美股下跌75%？近年来最大股灾来了？

最近，熊市肆虐华尔街、伦敦或巴黎金融市场的消息不绝于耳。

美国股市的疲软，年初创历史新低的油价以及中国经济的继续下滑，都为唱衰论分析师提供了大把证据。

在唱衰者中，兴业银行策略师艾伯特•爱德华兹可谓是无出其右。近些年来，他对世界经济充满了负面看法，而且最近发生的一些事情更让他对自己的观点深信不疑，即世界正走向灾难，而且也将殃及股价。股价会下跌多少？爱德华兹预计，美国股市最多可能会下跌75%，高于金融危机期间惨不忍睹的62%的跌幅。

爱德华兹在最近发布的研究纪要中指出，自上次金融危机以来，美联储通过大规模购买债券来支撑股价、刺激新兴市场增长，而全球经济则对此举产生了依赖性。爱德华兹在评论美联储降低长期利率的举措时写道，“商品泡沫和随之而来的美国页岩气投资热都是美联储量化宽松的产物。”爱德华兹称，既然美联储已经停止购买债券而且已转向加息，自上次金融危机以来出现的资产价格虚假增长现象将不复存在。“如今，随着高增长泡沫的破灭，繁荣的假象也将烟消云散。”

与其他愈发悲观的分析师一样，爱德华兹援引了中国最近发生的一些事情，来证明其“大事不妙”的观点。他认为，中国的决策者们目前正处于绝境中。他指出，中国的货币实际上已被过分高估。尽管如此，如果中国为了让人民币贬值而采取过激措施，那么中国富人将从经济中撤走更多的资金，而这也将导致局势的进一步恶化。

此外，由于中国制造业近些年来在新增产能方面的投入过多，他们的出路只有一条：为争夺不断缩减的全球贸易市场而削减价格。但是，此举将导致通缩。爱德华兹说：“这种外来的低价压力将导致西方制造业的凋零。”尽管制造业在美国经济中的占比很小，但制造业的不景气最终也将拖累服务行业。

这篇分析文章称，上述现象最终将导致新一轮的经济衰退，随后，央行将采取激进措施，遏制股价的下跌和经济的负增长。但是，由于当前的利率基本已见底，而且美联储的资产规模在上一轮的刺激举措中因购买债券而大增，因此，面对爱德华兹所谓的长期熊市，美联储也将是无计可施。爱德华兹称，最后，股价的暴跌将导致标普500指数下探至550点，较近期的峰值（2015年夏天达到的峰值，刚超过2100点）下跌75%。

值得注意的是，爱德华兹多年来一直都在宣扬类似的观点。2010年，他曾称标普指数将跌至450点，但此事并未发生。如果投资者听信了他的建议，他们便会错过股市历史上最为耀眼的辉煌——自那之后，标普500指数上涨幅度超过了80%。尽管最近有所下跌，但标普500如今仍处于略低于1900点的水平。

当然，这并不意味着爱德华兹的观点就是错误的。其分析的正确之处在于，全球股市完全依赖于央行的刺激举措，而且，当这些刺激举措消失后，股价必然会以某种形式触底。然而，如果你无法预测这一事件发生的时间，那么这篇分析文章就没有什么实质性的意义。它实际上成为了对公共政策的抱怨，而不是令人信服的投资建议。

尽管如此，中国最近发生的事情也让高频经济公司卡尔•维恩伯格这类牛市派分析师一改往日的镇定。在他们发给客户的纪要中，他将最近油价近40%的同比降幅称之为是“不可想象的”，并提醒读者，当经济中的过剩产能累积到无以复加的地步时，全球的经济衰退将拉开帷幕。

全球石油和商品市场的情况似乎和上述情形相吻合。因此，即便经济不会恶化到爱德华兹所描述的那种程度，但这并不意味着投资者可以高枕无忧了。（财富中文网）

译者：冯丰

校对：詹妮

You don’t have to listen very hard to hear the bears growling on Wall Street, London, or Paris these days. Indeed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down another 300 points on Wednesday to just under 16,200

With the U.S. stock market sagging, oil off to its worst start ever, and the China’s economy continuing to deteriorate, bearish analysts have a wealth of evidence to point to.

And they don’t come much more bearish than Albert Edwards, strategist at SociétéGénérale. He’s not had much nice to say about the global economy in years, and recent events have only hardened his convictions that the world is headed for disaster, and will take the prices of equities down with it. How much? Edwards predicts the U.S. stock market could plunge as much as 75%. That would be worse than during the financial crisis, in which stocks from their peak to trough dropped a brutal 62%.

In a research note published Wednesday, Edwards argued that ever since the last financial crisis, the global economy has been dependent on the Federal Reserve’s massive bond buying program to prop up equity prices and stimulate growth in emerging markets. “A commodity bubble and the resultant U.S. shale investment boom were all consequences of the Fed’s QE,” Edwards writes, referring to the U.S. central bank’s efforts to lower long-term interest rates. Now that the Fed has stopped buying bonds and has actually moved to raise rates, the artificial growth in asset prices that we’ve seen since the last financial crisis will come undone, according to Edwards. “The illusion of of prosperity is shattered as boom now turns to bust,” he writes.

Like other analysts who are increasingly bearish, Edwards marshals the recent events in China as evidence that something is seriously wrong. He argues that Chinese policy makers are in an impossible bind. Their currency is actually overvalued, he argues. Nonetheless, too bold an attempt to devalue the yuan would lead wealthy Chinese to remove even more of their money from the economy, destabilizing the situation further.

What’s more, the Chinese manufacturing sector, which has been over-investing in additional production for years now, has but one option: slash prices as it fights over a shrinking pie of global trade. And that’s going to lead to deflation. “The western manufacturing sector will choke under this imported deflationary tourniquet,” says Edwards. And even though manufacturing makes up just a fraction of the United States economy, the struggles of the manufacturing sector will eventually infect the services industries as well.

The end result of all of this will be another recession, followed by aggressive central bank action to fight falling equity prices and negative growth, according to this analysis. But with interest rates already so low and the Fed’s balance sheet already inflated from all the bonds it bought during its last stimulus efforts, there is little the central bank can do to stop what Edwards calls a secular bear market. The result, according to Edwards, will be a horrific drop that will leave the S&P 500 down 75%, to 550, from its most recent peak, hit last summer, of just over 2,100.

It should be pointed out that Edwards has been making similar calls for years. Back in 2010, he called for the S&P to collapse to 450. It didn’t. And had investors taken his advice then, they would have missed out on one of the greatest stock market booms in history—the S&P 500 has in fact soared more than 80% since then, and now, even with the recent dip, stands at just under 1,900. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Edwards is wrong. It’s plausible that Edwards is correct in his analysis that global equity markets are hopelessly dependent on central bank stimulus, and that prices will somehow, someway crash down to earth when that stimulus is removed.But if you can’t tell investors when this will happen, that analysis isn’t very meaningful. It amounts to complaints over public policy rather than sound investment advice.

That said, even more bullish analysts like Carl Weinberg of High Frequency Economics are sounding rattled by the events taking place of late in China. In a note to clients yesterday, he referred to the recent decline in oil prices of nearly 40% from a year ago as “the unthinkable,” and reminded readers that global recessions are typically triggered when an economy builds up excess capacity that must be unwound. Global oil and commodities markets appear to fit this description, and so even if things don’t get s bad as Edwards claims they will, that doesn’t mean that there are clear skies ahead for investors.