2014美股投资总结：盛世末路

    2014年即将成为历史，各路股市专家也终于可以松一口气了。

    从投资决策角度来看，2014年是有史以来最糟糕的年景之一，几乎可以说是全盘皆输。除了少数华尔街亿万富豪才玩得起的“股东积极主义”维权策略还算奏效外，没有哪种投资策略在这一年里始终灵光。

    对于更多的普通投资者而言，在标普500指数回报高于历史平均值的大背景下，2014年是充满挫折的一年。

    我们不妨借用一些狄更斯的名句，来回顾下几乎各种战略都失灵的2014年：

    这是最好的时代，这是最坏的时代……

    今年，标普500指数的总回报率为14%，比该指数25年期平均年化收益率高出40％。过去12个月，华尔街的首席战略师们一直在上调其目标值。标普500指数出现了50多次创纪录的收盘，几乎所有专业投资管理人士都卯足了劲，至少要跑平该指数。但有些因素让美股投资者要获得高于基准股指的收益，在今年尤为困难。

    这是智慧的时代，也是愚蠢的时代……

    今年领跑美国股市的标普500公司的行业组合有些奇特，出现了一些令人意想不到的黑马。就算基金经理预见到了医疗保健行业今年将上涨27％，难道他们也能猜到公用事业行业将位列第二，上涨23％？不大可能。

    今年年初，所有华尔街经济学家都呼吁提高利率，彭博社就这个问题调查了67位经济学家的意见，他们全票赞同，有鉴于此，任何一个有理性的人都不会想要增持对利率敏感的公用事业股。把赌注押在金融股上的投资者，回报进展缓慢；而瞅准了“低价”能源股的投资者，投资组合业绩在第一和第二季度曾因此推高，却在第三和第四季度被大拖后腿，可谓“成也萧何，败也萧何”。

    这是信仰的时代，也是怀疑的时代……

    另外两个在2014年表现上佳的行业可谓风马牛不相及：高科技（上涨16％）和必需消费品（上涨13.2％）。市场上最激进与最保守的两大投资领域前后脚撞线，留下困惑的旁观者们不知该如何解释这一现象。2014年，美国失业率大幅下降，GDP呈增长势头，为何领跑市场的却是医疗保健、必需消费品、公用事业等周期性最不明显的行业？令专家们懊恼的是，有些时候就是没有令人满意的答案。美国作家库尔特•冯内古特曾写道：

    老虎要猎食，鸟儿要飞翔；

    人类想知道“这是为什么？”

    老虎要入眠，鸟儿要降落；

    人不得不告慰自己，原来如此。

    如果你认为一开始准确判断应增持和减持哪些行业的股票是件难事，在年内不断调整投资组合更是难上加难。11月，野村证券一位定量分析师向《巴伦周刊》表示：“行业领军者每个月都在变换，其变化速度之快，在股市数十年未见。即便你选对了某行业的个股，由于市场环境瞬息万变，业绩也根本无法持续。”

    这是光明的季节，也是黑暗的季节……

    对投资者而言，今年对行业的准确判断还只是个小问题，因为除了美股，今年全球的投资好选择不多。

    鉴于标普500和纳斯达克指数都回升了14％以上，道琼斯和标普400中型股指数也都回升了近10％，你可能会认为今年被动投资者应该收获颇丰。确实，要不是那些恼人的海外股业绩不佳，大拖多元化投资组合的后腿，被动投资者原本应该值得庆祝。

    大多数专业顾问（包括我在内）都会对其客户大力鼓吹全球化多元投资组合的好处，然而，在12月看来，残酷的现实是2014年更像是个平局，而非大获全胜。事实上，上周摩根士丹利资本国际全球指数同比仅上涨了2％，而摩根士丹利资本新兴市场指数（MSCI Emerging Markets）和追踪美国以外发达国家市场的EAFE指数双双下跌了近5％。具有讽刺意味的是，除美国以外全球唯一一个表现上佳的市场——中国大陆股市的上证综指（上涨了45％），也是唯一一个美国投资者无法进入的市场。

    从10年和20年的时间跨度来看，地域和资产类别的多元化已经证明对投资回报和风险管理有益。不幸的是，在12个月内，不一定能看到此种战略的好处。在如今这个140字微博消息和2分钟短视频盛行的时代，投资者不能以长期的表现来判断其投资组合的成败，又有何奇怪？

    As we get closer to relegating 2014 to the history books, your local stock market guru most likely couldn’t be happier to see those books slammed shut.

    It’s been one of the worst years for investment decision-making on record, almost across the board. No strategy worked consistently, save for the type of shareholder activism that only a handful of Wall Street’s billionaire titans are able to engage in.

    For almost everyone else, it was a year of frustration against a backdrop of better-than-average returns for the most popular index in the land.

    With a bit of help from Charles Dickens, let’s take a look back at the year in which almost nothing worked:

    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

    The S&P 500’s total return of 14% this year was 40% higher than its 25-year average annual gain. Wall Street’s chief strategists spent much of the last 12 months revising their targets higher from behind. The index printed over 50 all-time record closes, with nearly all investment management professionals racing to at least pull even. A few characteristics made the U.S. stock market particularly difficult to keep up with this year.

    It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…

    An odd assortment of S&P sectors led the market higher this year, with some strange bedfellows atop the leaderboard. Even if a manager had foreseen that the healthcare sector would gain 27% this year, would they have guessed that utilities would be in the No. 2 slot, with gains of 23%? Unlikely.

    Given that every single Wall Street economist had called for higher rates at the start of this year and 67 of 67 economists surveyed by Bloomberg concurred, the rate-sensitive utilities industry would have been the last sector a rational person would want to overweight. Bets on the financial sector were slow to pay off while wagers on “cheap” energy stocks demolished portfolio performance in the third and fourth quarters, just as they had elevated it during the first and second.

    It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…

    Rounding out the top-performing sectors of 2014 was an unlikely pair: tech (+16%) and consumer staples (+13.2%)—the most aggressive and most defensive areas of the market, running side-by-side toward the finish line, with confounded spectators struggling to concoct a narrative for this. Why would the least cyclical sectors—healthcare, staples and utilities—lead the markets in a year in which unemployment plummeted and GDP growth gained momentum? Much to the chagrin of the pundit class, sometimes there are no satisfying answers. To quote Kurt Vonnegut:

    Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;

    Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’

    Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;

    Man got to tell himself he understand.

    If you thought that getting sector over- and under-weights correct at the outset proved difficult, switching between them throughout the year was nearly impossible. A quantitative analyst from Nomura Securities explained to Barron’s in November that “industry leadership has been reversing from month-to-month at a rate unseen in decades of stock-market history. ‘Even if you’re picking the right stocks in a sector,’ he says, ‘things are moving around so much that your performance doesn’t persist.’”

    It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…

    Getting sector calls right was the least of any investor’s problems this year because, outside of the brilliance of U.S. stock gains, the lights were off around the world.

    With both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq returning over 14% while the Dow and MidCap 400 each kicking in close to 10%, you would assume that passive investors would have an awful lot to celebrate this year. And indeed, they would have, if it weren’t for those pesky overseas stocks that did nothing but drag on the performance of any diversified portfolio.

    With the majority of professional advisors (myself included) preaching the benefits of global diversification to their clients, 2014 looks more like a draw than an outright victory in the harsh light of December’s low winter sun. Consider the fact that, through last week, the MSCI World Index gained just 2% on the year, with nearly 5% drops for both the MSCI Emerging Markets index and the EAFE index of developed markets outside of the United States. Ironically, the single best-performing foreign market in the world, the Shanghai Composite of mainland Chinese equities (up 45%) is the only one that U.S. investors could not actually put their money into.

    Over 10- and 20-year stretches, geographic and asset class diversification have proven beneficial for returns and risk management. Unfortunately, you are not guaranteed to see the benefits of such a strategy during any 12-month period. In an era of 140-character writing and two-minute video, should we be surprised that investors have trouble judging the success of their portfolios over long periods?