2014美股投资总结：盛世末路

    这是充满希望的春天，也是令人绝望的寒冬……

    对专业投资者而言，2014年最令人沮丧的一点是，美国经济复苏时断时续。2014年1月，经济领域捷报频传。然而，在短短几周内，一场暴风雪席卷全美，各种经济数据似乎也因此停摆。

    市场观察人士被迫接受一季度美国GDP负增长2.9％这一现实。突然间，同波诡云谲的现实相比，所有人的预测似乎都过于乐观，至少是过于平稳。这导致人们纷纷猜测美联储最终退出其债券购买计划的时机。短短几周内，我们从信心满满变成了垂头丧气，同时，伴随着不确定性的再次来袭，资产类别的交替以及市场调整也随之而来。

    尽管每轮市场反弹最终都呈V形，每次连续的涨势中，个股的参与越来越少。今年春夏两季的绝大部分时间里，时事分析评论员们都专注于赢家与输家、大盘股和小盘股之间的明显差异。欧洲的通缩担忧以及日本的技术性衰退，使得分析师们愈加困惑，尽管美国经济正在好转，美国国库券收益率和通胀指标却双双下行。

    简言之，2014年种种相反的趋势无法描述和解释。我也不信，多年之后，人们凭借后见之明，能将今年发生的种种事情看得更清楚。

    我们的前路应有尽有，我们的前路一无所有……

    在即将结束的2014年，标普500指数再次实现亮眼增长，而那些本欲跑赢该指数的基金经理们，表现则没那么出色。Lipper公司称，截止11月底，85％的活跃股票型共同基金经理业绩低于标普500指数。而在正常的年份里，跑赢该指数的基金经理比例是今年的两倍，也就是说，通常只有约三分之二的基金表现不如标普500指数。Lipper公司称，这是30年来活跃基金经理相对大盘表现最差的一年。

    今年选股遇到困难，部分原因在于市场顶部高度集中。苹果、伯克希尔•哈撒韦、强生、微软和英特尔这五只股票占去了市场涨幅的20％。如果你未持有上述股票，几乎就没有机会分享这场增长盛宴，而正是这几家公司的增长推高了标普500指数。市场上大部分股票的表现要逊色得多。研究公司路佛集团称，标普1500综合指数成分股中，仅有30％的个股跑赢了该指数。上次出现这样的景象，那还是1999年的事。

    在令人失望的2014年里，基金投资者们没有太多的动作。总体而言，过去11个月中，主动选股基金仅新增了350亿美元资金，还不到2013年同期新增资金（1620亿美元）的四分之一。2013年是该行业自2007年以来首次实现资金净流入。不过，这并不是说基金行业毫无作为。截止感恩节，交易所交易基金（ETFs）和被动指数型基金吸纳了2060多亿美元净存款，行业领先者先锋集团管理的基金规模在今年夏末突破了3万亿美元大关。投资者们似乎已经决定，与其把宝押在“骑手”身上，不如直接把赌注押在“赛马”身上。

    我们都将直上天堂，我们都将直下地狱

    萎靡不振的不光是那些挑选个股的基金。截止12月1日，对冲基金整体回报严重落后于市场。彭博收集的数据显示，对冲基金平均同比上涨了2％，其回报率也就勉强赶上无风险10年期美国国债的票面利率。2014年将有1000多只基金倒闭，是自2009年以来破产清算最多的一年。

    几家大型对冲基金的资产规模，占据了该行业的大半江山。各家的回报率相差巨大。每个像威廉•阿克曼旗下潘兴广场那样的大赢家，都对应着一个像约翰•保尔森旗下优势基金那样的大输家。投资者选择对冲基金，是冲着其“非相关收益”，意即与大盘走向背道而行的趋势。今年，他们绝对是获得了“逆市”的收益，可惜是在大盘表现出色的情况下“逆市”。

    那些原本希望今年凭借战术策略获得些利益的财务顾问和资产配置人员，也在反复无常的市场中栽了跟头。全美前三位的战术策略产品中，有两款产品几乎因为高达两位数的亏损而崩盘，还有一款产品则因为向公众误报自身历史回报率而受到美国证交会调查。另一家战术产品巨头嘉信理财旗下90亿美元的Windhaven Diversified Growth产品，2014年的回报率几乎为零。战术策略原来不过如此。

    简言之，那个时代与当今时代极为相似，一些最哗众取宠的权威人士，要么将其捧上天，要么把其贬得一文不值。

    狄更斯在《双城记》中描写法国大革命时，距离事件发生已有近一个世纪。而我则是在今年12月就回顾盘点这一年。因此，我在此描述的某些趋势，可能将在可预见的未来继续存在，而另一些趋势则可能已经开始减弱。作为当今时代“最哗众取宠的权威人士”之一，我只要求各位在阅读这篇评论文章时记住一点：过去的业绩并不能保证将来的表现。

    各位，我们明年见。（财富中文网）

    译者：Hunter

    审稿：李翔

    It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

    One of the most discouraging aspects of 2014 for professional investors has been the start-and-stop nature of the recovery. We coasted into January on a trend of strengthening economic reports. Within a few weeks, a nationwide snowstorm seemingly drove the economic data off the side of the road.

    Market watchers were forced to digest the reality of negative 2.9% GDP for the first quarter of the year. All of a sudden, everyone’s forecasts seemed too rosy—or at least too smooth—compared to the lumpy reality. This led to a raft of second-guessing on the timing of the Fed’s eventual exit from its bond-buying stimulus program. We went from confidence to WTF? in a space of a few weeks, with all the asset class rotations and market corrections that come along with a fresh bout of uncertainty.

    Despite the fact that each market rebound ended up as a V-shaped affair, each successive rally was carried out with less and less individual stock participation. Glaring divergences between winners and losers, large caps and small caps, preoccupied the commentariat for most of the spring and summer. Deflationary concerns from Europe and the Japanese technical recession further confounded analysts, as Treasury yields and inflation indicators in the U.S. were driven lower despite the improving domestic economy.

    Put succinctly, there was no way to describe or explain the crosscurrents of 2014. And I’m not convinced that the benefit of hindsight will make what happened this year any clearer years from now.

    We had everything before us, we had nothing before us…

    While the S&P 500 is on track to conclude another stellar year of gains, those who sought to beat the index are poised to finish with a more dubious distinction. According to Lipper, 85% of all active stock mutual fund managers had been trailing their benchmarks through the end of November. In a typical year, there are nearly twice as many managers outperforming, with only around two thirds of funds struggling to catch up. Lipper says this is the worst year for active managers relative to the market in three decades.

    Stock pickers encountered difficulty this year in part because of concentration at the top of the market. Just five stocks—Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and Intel— accounted for 20% of the market’s gains. If you weren’t at least equally weighted toward them, you had virtually no shot at making up for missing their enormous, index-driving gains. A majority of the market’s stocks did not perform nearly as well. According to the Leuthold Group, only 30% of S&P 1500 stocks posted gains exceeding the index itself. You’d have to go back to 1999 to see anything like this.

    Fund shareholders weren’t wasting any time reacting to this year of disappointment. Collectively, they’ve added just $35 billion to active stock-picking funds in the last 11 months, less than a quarter of the $162 billion they added in 2013, which was the first year of positive flows for the industry since 2007. This is not to say that they were sitting still. ETFs and passive index funds took in over $206 billion in net deposits through Thanksgiving, and Vanguard surpassed the $3 trillion mark sometime in late summer. Investors seem to have decided that they’d rather bet on the horses than the jockeys, after all.

    We were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way

    The malaise was not confined to those picking individual stock winners. Through December 1, aggregate hedge fund returns trailed the market to the point of farce. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, hedge funds were up an average of 2% on the year, just barely offering the coupon rate of a risk-free 10-year Treasury note. Over 1,000 funds are on track to close down in 2014, the worst year for liquidations since 2009.

    Among the gargantuan hedge funds that make up a majority of the industry’s assets under management, dispersion of returns shot up to notable levels. And for every big winner, like William Ackman’s Pershing Square, there was a big loser to counterbalance it, like John Paulson’s Advantage Fund. Investors choose hedge funds for their “non-correlated returns,” meaning a tendency to move opposite from the general market’s direction. They certainly got such returns this year, unfortunately.

    Financial advisors and asset allocators who had been hoping to see some benefit this year from tactical strategies were also not spared the punishment of a capricious market. Of the top three tactical strategies in the country (Mainstay Marketfield, Good Harbor U.S. Tactical Core, F-Squared Premium AlphaSector Index), two had nearly imploded with double-digit losses while the third found itself under SEC investigation for misleading the public about its historical returns. The other giant tactical manager, Schwab’s $9 billion Windhaven Diversified Growth product, looks to end 2014 with a return close to zero. So much for tactics.

    In short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

    When Dickens wrote about the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities, he did it with nearly a century of hindsight. Here, at the end of December, I don’t enjoy that luxury. As such, some of the trends I’ve written here are likely to remain in force for the foreseeable future, while others may have already begun to fade. As one of this period’s “noisiest authorities,” I insist only on your receiving this review with just one caveat in mind: Past performance does not guarantee future results.

    I’ll see you next year.