泡沫盛宴，何时散场？ | 经济学人财经
1
Summer，女，QE在职，梦想能仗走天涯 翻译/音乐/健康
02 我们招人啦
2
英文部分选自经济学人20230701期财经版块
Can anything pop the everything bubble?
Risky assets are proving extraordinarily resilient to threats
注释：
For a certain type of investor, last year came as a relief. True, the losses were grim. But at least markets were starting to make sense. Over the previous decade, central banks had pumped out floods of new money to buy bonds. Interest rates were kept unnaturally low, or even negative. The result was an “everything bubble”, a speculative mania in which valuations surged everywhere from stocks to housing to baffling crypto assets. It was never going to end well, and in 2022 it didn’t: inflation killed off cheap money; the everything bubble popped; asset prices plunged. Some were even approaching rationality. A return to reassuringly dull investing—based on fundamentals, not hype—beckoned.
对于某一类投资者而言，去年是令人宽慰的一年。诚然，损失是惨重的，但至少市场开始逐渐变得合理。过去十年间，各国央行疯狂印钞，买入债券，为市场注入流动性，利率低到令人发指，甚至出现了负利率。结果就是所谓的“万般泡沫”：从股票到房地产再到令人费解的加密资产，所有资产的估值都在飙升。这样的投资狂热注定不好收场，2022年的情况也确实如此：通货膨胀终结了廉价货币；“万般泡沫”破裂；资产价格跳水。一些资产甚至开始接近合理估值。基于基本面而非炒作、无趣而安心的投资方式似乎回归在即。
注释：
If this sounds familiar, and you were one of these relieved investors, you may have found yourself wrong-footed by developments over the past few months. It is not just stockmarkets, though both in America and globally they have risen to within striking distance of all-time highs. It is that risky assets across the board have proved astonishingly resilient to seemingly disastrous news. An index of American high-yield (or “junk”) bonds compiled by Bank of America suffered a peak-to-trough loss of 15% in 2022. It has since recovered half that loss. So has a similar index for junk bonds in Europe. The housing slump already shows signs of petering out, even though global prices have fallen by just 3% from their peak, or 8-10% adjusting for inflation, after a boom in which they rose at their fastest rate ever.
如果你对这样的论调并不陌生，并且你是如释重负的投资者之一，那么过去的几个月很可能让你手足无措。尽管美国和全球股票市场都已接近历史高位，但走高的不只有股市：各个领域的风险资产，在看起来糟糕透顶的消息面前，纷纷展现了令人讶异的韧性。美国银行（Bank of America）整理的美国高收益（或“垃圾”）债券指数在2022年峰谷跌幅达15%，但目前已经恢复了一半；欧洲的垃圾债券指数也出现了类似情况。房地产已经有了止跌回升的迹象，虽然也没怎么下跌：以前所未有的速度攀上高位后，全球房价下跌了区区3%（排除通胀因素后为8-10%）。
注释：
The biggest surprise is how well even more speculative assets have held up. Bitcoin—once an emblem of the cheap-money era, seen by many as a digital token with no intrinsic value—has proved indestructible. Anyone who bought it before 2021 and held on is once again sitting on a profit, albeit just a fraction of that which they could have booked two years ago. Even sales of non-fungible tokens, records that represent pieces of digital media, were 70 times higher in 2022 than in 2020, at $1.5bn.
最令人惊讶的是，即使是更加投机的资产也表现得足够坚挺。比特币坚不可摧，尽管作为廉价货币时代的标志，它被许多人视为一种没有内在价值的数字代币。2021年之前买入比特币并持有至今的人都将再次躺赢，虽然若两年前就出手他们本可以赚得更多。即便是所谓的非同质化代币，也就是某种数字藏品，其2022年的销售额也达到了2020年的70倍，即15亿美元之多。
注释：Emblem: Anemblem is something that represents a quality or idea. 象征; 标志In other words, the everything bubble in risky assets seems to have survived the return of inflation, rising interest rates, war in Europe and the threat of recession. Can anything pop it?
One oft-mentioned candidate is liquidity, which is being drained from the financial system. The main exit pipes run to the Federal Reserve and America’s Treasury department. The Fed is sucking out $95bn a month by allowing some of its portfolio of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities to mature without reinvesting the proceeds. The Treasury, by one estimate, must sell $1trn of new debt in the summer to rebuild its cash buffers after Washington’s debt-ceiling stand-off.
收获提名最多的是流动性，金融体系中的流动性正逐渐干涸，“罪魁祸首”便是美联储和美国财政部。其持有的部分国债和抵押担保债券到期后，美联储将不再进行再投资，这等同于每月撤出950亿美元的流动性。据估计，两党打破债务上限谈判僵局后，财政部必须在夏季售出1万亿美元的新债，以重建其现金缓冲。
Most obviously, this depresses Treasury prices by increasing supply and removing the Fed as a monthly buyer. (Tellingly, government bonds are the one asset class to have barely recovered from last year’s shellacking.) By raising “safe” Treasury yields, this makes riskier assets relatively less attractive. It also means that more investors end up holding Treasuries than otherwise would have been the case, reducing their appetite to buy riskier assets, even if prices fall. The likelihood of a crash, and of it being severe, is therefore creeping up.
最显而易见的后果是，供应增加，而美联储的买入减少，美国国债价格将被压低。政府债券是唯一未能从去年的打击中缓过劲儿来的资产类别，原因不言自明。这样一来，“安全”的国债收益率走高，风险较高的资产吸引力相对下降。这也意味着更多的投资者将持有国债，即使高风险资产价格下跌，也提不起购买的欲望。因此，崩盘的可能性和严重性正在悄然上升。
Such a crash is certainly not what markets are betting on. In fact, the vix, a measure of expected stock-price volatility, often dubbed Wall Street’s “fear gauge”, has this year fallen to its lowest since before the covid-19 pandemic. Yet analysts at ubs, a Swiss bank, point out that this is less reassuring than it might appear at first glance. They find that the vix has fallen mainly because correlations between stocks are unusually low, meaning their movements cancel each other out. Should they start moving in lockstep, volatility could suddenly jump, which is what has tended to happen after past spells of low correlation.
崩盘显然不是市场希望看到的。事实上，衡量股市预期波动性的VIX指数（往往戏称为华尔街“恐慌指数”）今年跌至疫情以来的最低水平。瑞士银行瑞银（ubs）的分析人士指出，乍看起来，这可能是好兆头，但事实远非如此。他们发现，VIX指数下跌的主要原因是不同股票的涨跌并非高度关联，即不同股票的涨跌出现相互抵消的情况。如果涨跌步调开始变得一致，波动率可能会突然飙升，这也是渡过关联度低的时期后往往会出现的情况。
注释：
Meanwhile, as in any bubble, asset valuations have become maddeningly hard to justify. America’s stockmarket, where the earnings yield of the s&p 500 index of major firms is now roughly level with the Fed’s risk-free rate, is the most audacious example. But it is not alone. The ubs team analysed prices across credit, commodities, stocks and currencies, backing out an implicit assumption that the world economy would grow at 3.6% per year. That is a little more than its long-term growth rate, and around double its present one. Time to bet on a correction? Tempting, but perhaps more foolish than brave. Based on recent experience, everything bubbles can survive for an awfully long time.
同时，就像所有泡沫一样，资产估值的合理性难以自圆其说，让人抓狂。美国股市就是最大胆的极致：目前，标普500指数的收益率已经大致与美联储的国债无风险利率持平。无独有偶，瑞银团队在分析信贷、大宗商品、股票和货币价格时，倒推出支撑这些价格的假设，即全球经济每年将以3.6%的增长率增长。这一数据稍高于长期增长率，大概是当前增长率的两倍。所以是时候赌一把市场调整了？这的确让人心痒痒，但这样赌注与其说是大胆，不如说是愚蠢。从最近的情况来看，“万般泡沫”被戳破还为时尚早。
注释：
Alexis, Less is more
Zorina，Dream big and be daring
Vivifang, 女，外币债券交易员，满眼都是鲍威尔
Humi，女，学习财经的金融小白，不负韶华，平视世界
Cecilia，今年过得贵妇一点
Hannah，做个废柴，保持愉快
Ithil，男，胡辣汤爱好者，世界杯冠军、三星阿根廷球迷
3
Intro，男，政府临时工，前理想主义者兼积极的悲观主义者
4