熊市注定要来临，必须关注这5种数据

公司利润

员工拿得多，股东得到的就可能变少

几十年来，沃伦·巴菲特秉承的指导原则中一直有这么一条，那就是当公司利润在GDP中的占比达到不成比例的高点时，资本主义的竞争属性就会产生吸引力，进而把这个比例拉回到历史正常水平。这位奥马哈圣人担心，公司盈利能力将下降，股票回报率也会变得很低，甚至更糟。

如果这条原则仍然适用，投资者就有可能要经历一段艰难旅程了。就某些指标而言，巴菲特所说的吸引力已经开始发挥作用。2012年美国的公司利润/GDP比例在11%见顶，但到了2018年第四季度，公司利润仍占GDP的9.3%，比60年来的平均值高2.6个百分点。这表明它还会进一步下跌。金融数据和分析公司FactSet调查的分析师预计，今年第一季度标普500指数的每股收益将同比下滑4.2%，第二季度则会出现零增长。

上述变化表明平衡点正在重新向劳动者靠拢。2000年至今，薪酬、工资和奖金在GDP中的比重从46%降至43%；最近其走势开始反转。Moody’s Analytics实时经济部门负责人瑞安·斯威特说：“美国目前有700万个职位空缺，待业者平均每人一个以上。”劳动力供应吃紧以及企业员工离职速度加快使工资上涨了3.1%，是2010年增速的两倍。通常，这些情况会不断给整个经济带来利润压力，同时抑制股价。

但有一位投资者认为我们或许已经进入了可以长期维持较强盈利能力的新常态，而他正是沃伦·巴菲特，这确实让人惊讶。在伯克希尔-哈撒韦的2018年投资者大会上，巴菲特承认互联网、社交媒体以及数据革命已经孕育出了“轻资产经济”，推动其发展的是仅凭少量资本就创造出高额利润的大型科技公司。亚马逊、苹果公司、谷歌母公司Alphabet、Facebook和微软主导着各自的行业，它们强有力的品牌和巨大的规模提高了单用户收入，同时降低了吸引新用户的成本。这五家公司目前占标普500指数利润的12%并非巧合。虽然它们的劳动力成本也在上升，但这些公司根本不需要那么多的人手（或者厂房、库存）就能使销售达到很高的水平。

结论：和其他行业的利润率下跌相比，科技巨头盈利能力的下滑将较为平缓，这还应有助于它们在股市上领跑。美股整体回报率可能会低于投资者已经习惯的水平。但如果员工拿了更多工资是股市回报率下滑的原因之一，那就有希望。—Shawn Tully（财富中文网）

本文刊登在2019年5月出版的《财富》杂志上，题为《解码市场信号》（Decoding the Market’s Messages）。

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林

Corporate Profits

As workers get more, shareholders could get less

For decades, it’s been one of Warren Buffett’s guiding principles: When corporate profits swell to a disproportionately large share of GDP, the Omaha sage has cautioned, the competitive nature of capitalism exercises a gravitational force that pulls them back to historical norms. Profitability shrinks, and stock returns become sluggish, or worse.

If that principle holds true, investors could be facing a rough ride. By some measures, Buffett’s gravitational shift is already underway. U.S. earnings peaked at 11% of GDP in 2012, but in the fourth quarter of 2018, they still accounted for 9.3%, or 2.6 percentage points higher than the 60-year average (see chart), suggesting they have further to fall. Analysts polled by FactSet forecast a year-over-year decline in earnings per share for the S&P 500 of 4.2% in the first quarter, and zero growth in the second.

The change reflects a tipping of the balance back toward labor. Since 2000, the share of GDP going to salaries, wages, and bonuses has dropped from 46% to 43%; lately, that trend is reversing. “America now has 7 million job openings, more than one for every unemployed worker,” says Ryan Sweet of Moody’s Analytics. That tightening labor market and the increased rates at which workers are leaving jobs for new ones are why wages are growing at 3.1%, twice the pace of 2010. Ordinarily, these trends would continue pressuring profits, and suppressing share prices, across the economy.

But there’s one investor who thinks we may have entered a new normal that could sustain higher profitability for a long time—and that investor, surprisingly enough, is Warren ¬Buffett. At the 2018 annual investor meeting for Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett acknowledged that the Internet, social media, and data revolutions have spawned an “asset-light economy,” driven by tech giants that generate floods of profits from mere trickles of capital. Amazon, Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Facebook, and Microsoft dominate their industries, and their powerful brands and enormous scale swell their revenues per customer and lower their costs of attracting new ones. It’s not coincidental that those five companies now account for 12% of the S&P 500’s profits. While they, too, face rising labor costs, they don’t need nearly as much labor (or plants, or inventories) to generate hefty sales.

The takeaway: The profitability of the tech titans will decline more gradually than margins in other industries, which should help their stocks outperform too. Overall U.S. stock returns will likely be lower than what investors have grown used to. But if workers pocketing higher wages are a reason for that slowdown, that will be a silver lining. —Shawn Tully

A version of this article appears in the May 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Decoding the Market’s Messages.”