第二部分聚焦於巴菲特成立合伙企業之前的五年黃金打工期（1951–1956），梳理了他先後任職於巴菲特-福爾克公司（Buffett-Falk & Co.）與格雷厄姆-紐曼公司（Graham-Newman Corporation）的五年。這是他個人投資回報率最為驚人的時期（年化復合增長率約60%）。通過對蓋可保險（GEICO）、洛克伍德 (Rockwood) 及費城裡丁煤鐵公司 (Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Corporation) 等八筆核心案例的復盤，揭示了巴菲特如何將“淨流動資產投資法”與“套利”手藝運用至極致。這段歷程不僅為巴菲特積累了“第一桶金”，更見證了他從一名定量的證券分析師向成熟資本配置者的華麗蛻變。
英文原文：I must have tried 20 different businesses by the time I got out of high school.
But it correlated business success with certain variables. And, you know, they tried grades in school, and they tried what your parents did, and they tried whether you went to business school, all those kind of things.
And they found it correlated best with the age at which you started your first business, got into business, that the younger you were when you did your first piece of business seemed to correlate best with later business success.
And to some extent, that’s sort of natural. It’s probably true that — that when you see it in athletics, you see it in music and that sort of thing.
英文原文：Picture Omaha in 1937, I was seven years old, and no air-conditioning, so the summers were hot and humid. People went out on their lawns at night just to try and cool off. And I got the idea that maybe I could sell them what you would call soft drinks and we call pop. So I went around to a bunch of gas stations and in these days every gas station had a cooler with very soft drinks in it. And it had a little opener on the side and something to catch all the bottle caps. So I went around and collected all the bottle caps for weeks. These various gas stations I collected eight thousand of them and I sort them all out and I saw that Coca-cola overwhelms everybody else. So I decided to hook myself up to him there.
My grandfather had a grocery store, so I went to my grandfather and I said how about giving me a deal on Coke so I can sell it around the neighborhood and he sold me at the rate of six bottles for a quarter and I went around and sold for nickle each and I sold out every time. And I had no inventory. I had no receivables. I had the best business I ever had.
But I made one mistake and I didn’t put the money I saved in the Coca-cola stock. And I rectified that mistakes up here later.
Since 1886, Jacob’s pharmacy, year after year after year until now, you’ve got one point eight billion eight ounce servings a day around world. And I joined the board in 1988, and you’ve got fewer shares outstanding now and you’ve gotten way more per capita and you’re gaining share around world. So those are the kind of business I like. We own four hundred million shares of Coca-cola stock, and we’ve never sold a share.
英文原文：If these seven business units had operated as a single company, their 1987 after-tax earnings would have been approximately $100 million - a return of about 57% on equity capital. You’ll seldom see such a percentage anywhere, let alone at large, diversified companies with nominal leverage. Here’s a benchmark: In its 1988 Investor’s Guide issue, Fortune reported that among the 500 largest industrial companies and 500 largest service companies, only six had averaged a return on equity of over 30% during the previous decade. The best performer among the 1000 was Commerce Clearing House at 40.2%.
With managers like ours, my partner, Charlie Munger, and I have little to do with operations. In fact, it is probably fair to say that if we did more, less would be accomplished. We have no corporate meetings, no corporate budgets, and no performance reviews (though our managers, of course, oftentimes find such procedures useful at their operating units). After all, what can we tell the Blumkins about home furnishings, or the Heldmans about uniforms?
Our major contribution to the operations of our subsidiaries is applause. Charlie and I have seen so much of the ordinary in business that we can truly appreciate a virtuoso performance. Only one response to the 1987 performance of our operating managers is appropriate: sustained, deafening applause.
英文原文：What does this have to do with management? It’s simple–to be a winner, work with winners.
Eddie understood that how he lugged bats was unimportant; what counted instead was hooking up with the cream of those on the playing field. I’ve learned from Eddie. At Berkshire, I regularly hand bats to many of the heaviest hitters in American business.
英文原文：But the interesting thing about those figures— and, actually, the figures go back before that, because the very best period was pre- the partnership days, because the amount I was working with was so small.
英文原文：You’ve said that you could return 50 percent per annum, if you were managing a one-million-dollar portfolio. What type of strategy would you use? Would you invest in cigar butts, i.e., average businesses at very cheap prices? Or would it be some type of arbitrage strategy? Thank you.
Warren：It might well be the arbitrage strategy, but in a very different, perhaps, way than customary arbitrages, a lot of it.
There are little fringe inefficiencies that people don’t spot. And you do get opportunities occasionally to do. But they don’t really have any applicability to Berkshire. Charlie?
英文原文：Yeah. Li Lu, using nothing but the float on his student loads, had a million dollars, practically, shortly after he graduated as a total scholarship student. He found just a few things to do. And did them.
英文原文：But I would try and know everything about everything small. And I would find something. And with a million dollars you could earn 50 percent a year. And that’s what I would be doing if I had a small amount of money and I wanted to make 50 percent a year, but I also wanted to just play the game. And you can’t do it if you really -” if you don’t find the game of interest, whether it’s bridge or whether-” you know, whatever it may be -” chess -” or in this case finding securities that are undervalued.
Warren: We paid 50 million dollars for half of GEICO in 1970s’, which turned out to be half of GEICO. We now own 100%, but 50% of 2 billion that we earned in the first quarter is a billion dollars which on a 50 million dollars investment, 20 for 1 in a quarter. That takes years to develop. The auto insurance policy which didn’t even exist 120 years ago by far is the largest item in the property casualty insurance business.
Ajit: The only thing I’d like to add is in addition to the underwriting profit,GEICO provides 29 billion dollars of float.
Warren: And that’s not unimportant when you paid 50 million dollars to get the business and it’s giving you 29 billion dollars to work with for nothing, and on top of that it gives you a billion dollars of profit in a quarter.
英文原文：Rockwood & Co., a Brooklyn based chocolate products company of limited profitability, had adopted LIFO inventory valuation in 1941 when cocoa was selling for 5￠ per pound. In 1954 a temporary shortage of cocoa caused the price to soar to over 60￠. Consequently Rockwood wished to unload its valuable inventory -quickly, before the price dropped. But if the cocoa had simply been sold off, the company would have owed close to a 50% tax on the proceeds.
The 1954 Tax Code came to the rescue. It contained an arcane provision that eliminated the tax otherwise due on LIFO profits if inventory was distributed to shareholders as part of a plan reducing the scope of a corporation’s business. Rockwood decided to terminate one of its businesses, the sale of cocoa butter, and said 13 million pounds of its cocoa bean inventory was attributable to that activity. Accordingly, the company offered to repurchase its stock in exchange for the cocoa beans it no longer needed, paying 80 pounds of beans for each share.
For several weeks I busily bought shares, sold beans, and made periodic stops at Schroeder Trust to exchange stock certificates for warehouse receipts. The profits were good and my only expense was subway tokens.
英文原文：So I went to the meeting, and nobody was there except one guy, and I was 24 and he was 29. Jay just gave me a lecture, or a lesson really I should say on the tax code. I could have gone to graduate school for years and never learned as much as he did.
英文原文：At the time, I had a significant portion of my limited net worth invested in P&R shares, reflecting my faith in the business talents of my bosses, Ben Graham, Jerry Newman and Howard (Micky) Newman.
This faith was rewarded when P&R purchased the Union Underwear Company from Jack Goldfarb for $15 million. Union (though it was then only a licensee of the name) produced Fruit of the Loom underwear. The company possessed $5 million in cash - $2.5 million of which P&R used for the purchase - and was earning about $3 million pre-tax, earnings that could be sheltered by the tax position of P&R. And, oh yes: Fully $9 million of the remaining $12.5 million due was satisfied by non-interest-bearing notes, payable from 50% of any earnings Union had in excess of $1 million. (Those were the days; I get goosebumps just thinking about such deals.
Subsequently, Union bought the licensor of the Fruit of the Loom name and, along with P&R, was merged into Northwest Industries. Fruit went on to achieve annual pre-tax earnings exceeding $200 million.)
英文原文：In 1965, two New England textile mills were the company’s only sources of earning power and, before Ken Chace assumed responsibility for the operation, textile earnings had been erratic and, cumulatively, something less than zero subsequent to the merger of Berkshire Fine Spinning and Hathaway Manufacturing. Since 1964, net worth has been built to $92.9 million, or $94.92 per share. We have acquired total, or virtually total ownership of six businesses through negotiated purchases for cash (or cash and notes) from private owners, started four others, purchased a 31.5% interest in a large affiliate enterprise and reduced the number of outstanding shares of Berkshire Hathaway to 979,569. Overall, equity per share has compounded at an annual rate of slightly over 15%.
英文原文：One interesting sidelight to the merger: Berkshire now has 1,146,909 shares outstanding compared to 1,137,778 shares at the beginning of fiscal 1965, the year present management assumed responsibility. For every 1% of the company you owned at that time, you now would own .99%. Thus, all of today’s assets - the News, See’s, Nebraska Furniture Mart, the Insurance Group, $1.3 billion in marketable stocks, etc.- have been added to the original textile assets with virtually no net dilution to the original owners.
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