经济学人 | 股市的黄金时代已经离我们远去？

每日双语经济学人 · 公众号 · · 2024-05-28 08:00

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背景介绍：

海外的股市最近涨太多了。从2023年10月到现在，美国股市已经上涨了21%。不仅仅是美股，欧洲股市也迎来了两年来的新高，印度经济的乐观情绪也推动了股市的上涨。就连一直停滞不前的日本股市，也终于突破了1989年的水平。从目前的市场趋势来看，股市的黄金时代是否还在？

How high can markets go?

股市能涨到多高？

A golden age for stockmarkets is drawing to a close

股市的黄金时代即将结束

Stockmarkets tend to rise gradually; recently they have soared. American stocks are up by 21% since the end of October and stand roughly 5% above their vertiginous peak in January 2022. On February 22nd Europe’s equities set a new record for the first time in two years.

股市通常是逐步上涨的，近年却是一路狂飙。自去年10月底以来，美国股市上涨了21%，比2022年1月令人目眩的峰值还要高出约5%。 2月22日，欧洲股市两年来首次创下新高。

India has been enjoying a multi-year boom as optimism about its economy abounds. Even Japanese stocks—a byword for stagnation —have at last exceeded the level they reached in 1989 before a decades-long slump. It has been an extraordinary run. Since 2010, the S&P 500 index of American stocks has returned 11% a year in real terms.

而在印度，投资者对经济的乐观情绪已经令股市连涨了好几年。就连被视为“停滞”代名词的日本股市也终于超过了1989年的水平（那一年之后它便经历了长达数十年的低迷）。这一轮上涨非同寻常。自2010年以来，美股标普500指数的实际年回报率达到了11%。

These profits are all the more striking given what markets have had to contend with. The age of free money has been followed by two years of interest-rate rises—and even now bond investors are betting against imminent cuts.

鉴于市场遭遇了一系列麻烦，这样的利润水平愈显惊人。廉价资本时代之后是两年的利率上涨——即使到了现在债券投资者还在押注利率短期内不会下调。

A trade war is raging between America and China; actual wars are raging in Ukraine, the Middle East and parts of Africa. Around the world, governments are turning away from free markets and globalisation in favour of industrial policy and protectionism. If all that has not extinguished this rally, whatever will?

中美贸易战正酣，乌克兰、中东和非洲部分地区则在真枪实弹地激战。纵观全球，各国政府正在放弃自由市场和全球化，转而支持产业政策和贸易保护主义。如果这一切都没能压制股市的这波反弹，那还有什么能做到呢？

One conclusion might be that a bubble is waiting to pop, especially in America. On Wall Street, valuations—the multiple by which profits are scaled up—are on average 80% as high as they were during the dotcom mania of the late-1990s and 90% as high as they climbed during 2021, before rock-bottom interest rates rose.

一个可能的结论是，泡沫早晚会破裂，尤其是在美国。在华尔街，市值（利润的倍数）平均而言达到了上世纪90年代末互联网狂热期的80%，以及2021年（利率触底反弹之前）的90%。

Similar extremes are also to be seen in other measures, including concentration (the share of the stockmarket that is made up by the top firms) or value spreads (the valuation of the most expensive companies compared with the cheapest).

类似的极端情况还体现在其他指标上，比如集中度（少数头部企业所占的股市份额）或价值差（估值最高与最低公司之间的差距）等。

The value of the top 10% of American firms as a proportion of the whole market has not been as high since the crash that was one cause of the Depression in the 1930s. And don’t forget the frothiest corner of the financial markets: bitcoin is trading around $60,000 again, just shy of its peak in 2021.

美国前10%公司的价值占整个市场的比例非常之高，仅次于上世纪30年代股市暴跌前的水平，那次暴跌正是大萧条的成因之一。金融市场中泡沫最严重的一块也不能不提：比特币的交易价格重回6万美元左右，仅略低于2021年时的峰值。

Yet there are also reasons to see markets’ exuberance as rational. As central banks all over the world tightened monetary policy at a pace not seen for a generation, many analysts warned about the danger of recessions and falling corporate profits.

不过，也有理由认为市场是理性繁荣。随着世界各国央行以二三十年来未曾见过的速度收紧货币政策，许多分析师警告称未来存在经济衰退和企业利润下降的风险。

At the start of 2023 Wall Street savants predicted that in the year to come America’s economy would grow by just 0.7%. In the event it achieved more than three times that amount. A broad range of firms are publishing strong results, including retailers, such as Walmart, and Japanese carmakers, such as Toyota.

2023年初，华尔街的专家们预测，未来一年美国经济的增长率只有0.7%。实际结果却是这一预测值的三倍多。包括沃尔玛等零售商和丰田等日本汽车制造商在内的一大批公司公布的业绩都很强劲。

The economy continues to defy gravity. A popular regular forecast of annualised American economic growth, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, stands at 3.2% for the first quarter of this year. Despite a slowdown in China—whose sagging markets are an exception to the global trend—the IMF has been nudging up its global growth forecasts, too.

经济仍然以无视地心引力的势头增长。亚特兰大联储定期发布的对美国经济年化增长率的预测广受认可，该预测认为今年第一季度美国的经济增长率为3.2%。尽管中国经济放缓（其股市是全球走势中的例外），国际货币基金组织也在小幅上调自己对全球经济增长的预测。

Adding to investors’ bullishness is their optimism about artificial intelligence (AI). This is not a ChatGPT-like hallucination . The event that propelled stocks into the stratosphere was the publication on February 22nd of earnings by Nvidia, which has an iron grip on the market for chips that are critical for training AI models.

此外，对人工智能（AI）前景看好也增强了投资者的信心。这不是 ChatGPT 那种幻觉。英伟达牢牢控制着训练AI模型所用关键芯片的市场，它在2月22日发布的财报让股市一飞冲天。

In October 2022, just before OpenAI released its now-celebrated chatbot, Nvidia earned around $3bn in gross profits each quarter, mostly from selling graphics cards to gamers. In the three months to the end of January 2024 Nvidia earned $17bn in gross profits while enjoying a margin of 76%.

2022年10月，就在 OpenAI 发布其如今广受追捧的聊天机器人 ChatGPT 之前，英伟达每个季度的毛利润约为30亿美元——主要来自向游戏玩家出售显卡。而在截至2024年1月底的三个月里，它的毛利润达170亿美元，利润率高达76%。

The company’s share price has climbed five-fold over that time, but its earnings have grown even faster. In other words the enthusiasm that has lifted Nvidia close to a stockmarket value of $2trn is not built on dotcom-like hype, but cold, hard profit.

在此期间，英伟达的股价上涨了五倍，但利润增长得更快。换句话说，推动英伟达市值升至接近两万亿美元的投资热情并非建立在类似互联网泡沫的炒作之上，而是建立在真金白银的利润上。

Equities could underwhelm in many ways. Perhaps AI-exhilaration will cause a dotcom-style bubble that pops. Another war or crisis could lead to a crash. Or prices may stagnate in a gentle bear market that takes years to reverse.

股市可能会以多种方式令人失望。AI 狂欢或许会引发像当年互联网泡沫一样的虚假繁荣，泡沫终会破裂。如果再来一场战争或者危机，股市可能崩溃；或者股价可能在温和的熊市中停滞不前，需要多年时间才能扭转。

Whatever the path to disappointment, in ten years’ time nobody will be repeating the obvious conclusion of today: that investors in equities—especially American ones—have enjoyed a golden age.

无论通往失望的大路是哪一条，十年后都不会有人再念叨今天这个显而易见的结论：股票投资者——尤其是美股投资者——经历了一个黄金时代。

(红色标注词为重难点词汇)

重难点词汇 ：

vertiginous [v ə r ˈ t ɪ d ʒə n ə s] adj. 令人眩晕的

stagnation [stæɡ ˈ ne ɪʃ ( ə )n] n. 停滞；滞止

经济学人 | 股市的黄金时代已经离我们远去？

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