Bears Are Roaming Far and Wide
Fingers crossed. With U.S. bond yields climbing ever higher and the specter of the Federal Reserve raising short-term interest rates looming ever nearer, one global financial-market bubble after another -- bonds, property, commodities, currencies and emerging-markets stocks and bonds -- is popping or threatening to blow.
So far, global stock markets have been spared. But some skeptics contend stock markets may be living on borrowed time. The rally these markets saw from October 2002 to January 2004, albeit coming from a low start, "was probably just a bounce in a long-term bear market," says Michael Belkin, president of Belkin Ltd., a Bainbridge Island, Wash., investment-advisory firm that forecasts financial-market trends.
He adds that, "the potential for a stampede in the opposite direction in everything is enormous" given that many investors are holding long positions -- bets that the only way is up -- in other financial markets just as U.S. and other nations' interest rates appear to be headed higher. Already, signs of that stampede can be seen on the horizon.
Since March 12, for instance, the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds has climbed to 4.8% from 3.7%, while the bond's price -- which moves inversely to its yield -- has fallen 8.7%.
The price of oil is higher than almost every analyst had predicted a year ago, but other commodity prices are sinking. Base-metals prices are down 13% from their recent highs of April 19, and the price of gold has tumbled 12% since the end of March.
From their highs against the dollar in February and March, the euro, yen and pound sterling have fallen by between 8% and 8.7%. And in the past month, emerging stock markets have lost 13%, according to Morgan Stanley Capital International.
What's more, money managers and economists are trying to decide whether China, Asia's new behemoth, will undergo a hard or soft landing as its leaders attempt to cool down their economy's near 10% growth rate.
All these markets are taking a hit because hedge funds and other speculators had piled in with borrowed money that was many multiples the capital they had. Employing so-called carry trades, they borrowed dollars at low interest rates and invested the proceeds in higher-yielding assets. But with U.S. interest rates rising, many of the trades either are becoming or threatening to become unprofitable. As a consequence, the speculators and other investors are making a mad dash for the exits, dragging markets down with them.
Meanwhile, individual investors are going deeper in debt to either refinance existing homes or take out bigger mortgages to purchase new ones. The result: a bloated real-estate bubble on the verge of bursting, says Morgan Stanley Chief Economist Stephen Roach in a report to clients last Friday.
Some point to the Fed as having fostered this speculative, bubble-creating fever. To deal with one problem -- the residue from the bursting of the late 1990's stock-market bubble -- the Fed pushed interest rates to 46-year lows. But that cheap money in turn created a new set of bubbles in other markets.
While their performance this year certainly isn't setting the house on fire, major world stock markets have so far managed to escape the carnage. James Montier, a global equity strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in London, suspects that is because the people making the big bets with borrowed cash largely avoided the big markets, except for a few individual sectors such as technology. But he warns: "The start of the unwind in the highly leveraged areas of the global reflation trade is just a hint of what's to come."
So how far can major stock markets around the world fall? Mr. Belkin contends all the way back to their 2002 lows. Depending on which index is measured, that could translate into declines of between 22% and 43%. If that starts to happen, investors may need to look for solace to none other than Abraham Lincoln, who said: "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."
各大股市或成为下一个破裂泡沫
但愿我说的不准。目前债券收益率越来越高，美国联邦储备委员会(Fed)上调短期利率的可能性也越来越大，一个又一个金融市场──债券、房地产、商品、外汇和新兴市场股市及债券市场眼看著泛起了阵阵泡沫。
迄今为止，主要股市还没有受到冲击。但部分怀疑论者认为，这也只是苟延残喘而已。华盛顿州投资顾问机构Belkin Ltd.的总裁麦克尔?贝尔金(Michael Belkin)说，2002年10月至2004年1月全球股市的上扬可能只是长期熊市中的一次反弹。他还说，从利率上调期间泡沫市场中投机性多头头寸的规模来看，市场反向发展的潜在力量很大。
与此同时，泡沫还在不断破裂。
─债券市场：自3月12日以来，10年期美国国债的收益率已经从3.7%攀升至4.8%，而债券价格则下跌了8.7%。
─股票市场：根据摩根士丹利资本国际公司(Morgan Stanley Capital International Inc., 简称MSCI)的数据，全球科技股已经从1月末的高点下跌了15%，半导体类股下跌了21%。
─商品市场：石油价格几乎超出了所有分析师1年前的预期，但其他商品价格，如工业材料、金属和谷物则在走低。比如，贱金属价格已较4月19日的近期高点下跌了13%，黄金价格则较3月底时的高点下跌了12%。
─外汇市场：欧元、日圆和英镑兑美元已较2-3月期间的高点下跌了8%-8.6%左右，澳元下跌了13%。
─新兴市场：根据MSCI的数据，新兴市场在过去一个月中下跌了13%，而阿根廷、巴西、秘鲁和俄罗斯市场则下跌了17%至23%不等。
此外，基金经理和经济学家还在判断，在中国领导人试图给接近10%的经济增长率降温时，中国经济是会硬著陆还是软著陆。有人甚至质疑中国本身是否就是一个巨大的泡沫，并已经开始──至少是暂时出现滑坡。
从4月12日至本周一，在香港上市的中国公司（H股）下跌了21%。根据MSCI的数据，同期向外国投资者开放的中国股票则下跌了19%；台湾股市下跌了14%，香港股市下跌了13%。
对冲基金及其他投机者曾经凭借其自由资金数倍的借款大举进入这些市场。通过所谓的结转交易，他们借到低利率的美元，然后投资到高收益率资产中。但随著利率走高，大多数此类交易正在或可能变得无利可图。因此，这些投机者及其他投资者开始迅速退出，并拖累市场走低。
伦敦Execution Ltd.的资深策略师马克?廷克尔(Mark Tinker)说，所有市场的主要问题就是结转交易的解除和投机资金的撤离。这个因素远远超过基本面的因素，成为导致目前市场走势的主要原因。
与此同时，部分个人投资者也在以自己的方式进行结转交易，将现有房屋再融资或是靠大笔抵押贷款购买新房屋而越来越深地陷入到债务当中。摩根士丹利资深经济师史蒂芬?罗奇(Stephen Roach)在上周五给客户的报告中称，其结果是，不断膨胀的房地产泡沫已经到了崩溃的边缘。
罗奇指出，在去年第四季度，美国全国的房屋价格折合成年率涨幅达到创纪录的15%，50个州中有48个州的房价上涨。另外一项摩根士丹利的研究称，英国的房屋价格比其合理价位高出了30%左右，在今后两年很可能会下跌，尽管下跌幅度可能不会像80年代时猛烈。
在制造所有这些投机性的泡沫方面，Fed难逃干系。为了解决90年代末股市泡沫破裂的遗留问题，Fed将利率下调至46年来的低点。但低成本的资金却由于投资者进行所谓的"通货再膨胀交易"，而在其他市场产生了新一轮的泡沫。
贝尔金说，关键之处在于联邦基金利率低于通货膨胀率。主要利率为1%，而通货膨胀率约为1.7%。他说，历史证明，只要央行设定的利率低于通货膨胀率，情况就会恶化。
罗奇表示，Fed现在已经完全令美国患上了多泡沫综合症。这是一个重大的政策错误。
今年以来全球主要股市尚未出现大规模的下挫。Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein驻伦敦全球策略师詹姆斯?蒙捷(James Montier)推测，这可能是因为用贷款进行炒作的市场人士基本没有进入主要市场中，最多只是进入了科技股等少数几个领域中。
