英文早读第48篇，选自巴菲特年度信，友才翻译。

The Usual Prediction
**常规预测”“

I am certainly not going to predict what general business or the stock market are going to do in the next year or two, since I don't have the faintest idea.
我当然不是去预测商业或者股市在接下来一年或两年走势，我也没有一点主意。

I think you can be quite sure that over the next ten years, there are going to be a few years when the general market is plus 20% or 25% a few when it is minus on the same order, and a majority when it is in between. I haven't any notion as to the sequence in which these will occur, nor do I think it is of any great importance for the long-term investor. If you will take the first table on page 3 and shuffle the years around, the compounded result will stay the same. If the next four years are going to involve, say, a +40%, -30%, +10% and -6%, the order in which they fall is completely unimportant for our purposed as long as well all are around at the end of the four years. Over a long period of years, I think it likely that the Dow will probably produce something like 5% per year compounded from a combination of dividends and market value gain. Despite the experience of the last decade, anyone expecting substantially better than that from the general market probably faces disappointment.
我认为你可以相当确定在接下来数十年，会有一些年大盘上涨20%或25%，一些年下跌同样比例，大部分年份介于两者之间。关于他们发生的次序我没有任何预测，我也不认为他对于长期投资者是重要的。如果你取第3页第一张表，并且把年份打乱，复合后的结果仍然相同。如果接下来四年表现是+40%，-30%，+10%和-6%，他们落在什么样的顺序对我们的目的完全不重要，只要四年后我们还在。经过长期一些年，我认为似乎道琼斯指数将会产生每年复合约5%的增长，整合分红和市值增长。尽管有过去十年的经历，任何人希望表现大幅优于大盘将会面临失望。

Our job is to pile up yearly advantages over the performance of the Dow without worrying too much about whether the absolute results in a given year are a plus or a minus. I would consider a year in which we were down 15% and the Dow declined 25% to be much superior to a year when both the partnership and the Dow advanced 20%.
我们的工作是年复一年累积优于道琼斯指数的表现而不是过多担心在某一年份绝对结果是正是负。我更认为我们下跌15%而道琼斯指数下跌25%的年份比我们和道琼斯指数都上涨20%的年份好很多。

For the reasons outlined in our method of operation, our best years reletive to the Dow are likely to be in declining or static markets. Therefore, the advantage we seek will probably come in sharply varying amounts. There are bonds to be years when we are surpassed by the Dow, but if over a long period we can average ten percentage points per year better than it, I will feel the results have been satisfactory.
因为在我们运作方法中概述的理由，我们最好的年份相比于道琼斯指数似乎是下跌或稳定的市场。因此，我们寻求的领先将可能会相差巨大。会有有限的年份被道琼斯指数超越，但是如果经历较长时期，我们可以平均每年领先道琼斯指数10个百分点，我对这个结果很满意。

89.certainly：当然；肯定；确定
90.shuffle：洗牌；拖着脚走；坐立不安；把（纸张等）变化位置；打乱次序