美联储小幅削减购债，美股意外大涨三百点

    美联储（the Federal Reserve）削减购债规模的影响也许远没有我们预计的那么糟糕。

    一年多以来，投资者一直在为美联储着手终止经济刺激计划做着准备。周三，美联储最终宣布小幅削减购债规模，那么股市到底下跌了多少呢？

    跌幅为零。

    相反，股指大幅上涨了近300点，债券市场则略有下跌。这是怎么回事？

    实际情况表明，削减购债规模对股票和债券市场（甚至整体经济）而言并没有我们认为的那么重要。

    对于美联储压缩购债计划，人们主要担心它会导致利率上升。但无论怎样，利率注定要上升。经济好转时利率水平就会提高。现在经济正在改善，所以利率也在上涨。10年期美国国债收益率已从年初的2%左右逼近3%。目前尚不清楚这个上涨和削减购债规模有多大关系。

    更重要的是，利率上升似乎并未导致经济放缓。上个月的就业数据再次好于预期，目前的失业率已经下降到7%，创下了五年来的新低。由此可见，利率上升并没有延缓经济发展。

    到目前为止，削减购债的幅度很小。美联储仅仅只是把购债的规模压缩了100亿美元。它意味着美联储购买债券的规模比我们的预期少了11%。当然，美联储很可能进一步减少购债数额。但即便如此，这对美联储所持债券规模产生明显影响还需要很长一段时间，预计这个数字本周会超过4万亿美元。

    人们一直在探讨美联储购债计划中最重要的是什么？是存量，还是流动性？或者说，是美联储持有的债券规模，还是美联储正在购买的债券数额？最近，经济学家得出结论，流动性比我们想象的更重要，但二者之间的差距也许没那么大。

    接下来让我们看看股市的表现。长期以来，一些策略分析师一直认为，伯南克是股市持续上涨，或者至少上涨到目前水平的唯一原因。如果真是这样，那么美联储宣布减少注资规模应该会造成股市下跌，而不是上涨。

    至少，它表明股市的复苏（乃至整体经济的复苏）和美联储的关系并没我们想象的那么密切。相反，股市上行似乎是得益于经济形势的好转，所以说到底，经济复苏才是关键因素。与此相比，美联储是否削减购债规模并不是那么重要。（财富中文网）

    译者：Lina  

    The Federal Reserve's taper may turn out to be a lot less terrible than we thought.

    For more than a year, investors have been bracing for the beginning of the end of the Fed's stimulus program. So on Wednesday when the Fed finally announced it would pull back a little, how far did stocks fall?

    They didn't.

    Instead, they rose, a lot, by nearly 300 points. Bonds were down slightly. What gives?

    The taper, it turns out, for the stock and bond market -- and perhaps even the economy altogether -- matters a lot less than we thought.

    One of the main concerns about the Fed pulling back on its bond buying program is that it would cause interest rates to rise. But that was bound to happen anyway. Interest rates tend to rise when the economy improves. And the economy has been improving. So interest rates are up. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds has risen to just under 3% from around 2% at the beginning of the year. It's not clear how much that has to do with the taper.

    Even more important, that rise in interest rates doesn't seem to be slowing the economy. Last month's jobs report was once again better than expected, and the unemployment rate fell to 7%, the lowest it has been in five years. So clearly higher interest rates are not spooking the economy.

    And the taper, at least so far, is tiny. The Fed is only reducing its bond buying program by $10 billion. That means the Fed will be buying 11% fewer bonds than we thought. Of course, the Fed is likely to pull back further. But even if they do, it will be a long time before that makes a big dent in the Fed's total bond holding, which is expected to cross $4 trillion this week.

    There has been a debate over what matters more in the Fed's bond buying program: the stock or the flow -- how much bonds the Fed has, or how much it is buying. Recently, economists have come to the conclusion that the flow matters more than we thought. But perhaps not that much more.

    And then there's stocks. Some strategists have long contended that the only reason the market has been going up, or at least going up as much as it has, is because been Ben Bernanke. If that was true, then the announcement that the Fed will be pumping a little less money into the market should have made stocks drop, not rise.

    What this says, at the very least, is that the recovery in the market, and perhaps the economy as a whole, has less to do with the Fed than we thought. Instead, it appears that the market is rising because the economy is improving, and in the end that's what matters. Compared to that, whether the Fed tapers or not just isn't nearly as important.