if he’d failed – would we still think that Rockefeller’s example is one we should follow? Probably not. At best, we’d see him as an unsuccessful criminal who taught us what not to do.

但归根结底，这两种结果之间的差别在于运气。这里或那里的一些不同判决，或者政治气候的变化，都可能改变洛克菲勒的命运。

But when you get down to it, the difference between these two outcomes is luck. A couple of different verdicts here and there, or perhaps a change in the political climate, might have altered Rockefeller’s fortunes.

更重要的是，好运是无法模仿的。即使你模仿沃伦-巴菲特（Warren Buffett）等人的每一步职业生涯，你也无法确保和他摇出一样的骰子。

More importantly, good luck is all but impossible to emulate. Even if you mimic every career step of someone like Warren Buffett, you can’t ensure the dice will fall the same way for you as they did for him.

因此，这里有一个替代方案：坚持分析成功和失败的模式。越是常见的模式，就越有可能适用于你的生活和财务决策。例如，一项又一项的研究表明，能够控制自己的生活结构的人比不能控制的人工作得更快乐。与少数超乎寻常的情况不同，这是一个广泛的观察结果，你现在就可以采取行动。

So here’s the alternative: stick to analyzing patterns of success and failure. The more common a pattern, the more likely that it’s applicable to your life and financial decisions. Study after study, for example, shows that people who control the structure of their days are happier with their work than those who don’t. Unlike the few cases of larger-than-life outliers, that’s a broad observation you can act on right now.

7, Envy can make you reckless.

[ 嫉妒会让你变得鲁莽。 ]

资本主义最擅长两件事--创造财富和嫉妒。

Capitalism is great at two things – generating wealth and envy.

就拿年薪 50 万美元的棒球新秀球员来说。从任何合理的标准来看，他都很富有。但是，如果他和迈克-特劳特（Mike Trout）这样的超级巨星在同一支球队打球，而后者的年薪高达 3,600 万美元--突然之间，他就对自己的收入不满意了。他想要别人拥有的东西。

Take a rookie baseball player who makes $500,000 a year. By any reasonable standard, he’s rich. But say he plays on the same team as a superstar like Mike Trout, who makes $36 million a year – suddenly, he’s not happy with what he earns. He wants what others have.

与此同时，像特劳特这样的高收入者会把自己与那些收入更高的人相比较。例如，要想进入2018年美国收入最高的前十名对冲基金经理名单，你必须在那一年至少赚到3.4亿美元。按照这个标准，即使是特劳特也是小巫见大巫。

Meanwhile, high earners like Trout compare themselves to those who earn even more. To make it onto the list of America’s top-ten highest-paid hedge fund managers in 2018, for example, you had to have earned at least $340 million that year. Even Trout is small fry by that standard.

从资本主义的角度来看，嫉妒在道德上并无不妥。但这是一个实际问题。

In capitalist terms, there’s nothing morally wrong with envy. But there is a practical problem.

关键信息是： 嫉妒会让你变得鲁莽。

The key message in this blink is: Envy can make you reckless.

什么时候才算真的应该满足了？问问拉杰特-古普塔（Rajat Gupta）就知道了。

When is enough enough? Just ask Rajat Gupta.

古普塔出生于印度加尔各答的一个贫民窟，靠着自己的努力，他成为管理咨询公司麦肯锡的首席执行官。2007 年退休时，他的身价已达 1 亿美元。

Born in a slum in Kolkata, India, Gupta worked his way up the corporate ladder to become the CEO of management consulting firm McKinsey. When he retired in 2007, he was worth $100 million.

他可以做任何事情。但古普塔并不满足。他想成为亿万富翁。

He could have done anything. But Gupta was envious. He wanted to be a billionaire.

2008 年，身为高盛董事会成员的古普塔得知，沃伦-巴菲特即将投资 50 亿美元，以维持高盛公司在金融危机期间的运营。在电话会议上听到这个消息 16 秒后，早在消息公开之前，古普塔就拨通了一位对冲基金经理的电话，买入了 17.5 万股高盛股票。

In 2008, Gupta – a member of the board of directors at Goldman Sachs – learned that Warren Buffett was about to invest $5 billion to keep the firm afloat during the financial crisis. Sixteen seconds after hearing this news on a conference call, long before it was made public, Gupta dialed the number of a hedge fund manager and bought 175,000 shares of Goldman Sachs.

这是内幕交易，完全违法。古普塔并不在乎，他只是轻松赚了 100 万美元。当检察官抓到他时，他已经在一连串的可疑交易中赚到了 1,700 万美元。这虽然没有让他成为亿万富翁，但也足以让他被判重刑。

This was insider trading and strictly illegal. Gupta didn’t care – he’d just made an easy $1 million. By the time prosecutors caught up with him, he’d racked up $17 million in a string of dodgy deals. It hadn’t made him a billionaire, but it was enough to earn him a hefty prison sentence.

这个故事的寓意是什么？嫉妒会导致错误的决策，而这些决策的成本远远高于你所能获得的收益。这样想吧： 如果你胃口大开，你会一直吃到吐。但呕吐比任何一餐都糟糕，所以你不会这么做。在餐桌上留下机会并不一定意味着你错过了什么--这往往是认识到，试图吞下所有东西会把你逼到后悔的地步。

The moral of this story? Envy drives bad calls, and the cost of those calls is a lot higher than the gains you stand to make. Think of it this way: If you have an insatiable appetite, you’ll eat until you’re sick. But throwing up is a lot worse than any meal is good, so you don’t do that. Leaving opportunities on the table doesn’t necessarily mean you’re missing out – it’s often recognition that trying to devour everything will push you to the point of regret.

换句话说，不要成为拉杰特-古普塔！

In other words, don’t be Rajat Gupta!

8, Amassing a fortune is easier than keeping hold of it.

[ 积累财富比守住财富更容易 ]

在 20 世纪初的美国，很少有比杰西-利弗莫尔（Jesse Livermore）更出色的股市交易员了。他出生于 1877 年，帮助建立了华尔街。30 岁时，他的身价已达 1 亿美元。

There were few better stock market traders in early twentieth-century America than Jesse Livermore. Born in 1877, he helped build Wall Street. By the age of 30, he was worth $100 million in today’s dollars.

就在 1929 年股市崩盘之前，利弗莫尔做出了他职业生涯中最正确的决定：他做空股票，赌股票会下跌。果然，市场损失了总价值的三分之一。当财富被清算，破产的投资者从办公室窗户跳下的消息不胫而走时，利弗莫尔却带着好消息回到了家中。他刚刚赚到了相当于现代的 30 亿美元。

Just before the crash of 1929, Livermore made the best decision of his career: he took a short position and bet that stocks would decline. Sure enough, the market lost one third of its total value. While fortunes were liquidated and news spread of bankrupt investors leaping from office windows, Livermore returned home to his family with great news. He’d just made the modern equivalent of $3 billion.

从此幸福了吗？不尽然。

Happy ever after? Not quite.

这则新闻的关键信息是：积累财富比守住财富更容易。

The key message in this blink is: Amassing a fortune is easier than keeping hold of it.

还记得我们说过成功是个糟糕的老师吗？在 1929 年大获全胜之后，利弗莫尔认为自己是不可战胜的。他下的赌注越来越大，却一输再输，直到倾家荡产。1940年，身无分文、负债累累的他在曼哈顿的一家俱乐部自杀身亡。

Remember what we said about success being a lousy teacher? Well, after his big win in 1929, Livermore thought he was untouchable. He placed larger and larger bets and lost big – again and again, until his fortune was gone. Broke and indebted, he took his own life in a Manhattan club in 1940.

事实证明，致富有时比守财简单得多。这就不难理解，为什么擅长前者的人往往在后者上举步维艰。

Getting rich, it turns out, is sometimes a lot simpler than staying rich. It’s easy to see why people who are good at the former often struggle with the latter.

赚钱需要冒险、乐观和勇气。守财则是完全不同的心理游戏。守财是担心自己所赚的一切都会被夺走。保持富有也意味着谦虚。1929 年之后，利弗莫尔认为自己是一个不会走错一步的天才。他最好能认识到运气的作用，认识到他的成功不可能无限期地重复。

Making money is all about risk, optimism, and courage. Keeping money is an entirely different psychological ball game. It’s about the fear that everything you’ve made could be taken away. Staying rich also means being humble. After 1929, Livermore thought he was a genius who couldn’t take a wrong step. He’d have been better off recognizing that luck had played its part – and that his success couldn’t be repeated indefinitely.

利弗莫尔的例子比比皆是，不过他们的故事通常没有那么悲惨。大约 40% 的上市公司随着时间的推移失去了全部价值。福布斯 400 富豪榜上的美国富豪每十年的更替率为 20%，这还不包括死亡和家族内部转让的情况。

There are lots of Livermores out there, though their stories aren’t usually as tragic. Around 40 percent of all publicly listed companies lose their entire value over time. And the Forbes 400 list of America’s richest people has a 20 percent turnover per decade, excluding cases of death and intra-family transfers.

那么，如何才能保住已经拥有的东西呢？一句话，坚持不懈。那些做得最好的企业家都能坚持很长时间而不倒下。他们的共同点是都有一个叫做恐惧的小东西。正如身家数十亿美元的风险投资家迈克尔-莫里茨（Michael Moritz）所说，当你害怕失败时，你就会用另一种眼光看待潜在的胜利。很少有收益大到足以让你冒失去一切的风险。当你持有这种观点时，你就更有可能做出更好的决策。

So how do you keep what you already have? In a word, perseverance. The entrepreneurs who do best stick around for a long time without wiping out. What they all have in common is a little thing called fear. As the multi-billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz puts it, when you’re scared of losing, you look at potential wins through a different lens. Few gains are large enough to justify risking losing everything you already have. And when you take that view, you’re much more likely to make better calls.

9, You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune.

[ 你可以有一半时间是错的，但仍然可以赚大钱 ]

根据海因茨-贝格鲁恩自己的说法，他年轻时并没有什么出息。1936 年，当他被迫逃离纳粹德国时，他不知道自己的人生该何去何从。

According to his own account, Heinz Berggruen didn’t show much promise in his youth. When he was forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1936, he wasn’t sure what to do with his life.

在加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校学习文学后，他做了一名记者，同时兼职艺术评论。1940 年，他花 100 美元买了一幅保罗-克利的小幅水彩画。从此，他开始了对现代艺术的终生热爱。

After studying literature at the University of California, Berkeley, he worked as a journalist with a sideline in art criticism. In 1940, he bought a small watercolor by an artist called Paul Klee for $100. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for modern art.

时至 20 世纪 90 年代，贝格鲁恩已成为最成功的艺术品收藏家之一。2000 年，他以 1 亿欧元的价格将自己的收藏卖给了德国政府。由于其中有大量毕加索、克莱斯、马蒂斯和布拉格的作品，这个数字远远无法与它的实际价值相提并论，据估计它的实际价值高达 10 亿美元。这是世界上最重要的收藏之一。

Fast-forward to the 1990s, and Berggruen had become one of the most successful art collectors of all time. In 2000, he sold his collection to the German government for 100 million euros. Given that it contained a large number of Picassos, Klees, Matisses, and Braques, that figure was nowhere close to its real worth, which was estimated at $1 billion. It was one of the most important collections in the world.

这个关键信息是： 你可以有一半时间是错的，但仍然可以赚大钱。

The key message in this blink is: You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune.

贝格鲁恩是如何收集到这些令人印象深刻的二十世纪最伟大的艺术家作品的？是技巧，还是运气？投资公司 Horizon Research 给出了一个更有趣的答案。

How did Berggruen amass this impressive collection of the twentieth century’s greatest artists? Was it skill, or just luck? The investment firm Horizon Research has a more interesting answer.

根据该公司的研究，所有伟大的收藏家都会做同一件事--购买大量艺术品。有些购买的艺术品被证明是很好的投资，尤其是如果收藏家长期持有的话。然而，大多数都是败笔。

According to the company’s research, all great collectors do the same thing – they buy vast quantities of art. Some acquisitions turn out to be great investments, especially if the collector holds on to them for a long time. The majority, however, are duds.

正如 Horizon 的报告所指出的，诀窍在于保留前者，直到投资组合的回报率（即整个收藏的价值）"与投资组合中最佳元素的回报率趋于一致"。

The trick, as Horizon’s report notes, is to keep the former until the portfolio return – the value of the entire collection – “converges upon the return of the best elements in the portfolio.”

伯格鲁恩的收藏有点像指数基金：他的风险被均匀地分散在各种投资中。他并不只是购买自己碰巧喜欢或欣赏的作品，而是买下所有能买到的东西，直到出现几个佳品。

Berggruen’s collection was a bit like an index fund: his risks were evenly spread across a wide range of investments. Rather than just buying pieces he happened to like or admire, he bought everything he could get his hands on and waited until a few winners emerged.

这一策略适用于所有投资。这就是 "长尾效应"--少数事件占大多数结果的趋势。这个原理背后有很多复杂的数学知识，但归纳起来其实很简单。基本上，当你做对了几件事，你就能承受更多的错误。失败是不可避免的，真正重要的是成功的性质。换句话说，当你拥有一幅毕加索的作品时，你就不必担心收藏中的 99 幅次品。

This strategy applies to all investments. Call it the long tail – the tendency of a small number of events to account for the majority of outcomes. There’s a lot of complicated math behind this principle, but it’s simple enough when you boil it down to the essentials. Basically, when you get a few things right, you can afford to get more things wrong. Failure is inevitable; what really matters is the nature of your successes. Put differently, when you’re sitting on one Picasso, you don’t have to worry about the 99 duds in your collection.

10, Final summary [总结]

本文关键信息：

现实世界中的财务决策要比经济学教科书中的混乱得多。很多决策--比如在你身无分文的时候买乐透彩票--都不是理性的，但它们确实有自己的道理。投资选择也是如此，其驱动力往往是人们成年早期的经济成长经历，而不是对当前市场状况的冷静评估。简而言之，理财需求与心理因素息息相关。那么，最好的办法是什么呢？好吧，接受运气在成功中扮演的角色，学会害怕失去你已经拥有的东西，并对冲你的赌注。

The key message in these blinks:

Financial decision-making is a lot messier in the real world than it is in economics textbooks. Lots of decisions – like buying lotto tickets when you’re broke – aren’t rational, but they do make sense in their own way. The same goes for investment choices, which are often driven by people’s formative experiences of the economy in early adulthood rather than cool appraisals of current market conditions. Put simply, financial calls are entangled with psychological factors. So what’s the best way forward? Well, accept that luck plays a role in success, learn to fear losing what you already have, and hedge your bets.

接下来读什么？《行为差距》，卡尔-理查兹著

这篇文章揭示了人们做出财务决策的一些奇特方式。尽管这些行为在人类心理中根深蒂固，但这并不意味着你不能学会做出正确的决定。

What to read next: The Behavior Gap, by Carl Richards

These blinks have illuminated some of the curious ways in which people go about making financial decisions. But although these behaviors have deep roots in the human psyche, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn to make the right calls.

听理财顾问卡尔-理查兹（Carl Richards）一席话。多年来，理查兹看着聪明的客户一而再、再而三地犯同样的错误，他感到非常沮丧，于是开始制定一个万无一失的计划，帮助投资者不再做蠢事。想了解更多吗？那就看看《行为差距》吧！

Take it from financial advisor Carl Richards. Frustrated by years of watching otherwise smart clients make the same mistakes again and again, Richards set out to create a foolproof plan to help investors stop doing dumb things. Want to find out more? Then check out our blinks to The Behavior Gap!