Global finance

全球金融

The real revolution on Wall Street

真正的華爾街革命

High tech meets high finance

當(dāng)高科技遇見華爾街


Events on Wall Street have become so strange that Netflix is said to be planning a show to immortalise them. But what should be the plot? One story is of an anti-establishment movement causing chaos in high finance, just as it has in politics. Another is how volatile shares, strutting online traders and cash-crunches at brokerage firms signal that a toppy market is poised to crash. Both gloss over what is really going on. Information technology is being used to make trading free, shift information flows and catalyse new business models, transforming how markets work (see article). And, despite the clamour of recent weeks, this promises to bring big long-term benefits.

華爾街事件變得如此蹊蹺，以至于聽說Netflix公司打算為此制作一檔節(jié)目流傳后世。但故事情節(jié)是什么？一個(gè)情節(jié)是反建制運(yùn)動(dòng)導(dǎo)致華爾街混亂，這與政壇如出一轍。另一個(gè)情節(jié)是劇烈波動(dòng)的股價(jià)、春風(fēng)得意的網(wǎng)上交易者、資金短缺的券商是如何預(yù)示著市場(chǎng)過熱將導(dǎo)致崩盤的。兩個(gè)情節(jié)都掩蓋了真實(shí)情況。人們正在利用信息技術(shù)使交易免費(fèi)、改變信息流、分析新型商業(yè)模式、改變市場(chǎng)的運(yùn)作方式。盡管最近幾周喧囂不已，但可能帶來巨大長(zhǎng)遠(yuǎn)的利益。

Don’t expect screenwriters to dwell on that, obviously. Their focus will be the 8m followers of WallStreetBets, an investment forum on Reddit, who have invented a new financial adventurism: call it swarm trading. Together, they bid up the prices of some obscure firms in late January. This triggered vast losses at hedge funds that had bet on share prices falling (see Buttonwood). And it led to a cash squeeze at online brokers which must post collateral if volatility rises. Since January 28th the most prominent, Robinhood, has raised $3.4bn to shore itself up.

很顯然，別指望編劇能思考這些。他們關(guān)注的是Reddit網(wǎng)站的投資論壇“華爾街賭場(chǎng)”（WallStreetBets）上的800萬名訂閱者，他們創(chuàng)造了新式金融冒險(xiǎn)主義：稱為集體交易。他們?cè)谝辉碌准w哄抬一些不知名企業(yè)的股價(jià)，導(dǎo)致做空股價(jià)的對(duì)沖基金巨額虧損。同時(shí)也導(dǎo)致線上券商資金短缺，如果股價(jià)波動(dòng)加劇，他們必須提供擔(dān)保。自1月28日以來，最知名的券商Robinhood籌集了34億美元支撐自己。

The swarm seems to have moved on. This week the price of some favoured shares sank and silver leapt. Meanwhile, in many markets the normal rules of play have been suspended. Almost 300 “spacs” listed last year, raising over $80bn and allowing firms to float without the hassle of an initial public offering (ipo). Tesla has become America’s fifth most valuable firm. Bitcoin, having gone from the fringe to the mainstream, has a total value of $680bn. Trading volumes for shares are at their highest in at least a decade and those for some derivatives are off the charts.

散戶集體似乎轉(zhuǎn)戰(zhàn)別處了。本周一些受到追捧的股票下跌，白銀價(jià)格攀升。與此同時(shí)，許多市場(chǎng)的普通游戲規(guī)則已被停用。去年有近300家“特殊目的收購(gòu)公司”上市，籌集800多億美元資金，使并購(gòu)對(duì)象無需首次公開募股（IPO）就可上市。特斯拉已成為美國(guó)排行第五最具價(jià)值的企業(yè)。比特幣已從邊緣貨幣變成主流貨幣，總值達(dá)6800億美元。股票交易量達(dá)到至少十年來最高水平，一些期貨的交易量創(chuàng)下歷史新高。

Part of the reason for this is that government bail-outs have put a floor under risky debt. Banks have so much spare cash—JPMorgan Chase’s pile has risen by $580bn in the pandemic—that they are turning depositors away. Instead of using the lockdown to learn Mandarin and discover Tolstoy, some people have used their stimulus cheques to daytrade. Although the whiff of mania is alarming, you can find reasons to support today’s prices. When interest rates are so low, other assets look relatively attractive. Compared with the real yield on five-year Treasuries, shares are cheaper than before the crash of 2000.

部分原因是政府的救助行動(dòng)減少了高風(fēng)險(xiǎn)債務(wù)。銀行的閑置資金太多——在疫情期間，摩根大通銀行的資金量猛增5800億美元——以至于將儲(chǔ)戶拒之門外。有些人沒有利用封城的機(jī)會(huì)學(xué)習(xí)漢語或探索托爾斯泰，而是將手中的刺激支票用于日內(nèi)交易。盡管些許的狂熱令人恐慌，但你能找出理由支持當(dāng)今股價(jià)。銀行利率這么低，其他資產(chǎn)看起來比較有吸引力。相比五年期國(guó)庫券的實(shí)際收益率，股票價(jià)格低于2000年經(jīng)濟(jì)崩潰前的水平。

Yet the excitement also reflects a fundamental shift in finance. In recent decades trading costs for shares have collapsed to roughly zero. The first to benefit were quantitative funds and big asset managers such as BlackRock. Now retail investors are included, which is why they accounted for a quarter of all trading in January. Meanwhile, information flows, the lifeblood of markets, are being disaggregated. News about firms and the economy used to come from reports and meetings governed by insider-trading and market-manipulation laws. Now a vast pool of instant data from scraping websites, tracking industrial sensors and monitoring social-media chatter is available to those with a screen and the time to spare. Last, new business models are passing Wall Street by. spacs are a Silicon Valley rebellion against the cost and rigidity of ipos. Robinhood, a tech platform from California, executes trades through Citadel, a broker in Chicago. In return for free trading, users’ trades are directed to brokers who, as on Facebook, pay to harvest the data from them.

但是，這種狂熱也反映出金融領(lǐng)域的根本性變化。近幾十年來，股票交易幾乎零成本。最初獲利的是量化基金和大型資產(chǎn)管理公司，例如貝萊德集團(tuán)。如今散戶投資者也參與進(jìn)來，所以他們占一月份交易總量的四分之一。與此同時(shí)，信息流作為市場(chǎng)的命脈正在被瓦解。在過去，有關(guān)企業(yè)和經(jīng)濟(jì)的新聞來源是公報(bào)和會(huì)議，并受到內(nèi)部交易與市場(chǎng)操縱相關(guān)法律的約束。如今人們只要有顯示器和閑暇時(shí)間，可以通過瀏覽網(wǎng)站、跟蹤行業(yè)指標(biāo)、監(jiān)視社交媒體聊天來獲取海量的即時(shí)數(shù)據(jù)。最后，新型商業(yè)模式也在降臨華爾街?！疤厥饽康氖召?gòu)公司”是在反抗首次公開募股（IPO）的成本與死板。Robinhood是一家位于加利福尼亞州的科技平臺(tái)，通過芝加哥券商Citadel執(zhí)行交易。作為免費(fèi)交易的回報(bào)，用戶的交易數(shù)據(jù)被提供給券商。正如Facebook那樣，券商需要花錢獲取用戶的交易數(shù)據(jù)。

Far from being a passing fad, the disruption of markets will intensify. Computers can aggregate baskets of illiquid assets and deploy algorithms to price similar but not identical assets, expanding the universe of assets that can be traded easily. A sharply rising proportion of bonds is being traded through liquid exchange-traded funds, intermediated by a new breed of marketmakers, such as Jane Street. Contenders such as Zillow are trying to make housing sales quick and cheap, and in time commercial-property and private-equity stakes may follow.

這次市場(chǎng)顛覆決非短暫的狂熱，未來將會(huì)愈演愈烈。計(jì)算機(jī)能夠匯集一籃子非流動(dòng)資產(chǎn)，利用算法給相似但不完全相同的資產(chǎn)定價(jià)，從而不斷增加易于交易的資產(chǎn)種類。通過易變現(xiàn)的交易所交易基金進(jìn)行交易的債券比例急劇上升，由一種新型造市商作為中間商，例如Jane Street公司。Zillow這樣的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)者正在設(shè)法使房地產(chǎn)交易變得既快捷又便宜，商業(yè)地產(chǎn)和私募股權(quán)可能遲早也會(huì)效仿。

On paper this digitisation holds huge promise. More people will be able to gain access to markets cheaply, participate directly in the ownership of a broader range of assets and vote over how they are run. The cost of capital for today’s illiquid assets will fall. It will be easier to match your exposure to your appetite for risk.

理論上，這場(chǎng)數(shù)字化變革潛力巨大。更多的人將能夠低成本進(jìn)入市場(chǎng)，直接參與種類日益繁多的資產(chǎn)所有權(quán)，并有權(quán)決定資產(chǎn)的運(yùn)營(yíng)方式。當(dāng)今非流動(dòng)資產(chǎn)的資本成本將會(huì)下降，你面對(duì)的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)將更容易符合你的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)偏好。

But financial progress is often chaotic. First time around, innovations can cause crises, as the structured-credit boom did in 2007-09. The capacity of social media to spread misinformation and contagion is a worry. It is hard to see how some underlying assets justify the price rises of the past few weeks. Some fear that powerful firms hoarding the data of individual investors will exploit them. Already the Robinhood saga has led politicians on the right and the left to fret about losses for retail investors, mispriced assets and the threat to financial stability if market infrastructure should be overwhelmed as investors stampede from one asset to the next. Tellingly, the only big stockmarket dominated by technologically sophisticated retail investors is China’s. Its government employs censorship and an array of price and behavioural controls to try to keep a lid on it.

然而，金融的進(jìn)步往往造成混亂。第一次創(chuàng)新可能引發(fā)危機(jī)，例如2007-08年的結(jié)構(gòu)性信貸繁榮。社交媒體傳播虛假信息的能力令人擔(dān)憂。很難看出最近幾周標(biāo)的資產(chǎn)價(jià)格上漲的合理之處。有人擔(dān)心實(shí)力雄厚的企業(yè)囤積散戶投資者的數(shù)據(jù)將使他們受到剝削。Robinhood事件已使左右翼政客擔(dān)憂散戶投資者蒙受損失，資產(chǎn)被錯(cuò)誤定價(jià)，以及金融穩(wěn)定受到威脅，因?yàn)橥顿Y者對(duì)某種資產(chǎn)蜂擁而上會(huì)使市場(chǎng)基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施崩潰。顯然，中國(guó)股市是唯一被技術(shù)先進(jìn)的散戶投資者主導(dǎo)的龐大股票市場(chǎng)，政府利用審查機(jī)制和價(jià)格與行為管控措施來穩(wěn)住大盤。

Although that is thankfully not an option in America, the regulators’ toolkit does need to be upxed. It must be made clear that speculators, amateur and professional, will still bear losses, even if they attract sympathy from politicians. Irrationality thrives in online politics because it imposes no direct cost. By contrast, in markets losses act as a disciplining force. If today’s frothiest assets collapse, the bill could be perhaps $2trn: painful but not catastrophic in a stockmarket worth $44trn.

幸虧美國(guó)沒有采取這種做法，但監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)的手段確實(shí)有待于提高。很顯然，業(yè)余和專業(yè)投資者仍將遭受損失，即便他們博得了政客的同情。網(wǎng)絡(luò)政治越來越失去理性，因?yàn)闊o需付出直接成本。相比之下，在市場(chǎng)上遭受損失具有制約作用。如果當(dāng)今最大的資產(chǎn)泡沫破裂，損失可能高達(dá)2萬億美元：令人痛心，但對(duì)于市值44萬億美元的股市而言算不上災(zāi)難。

Don’t forget season two

莫忘第二季

Insider-dealing and manipulation rules also need to be modernised to deal with new information flows. Stupidity, greed and a killer instinct are all perfectly acceptable: deception, including the spread of misinformation, is not. Price-sensitive data need to be kept widely available. And the plumbing must be renovated. America’s trade-settlement system works with a two-day delay, creating a timing mismatch that can lead to cash shortfalls. It needs to be able to cope with faster trading in an expanding range of assets so that the system can withstand a crash. Netflix’s tv drama will doubtless pitch daytrading heroes like Roaring Kitty against the wicked professionals on Wall Street. Off-screen, in the real revolution in finance, a far bigger cast can win.

內(nèi)部交易與市場(chǎng)操縱法規(guī)有待于現(xiàn)代化，以應(yīng)對(duì)新的信息流。人們完全可以接受愚蠢、貪婪、爭(zhēng)強(qiáng)好勝：但欺騙不行，包括傳播虛假信息。價(jià)格敏感型數(shù)據(jù)需要被公之于眾。管道必須被翻新，美國(guó)的交易清算系統(tǒng)有兩天延遲，造成的時(shí)差可能導(dǎo)致資金短缺。面對(duì)種類日益繁多的資產(chǎn)，系統(tǒng)需要能夠應(yīng)對(duì)更快的交易才能避免崩潰。Netflix制作的電視劇肯定讓Roaring Kitty（Youtube主播）那樣的日內(nèi)交易英雄與華爾街的邪惡專家上演對(duì)手戲。而在鏡頭之外，更大陣容的演員將在這場(chǎng)真正的金融革命中獲勝。

原創(chuàng)翻譯：龍騰網(wǎng) http://www.top-shui.cn 轉(zhuǎn)載請(qǐng)注明出處