編者按：本文來(lái)自微信公眾號(hào)易則投資（ID：yizefund）翻譯，原文作者：James Anderson，創(chuàng)業(yè)邦經(jīng)授權(quán)轉(zhuǎn)載

引言

詹姆斯?安德森(James Anderson)是Baillie Gifford的合伙人之一，也是該公司的旗艦基金蘇格蘭抵押貸款信托(Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust，下稱(chēng)SMT)的基金經(jīng)理。

安德森出生于1959年，本科畢業(yè)于牛津大學(xué)歷史系，后赴意大利和加拿大讀研，1982年獲得國(guó)際事務(wù)碩士學(xué)位。安德森于1983年加入Baillie Gifford，1987年成為合伙人，2000年開(kāi)始管理SMT，20年間為股東帶來(lái)了約1500%的回報(bào)。

安德森將于2022年4月30日從BG退休，所以這封信是安德森在BG的最后一封致投資人的信。

寫(xiě)了這么多年四平八穩(wěn)的信之后，請(qǐng)?jiān)试S我在這第22封也是最后一封信中直率一些。過(guò)去的20多年里我犯了很多錯(cuò)、做了很多誤判，但是我越來(lái)越相信，我最大的失誤是不夠激進(jìn)。坦率的說(shuō)，傳統(tǒng)投資管理的世界已不可挽回的破碎了。它需要新的思想，遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超過(guò)愛(ài)麗絲在夢(mèng)游仙境中所說(shuō)的“在早餐之前先想六件不可能發(fā)生的事情”。

一些信念

讓我開(kāi)頭先講一講我所相信的理念。無(wú)需多言，我的繼任者應(yīng)該對(duì)未來(lái)的幾十年中一直相信這些信念持懷疑態(tài)度。世界在變，我們也要變?，F(xiàn)在確實(shí)是一個(gè)告別的合適的時(shí)點(diǎn)。投資的世界在20世紀(jì)80年代中期發(fā)生了深刻的變化。由價(jià)值投資教父本杰明?格雷厄姆（Ben Graham）所開(kāi)創(chuàng)的、沃倫?巴菲特（Warren Buffett）所尊崇的和媒體所擁抱的價(jià)值投資理論，一點(diǎn)也不像愛(ài)麗絲的兔子洞(Alice 's rabbit hole)，能夠描述19世紀(jì)末的情況。為了說(shuō)明格雷厄姆所定義的十年利潤(rùn)翻倍的成長(zhǎng)股的世界發(fā)生了什么變化，讓我們看一看最近的一些數(shù)據(jù)：

我相信你們很多人能夠認(rèn)出來(lái)，這是亞馬遜（Amazon）的年度收入數(shù)字。這些數(shù)字還低估了亞馬遜的成績(jī)，因?yàn)榈谌綍?huì)計(jì)準(zhǔn)則比較保守。亞馬遜20多年的年復(fù)合增速高達(dá)41%。格雷厄姆等人更喜歡的自由現(xiàn)金流指標(biāo)，在2020年也高達(dá)310億美元。自從數(shù)字科技的出現(xiàn)，這種可持續(xù)的高速增長(zhǎng)模式和規(guī)模效應(yīng)越來(lái)越明顯，最早的典型案例是微軟（Microsoft），它在上市35年后仍然保持高增長(zhǎng)。

投資的道理就存在于這些極端情況。CFA灌輸給年輕人的是，沿著經(jīng)典的鐘形曲線(xiàn)（正態(tài)分布）你可以選擇一個(gè)風(fēng)險(xiǎn)與收益的點(diǎn)來(lái)符合你的投資組合，但這并不現(xiàn)實(shí)，因?yàn)镃FA既沒(méi)有接受當(dāng)今世界的高度不確定性，也不承認(rèn)回報(bào)的極端分布意味著尋找具有極端和可持續(xù)增長(zhǎng)特征的公司對(duì)于投資的核心意義。分心在平庸公司中尋找短期的微小機(jī)會(huì)是始終的誘惑。這種誘惑需要抵制。這需要強(qiáng)大信念。股價(jià)回撤是經(jīng)常的和嚴(yán)重的，回撤40%是常態(tài)。股價(jià)走勢(shì)圖看起來(lái)就是從左下到右上的平滑上升，但是當(dāng)你買(mǎi)入之后情況就不是如此了。

那我們?nèi)绾巫R(shí)別這些有杰出潛力的股票呢？我們?nèi)绾潍@得信念以使得復(fù)利魔法能夠發(fā)揮作用呢？剛好貝索斯（Jeff Bezos）卸任亞馬遜CEO，我們來(lái)回顧一下我們注意到什么、如何忍受波動(dòng)、哪些地方?jīng)]做好。

偉大的投資，通常具備以下特征：公司具有無(wú)限的增長(zhǎng)機(jī)會(huì)，從不自我設(shè)限；由創(chuàng)始人來(lái)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)公司；具有鮮明的經(jīng)營(yíng)哲學(xué)，通常是從第一性原理出發(fā)而獨(dú)創(chuàng)出來(lái)的。我認(rèn)為這些特點(diǎn)在早期的亞馬遜身上都是可以看得到的。讀了貝索斯1997年致股東的信，就能知道他是兼具野心和耐心的具有獨(dú)特思維的人。坦率的說(shuō)，我們當(dāng)初之所以沒(méi)有認(rèn)識(shí)到，不是因?yàn)闆](méi)有線(xiàn)索，而是因?yàn)槲覀冏陨淼木窒扌?。我們?duì)市場(chǎng)波動(dòng)太熟了，太過(guò)于追求短期業(yè)績(jī)，太過(guò)于看重回撤控制，很難成為堅(jiān)定的持有者。直到2005-06年左右，我們的投資才沒(méi)那么糟糕，能夠認(rèn)識(shí)到亞馬遜的潛力，并且能夠忍受各種波動(dòng)與噪音的干擾。干擾是非常多的，例如：亞馬遜股價(jià)在2006年從最高峰回撤46%；我漸漸習(xí)慣了，同行們?cè)陔娫?huà)會(huì)議上宣稱(chēng)亞馬遜是他們最喜歡做空的股票；他們特別不喜歡亞馬遜Prime會(huì)員計(jì)劃和服務(wù)計(jì)費(fèi)兩項(xiàng)業(yè)務(wù)的成本，服務(wù)計(jì)費(fèi)后來(lái)變成了AWS云服務(wù)業(yè)務(wù)。我們逐漸學(xué)習(xí)和理解亞馬遜，但是當(dāng)亞馬遜頭寸超過(guò)我們的10%持倉(cāng)限制時(shí)，我們多次被迫減倉(cāng)。這一點(diǎn)我要道歉，我認(rèn)為這種做法是有問(wèn)題的。最近幾個(gè)月我們對(duì)亞馬遜的熱情才稍微減了一點(diǎn)，亞馬遜被認(rèn)為是安全、可接受的價(jià)值投資標(biāo)的，創(chuàng)始人也不再擔(dān)任CEO了，雖然前路依然光明，但是我們擔(dān)心，創(chuàng)業(yè)第一天的那種激情沒(méi)有了。

時(shí)間框架，可能性，極度不確定性

著迷于長(zhǎng)期投資決策的原因數(shù)不勝數(shù)，這里就不一一描述。但是有一個(gè)看起來(lái)似乎異常重要的推論被忽視了。有效市場(chǎng)理論認(rèn)為，所有可得信息都包含在股價(jià)中了，只有新的信息才起作用。這被用來(lái)證明對(duì)企業(yè)盈利公告、宏觀(guān)經(jīng)濟(jì)新聞等消息的追逐是合理的。反過(guò)來(lái)，追逐短期回報(bào)的力量又加強(qiáng)了這一點(diǎn)。

到目前為止，這是一個(gè)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的批評(píng)。我們分享它，然后問(wèn)題就來(lái)了。如果你相信所有信息都體現(xiàn)在股價(jià)中，同時(shí)又認(rèn)為短期投資業(yè)績(jī)至關(guān)重要，這就留下了一個(gè)思考的空白。沒(méi)有明顯的根據(jù)來(lái)解讀未來(lái)。這聽(tīng)起來(lái)很抽象但其實(shí)不是。讓我們以特斯拉為例來(lái)說(shuō)明一下這個(gè)謎題。當(dāng)我們7 年前第一次投資特斯拉時(shí)，我們認(rèn)為，更確切地說(shuō)是觀(guān)察到，電池性能改進(jìn)和電動(dòng)汽車(chē)制造學(xué)習(xí)的規(guī)律和速度，在現(xiàn)實(shí)中很清楚了，在學(xué)術(shù)研究中也很好闡述了。從那時(shí)起，改進(jìn)的速度和對(duì)數(shù)據(jù)的信心一直在上升。這使得在投資允許的情況下，必然在某一天，電動(dòng)汽車(chē)將比內(nèi)燃機(jī)具有更高性能和更便宜，更不用說(shuō)更環(huán)保。當(dāng)15%以上的進(jìn)步速度面對(duì)2-3%的蝸牛速度時(shí)，超越就會(huì)發(fā)生。

既然特斯拉是西方世界唯一的大玩家，我們的投資決策就很簡(jiǎn)單明了。我們只需要聆聽(tīng)專(zhuān)家意見(jiàn)，然后等待。大部分投資者并不去聽(tīng)專(zhuān)家意見(jiàn)，而是聽(tīng)經(jīng)紀(jì)人和媒體的話(huà)，被恐慌買(mǎi)賣(mài)和很多做空者所迷惑。新聞?lì)^條告訴他們，下季度特斯拉的日子將不好過(guò)，馬斯克（Elon Musk）又口無(wú)遮攔。對(duì)我們而言，這是一種明顯的市場(chǎng)失效，為有耐心的投資人提供了極高可能性的高回報(bào)。太多的投資決策是基于邊際判斷。電動(dòng)汽車(chē)將勝出的可能性是越來(lái)越大的。我們不需要洞見(jiàn)，不需要聰明的模型來(lái)發(fā)現(xiàn)它，只需要耐心和對(duì)專(zhuān)家、對(duì)公司的信任。不確定性在別處，地理上的別處。考慮到中國(guó)市場(chǎng)的高度競(jìng)爭(zhēng)，我們對(duì)蔚來(lái)汽車(chē)的投資能否大獲成功或者能否存活，是完全不確定的。特斯拉的投資回報(bào)也要考慮中國(guó)市場(chǎng)，尤其是現(xiàn)在，尤其對(duì)于特斯拉的自動(dòng)駕駛雄心。這將改變特斯拉的經(jīng)濟(jì)狀況。盡管我們盡力去做，我們也不大可能預(yù)估出特斯拉在一個(gè)全新行業(yè)中勝出的可能性，也無(wú)法預(yù)估一旦勝出后現(xiàn)金流的精確結(jié)果。離奇的是，經(jīng)紀(jì)商、對(duì)沖基金專(zhuān)家和評(píng)論人士都聲稱(chēng)能夠解讀特斯拉的未來(lái)，并能給出一個(gè)精確的目標(biāo)價(jià)。也許他們都是天才吧。我們不是。我們要尊重和接受不確定性，努力找出極端上行可能出現(xiàn)的地方，然后耐心的觀(guān)察。

這不是增長(zhǎng)VS價(jià)值

特斯拉只是當(dāng)今時(shí)代投資的核心問(wèn)題的一個(gè)例子，一個(gè)至關(guān)重要的例子。投資的核心問(wèn)題，不是增長(zhǎng)還是價(jià)值的取舍，不是市場(chǎng)估值水平的高低，也不是2021年的經(jīng)濟(jì)增速或新冠疫情的進(jìn)展，而是理解變化、變化怎么發(fā)生的、發(fā)生了多少以及他們的影響。拒絕接受這一點(diǎn)，反映了對(duì)安全的超級(jí)渴望，也象征著被數(shù)學(xué)均衡所占據(jù)的經(jīng)濟(jì)思想出現(xiàn)了廣泛的危機(jī)。如果我們把注意力轉(zhuǎn)移去研究深刻的變化，那么就沒(méi)那么會(huì)相信投資有永恒的真理讓我們默認(rèn)為規(guī)則。危險(xiǎn)的呼聲不是“這次不同了”，而是拒絕承認(rèn)這個(gè)世界，以及作為其反映的投資，和以前不一樣了。唯一還有效的規(guī)律是，股票的長(zhǎng)期價(jià)值取決于其長(zhǎng)期產(chǎn)生的自由現(xiàn)金流。但是對(duì)于這些現(xiàn)金流將會(huì)是多少，我們只有最少的和最模糊的線(xiàn)索。在一個(gè)深刻變化的年代，還拿著短期PE倍數(shù)來(lái)判斷估值的人，將難免吃灰。

未來(lái)

未來(lái)的10年，將肯定出現(xiàn)比我們所見(jiàn)過(guò)的更加激蕩、更鼓舞人心、更巨大的變化。我很羨慕我的繼任者們所享有的機(jī)會(huì)和經(jīng)歷。即使在新冠疫情悲劇蔓延的2020年，已經(jīng)有很多跡象顯示新事物的到來(lái)。我指的不是為了克服疫情限制所出現(xiàn)的大量數(shù)字平臺(tái)，而是更激動(dòng)人心、更加重要的新生力量。讓我們的社會(huì)變得更好的可再生能源取得非凡成就，逐漸成為主流；合成生物學(xué)出現(xiàn)了可喜的成績(jī)，使得醫(yī)療創(chuàng)新成為一系列有益人類(lèi)的成果，而不是復(fù)雜的和令人沮喪的資源消耗。未來(lái)無(wú)限美好，對(duì)舊帝國(guó)的威脅迫在眉睫。如果不是參與了風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資（VC），我們很難在這些領(lǐng)域培養(yǎng)巨大的熱情。我們永遠(yuǎn)感激我們找到了在一級(jí)市場(chǎng)與那些具有非凡思想和能量的人互動(dòng)。坦率的說(shuō)，五年前我會(huì)對(duì)如今習(xí)以為常的接觸和機(jī)會(huì)感到驚訝。我們很幸運(yùn)。這是一種榮幸。我們的前董事會(huì)成員，約翰?凱（John Kay），教給我們很多東西，但其中最有價(jià)值的是迂回的作用。通過(guò)與富有遠(yuǎn)見(jiàn)的企業(yè)家和他們的公司打交道，我們尋求對(duì)于未來(lái)的洞察。通常我們是不知所措的、困惑的，而不是理解的。這就是我們的計(jì)劃。投資的結(jié)果只是思想和努力過(guò)程的最終結(jié)果。

我們需要保持古怪。事實(shí)上我們需要變得更加古怪，更加激進(jìn)。我們一直聲稱(chēng)，在管理SMT時(shí)，我們要向有幸遇到的杰出的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者們學(xué)習(xí)。如果可以的話(huà)，我想引用其中的兩位作為結(jié)尾。第一位是旗艦醫(yī)療投資公司創(chuàng)始人、Moderna董事長(zhǎng)的Noubar Afeyan。一年前的此時(shí)此刻，我可能需要詳細(xì)說(shuō)明Moderna的使命，但如今這是多余的了。我想引用的評(píng)價(jià)遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超出了Moderna和疫苗的范圍：

“讓我說(shuō)一些直白的話(huà)……為了取得非凡的發(fā)現(xiàn)，我們必須愿意擁抱不合理的建議和不合理的人，因?yàn)橥耆侠淼娜俗鐾耆侠淼氖履軌虍a(chǎn)生巨大的突破我是不相信的”。

沒(méi)有哪個(gè)行業(yè)比資產(chǎn)管理行業(yè)更加質(zhì)疑非傳統(tǒng)想法。我們需要從第一性原理出發(fā)重新構(gòu)建新理念。我們需要幫助創(chuàng)建擁抱非凡的偉大公司。顯然，沒(méi)有任何其他人比貝索斯能更好的展示和闡釋這一點(diǎn)。他在最近的、很遺憾也是最后的一封CEO信的結(jié)尾寫(xiě)道：

“我們都知道獨(dú)特性--獨(dú)創(chuàng)性，是寶貴的。我真正要求你做的是接受并現(xiàn)實(shí)的看待保持獨(dú)特性有多難！這個(gè)世界希望你是普通平常的，它有一千種方式驅(qū)使你這么做。不要讓它發(fā)生”。

我不認(rèn)為湯姆（Tom）和勞倫斯（Laurence）需要這個(gè)建議，也不認(rèn)為他們倆會(huì)忽略貝索斯先生的觀(guān)點(diǎn)。但是請(qǐng)幫助SMT變得更不合常規(guī)、更加獨(dú)特，因?yàn)橥顿Y界的壓力持續(xù)的拉扯著我們。

詹姆斯?安德森

2021年5月12日

Managers' Review

After many years of anodyne reviews perhaps some bluntness is permissible in this final and twenty second version. There’s much that I have misunderstood and misjudged over the two decades but my ever-growing convictionis that my greatest failing has been to be insufficiently radical. To be blunt:the world of conventional investment management is irretrievably broken. It demands far in excess of the canonical ‘six impossible things before breakfast’ that Alice in Wonderland propounds.

Some Contentions

But let me start by trying to set out what I do believe. Hopefully it doesn’t need saying that my successors should be suspicious of continuing to believe in these contentions for the next decades. As the world changes so should we. Indeed this is an appropriate point of departure. The investment world changed profoundly in the mid 1980’s. It resembles that most famously described by Ben Graham, the apostle of value investing, paid homage to by Warren Buffett and perpetually embraced by the media, as little as Alice’s rabbit hole described the reality of the late 19th century. To illustrate the change from the world in which a growth stock was defined by Graham as one able to double earnings in a single decade let’s look at some more recent figures:

I’m sure that many of you will recognise these numbers as the annual revenues of Amazon. They rather understate progress as the accounting for third-party fulfilment is conservative. But we still have a compound growth rate of 41% per annum for over two decades. For those, like Graham, who prefer the-bottom line then 2020 produced $31bn in free cash flow. This pattern of sustained growth at extreme pace and with increasing returns to scale has become more and more evident since the emergence of digital technologies as first exemplified by Microsoft (still growing after 35 years as a public company).

It is in these extremes that investing resides. Despite what the CFA foists on the young and innocent you cannot choose a level of risk and return along a classic bell-curve to suit your portfolio because that is neither accepting the deep uncertainty of the world nor acknowledging that the skew of returns is so extreme that it is the search for companies with the characteristics that might enable extreme and compounding success that is central to investing. But distraction through seeking minor opportunities in banal companies over short periods is the perennial temptation. It must be resisted. This requires conviction. The share price drawdowns will be regular and severe. 40% is common. The stock charts that look like remorseless bottom left to top right graphs are never as smooth and easy as they subsequently appear.

So how do we identify these stocks with extraordinary potential? How do we acquire the conviction to allow the compounding to work its magic? As Jeff Bezos steps down as CEO let’s look back at what we spotted, how we endured and what we failed to do for shareholders. The common factors that are most likely to recur in the narratives of great investments are that the company should have open-ended growth opportunities that they should work hard never to define or time, that it has initial leadership that thinks like a founder (and almost always is one)and that has a distinctive philosophy of business – almost always from independently thought through first principles. Now, I think that all these traits were identifiable in Amazon from the start. To read the initial shareholder letter of 1997 was to know that this was the ambitious, patient creation of a very special mind. To be frank our failure to recognise this was because of our own limitations not an absence of clues. We were simply too aware of market movements and too preoccupied with the terrible combination of short-term performance and fear of downside to be able to be committed owners.By 2005–6 we were less bad investors and could recognise some of the potential and endure more of the slings and arrows. Of those there were plenty: the share price fell 46% from peak to trough in 2006. I became used to peers at client conferences declaring Amazon their favourite short. They particularly disliked the costs of two projects – Prime and Amazon Elastic Compute. The latter became AWS. Gradually we learnt and understood. But we should apologise for our willingness to trim Amazon back repeatedly when our holding size approached 10% of assets.That was misguided. Only in recent months has our enthusiasm waned. Amazon is now seen as good value, safe and acceptable. It no longer has a founder CEO. We fear that in his inimitable terms it is no longer Day 1 in Seattle though the road ahead is still long and profitable.

TimeFrames, Likelihoods and Radical Uncertainty

The litany of reasons to be obsessed with long-term decision making is too long to describe here. But there’s an offshoot of it that seems unusually important yet neglected. It is inherent to the notion of efficient markets that all available information is incorporated in share prices. Only new information matters. This is used to justify the near pornographic allure of news such as earnings announcements and macroeconomic headlines. In turn this is reinforced by the power of near-term financial incentives.

So far this is a standard critique. We share it but there is a twist to come. If you believe that all information is built into the share price and simultaneously that it is near term investment outcomes that matter this leaves a vacuum of thought. There is no apparent rationale for deciphering the future.If this sounds abstract it’s not so. Let’s take a look at Tesla to illustrate the puzzle. When we first invested in the company seven years ago we thought,or rather observed, that the regularity and pace of improvement in battery performance and of learning in building electric vehicles was already clear in practice and well-elucidated in academic study. Since then both the pace of improvement and the level of confidence surrounding the data has risen consistently. This made it as close to inevitable as investing allows that at some point electric vehicles were going to be better and cheaper than the internal combustion engine – quite aside from environmental issues. That’s simply what happens when a 15% plus improvement rate meets a 2–3% snail.

Since Tesla was the only substantial Western player our investment decision was hardly demanding. We just had to listen to experts and wait. But most investors do not listen to experts. Instead they listen to brokers and the media, besotted as it is by fear mongering and the many short sellers. The headlines tell them that next quarter will be hard for Tesla and that Elon Musk is outspoken. To us this was a blatant market inefficiency offering an extraordinarily high likelihood of high returns to the patient. All too many investment decisions are marginal judgments. That electric vehicles would win had become intensely likely. We needed no insight, no clever model to spot it –only patience and trust in experts and the company. The uncertainty was elsewhere. It was elsewhere geographically – given the levels of competition in China it was profoundly uncertain that our investment in NIO would flourish or even survive. It was elsewhere in return calculations for Tesla itself. This particularly applies now and to Tesla’s autonomous driving ambitions. This could transform the economics of the company. But try though we do it seems implausible that we can estimate either the likelihood of success in a radically new endeavour nor the precise outcomes in cashflows should success emerge. To us it is bizarre that brokers, hedge fund mavens and commentators can claim to be able to decipher the future and assign a precise numerical target to the value of Tesla. Perhaps they are all geniuses. We are not. We should respect and endure uncertainty, try to identify where extreme upside might occur and observe patiently.

It’s Not Growth versus Value

Tesla is but an example, if a crucial one, of the central issue for investing in our times. It isn’t growth versus value, it isn’t the level of markets, it isn’t the economic growth rate in 2021 or the progress of the pandemic but it is understanding change, how it happens, how much happens and its implications. The refusal to embrace this is probably a reflection of the doomed desire for security but it is also emblematic of abroader crisis in economic thought that is preoccupied with the mathematics of equilibrium. But If we switch our attention to studying deep change then there is less temptation to believe that investing has eternal verities that we can default to as a rule book. It’s not ‘this time it’s different’ that is the cry of danger but the refusal to admit that the world, and its reflection that is investing, is ever the same. The only rhyme is that in the long run the value of stocks is the long-run free cash flows they generate but we have but the barest and most nebulous clues as to what these cash flows will turn out to be.But woe betide those who think that a near term price to earnings ratio defines value in an era of deep change.

The Future

There will almost certainly be more wrenching, inspiring and dramatic change in the next decade than we have ever seen. I’m very envious of the opportunities and experiences that my successors will enjoy. Even in the last year, amidst the tragedies of the pandemic, there have been hints of what is to come. I don’t mean the surge in digital platforms that helped to navigate the constraints of the pandemic but still more dramatic and important rising forces. From the extraordinary revolution that will transform our societies for the better in renewable energy becoming mainstream to the emerging wonders of synthetic biology to the possibility that healthcare innovation becomes a regular series of beneficial revolutions rather than a complex and frustrating drain of resources the potential is wonderful and the threat to old empires looms. It would have been hard for us to have educated ourselves in these areas of unashamed excitement without our involvement in venture capital. We are forever grateful that we have found our way to interact with the extraordinary minds and energies in the unquoted world. Frankly, five years ago I would have been amazed at the access and opportunities that we have come to take as normal. We are very fortunate. It’s a privilege. Our former Board member, John Kay, taught us many things but one of the most valuable was the role of obliquity. By engaging with visionary minds and their companies we are simply seeking insight into the world of tomorrow. Often we are overwhelmed and puzzled more than comprehending. That’s the plan. The investment outcomes are but the eventual outcomes of the mentality and process.

We need to remain eccentric. In fact we need to become more so and more prepared to be radical. We’ve always claimed to learn from the remarkable leaders we are lucky enough to meet in managing Scottish Mortgage. If I may I’d like to end by quoting two of them. The first is Noubar Afeyan, founder of Flagship health investors but also Chair of Moderna. A year ago I would at this point have needed to detail the purpose of Moderna but that is now delightfully redundant. But the comment I want to quote applies far beyond Moderna and vaccines:

“Let me say maybe something stark…which is that we have to be willing to embrace unreasonable propositions and unreasonable people in order to make extraordinary findings because the notion that utterly reasonable people doing utterly reasonable things will produce massive breakthroughs doesn’t compute to me”.

There is no industry more suspicious of the unconventional than fund management. We need to reinvent from first principles. We need to help create great companies that embrace the extraordinary. Plainly no one has been better at demonstrating and articulating this than Jeff Bezos. His recent, and sadly last, CEO letter concluded with a plea:

“We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable…What I’m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen”.

I don’t think Tom and Lawrence need this advice, or would neglect the views of Mr Bezos. But please help Scottish Mortgage become more unreasonable and more distinctive as the pressures of the investment world continue to pull at us.

James Anderson

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