又是通胀又是打仗的，金价咋不起飞？ | 经济学人财经

英文部分选自经济学人20230715期财经版块

Finance and economics | Buttonwood

财经 | 梧桐树专栏

The mystery of gold prices

“黄金爱乱世”？黄金价格走向成谜

A fear-and-inflation hedge has failed to hedge against fear or inflation

黄金——用于防范恐慌和通货膨胀的对冲工具未能对冲恐慌或通货膨胀。

Traders have an expression to describe how unpredictable financial markets can be: “better off dumb”. Stocks or other financial markets can sometimes behave in unforeseeable ways. Analysts predicted that American share prices would collapse if Donald Trump won the election in 2016—they soared. Companies that post better-than-expected earnings sometimes see their share prices decline. Glimpsing the future should give a trader an edge, and most of the time it would. But not always.

金融交易员这样形容金融市场的不可预测性：大智若愚更挣钱。股票或其他金融市场的走势时常扑朔迷离。曾有分析人士预测：若唐纳德·特朗普 （Donald Trump）于2016年的大选中胜出，美股会暴跌，但事实上股价反而飙升。而有时，即便是公司盈利超出预期，股价也会下跌。能窥探未来理应给交易者带来优势，大多数时候确实如此，但也有例外。

注释：

1.Better off: being in a more advantageous position adj.状况好的

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/better-off

2.Give an edge: 给予优势

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/edge

Say you knew, at the start of 2021, that inflation was going to soar, the consequence of rampant money-printing by central banks and extravagant fiscal stimulus. In addition, perhaps you also knew that inflation would then be stoked by trench warfare in Europe. With such knowledge, there is perhaps one asset above all others that you would have dumped your life savings into: the precious metal that adorns the necks and wrists of the wealthy in countries where inflation is a perennial problem.

假设您在2021年初就知道央行疯狂印钞和财政政策过度刺激将导致通货膨胀飙升。此外，您还知道俄乌冲突还会给通胀火上浇油。有了这些背景知识，相比于其他资产，或许您会考虑把毕生积蓄都用来投资黄金：在长期存在通胀问题的国家，这种贵金属是富人脖子和手腕上的装饰品。

注释：

1.Rampant：marked by a menacing wildness, extravagance, or absence of restraint adj.无法控制的

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rampant

2.Perennial：continuing without interruption adj.长期存在的

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perennial

Better off dumb, then. The price of gold has barely budged for two years. On January 1st 2021 an ounce cost just shy of $1,900. Today it costs $1,960. You would have made a princely gain of 3%.

那还是大智若愚吧。两年来，黄金价格几乎没有发生过变化。2021年1月1日，黄金价格略低于每盎司1900美元，而今天则是1960美元，收益“高达”3%呢。

注释：

1.princely：(of a sum of money) large or generous (often used ironically). （金钱）（常用作讽刺）大笔的；慷慨的

She's paying a princely sum. 她支付了一大笔钱。

What is going on? Working out the right price for gold is a difficult task. Gold bugs point to the metal’s historical role as the asset backing money, its use in fine jewellery, its finite supply and its physical durability as reasons to explain why it holds value. After all, at first glance the phenomenon is a strange one: in contrast to stocks and bonds, gold generates no cash flows or dividends.

这是怎么回事？给黄金估值是一项艰巨的任务。黄金爱好者指出，黄金历来为货币提供支撑，可用于制作高级珠宝，且供应量有限、不易磨损：这些都是黄金保值的原因。乍一看，这种现象很反常，毕竟黄金与股票和债券不同，不产生现金流或股息。

注释:

gold bug: a person who invests in or hoards gold;

Yet this lack of income also provides a clue to the metal’s mediocre returns in recent years. Because gold generates no cash flows, its price tends to be inversely correlated with real interest rates—when safe, real yields, like those generated by Treasury bonds, are high, assets that generate no cash flows become less appealing. Despite all the furore about the rise in inflation, the increase in interest rates has been even more remarkable. As a result, even as inflation shot up, long-term expectations have remained surprisingly well anchored. The ten-year Treasury yield, minus a measure of inflation expectations, has climbed from around -0.25% at the start of 2021 to 1.4% now.

但缺乏现金流的特点也揭示了近年来黄金回报平平的原因。由于黄金不产生现金流，其价格往往与实际利率成反比——当国债收益率等无风险实际利率较高时，不产生现金流的资产就不再那么有吸引力了。尽管人们对通胀上升感到愤怒，但加息速度比通胀上涨的速度还要快。因此，即使通胀飙升，长期预期也出人意料地保持平稳。剔除通胀预期后，十年期国债收益率已经从2021年初的约-0.25%攀升至如今的1.4%。

注释：

furore. noun [sing.]~ (about/over sth)群情激愤；骚动；轰动
great anger or excitement shown by a number of people, usually caused by a public event

His novel about Jesus caused a furore among Christians.

In 2021 researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago analysed the main factors behind gold prices since 1971, when America came off the gold standard, a system under which dollars could be converted into gold at a fixed price. They identified three categories: gold as protection against inflation, gold as a hedge against economic catastrophe and gold as a reflection of interest rates. They then tested the price of gold against changes in inflation expectations, attitudes to economic growth and real interest rates using annual, quarterly and daily data.

2021年，美联储芝加哥分行的研究者分析了自1971年以来影响金价的主要因素，时值美国与金本位脱钩（在金本位制度下，美元与黄金可以通过固定比率兑换）。他们分析了三类造成金价波动的原因：黄金用于对抗通货膨胀，黄金用于对冲经济衰退，以及黄金价格反映利率波动。他们之后使用了年度、季度、和日度数据测试了通胀预期、经济增长预期、及真实利率对金价的影响。

注释：

catastrophe：大灾难、大灾祸；困境，不利的局面。

Their results indicate that all these factors do indeed affect gold prices. The metal appears to hedge against inflation and rises in price when economic circumstances are gloomy. But evidence was most robust for the effect of higher real interest rates. The negative effect was apparent regardless of the frequency of the data. Inflation may have been the clearest driver of gold prices in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s but, the researchers noted, from 2001 onwards long-term real interest rates and views about economic growth dominated. The ways in which gold prices have moved since 2021 would appear to support their conclusion: inflation matters, but real interest rates matter most of all.

研究结果指出，这些因素确实都会影响黄金价格。这种金属看起来确实可以对冲通胀，在经济前景悲观的时候也会升值。但是更有力的证据表明，实际利率上升会更加抑制金价上涨。这种负相关性在任何数据频率下都很显著。研究者指出，在1970、1980和1990年代，通胀或许是金价最明显的驱力，但2001年之后，长期实际利率和对经济的预期主导了金价的走势。2021年后金价的走势似乎也佐证了他们的结论：通胀的确重要，但实际利率是所有因素中最重要的。

注释：

Robust: (东西或系统) 坚固的、耐用的、结实的

All of this means that gold might work as an inflation hedge—but inflation is not the only variable that is important. The metal will increase in price in inflationary periods if central banks are asleep at the wheel, and real rates fall, or if investors lose their faith in the ability of policymakers to get it back under control. So far neither has happened during this inflationary cycle.

这都意味着黄金可以对冲通货膨胀，但是通货膨胀并非唯一重要的变量。倘若央行放任通胀上涨，导致实际利率下跌，又或者投资者不再相信政府有能力重新控制通胀，黄金的价格就会随着通胀水涨船高。在当前的通胀周期中，这两条哪一条都不成立。

注释：

at the wheel : while driving 开车，掌舵

She fell asleep at the wheel.她开车时睡着了。

A little knowledge about the future can be a dangerous thing. “The Gap in the Curtain”, a science-fiction novel by John Buchan, which was published in 1932, is a story about five people who are chosen by a scientist to take part in an experiment that will let them glimpse a year into the future. Two end up seeing their own obituaries. It is the “best investment book ever written”, according to Hugh Hendry, a Scottish hedge-fund investor, because it encourages readers to envision the future while thinking deeply about what exactly causes certain events. As the recent seemingly perplexing movements in gold suggest, unanchored future-gazing is a dangerous habit.

能够略微洞见未来有时是件危险的事。在约翰·布肯所于1932年出版的科幻小说《窗帘上的缝隙》中，五个人被一位科学家选为实验对象，可以窥见未来一年将发生的事。结果，其中两个人看到了自己的讣告。苏格兰对冲基金经理表示，这是有史以来最好的投资书籍，因为它鼓励读者在深入思考某些事件前因后果的基础上展望未来。正如近期金价看似令人困惑的走势所体现的那样，跑偏了的未卜先知非常危险。

注释：

休·亨德利（Hugh Hendry），基金经理。休·亨德利先生成功运营着对冲基金公司——Eclectica资产管理公司。这是一家以老派宏观经济学为核心理念的基金公司，其风格以长远宏观战略及全球跨式套利策略为特色，倒不像华尔街那些痴迷数学的金融数量分析师所掌管的科技含量较高而又令人眼花缭乱的基金公司。

Summerr，Stay hungry, stay foolish

Harvey，男，爱生活爱翻译的奶爸一枚

Martina，女，爱电影爱生活，爱金融经济

Vic，男，曾在52街和第6大道的投行人，目前的券商兵；市场和历史的学生

骡拉，很帅但是吃冰棒舔手

Claire，进进退退，摇摇摆摆，探索世界ing

Diamond，男，血汗工厂搬砖工，经济学人粉丝