Sir John Speaks
2014-08-12 15:52阅读：
（夕注：读《The Templeton
Touch》，找到了一篇采访他的旧文）
Sir John
Templeton
Interview with Sir John Templeton
By Eleanor Laise
4/1/2004
SmartMoney
Sir John Speaks --- He bought low during the Depression, sold
high during the Internet boom and made more than a few good calls
in between; Sir John Templeton,
dean of contrarians, tells us where to invest now
Spend five minutes in Sir John
Templeton's offices and you'll
learn a lot about the legendary value investor. It's not the
imposing portrait, the honorary degrees or even the certificate of
knighthood. It's the books. Crisis Investing shares shelf space
with Eat Right f
or Your Type. The Hand of God sits near Invest for Retirement and
Natural Capitalism. Several thick volumes occupy substantial real
estate on the top shelf. An investing bible? No -- it's the 1991
edition of the London Central Yellow Pages.
A 1934 Yale graduate and Rhodes scholar,
Templeton has a voracious
appetite for information. The small-town Tennessee native became
known as the Marco Polo of his Oxford class, thanks to a
round-the-world postgraduation jaunt. In his late 20s he opened his
own money-management firm and began to put international investing
on the map. His flagship Templeton
Growth fund has posted a 13.8 percent annualized
return over 50 years, well ahead of the Standard & Poor's 500's
11.1 percent.
Templeton's track record is full of prescient
moves. In 1978, when Ford was near bankruptcy, he was a buyer. When
everyone else piled into tech in 2000, he was a seller.
Though he now lives in Lyford Cay, a decidedly well-heeled
corner of the Bahamas, Templeton
maintains a surprisingly modest lifestyle. He tools
around at the wheel of a Lincoln Town Car. Orchids and
bougainvillea upstage his whitewashed home. It's the ideal setting
for a quiet retirement, but that's not
Templeton's cup of tea. Since
Franklin Resources bought his funds in 1992 for ＄440 million, he
has devoted most of his time to philanthropy. The
JohnTempleton Foundation gives ＄40
million a year to projects that explore the intersection of science
and religion.Templeton's longtime
philanthropic efforts earned the naturalized British citizen a
knighthood in 1987. In his spare time, he hunts for global
bargains, and at 91, he's clearly as curious as ever. As SmartMoney
sat down in his cluttered conference room, it was
Templeton who fired off the
first question: 'Have you written any books I can read?' Well, no.
But enough about us.
SmartMoney: How did a kid from rural Tennessee become a
pioneer of global value investing?
John Templeton: In Tennessee
I didn't meet anybody who owned a share of anything. At Yale there
were hundreds of boys from wealthy families, but not a single one
who was investing outside one nation. I thought that was just not
sensible. Surely they'd get better results if they searched
everywhere rather than limiting their search to one country. Then I
investigated the investment counsel profession and couldn't find
any investment counselor who specialized in helping people invest
outside America. So I saw a wide-open opportunity.
Q: In 1939 you bought ＄100 worth of every New York Stock
Exchange listed stock that was trading under ＄1 per share. There
were 104 names, and 37 were already in bankruptcy. Why did you do
it?
John Templeton: I was
sitting in my office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan when the
news came out that Hitler had invaded Poland. It was obvious within
a few days that it was going to lead to the Second World War.
During war, everything that was in surplus, and therefore
unprofitable, becomes scarce and profitable. Three years later I
had a profit on 100 out of the 104.
Q: What signs helped you see that the U.S. technology bubble
was about to burst back in 2000?
John Templeton: If you want
to have a better performance than the crowd, you must do things
differently from the crowd. Four years ago the crowd was piling
into tech stocks. The prices went sky-high. I sold my clients'
technology stocks, and sold a lot of them short. I have put these
philosophies into a simple statement: Help people. When people are
desperately trying to sell, help them and buy. When people are
enthusiastically trying to buy, help them and sell.
Q: That's a good way to look at it.
John Templeton: That's
mainly a joke.
Q: In 1992 you predicted that 'the next 10 years will be the
happiest period, and the most progressive,' with 'rapidly
increasing prosperity for both Europe and America.' Are you as
optimistic about the next decade?
John Templeton: Very few
people realize how fortunate we are to live in the most glorious
period in world history. There has been more progress in prosperity
than in any previous century. The Dow Jones Industrial Average
never went above 100 until a century ago. Now it's up to 10700, a
hundredfold increase in one century. Probably in the next century,
the increase will be equally great, if not greater. But I have to
say that we are starting from an unusually high price for shares,
not just in one industry, but in practically all industries and all
nations.
Q: What is your view of current U.S. stock valuations?
John Templeton: Over the
next five years, the chances are about 50/50 that the stock market
will be lower. There is a risk that stock indexes will go down by
over 30 percent or they'll go up 30 percent. Share prices are
remarkably high right now. The Nasdaq
Composite index is trading at 36 times next year's earnings and 95
times last year's earnings. That's high. For most of my lifetime I
found bargains one place or another below 12 times earnings.
Q: How does this environment compare with the market of 1972,
when the Dow regained its late '60s highs of around 1000 but didn't
break through that level again until 1982?
John Templeton: That was a
period of stock market optimism, which goes in cycles. There are at
least five of these cycles every century. The one in those years
you mentioned was a normal cycle. This one seems to be more
exaggerated. Prices in those years never went as high as they are
now.
Q: Are there any sectors in the U.S. that look cheap?
John Templeton: No. I wish
there were, but I can't find them. The answer is to play safe. And
playing safe means diversifying among nations, industries and types
of securities. At present I don't think anybody should have over
half their assets in common stock.
Q: And you believe that no one should have more than 50
percent of his or her portfolio in a single country?
John Templeton: Yes. And no
more than 25 percent in one industry.
Q: Do you think there is a real estate bubble in the U.S.?
John Templeton: Yes. Real
estate is very different from the stock market because it's so
local and separate in terms of type. But in many locations and many
types of real estate, prices are dangerously high right now.
And in real estate it's easier to say what's
dangerously high. You just look at what it costs to rebuild. Right
here in the Bahamas, I have recently seen people pay four or five
times for a house what it would cost to rebuild.
Q: Do U.S. bonds look more attractive than equities?
John Templeton: Compared to
the cost of living [measured by inflation], you can still buy
American bonds. But at present there are bonds of other nations
that seem safer. It's wise to invest in nations that do not have an
unfavorable balance of trade or a government deficit.
Q: Which countries seem the safest?
John Templeton: There are
not many. There are almost 200 nations on earth and about 150
different currencies, and most of them have problems even greater
than America's. But Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, New Zealand,
Australia and Russia don't have big problems.
Q: A few years ago you were buying STRIPs, or Treasury bonds
with the coupons cut off. Do you still like them?
John Templeton: I bought
STRIPs because the yield to maturity was about 10 percent better
than what you could get on Treasury bonds. But I found I did better
by changing from U.S. Treasury STRIPs to STRIPs of nations with
stronger currencies, like the ones we just talked about.
Q: Where do you think the U.S. dollar will go from here?
John Templeton: The chances
of the U.S. dollar going down in relation to the euro are no more
than 50/50. The euro has already gone up 47 percent in the last two
years. But the yen is up only 25 percent. Japan has put hundreds of
billions of dollars into buying American money. The quantities are
so great that that can't continue much longer. Japanese money is
likely to go up in the future.
Q: Are you concerned about inflation?
John Templeton: Long term,
because we have more and more democracies in the world, we're going
to have more and more inflation. Politicians who are willing to
spend too much are the ones who get reelected. Look back at
history. Inflation has averaged about 2 percent a year. Probably,
it will average somewhat more than that in the next century. But
from a short-range standpoint, there does not yet seem to be a
shortage of almost any product. Until there's a shortage, you're
not likely to see higher prices.
Q: What do you see as the biggest threat to economic recovery
in the U.S.?
John Templeton: We don't
need an economic recovery because we're already operating at a very
high level. The greatest threat to maintaining this level of
economic activity is debt. There's never been a time when people
worldwide, and especially in America, had such a high proportion of
debt. I think 20 percent of people who have mortgages on their
homes are likely to lose them in foreclosures. When a home goes
into bankruptcy, it's sold at auction. That pushes the price down
and affects the prices of other homes.
Q: Does the U.S. government's debt level worry you?
John Templeton: Oh, yes.
There has never been any government anywhere in the world that has
such a big deficit in the federal budget. And there's never been a
nation in history that had such an adverse balance of trade.
However, if you look at those debts and balance of trade as a
percentage of gross national product, they're bad, but not
unprecedented.
Q: What does that mean for investors?
John Templeton: It's one
more reason why this is a dangerous time to own stocks.
Q: Even foreign equities?
John Templeton: Yes. In my
long history I could always find some nation where people were
desperately trying to sell. Now I can't find a place where people
are trying desperately to get out of equities.
Q: So what do you think about the rush to invest in China?
John Templeton: The cycles
will be much wider and more frequent in China because of the lack
of information. Having said that, if you're investing, you should
put a fairly large part of your total assets in China because
within as short a period as 30 years, China is likely to have the
largest gross national product any nation has ever had.
Q: Is India as great an opportunity as China?
John Templeton: Yes. You
could say almost the same thing about India, except in terms of
speed. The improvement in India is wonderful but not as fast. But
the Indian market is up more than 80 percent in 12 months. That's a
danger signal. It means you're going to take a lot of risk that you
wouldn't have taken a year before.
Q: What's the world's best stock market now?
John Templeton: The best
answer is none. There are so many securities analysts working on
that question that the prices in different markets are less out of
line than normal.
Q: So an influx of information has made life difficult for
global value investors?
John Templeton: When I
became an investment counselor, there were only 17 security
analysts on earth. Now, in America alone, there are more than
32,000, and they do have an effect on prices by doing research on
where to find bargains.
Q: If you were starting out in the investing world today,
what would you do?
John Templeton: Play safe.
If you don't have your money in equities, it's very difficult to
find a place to put it. Gold has already gone up.... People also
tend to think it's safe to put your money in the bank. When I was
studying in the U.K., people swore that it was safe to put your
money in pounds sterling. But within a few years, sterling went
down from ＄5 a pound to ＄1.50 a pound because of the war. If gold
and bank accounts are no longer safe, where can you put it?
Diversify. Don't put too much in any one thing.
Q: What have you been buying lately?
John Templeton: I believe
there are fewer opportunities than I've ever seen in 91 years. In
the last year I've been using market-neutral hedge funds, whose
policy is to have always the same quantity of longs and shorts. I
have invested lately in two funds that are managed by people who
worked for me when I was in the investment business: Jane
Siebels-Kilnes' Siebels Multi-Fund and Mark Holowesko's Holowesko
Global fund. They aren't registered with the SEC, however, so
American stockbrokers can't sell them.
Q: After the corporate scandals of recent years, how can we
restore trust in the markets?
John Templeton: The answer
is comparison. When you're worried about those scandals, stop and
think, what nation would you feel safer in? At what time in world
history could you feel safer? I don't think you'll find any time
when the degree of information, the degree of honesty, is higher
than it is today.
Q: You don't think there's anything the government should do
to restore trust?
John Templeton: Yes. Keep
their hands off. It has been proven over and over that the best
regulation is free competition. Those that are not doing a good job
for the public get squeezed out. I can't think of any nation where
the quantity of regulation is already not too high.
Q: A couple of days ago, Franklin Resources, the firm that
bought your funds, was accused of participating in market-timing
arrangements. What's your take on the fund scandal?
John Templeton: Everything
I've just said applies double to that. Can you think of any
industry or any nation where there are fewer questionable practices
than there are in American mutual funds? I can't. If all the claims
in the news were added up, what would it cost a mutual fund owner?
One cent.
Q: You've lived here in the Bahamas for 31 years...
John Templeton: Yes. I've
found my results for investment clients were far better here than
when I had my office in 30 Rockefeller Plaza. When you're in
Manhattan, it's much more difficult to go opposite to the
crowd.
