中国股市的投资之道

Check Out China Plays


Investing in China is very appealing -- and puzzling. So investors should know what they're getting into before putting money there.

Sure, few markets have such bright long-term prospects. China is the world's most populous country and its economy is expanding at more than 7% annually.

Businesses have made China the No. 1 destination for overseas investment.

But capitalism is still relatively new in China and many Chinese stocks surged in the 1990s following their initial public offerings, only to collapse in price later on.

That's why investment pros advise socking away just a small amount of money in China, and to not expect to pull it out anytime soon.

Over time, many pros predict, a diversified China portfolio should outperform most developed markets as the Chinese economy and business culture mature.

How to invest in China? The easiest and safest way is through one of the dozen mutual funds that invest primarily in Chinese companies and other Asian companies that do business in China.

The top three performers over the past five years with at least 50% of assets in China and Hong Kong: Matthews China Fund, Columbia Newport Greater China Fund (class A shares) and AllianceBernstein Greater China '97 Fund (advisor shares).

To invest in individual Chinese companies, your choices include 16 mainland firms that trade in New York. The list ranges from Internet start-ups like Netease.com to infrastructure plays like Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co. Many other Asian stocks have some exposure to China.
中国股市的投资之道

投资中国充满了诱惑，同时也令人难以捉摸。因此，在把钱投到中国之前，投资者应该先了解这个市场。

的确，没有几个市场的前景有如中国这般光明。中国是世界上人口最多的国家，每年经济增长率超过7%。

中国是全球海外投资的头号目的国。

但资本市场在中国的发展时间仍然较短，中国许多股票在90年代首次公开上市后一度大幅飙升，但最后都踏上了漫漫下跌之路。

这就是许多投资专业人士建议对中国只进行低额度投资的原因，而且还不要指望这笔资金能在短期内撤出。

许多专业人士预测，随著中国经济和商业文化的日臻成熟，一个多样化的中国投资组合的表现应会强于大多数发达国家的市场。

如何在中国投资？目前有数十个共同基金投资于中国公司以及在中国开展业务的亚洲公司，挑选其中一个共同基金是最简便和最安全的办法。

那些对中国和香港投资占总资产比例超过50%的共同基金中，过去5年表现最好的3只分别为：Matthews China Fund、Columbia Newport Greater China Fund（A股）以及AllianceBernstein Greater China '97 Fund

如果投资个股，可从在纽约上市的16只中国大陆股票中挑选。这些股票既有网易(Netease.com)这样的互联网初创公司，也有象上海石化(Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co.)这样的基础设施公司。有许多亚洲公司都在中国开展业务，这些公司的股票也在可选择之列。

投资美股慎防头脑发热

Many Investors Throwing Caution Back to the Wind


Earlier this year, Chris Wolfe's biggest problem was persuading his wealthy clients to start buying stocks again.

Today, says Mr. Wolfe, who heads stock investment at J.P. Morgan Private Bank in New York, the problem is to persuade some of them to cool their engines.

"If someone should have 65% or 70% of his money in stocks, they want 90% or 95%," Mr. Wolfe says. He says it sometimes looks like a miniversion of the stock mania he saw in 1999. Even the contractor who is refinishing the basement of Mr. Wolfe's home in Connecticut has begun asking for stock tips.

Plenty of ordinary people still are wary of stocks, say Mr. Wolfe and others who deal with individual investors. But with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 32% since last October, many ordinary investors are throwing caution to the wind and jumping back into stocks.

The trend has many analysts, including Mr. Wolfe, beginning to worry that some investors are going overboard again, pushing stocks up too far, too fast.
"People come up to me at my son's hockey game or my daughter's soccer game, and say, 'So, are things getting better?'" reports market strategist Brian Belski of brokerage firm U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. He worries that stocks have gotten ahead of corporate fundamentals.

The returning optimism can be seen in Federal Reserve data on individual ownership of stocks. Taken as a percentage of all household financial assets, stock ownership fell during the bear market. But in the second quarter of this year, it turned sharply up again, according to an analysis of Fed data by Ned Davis Research in Venice, Fla. Household financial assets include things like stocks, bonds, cash, insurance and annuities, but not real estate or 401(k) retirement accounts.

Some of the rise in the stock percentage is a statistical artifact. When stock prices rise faster than the value of other investments, stocks automatically represent a larger percentage of people's portfolios. But analysts at Ned Davis Research , as well as people who manage investors' portfolios, say there is more going on than that. Ordinary people, especially wealthy, experienced investors, have begun chasing stocks again.

"A day doesn't go by without a client saying, 'Hey, I'm looking for a good story, give me a story on a stock,'" Mr. Wolfe says.

Some investor excitement is good for stocks. It helps explain why stocks jumped last week to 15-month highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average last week recorded its sixth week of gains in the past seven, rising 173.27 points, or 1.83%, to 9644.82. The weekly gain came despite Friday's pullback of 14.31 points, or 0.15%.

Like the pros, ordinary investors are enraptured again with technology stocks. Many tech stocks have doubled over the past year. Some have tripled or quadrupled. The Nasdaq Composite Index, dominated by big technology stocks, is up 71% since October of last year.

But analysts worry about the trend. When investors get too optimistic, they push stocks to levels that aren't justified by corporate earnings. And when investor expectations for stocks and corporate performance exceed companies' ability to deliver, it can snuff out bull markets. A cliche on Wall Street is that you know that a bull market is ending when the pros start unloading their stock holdings to individuals, who are always the last to get the word.

A number of analysts, including Mr. Belski, are warning now about the risk of at least a temporary pullback. Some think stocks could fall 15% or more.

A deeper reason for worry is that, during the long stock decline that began more than three years ago, investors never got as negative on stocks as they normally do during a long bear market. The Ned Davis data indicate that during the long stock slump of the 1970s and early 1980s, stocks fell to as little as 11% of household assets before finally turning up in 1982 as a long-term market recovery began.

Over the past 50 years, individuals have held on average about 26% of household financial assets in stocks. But in recent years, even at the worst of the bear market, stocks never fell below 29% of household financial assets. At the end of June they were back almost to 33%, though still well below the peak of 49% in the first quarter of 2000. (To avoid having the data skewed by the rise of retirement investing in programs such as 401(k)s, the calculations don't include those retirement accounts.)

Some analysts who study long-term market trends say that before the post-bubble retrenchment truly will be over, ordinary investors need to do what they have done in the past, and become truly negative on stocks. Until stock holdings fall to a below-average level in household finances, these analysts believe, stocks will still be at risk for more sharp declines and disappointments.

But Prof. Jeremy Siegel of the Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania, who has studied investor behavior, offers a different view. He says investors decided in the 1990s that stocks are a better place for long-term savings than bonds. He wrote a book making that argument. And recent laws reducing taxes on capital gains and on dividend income make stocks even more attractive, he adds.

"I don't think we are ever going to get down to those percentages [of stock holdings] that we saw in the 1970s, when the idea that stocks are good long-term investments was not as ingrained in people's minds as it is today," Mr. Siegel says. During the bear market "many more people told me they were sticking with stocks than told me, 'I am packing it in and getting out of stocks.'"

Mr. Siegel says he believes that a lasting investor preference for stocks means that price/earnings ratios and other market measures don't have to fall back to the lows they have recorded in other bear markets.

James Paulsen, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management, a money-management arm of Wells Fargo, says he just finished a conference with clients and that they still don't seem overly bullish to him. "The fear is gone of it collapsing like it was," he says. But he adds "There is still a high level of cautiousness overall, compared to what it could be if the market were to keep rising for another year." As long as people retain some skepticism, he says, it means they are keeping some "dry powder" in the form of cash that could be used to send stocks up later.

And there aren't many signs yet that big institutions are pulling back from stocks. The Fed data suggest that investment institutions like pension funds are even more heavily exposed to stocks than are individuals. They had 36% of financial assets in stocks at the end of June. They also never fell back to their own 50-year average holding of 25%. Ordinary people aren't the only ones feeling more bullish these days.

Friday's Market Activity

Expeditors International of Washington (Nasdaq), a member of the Dow Jones Transportation Average, slid $2.84, or 7.3%, to $36.15, after the logistics-services provider said it expects third-quarter earnings of 28 cents to 30 cents a share, below analysts' targets.

FedEx, also a Dow transportation stock, fell 2.35, or 3.4%, to 66.25, as Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock to "equal-weight" from "overweight" because the delivery company's shares are up 26% this year, near Morgan Stanley's target.

Nike jumped 4.25, or 7.4%, to 61.50, after the athletic footwear and clothing retailer reported fiscal first-quarter net income of 98 cents a share, contrasted with a loss of 18 cents a share a year earlier.
投资美股慎防头脑发热

就在今年年初时，J.P. Morgan Private Bank驻纽约股票投资主管克里斯?沃尔夫(Chris Wolfe)还在为如何说服富有的客户重新进入股市而大伤脑筋。但他没有想到，如今的问题却是如何给这些投资者的投资热情降温。

沃尔夫说，若有人本应将65%或70%的资金投入股市，他们就会希望投入90%或95%。他说，有时候这看上去就像1999年股市狂热的缩影。甚至为他在康涅狄格州的居所整修地下室的工人都开始向他打听股市内幕消息。

沃尔夫和其他接待散户投资者的专业人士称，有许多普通大众仍对股市怀有戒心。但由于自去年10月以来道琼斯工业股票平均价格指数涨了32%，许多普通投资者也抛开一切顾虑重回股市。

这种趋势令包括沃尔夫在内的许多分析师开始担心一些投资者将再次头脑发热，推动股市以过快的速度和过大的涨幅走高。

此种对股市信心的恢复在美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve, 简称Fed)有关个人持股数量的数据中也有所体现。

熊市期间，美国家庭金融资产中股票所占比例会下降。但佛罗里达州的Ned Davis Research对Fed数据的分析显示，今年第二季度该比例再次大幅上升。家庭金融资产包括股票、债券、现金、保险和年金，但不包括房地产和401k退休金计划的帐户。

当股价涨速超过其他投资的价值时，股票在人们投资组合中的比例将自动提高。但Ned Davis Research的分析师和其他管理投资者投资组合的人士认为，情况其实更为严重。普通群众，特别是有钱且经验丰富的投资者，又开始追捧股票。

投资者一定程度的热情对股市有利。它是推动股市上周跃升至15个月高点的原因之一。尽管道琼斯工业股票平均价格指数上周五下跌14.31点，跌幅0.15%，但上周累计仍涨了173.27点，至9644.82点，涨幅1.83%，这是过去7周来该指数第六周上扬。

与机构投资者一样，散户投资者再次极度热衷于科技股。许多科技股过去一年来股价涨了一倍，有一些甚至涨了两倍或三倍。以大型科技股为主的那斯达克综合指数去年10月以来上涨71%。

但分析师对此势头表示担忧。当投资者对股市过于乐观时，他们会将股价推高至超出公司收益状况所能支持的合理范围之外。而且当投资者对股价和公司表现的预期超出公司实际能力时，就会扼杀股市的上行趋势。华尔街的一条定律是，当机构投资者开始减持股票头寸，将其卖给散户投资者时，即意味著牛市已近尾声。散户投资者通常是最后得知这一讯息的人。

许多分析师警告称，股市可能至少将暂时回落。其中一些认为股市将下跌15%或更多。

引起担忧的更深层原因是，在始于3年多前的为时很长的股市下行期间，投资者对股市的悲观情绪远未达到以往熊市时的程度。Ned Davis的数据显示，在70年代和80年代初发生的长期股市下挫过程中，美国家庭金融资产中股票所占比例曾降至11%的低点，直到1982股市开始进入长期反弹期时才终于回升。

过去50年来，家庭金融资产中股票所占比例平均为26%左右。但近几年，即使在股市环境最为糟糕的时候，上述比例也从未低于29%。今年6月底，该比例回升至将近33%，尽管仍远低于2000年第一季度创下的49%的高点。

一些研究股市长期走势的分析师认为，只有等到家庭金融资产中股票头寸所占比例降至平均水平以下时，股市才有可能摆脱大幅下挫的危险。

但宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿(Wharton)商学院研究投资者行为的杰里米?西格尔(Jeremy Siegel)教授却有不同见解。他认为，90年代投资者认为长期存款投入股市强于投入债市。而且，近期实行的降低资本利得税和股息收入税的法律，更增添了股市的吸引力。

西格尔认为，家庭金融资产中股票所占比例再也不会降至70年代的水平，因为投资者看法已和当时不同。

西格尔称，他相信投资者对股市的持续青睐意味著本益比和其他市场衡量标准不一定会回落至以往熊市时出现过的低水平。

富国银行(Wells Fargo)资金管理子公司Wells Capital Management的首席投资长詹姆斯?保尔森(James Paulsen)刚刚结束了客户会议，他认为客户并未显得过于乐观。他说，总体而言，市场仍维持相当高的谨慎态度。只要投资者心存顾虑，就意味著他们会在手头保留一些现金，这些现金日后可能用于推高股市。

而且，现在也没有太多迹象表明大型机构投资者将减持股票头寸。Fed数据显示，像退休基金这样的投资机构的股票持有量甚至高于个人投资者。截至6月底，这些机构投资者所持股票在其金融资产中占36%。

这一比例也再没有降至25%的50年平均水平。因此，目前并非只有普通投资者对股市态度更为乐观。

中国门户网站能否维持高股价
Chinese Portals' Future Plans Will Need to Justify Rich Prices

China's three main Internet portals have enjoyed a spectacular run on the Nasdaq Stock Market in the U.S., with their share prices jumping several-dozen fold during the past year. Will the good times continue?

Certainly, some short-sellers have been borrowing the stock of Sohu.com, Sina and NetEase.com, betting they can profit by replacing the borrowed shares with less-expensive shares when the market price drops. Several executives at Sohu.com, including its founder and chief financial officer, have recently sold the company's shares near their highs. The companies themselves have predicted growth will slow during the third quarter.

Some uncertainties cloud the portals' prospects. Until now, they have prospered largely on the back of explosive growth in short-messaging services -- jokes, horoscopes and other messages that are delivered to mobile phones, often by the portals, usually for either a one-time or monthly fee. For the portals, such services comprise a low-cost, high-profit-margin business that accounts for about half of their revenue.

Following the rapid expansion of China's SMS user base during the past year, the growth rate is expected to slow. A review by cellular carriers of their cooperation with the portals is raising additional questions about how much SMS would contribute to the portals' future revenues. Because portals rely on mobile-phone companies to do their billing and collection -- mobile phones are much more prevalent than credit cards in China -- those relationships with cellular carriers are crucial.

Whether the portals can maintain their rapid growth, and high share prices, will depend in part on how these issues are resolved. But the companies' longer-term outlook may hinge on how well they diversify beyond short-messaging services.

"Over the next two or three years the question will be answered as to which company is the leader and has built a business for the long term," says Peter Conley , director of equity research at MDB Capital Group in Los Angeles. Besides short messaging, the "things that will emerge as important factors in market growth are paid e-mail, paid search, advertising and games."

Mr. Conley says his bet is on Sina, in which MDB holds stock. Sina is already the leader in terms of online ad revenue, with nearly 40% of the Chinese market, and top multinationals among its clients. Mr. Conley says Sina is investing in technology for sophisticated online games that could eventually help it to oust current leader NetEase. To date, though, Sina's move into this sector, through a joint venture with South Korean gaming company NCSoft, hasn't done especially well.

Sina, which had dropped to a low of $1.06 in October 2001, closed at $40.23 in New York Friday, down from a record $54.50 during May 2000. Sohu.com, which fell to 60 cents a share during April 2001, ended at $39.98 Friday, against a record of $42.68 during July. NetEase whose American depositary receipts had dropped to $0.53 in July 2001, ended the week at $63.80, far from its 52-week low of $1.80 but within striking distance of its 52-week high of $64.54.

In the short term, what happens in the short-messaging market could continue to make a big difference in the portals' performance. The official publication of China's Ministry of Information Technology estimates the number of short messages sent in China will double this year from 90 billion in 2002 -- a long way from the one billion short messages the country's two cellphone companies say they carried during 2000. With that kind of heady growth, industry analysts predict the growth rate for SMS users will slow during the next year or so.

Another question mark is the portals' relationship with China's wireless carriers, China Mobile and China Unicom. The carriers have collected fees from mobile-phone users for an array of services on behalf of the portals, including services that didn't involve the use of cellphones, such as Web-based e-mail or access to movies. The portals then paid the carriers a portion of the fees collected, usually 15%.

This summer, the carriers suspended fee collections for all services not involving the use of cellphones, pending a three-month review of the policy. The move was aimed at curbing sexy, sometimes pornographic, services that were being offered by third-party Web sites via the portals, but it has also affected the portals' ability to collect fees for some legitimate services, including online games and Web-based e-mail.

That uncertainty could end soon. Industry executives say China Mobile, in cooperation with banks, could launch a separate billing system for services that aren't related to mobile-phone use, perhaps this year. The wireless carrier is expected to ask for a higher share of the fee revenue.

Sohu.com says such a move won't affect it, because it doesn't offer any noncellular services that require mobile-carrier billing. It doesn't expect any changes to its SMS revenue-sharing agreements with China Mobile. "The long-term prospects for SMS and MMS are very good," says Sohu.com spokeswoman Caroline Straathof. MMS refers to multimedia messaging services, such as the delivery of video clips to mobile phones.

Sina declined to comment on its share price or the company's prospects. NetEase spokeswoman Zhang Yang also declined to comment on her company's share price, but says, "It is Netease's business model with various revenue sources that has attracted investors and made Netease's share prices outstanding ... That's why we will keep it up and try and keep a balance among our main revenue sources," online ads, games, short-messaging services and other paid services.

She says she expects NetEase to maintain "solid growth" in the SMS business, even if the user-base expansion slows, because "the existing SMS user base is large enough."

Some analysts say the portals, with price-to-earnings ratios reminiscent of U.S. tech stocks before the tech bubble burst, are priced too richly. Jenny Zhan, an analyst for GMO Emerging Market Fund in Berkeley, California, says that given the high profit margins of the SMS business, it is just a matter of time before the cellular carriers ask for a bigger piece of the pie and more SMS providers jump into the market. She also expressed concern about the recent insider selling in portal stocks.

"Given all the risks," Ms. Zhang says, "the companies are overvalued."
中国门户网站能否维持高股价

中国互联网三大门户网站的股价在美国那斯达克市场经历了螺旋式的上升，过去一年中股价跃升了几十倍，但这种好日子还能持续多久呢？

实际上，一些做空者一直在借入搜狐公司(Sohu.com Inc., Q.SOQ)、新浪网(Sina.Com)及网易公司(Netease.com Inc., Q.NTE)的股票，以期在这些股票股价下跌时，能够以较低的价格归还，进而从中获利。而搜狐公司的一些管理人士，包括其创始人兼首席执行长，近期也都在该股接近高点时卖出了该公司的股票。此外，这些公司本身也都预测第三季度（收入）增长速度将放缓。

确实，这些互联网门户网站的前景还充满了诸多不确定性。到目前为止，它们的主要利润来源还是短信息服务。这些网站将笑话、星运以及其他短信息发送给手机用户，一次性收取费用或按月收费。对它们来说，这是一项低成本、高利润的服务，网站的收入中有大约一半都来自此项业务。

而另一方面，由于门户网站依靠移动电话运营商来进行计费和收费，在中国移动电话的使用比信用卡更加普遍，因此它们与移动电话运营商的关系就至关重要。

总的来说，这些门户网站能否保持快速发展并维持较高的股价，在某种程度上将取决于上述问题能否得到解决。但从长期来看，它们的前景将取决于在短信息业务以外的业务多元化。

MDB Capital Group驻洛杉矶的股权研究负责人Peter Conley认为，在今后两三年，哪家公司将成为其中的佼佼者，哪家公司能够建立起长期业务等问题都将获得解答。除了短信息之外，还有几项业务将成为决定市场增长率方面的重要因素，其中包括收费电子邮件、收费搜索、广告以及游戏等。

Conley称，他比较看好MDB持股的新浪网。在网上广告收入方面，新浪早已是独占鳌头，其该项收入占中国网上广告收入市场近40%的比例，其客户中也有很多顶级的跨国公司。Conley称，新浪目前正投资于高端网络游戏制作技术，以期最终超越目前处于领先地位的网易公司。但到目前为止，新浪在这方面的动作也只是与韩国游戏商NCSoft成立了合资公司，而该合资公司的表现则不尽人意。

新浪的股票在2001年10月份曾达到了1.06美元的低点，上周五收于40.23美元，但低于2000年5月份创下的54.5美元的历史高点。搜狐公司的股票在2001年4月份曾一度跌至60美分，上周五收于39.98美元，也低于今年7月份创下的42.68美元的纪录高点。网易的美国存托凭证在2001年7月曾跌至53美分，上周五收于63.80美元，远远高于52周低点1.80美元，与其52周高点64.54美元也触手可及。

这些门户网站面临的另一个问题是与中国移动及中国联通等移动电话运营商的关系。目前，这些移动运营商代表网站向移动电话用户收取一系列服务费用，网站将这些费用中的一部分（通常为15%）分成给运营商。运营商向用户收取的费用中也包括基于Web的电子邮件服务或浏览电影费用，但这些服务与移动电话毫不相干。

今年夏天，这些运营商暂停收取与移动电话业务无关的费用，有关部门将就此进行为期3个月的评估。此举旨在抑制第三方网站通过这些门户网站提供色情淫秽服务，但同时也影响了这些网站合法服务的收费。

这种不稳定的状态将很快结束。业内人士称，中国移动正在同银行合作，也许今年就会推出针对非移动电话业务的独立计费系统，但预计届时它在收入中提取的比例也将更高。

搜狐公司称，此举不会影响其业绩，因为它并不提供需要无线运营商计费的非移动电话服务，因而预计其与中国移动之间的SMS收入分成协议也不会发生变化。搜狐的发言人卡洛琳-斯特拉托福(Caroline Straathof)称，SMS及MMS的长期前景都很好。

新浪则拒绝就其股价及公司前景进行置评。网易的发言人张洋(Zhang Yang, 音译)也拒绝就公司股价问题发表评论，但她表示，网易的多元化业务模式吸引了投资者，使得网易的股价目前遥遥领先。而这也是公司何以保持这种势头并维持网络广告、游戏、短信息服务及其他收费服务等主要业务之间平衡的原因。

她说，即便用户基数的扩充速度减缓，预计网易的SMS业务也将保持稳定增长，因为现有的SMS用户基数已经足够大。

一些分析师称，这些门户网站目前的本益比使人联想到科技泡沫破灭前的美国科技公司，这些公司的股价都太高。GMO Emerging Market Fund驻加州伯克利的分析师Jenny Zhan称，从SMS业务的高利润率来看，移动运营商要求更高分成、更多SMS提供商涌入市场只是时间早晚的问题。她还对近期门户网站内部股权出售的问题表示担忧。

Jenny Zhan说，从这些风险性考虑，这些公司的股票估值过高。

1993-94年亚洲股市泡沫重现？

Shades of 1993-94 Boom-Bust? Asian Bulls See More Stability


The verdict from Asian investors is in: 2003 feels a lot like 1993, with markets jumping, the bars buzzing, and money pouring into Asia.

But the heady atmosphere begs the question: Will 2004 feel like 1994, when Asian regional markets lost almost half the gains of the year before?

It is natural to be nervous because, even after Monday's 4% plunge in Tokyo stocks due to a resurgent yen, Asia has seen a phenomenal stock-market run-up this year. The region's markets have gained 22% year-to-date, according to a measure of Asian stocks excluding Tokyo, the Morgan Stanley Capital International Far East Free Ex-Japan index. Tokyo stocks, for their part, are up an identical 22%, but didn't trade Tuesday due to a national holiday.
Similarities abound with the blockbuster year of 1993, when Asian regional markets doubled. Then, like now, foreigners rather than locals drove the gains. The current year might not have a high-profile cheerleader like Barton Biggs , the Morgan Stanley research director who visited China and then famously told investors he was "tuned in, overfed, and maximum bullish." But plenty of influential investment bankers have been encouraging their institutional clients to buy, including former bears like CLSA Asia-Pacific's Christopher Wood.

Another similarity: Asian markets have outperformed U.S. markets, just as they did in 1993. And Asian economic growth is again outpacing most of the Group of Seven industrialized countries.

Worried? "Yes, we are," says Ray Jovanovich, who was named fund manager of the year by Barron's magazine in 1993, the year his Manila Fund returned 171%. Now chief investment officer at Credit Agricole Asset Management, Mr. Jovanovich frets that global "overreliance on the U.S. [to drive growth] can only be a recipe for disaster." That said, all of Credit Agricole's Asian equity funds are fully invested, he says, though he on standby to move large portions to cash if necessary.

But even Mr. Jovanovich sees reason to stay positive on Asia, at least for now. In 1993, especially by the end of the year, the region traded at a significant premium relative to the rest of the world. Now, it is at about a 25% discount.

Asian stocks currently trade at 14 times estimated future earnings, according to UBS, compared with 16.5 times 10 years ago. And that is despite the fact that overall, Asian businesses are in much better shape today.

"Now the companies are quite strong in cash flow, they've reduced their debt, and profitability has been quite reasonable," says Sam Lau, a portfolio manager at Baring Asset Management, who apart from a hiatus of a few months has been with the company since 1993. "That hasn't been reflected in the share prices yet."

That is as true for markets that are cheaper on a price-to-earnings basis than they were in 1993, such as Indonesia's and India's. Because stocks are of better quality than they were a decade ago, it is also true for markets such as Hong Kong's, where prices are about 25% higher.

And compared with the U.S., Asian stocks still look beaten down. At CLSA, Mr. Wood has revived his "Jack and Bill Index," which measures Asia's market capitalization as a percentage of the two biggest U.S. stocks: General Electric and Microsoft. This year, investors value Asian markets, including India but excluding Japan, at 3.4 times those two companies. Ten years ago, the ratio was 12.5.

Asian markets might have smaller capitalizations, but fund managers say the selection of stocks is more diverse, boosting their appeal among wider groups of investors. Take Hong Kong, for example. "Today, we've got a lot more China exposure than we ever did in 1993," says Brook McConnell, president of Hong Kong's South Ocean Management, an investment fund he founded in 1993. Greater diversity is "a bit more stabilizing."

The interest in Asia is trickling down to global retail investors as well. Back in 1993, Kerry Series was an Asian investment manager at James Capel in London; now, he is managing director at Perennial Investment Partners Asia in Sydney, which next month will list its new GEC Asia Value Fund on the Australian Stock Exchange. "We're seeing quite good demand for that in the retail market," he says. "We haven't seen retail demand for Asia since the [1997-98 financial] crisis."

One reason some investors don't expect Asian stock values to plummet next year is simply that they don't see the unreasonable exuberance that often precedes a crash. "If you talk about the optimism in Asia," says Mr. Lau of Baring, "I don't think we are anywhere close to 1993."
1993-94年亚洲股市泡沫重现？

亚洲投资者认为，2003年的情况与1993年有很多相似之处：股市普遍上扬、资金涌入亚洲。

但人们不禁提出这样一个疑问：2004年会不会像1994年一样--把前一年股市的涨幅蒸发将近一半？

考虑到亚洲股市今年的强劲上扬势头，人们自然而然地感到紧张。以摩根士丹利资本国际公司(Morgan Stanley Capital International)的远东(除日本外)自由指数(Far East Free Ex-Japan index)来衡量，亚洲股市今年迄今为止的涨幅已达22%。

与1993年市值增加一倍的繁荣时期相比，今年与1993年的确有很多相同之处。

当时的情形和现在一样，是境外投资者，而不是本地投资者推动了市场的上扬。只不过今年可能不会再有像摩根士丹利分析师巴顿?碧斯(Barton Biggs)那样的知名人物大肆追捧亚洲股市。但现在也不乏具有影响力的投资银行家一直在鼓励机构投资者买进亚洲股票，如CLSA Asia-Pacific的克里斯多弗?伍德(Christopher Wood)等人。
另一个相似之处是亚洲市场走势强于美国市场，与1993年如出一辙。并且，亚洲经济的增速再次超过了七大工业国(Group Of Seven)多数成员国。

Credit Agricole Asset Management的首席投资长雷?乔瓦诺维奇(Ray Jovanovich)表示，今年的情形肯定会让人感到担心。乔瓦诺维奇掌管的基金Manila Fund在1993年的回报率高达171%，他也因此获得《巴伦周刊》(Barron)年度基金经理的荣誉称号。乔瓦诺维奇担心，全球经济增长对美国经济的过度依赖只会招致灾难。因此他表示，虽然Credit Agricole的亚洲股市基金处于满仓状态，但他随时准备在必要时将其中的大部分头寸变现。

但即便这样，乔瓦诺维奇本人也认为有理由对亚洲市场持乐观态度，至少现在是这样。1993年，尤其是当年年底的时候，亚洲市场的股价远远高于全球其他地区。但现在，亚洲股市的股价比全球股市低约25%。

瑞士银行(UBS)称，亚洲股市基于未来收益的预期本益比为14倍，而10年前为16.5倍。除此之外，亚洲企业的整体状况要远远好于10年前。

霸菱资产管理(Baring Asset Management)的投资组合经理Sam Lau表示，如今，亚洲企业的现金流非常强劲，他们已经削减了负债，实现盈利是情理之中的事。但所有的这些却尚未体现在股价之中。

从本益比的角度来讲，印尼及印度等亚洲股市的股价的确低于1993年的水平。再加上上市公司的素质要好于10年前，因此像香港这类的亚洲股市上涨了约25%。

不过，同美国股市相比，亚洲股市股价仍然偏低。CLSA Asia-Pacific的伍德再次以他的Jack and Bill Index指数（杰克?韦尔奇和比尔?盖茨指数）来加以说明。该指数衡量的是亚洲股市市值与通用电气(General Electric)和微软(Microsoft)这两家全美最大上市公司市值之比。今年，包括印度但不含日本的亚洲股市市值为通用电气和微软市值的3.4倍。而在10年前，这一比值却高达12.5倍。

虽然亚洲股市的市值不大，但基金经理却认为亚洲股市在多样性方面却更胜一筹，因此能够更受那些多元化投资者的青睐。以香港为例：South Ocean Management的总裁布鲁克?麦康奈尔(Brook McConnell)表示，香港股市如今的中国概念股比比皆是，远远多于1993年。多样性的丰富也就意味著稳定性的提升。

亚洲股市还吸引了全球散户投资者的目光。总部位于悉尼的Perennial Investment Partners Asia的董事总经理Kerry Series表示，公司新的GEC Asia Value Fund将于下个月在澳大利亚股市上市，这个基金的推出受到了散户投资者的踊跃追捧。他表示，自1997-98亚洲金融危机以来，散户投资者对亚洲股市的兴趣还从未如此高涨过。

一些投资者认为，明年亚洲股市不会暴跌的一个理由很简单：他们认为市场上并未出现非理性的过度乐观情绪，而这种情绪通常意味著股市即将暴跌。霸菱资产管理的Lau说，亚洲股市上的人气与1993年相比要冷静得多。

美国投资银行业利润普遍上升

Lehman Brothers Reports Second Consecutive Qtr Of Record Rev

NEW YORK -- Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s (LEH) third-quarter net income more than doubled and beat Wall Street's consensus estimate, reflecting improvement in the market cycle and continued investments through acquisitions and key hires.

In a press release Tuesday, the financial services provider said net income increased to $480 million, or $1.81 a share from $194 million, or 70 cents a share, a year ago.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call expected Lehman to earn $1.35 a share for the period.

Lehman Brothers' third-quarter revenue surged 74% to $2.35 billion from $1.35 billion a year ago and beat Wall Street's consensus estimate of $1.89 billion, reflecting strong results in the investment banking and capital markets segments. The company said customer flow activity propelled its fourth consecutive quarter of record performance in fixed income.

Capital markets revenue more than doubled from a year ago, driven by customer flow activity in both fixed income and equity markets. Lehman said its fixed income business remained strong, surpassing the previous quarter's record, and the equities business improved substantially, as confidence returned to the marketplace and investors sought to outperform the broader indexes.

The company added that investment banking achieved its highest levels of revenue this year, attributable to stronger performances in Lehman's equity and high yield origination activities.

During the third-quarter, Lehman, seeking to lessen its reliance on bond trading and underwriting, agreed to acquire Neuberger Berman Inc. (NEU) for about $2.6 billion. Lehman also signed a definitive agreement to acquire Crossroads Group of Dallas , a private equity fund investment managers with about $7 billion in assets under management.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. - New York

3rd Quar Aug. 31:

2003 2002

Net revenue $2,347,000,000 $1,347,000,000

Net income 480,000,000 194,000,000

Avg shrs (diluted) 259,500,000 261,000,000

Shr earns

Net income 1.81 .70

Revenue Table:

Principal Trans 1,203,000,000 234,000,000

Invest Banking 458,000,000 427,000,000

Commissions 314,000,000 357,000,000

Int. & Divs. 2,467,000,000 3,048,000,000

Other 21,000,000 9,000,000

Total revenue 4,463,000,000 4,075,000,000

Interest expense 2,116,000,000 2,728,000,000

Net revenue 2,347,000,000 1,347,000,000

Lehman plans to discuss its third-quarter financial results and outlook during a conference call that starts at 9 a.m. EDT.

Shares of the financial services company rose in premarket trade to $70.90, according to Instinet, after closing the regular session Monday on the New York Stock Exchange at $70.21.
美国投资银行业利润普遍上升

金融服务提供商雷曼兄弟公司(Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., LEH)和摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley, MWD)第三财政季度净利润均增长了一倍，反映出投资银行业和资本市场的上升势头。

雷曼兄弟周二公布，第三财政季度净利润增至4.8亿美元，合每股1.81美元，而上年同期净利润1.94亿美元，合每股70美分。接受Thomson First Call调查的分析师预计，雷曼兄弟此期间每股收益1.35美元。

雷曼兄弟第三财政季度收入较上年同期的13.5亿美元增长74%，达到23.5亿美元，高于华尔街普遍预期的18.9亿美元，反映出投资银行与资本市场部门收入增长强劲。该公司称，客户交易活动增加推动其固定收入业务连续第四个季度创下历史纪录。

资本市场收入较上年同期增长一倍以上，主要是受到客户在债券市场与股票市场的交易活动增加。雷曼兄弟称其国债业务继续保持强劲，刷新了前一季度创下的纪录，同时股票业务明显改善，原因是市场人气回升，且投资者欲使投资收益增幅超越指数涨幅。

雷曼兄弟还称，投资银行收入达到今年最高水平，主要得益于与股票及高收益率产品相关的业务表现更为强劲。

在第三财政季度，雷曼兄弟为减轻对债券交易和承销的依赖性，同意以大约26亿美元收购Neuberger Berman Inc. (NEU)。雷曼兄弟还签署了一份最终协议，同意收购管理私人股票基金投资管理公司Crossroads Group of Dallas，这将使其管理下的私人股票资产增加到近70亿美元。

高盛债市马失前蹄

Huh? Goldman Earnings Show It Missed Out on Bond Market


Most of Wall Street is again riding the bond market to strong results, but the firm perhaps best known for trading prowess in this area, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., failed to keep up with the pack this quarter.

Goldman's misstep rattled investors, who had driven up the stock this year and turned it into one of the brokerage sector's priciest stocks. Goldman shares fell 3.9% on heavy trading volume following the earnings announcement, while shares of rivals were up moderately in a rising day for the market.

The fear now is that Goldman could decline a bit more. The spoiler for Goldman: It bought millions of dollars in mortgage portfolios from various clients early in the quarter, and, before it could resell them, interest rates shot up, leaving the firm with big losses on its mortgage desk.

In addition, according to a person familiar with the results, the firm made a number of proprietary trades during the quarter, betting the wrong way on some currency moves.

"We had a tough fixed-income quarter and that is going to happen from time to time," Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said in an interview. In a conference call with analysts, he added: "Our business involves taking risk. ... Maybe we could have sold sooner or maybe we could have hedged it better, but we didn't and so it was less attractive results."

Goldman long has had a reputation as an unusually aggressive and active trader, but it had managed to convince Wall Street that it was better at that game than anyone else in town. Indeed, following Tuesday's results, Goldman once again moved to assure investors that trading conditions have improved so far during the fourth quarter, which some investors say should limit the downward pressure on the stock.

For the fiscal period ended Aug. 29, Goldman posted net income of $677 million, or $1.32 a share, 30% above the $522 million, or $1 a share, reported for a year earlier. Overall results were better than Wall Street's expectations of $1.22 a share, according to Reuters Research. But two of the big securities firm's main rivals, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., each saw net income more than double. Bond-trading results drove both firms' earnings.

Unlike Goldman, Lehman said it had successfully employed hedging techniques to mitigate losses on mortgages that sat on its books before they were resold. It and Morgan Stanley, not historically known as a bond-trading powerhouse, more than doubled net revenue in their fixed-income operations, which include sales and trading of bonds, currencies and mortgage-backed securities. Bear Stearns Cos. reported similar results, posting a 77% jump in fixed-income sales and trading for the third quarter last week.

Morgan Stanley's chief financial officer, Stephen Crawford, said his firm believes it is taking less risk than a number of its peers. "As a result, we're going to have lower highs and higher lows," he said. "We feel it will work out for our shareholders over time."

Goldman's results are a bit of wake-up call for the securities firm, which has recently shown more willingness than rivals to put its own capital at risk in the pursuit of trading profits, particularly in the currently hot trading arena for bonds, currencies and commodities. While fixed-income trading has helped drive the firm's profit during one of the worst stock-market slumps in years, net revenue, or revenue after interest expense, for that division this quarter sank 37% to $828 million from $1.3 billion a year earlier.

One primary marker of how much risk Goldman is taking rose. The firm's "value at risk," an average figure for the quarter indicating what it could lose in a day due to bad market conditions, increased 36% to $64 million, its highest-ever level. However, Mr. Viniar said this number took a downward trend during the third quarter. He noted that the environment for fixed-income trading has improved recently but "it is still hard to predict" how the firm will do in the fourth quarter, which ends Nov. 28.

Goldman shares fell $3.60 to $89.06 each in 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Before the earnings announcement, Goldman shares traded at nearly 18 times analysts' consensus expectation for earnings this year, while Morgan Stanley stock fetched just above 17 times the company's expected annual earnings, and Lehman, just under 13. According to analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call, Goldman is expected to earn $5.16 for the year through Nov. 28, and after its decline Tuesday, Goldman stock traded at closer to 17 times that figure. In 4 p.m. NYSE composite trading, Morgan Stanley shares were up $1.18, or 2.3%, to $52.33 each, and Lehman shares rose 69 cents, or 1%, to $70.90 each.

Some investors said Goldman's trading results were bound to take a hit, given the firm's emphasis on proprietary trading.

Anton Schutz, a portfolio manager at Burnham Financial Services, which has $240 million in assets under management, said he wasn't surprised. "The potential exists when you take risk to have a misstep." Mr. Schutz's fund has approximately 45,000 shares of Goldman in its portfolio, and most of them are hedged to protect against a fall in the stock.

Jeff Arricale, an investment analyst for T. Rowe Price Associates, which has stakes in Goldman and Morgan Stanley, said that while proprietary trading and mortgage-rate volatility may be the "the issue du jour," he still feels comfortable with his firm's investments in Goldman because Goldman has a diversified revenue base.

Still, some investors ditching the shares were concerned that a big chunk of the earnings improvement came from a $277 million unrealized gain related to the firm's convertible preferred-stock investment in Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. Investors don't like to pay up for such nonrecurring earnings gains. And despite the recent surge in the stock market, merger-and-acquisition activity remains sluggish; Goldman's investment-banking net revenue inched up 5.4% from the year-earlier quarter, to $687 million. Goldman highlighted that net revenue in its asset-management business soared 20%, to $481 million, while its equity-arbitrage operations drove a strong increase in its equity operations.

Morgan Stanley said net came in at $1.27 billion, or $1.15 a share, compared with $611 million, or 55 cents a share, a year earlier. Of the increase, the firm said $350 million resulted from a decision to expense employee stock awards over a longer period. Previously, Morgan Stanley had expensed such awards in the year in which they were granted. Now, it said, $960 million that it planned to expense during 2003 will be amortized over three to four years.

The compensation change and the fixed-income-trading results helped Morgan Stanley offset a 13% decline in investment-banking advisory work and a 21% decline in equity sales and trading from the year-earlier quarter. It also helped counter higher net charge-off rates in its Discover credit-card division, to 6.9% from 6.07%, which Mr. Crawford said resulted from continued high consumer bankruptcies and unemployment as well as customer-policy changes. Morgan Stanley's retail-brokerage operations posted $125 million in profit, compared with $18 million a year earlier, aided by expense reduction. Branch offices are down to 525 from 649.

Lehman posted net of $480 million, or $1.81 a share, above year-earlier results of $194 million, or 70 cents a share. The bottom line was well above the $1.34 a share predicted by analysts surveyed by Reuters Research.

Lehman's chief financial officer, David Goldfarb, said the increased diversity of fixed-income products on the market provides profit opportunities regardless of rising interest rates. For example, he said, commercial real estate has been somewhat depressed but is expected to pick up, and increased real-estate transactions should provide a boost to the market for commercial mortgage-backed securities.

Likewise, he said, as consumer spending again picks up, asset-backed securities such as credit-card securitizations could also get a boost. "As we get into the next part of the cycle, there will be more high-net-worth investor appetite and institutional-investor appetite for these products," he said.

Lehman's capital-markets revenue more than doubled from the year-earlier quarter, as the company facilitated trades for clients across stocks and bonds.
高盛债市马失前蹄

大多数华尔街证券公司正在债券市场再度角逐，希望从中获得丰厚的盈利。而在这个领域一向实力强劲的高盛公司(Goldman Sachs Group Inc.)这一次恐怕要落后了。

高盛的失误引起了投资者的巨大恐慌。今年以来，他们的持续追捧已将高盛推至证券类股股价排行榜的榜首。但在第三季度业绩公布后，其股价放量下跌，跌幅达到了3.9%，而同期大盘走高，竞争对手们的股价也温和上扬。

投资者现在担心高盛的股价可能还会继续走低。导致高盛业绩疲软的罪魁祸首是其本季度初买入的数百万美元的各种抵押贷款投资组合。在高盛将这笔资产转售出去之前，市场利率已开始大幅上扬，导致这部分业务出现了大量亏损。

此外，据一位熟知高盛业绩详情的人士透露，高盛第三季度进行了大量的自营交易，但在汇率走向上押错了宝。

高盛首席财务长维尼亚(David Viniar)在接受采访时表示，高盛本季度债券交易业绩低迷，这种情况将来也会时有发生。他在分析师电话会议上表示，高盛的业务本身必定存在风险。也许高盛应该把部分头寸提前卖掉，也许应该更好地进行风险对冲。但高盛没能办到，所以业绩差强人意。

一直以来，高盛就以交易异常大胆且活跃而著称，但它成功地使华尔街相信，它在这个领域技高一筹，无人能比。的确，就在昨天发布季度报告后，高盛再次劝说投资者，称第四财政季度迄今为止的交易形势已经有所好转。一些投资者据此认为，高盛股价的跌势应该很有限。

截至8月29日的第三财政季度期间，高盛实现净利润6.77亿美元（合每股净收益1.32美元），较上年同期的5.22亿美元（合每股净收益1美元）高出30%。虽说总体业绩好于预期－接受Reuters Research调查的华尔街人士普遍预计高盛每股收益1.22美元，但高盛的两大竞争对手摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)和雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.)的净利润都达到了上年同期的两倍。债券交易业务提升了这两家公司的业绩。

与高盛不同的是，雷曼兄弟说，它通过套期保值操作成功地减少了抵押贷款业务在转售前的帐面亏损。雷曼兄弟和摩根士丹利的债券交易并非它们的主要利润来源，但他们这部分业务的净收入却增长了一倍多。这部分业务包括债券、货币以及抵押证券的销售和交易业务。贝尔斯登(Bear Stearns Cos.)上周也宣布取得了不俗的业绩，第三财政季度债券销售和交易业务利润激增77%。

摩根士丹利首席财务长克劳福德(Stephen Crawford)称，公司相信，与诸位同行相比，摩根士丹利承担了较低的风险。他说，因此公司的最高股价会相对偏低，而最低股价会相对较高。长期来看这对各位股东有利。

高盛上季度的业绩报告给它敲响了警钟。为攫取更多的交易利润，近来高盛在投资于高风险业务方面比诸多同行更加积极，尤其热衷于近来火爆的债券、货币和商品交易。在股市暴跌最惨重的几年中，正是债券交易支撑著高盛的利润表现。然而，在今年第三财政季度，债券交易部门扣除利息费用后的净收入却较上年同期锐减37%，从13亿美元降至8.28亿美元。

高盛衡量风险程度的一个重要指标在不断上升。高盛自行编制的“风险资产价值”指标第三财政季度增长了36%，达到6,400万美元的历史最高水平，这个指标表明市况恶化时其一天之内可能发生的损失。然而，维尼亚称这个指标在整个第三财政季度内呈下降趋势。他还指出，债券交易的市场环境近来有所好转，但仍然难以预计截至11月28日的第四财政季度的表现。

截至周二下午4点，在纽约证交所综合交易中高盛股价下跌3.60美元，收于89.06美元。业绩发布前，高盛股价接近分析师对其年收益预期的18倍，摩根士丹利股价略高于其年收益预期的17倍，而雷曼兄弟的股价则低于13倍。

接受Thomson First Call调查的分析师普遍预计，高盛在截至11月28日的财政年度期间每股收益可达5.16美元。目前高盛的股价已跌至这一数据的17倍。摩根士丹利周二上涨1.18美元，收于52.33美元，涨幅2.3%；雷曼兄弟上涨69美分，收于70.90美元，涨幅1%。

一些投资者表示，由于过分倚重自营交易，高盛交易部门的业绩还会受到更多打击。

Burnham Financial Services资产组合经理舒尔茨(Anton Schutz)表示，对此毫不感到意外。他说，一旦走出冒风险的错著，潜在的危险就已经产生了。Burnham Financial Services旗下管理著价值2.4亿美元的资产，舒尔茨管理的基金持有大约45,000股高盛股票，其中大多数都已经进行了套期保值。

T. Rowe Price Associates投资分析师阿里卡莱(Jeff Arricale)认为，虽然自营交易和抵押贷款利率的波动是两大干扰因素，但对T. Rowe Price Associates在高盛的投资并不感到担心。因为高盛有著多样化的收入基础。T. Rowe Price Associates在高盛和摩根士丹利都持有股份。

仍有一些投资者因对高盛高达2.77亿美元的未兑现所得金额之大感到担忧而脱手高盛的股票。这笔未兑现所得与高盛在日本Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc.持有的可转换优先股有关。投资者不愿为这种一次性所得买单。
此外，尽管近来股市飙升，但企业并购活动依然低迷，高盛的投资银行业务净收入仅较上年同期增长了5.4%，至6.87亿美元。高盛则强调说，资产管理业务净收入激增20%，至4.81亿美元；股票套利操作也推动股票交易部门业绩强劲增长。

摩根士丹利宣布，第三财政季度实现净利润12.7亿美元，合每股1.15美元；上年同期利润为6.11亿美元，每股收益55美分。摩根士丹利表示，公司决定把员工股票期权计作费用的期限延长，产生了3.5亿美元所得。此前，摩根士丹利在员工获得期权奖励的当年将其计作费用，而现在决定把原应计入2003财政年度的9.6亿美元费用在未来的三到四年之间摊销。

这项变动，加之债券交易的良好业绩，帮助摩根士丹利抵消了投资银行咨询业务较上年同期业绩13%的降幅，以及股票销售和交易业务21%的降幅；此外，还抵消了摩根士丹利旗下Discover信用卡撇帐率从6.07%升至6.9%的不利影响。克劳福德将撇帐率升高归咎于消费者破产数量和失业率持续上升及消费政策的调整。摩根士丹利的零售证券业务利润从上年同期的1,800万美元激增至1.25亿美元，这主要得益于各项费用削减措施的实施。该公司的分支办事机构的数量从649家减少到525家。

雷曼兄弟第三财政季度净利润为4.80亿美元，每股净收益1.81美元；远远高于上年同期利润1.94亿美元和每股净收益70美分的业绩；也高于接受Reuters Research调查的分析师普遍预计的每股收益1.34美元。

雷曼兄弟首席财务长戈德法布(David Goldfarb)表示，债券市场可交易的债券种类增多，所以虽然利率走高，公司还是能够从中获得利润增长机会。他举例说，商用地产市场遭受了打击，但有望回升。地产交易数量增加应会推动商业抵押证券交易的增加。

同样，一旦消费者支出开始反弹，诸如信用卡证券化这类的资产抵押证券交易也会随之增加。

受股票和债券交易业务推动，雷曼兄弟第三财政季度资本市场收入较上年同期增长了一倍多。

美股下跌原因没那么简单

There's More to Market's Slide Than Oil and the Buck

THERE'S A CUTE AND TIDY STORY going around that the downturn in the dollar last week combined with the OPEC-engineered bounce in oil prices to knock the stock market for substantial losses.

Could be. But if so it's a little curious that the sector hit hardest was technology -- the very group that benefits most from a weaker dollar and is perhaps the least energy-intensive industry in the market.

The dollar's tumble and oil's uptick were, more likely, "MacGuffins," as Alfred Hitchcock called his convenient, simplistic plot devices. They propelled a drama playing out mostly in the psyches of professional investors. This is hardly trivial, given that investor psychology has been the propellant of the intense rally that had evaded serious pullbacks for months.

The tempting conclusion suggested by last week's losses is that portfolio managers' performance anxiety is now manifesting itself in different types of behavior. While the zeal to grab a fair share of the market's upside has for months spurred the pros to chase the highly valued market leaders, last week there were hints that money managers were eager to preserve their gains, sell some winners and pare risk levels.

The selling hit the tech-driven Nasdaq hard, driving it down 113 points, or 6%, to 1792, extinguishing a month's worth of gains. The S&P 500 gave up 39 points, or 3.8%, to settle below 1000, at 996. The Dow Jones Industrials lost 331 points, or 3.4%, to reach 9313.

There are other possible fundamental items on which to pin the sudden selling impulse. Earnings warnings from Viacom and a few others rattled investors a bit, though the overall preannouncement season isn't shaping up to be a particularly poor one.

There were also a couple of economic releases that undershot forecasts and spread concern that the economy's momentum might be flagging. One of the market's weaker days, Thursday, was explained in part by a decline in durable-goods orders during August. But that number had been out for a good seven hours by the time stocks began registering the bulk of their losses in a late-day flop.

Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg notes that 80% of this month's economic data releases have failed to beat expectations, a reversal from the ratio in August. That couldn't have helped the bulls' cause, but the fact is that investors had for weeks been able to absorb or ignore most negative news as they punched in the buy orders, and last week that changed.

Scott Jacobson, a trader and strategist at Jefferies, says, "Getting close to the end of the year, if you're an average portfolio manager and you're at or near your benchmark, you'll start to 'closet index' and hug the benchmark."

That would imply selling many of the kinds of stocks that have worked especially well for the past six months. High-expectation, low-profitability, fringe-dwelling tech stocks, for example. If this activity continues, it would also suggest that the massive outperformance of small-cap shares could be about to curdle. The valuation gap that once favored smaller, more aggressive, more deeply cyclical stocks is no longer quite so compelling.

Vadim Zlotnikov, strategist at Sanford C. Bernstein, told clients last week: "To make a significant bet on small-cap names now, you need to believe in a very strong recovery" in the economy.

Jacobson adds that Treasury bonds, which have rallied to knock 10-year yields to 4.02% from 4.60% right after Labor Day, "are telling stocks something again." Namely, bonds might be whispering that the hopes for a galloping economic pickup might've been premature.
If indeed investor psychology is beginning to take on a more defensive cast, then larger, more stable stocks might be expected to grab the lead, at least temporarily, from the long-shot, highly leveraged bets that have been rewarded for some time now.

Zlotnikov notes that his firm's model for selecting stocks with high-quality earnings and attractive valuations has underperformed the market since its March low. In examining past periods back to 1966 when this quality screen has trailed the market this badly, he found that its laggard behavior tends to last five or six months before rebounding strongly. It's been just over six months this time. He's now favoring health-care-services stocks, as well as energy names.

Even stock-market bulls, of course, have been talking about the likelihood of a retreat, albeit a shallow one, in the indexes. Some have professed to be hoping for just that, so they might do a little buying at lower asking prices. And certainly, there's enough liquidity out there to allow for that to play out on a broad scale.

Yet a couple of index levels deemed significant by technicians were breached in the latest downdraft. Heretofore invincible momentum champions such as Yahoo were taken down a peg. Short sellers have stopped kicking the dirt and are looking for fat pitches to hit again. And, naturally, the same dynamic that pulled fresh buyers in as stocks surged could begin operating in reverse. It's happened before.

THE ACTION IN VIACOM SHARES had been evidencing deep investor concern for several days before the company finally validated the market's fears on Wednesday, by tempering its revenue and profit outlook for the rest of the year.

The media outfit blamed continued softness in local advertising demand for a reduction in its revenue and operating-income projection to "mid-to-high single digit" percentage growth from a prior forecast of double-digit income growth atop single-digit revenue gains.

In each of the three trading days before Viacom's announcement, its shares had sold off steadily on roughly twice their normal volume. Hints of a slower-than-hoped rebound in local advertising had emerged from the New York Times and Gannett, and some observers had begun to worry that Viacom's CBS television stations might have a tough time matching last fall's ad performance that was helped disproportionately by political ads. Paramount's weak summer box office showing was another drag.

In fact, from Sept. 5 -- the day after Congress voted to preserve many restrictions on media-outlet concentration -- Viacom's heavily traded B shares are down some 17%. This radical underperformance is something new for Viacom, which was a nearly bulletproof stock throughout much of the bear market, consistently afforded a valuation premium by an investor base in the thrall of Chairman Sumner Redstone's grand vision and President Mel Karmazin's vaunted operational acumen.

Last week several loyal analysts came to the company's defense, calling the stumble an aberration and, predictably, a buying opportunity. The bullish case always begins with a tribute to the quality of its assets: CBS, Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount, Simon & Schuster, the list goes on. True enough. But AOL Time Warner and Walt Disneyand Fox Entertainment each has its own set of enviable media assets, too.

What Viacom has that the others don't is significant exposure to radio, through its ownership of the Infinity Broadcasting stations. Radio accounts for only 9% of Viacom's revenues. But because it's such a high-margin business it produces some 19% of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization -- the coin of the realm in media. This accounts for much of Viacom's exposure to local ads, which has badly trailed the recovery in national advertising.

Spencer Wang of J.P. Morgan published a cautious note a week ago Friday on Infinity's ratings, which have fallen even more than the overall declining listenership rates of the industry among the important 25-to-54 age group. The growth drought in radio has led some investors to question whether there are more worrisome trends to be inferred.
Drew Marcus of Deutsche Bank believes it simply means that radio has stopped gaining market share from other media. Meanwhile, he thinks, "The weak pacing of local advertising calls into question the strength of the economic recovery."

Others, though, wonder whether there's something more significant happening in radio, whether consumers are being increasingly turned off by the homogenization of radio formats and the aggressive increases in commercials aired per hour. The long-term expected growth rates of radio companies -- no surprise -- hint at none of these concerns, as analysts pencil in three-to-five-year earnings increases of 15%-25% per annum.

There has been management shuffling at Infinity in an effort to revive the group, and it seems Viacom is committed to spending money to get ratings higher. One skeptical observer notes that the real story in Viacom's announcement last week was that management effectively said margin expansion wouldn't happen this year. It brought profit-growth guidance in line with revenue growth. So much for those hopes of gaining leverage to an advertising recovery.

He also points out that Viacom has effectively had to cut back its guidance three years in a row. Until now, the market has overlooked these hiccups and tuned right back in to the Mel and Sumner show. Yet even with its recent decline, Viacom's stock doesn't appear to be a particular bargain compared with other companies with exposure to the same businesses, such as Time Warner, Fox and Tribune.

THERE WAS A LINE OF THINKING among certain investors, cited here recently, that a drastic dividend cut by Eastman Kodak could lead to a higher stock valuation. The idea was that the company would thereby signal a plan to marshal resources to maximize cash returns from a declining film market while selectively making acquisitions in higher-growth businesses.

Well, Kodak's announcement last week that its lavish, $1.80-a-share annual dividend would be hacked down to 50 cents wasn't received quite so well, as the company's shares were knocked down by 6.40 to 21.40.

The hostile reaction can be traced to a couple of things. Clearly, yield-fixated investors see no reason to stick around. But the nature of Kodak's announced plan -- to pursue some $3 billion in acquisitions and enter the savagely competitive ink-jet- printer business -- spooked even those who thought a dividend cut could be spun positively.

The company posited that its plan would lead to $3 a share in earnings in 2006. No one has enough faith in a strategically challenged company's fortune-telling abilities to buy into that, especially given Kodak's mixed record on acquisitions and only tentative success turning a profit from digital photography.

Bond analyst Carol Levenson of Gimme Credit calculates that Kodak could achieve even better earnings growth by 2006 by using the same $3 billion to simply buy back stock, with little operational risk.
One intriguing element of Kodak's plan is its vow to start making private-label film. This suggests Kodak is indeed looking to pull as much cash out of every available segment of the film business, rather than retain premium pricing and sniff at the mucky business of competing for market share.

Once the yield investors and the understandably skeptical former bulls finish selling, Kodak shares should find more stable ground. The best-case scenario might be if Kodak were to pull a McDonald's and answers a disillusioned Wall Street by forgoing delusions of fast growth in favor of retrenchment, cash-maximization and humility. But with such a dramatic makeover in the works, today's Kodak stock buyers won't be able to gauge its prospects for success for quite some time.

AFTER THREE CALENDAR YEARS of eroding stock prices, virtually every powerful constituency in the Washington-New York politico-financial world has an acute interest in stocks riding higher.

Brokerage houses and mutual-fund firms have their bottom lines at stake, of course. The Fed wants to forestall asset deflation and to see the market ratify its attempts at goosing economic growth. The Bush administration needs Wall Street to augment re-election prospects. The Treasury and Congress desperately covet capital-gains taxes to help offset some of a soaring deficit.

Just about the only people that have a stake in seeing the market decline are a couple thousand hedge-fund managers habitually attached to the short side.

The liquidity thrust from tax cuts, higher government outlays and teensy interest rates are widely discussed as contributors to the market's rebound this year. But there's also been a market-friendly effort by Congress to legislate away the bad or inconvenient items that can plague companies' books.

One goodie offered to corporate interests by the tax-cut law was the chance to accelerate the depreciation of newly acquired capital goods. This effectively lowered the after-tax cost of these investments and provided a great, temporary incentive for companies to load up on new technology products. Those incremental sales, mostly booked over the summer, have been dutifully incorporated into analysts' run rate of tech demand.

Another idea clattering around the halls of Congress would have farther-reaching effects. This is a proposal to allow companies to use a higher discount rate when calculating the present value of their future pension liabilities.

If Congress does make such a change, no doubt Wall Street will be happy to bless the cosmetically enhanced earnings numbers. Investors have already been blithely dismissive of the potential earnings-corroding implications of pension shortfalls, and such a legal shift would make the problem that much easier to ignore.

The tomorrow-be-damned attitude among investors is perhaps most pronounced in their treatment of airline stocks. As a group, airline shares have more than doubled since the market low in early March. The traditional major airline shares -- AMR, Continental, Delta and Northwest -- have soared from levels implying they were bankruptcy risks.

Yet the market might not be taking a full account of the sorry state of the industry's pension situation, according to an extensive new study by Bear Stearns analyst David Strine. Those four carriers have a combined $13.9 billion pension shortfall, against total pension plan assets of $17.8 billion. Strine forecasts that their likely required cash contributions to pension funds will jump from $594 million this year to nearly $1.8 billion in 2004.

As a proportion of forecast operating cash flow, the companies' expected 2004 pension contributions amount to 31% for Continental, 37% for AMR, 42% for Delta and 62% for Northwest. For each, operating cash flow is expected to fall short of the airlines' combined net capital expenditures, debt payments and cash pension contributions. Congress may ease the airlines' crushing pension burdens with a little "new math," but as Strine shows, stockholders have little hope of staking a claim to these cash flows any time soon.
美股下跌原因没那么简单

人们以为，上周美元的下挫和欧佩克减产造成的油价反弹导致股市大幅下跌。

也许是吧。但如果确实如此，上周受压最沉重的类股是科技股，这显得有些不可思议。因为科技股从美元走软中受益最大，而且可能是市场中最不易受能源影响的类股。

美元下跌及油价上扬更像是希区科克(Alfred Hitchcock)对其简单化的情节设置的称谓“MacGuffins”，这两个因素促使多数专业投资者的身心疲惫。这可非同小可，因为投资者的人气一直是股市摆脱数月来的疲势连连上涨的推动力。

上周的股市下跌表明，基金经理的业绩焦虑情绪在各种方面得到体现。虽然数月来，借助上涨行情获取可观收益的热望驱使他们追逐高价的市场领头羊，但上周有迹象显示，基金经理们更急于保存收益，抛售部分上涨股，降低风险。

这种抛盘使那斯达克市场遭受重挫，下跌113点，至1792点，跌幅6%，抹去了一个月的涨幅。标准普尔500指数跌破千点，下跌39点至996点，跌幅3.8%。道琼斯工业股票平均价格指数跌331点，至9313点，跌幅3.4%。

还有其他基本面因素可能促使抛盘骤然爆发。维亚康姆(Viacom)及其他一些公司的收益预警引发投资者的不安情绪，不过总体而言，美国公司的预期不算太糟糕。

最新公布的一些经济数据低于预期，导致市场担心经济增长势头可能停滞。上周四市场疲弱的部分原因可能就在于8月份耐用品订单下降的消息。

美林(Merrill Lynch)经济学家大卫?罗森伯格(David Rosenberg)发现，本月公布的80%的经济数据未能超出预期，和8月份大相径庭。这也许无法成为市场看涨的理由，但事实是，过去几周来投资者在发出买单时能够消化或忽略多数负面数据，而上周这一切发生了变化。

Jefferies的交易员兼策略师杰克森(Scott Jacobson)称，随著年终将至，普通的基金经理如果达到或接近业绩基准，将开始采取谨慎持有策略。
这将暗示，许多在过去6个月中表现极佳的股票将遭遇抛压，例如那些高预期、低盈利率的科技股。如果这种情形持续下去，小型股的上佳表现可能暂告段落。曾经有利于规模较小、比较激进、周期性明显的股票的价值差不再具有诱惑力。

Sanford C. Bernstein的策略师赀洛特尼科夫(Vadim Zlotnikov)上周表示，如果投资者开始采取更为保守的策略，那么预计更稳定的大型股可能将独领风骚，至少暂时如此。

赀洛特尼科夫称，他所在公司的选股模式是看重那些高收益和估值具有吸引力的股票，这使其投资组合自3月低点以来弱于大盘。回顾1966年以后的历史时期，这种滞后表现往往会持续5或6个月的时间，然后强劲反弹。这次正好过了6个月。他目前青睐于医疗保健类股和能源类股。

当然，即使看涨人士也在谈论股指小幅回落的可能性。一些人坦言希望如此，这样可以进行逢低吸纳。毫无疑问，目前市场上有充裕的资金可以用于全面买盘。

但是，一些技术分析师视为相当重要的指数水平在最近的下行过程中被突破，雅虎(Yahoo)等领先股已经开始下滑。卖空者停止了对该股的交易，转而寻找其他目标。诚然，股市飙升吸引新买家进场的动力也可能开始逆转。这种情况以前也发生过。

维亚康姆上周三终于证实了市场的担忧，削减了年内剩余时间的收入和利润预期。而此前几天，投资者的沉重忧虑已经影响了该股走势。

维亚康姆称，由于地方广告需求持续疲软，下调收入和运营利润增长率至4%-9%。它先前预计，收入增长1%-9%，利润呈两位数增长。

在维亚康姆发布预警的前三个交易日，其股价已经开始稳步下挫，日交易量约为正常日成交量的两倍。《纽约时报》(New York Times)和Gannett此前都曾暗示，当地广告需求的反弹迟于预期。一些观察人士开始担心，维亚康姆旗下的哥伦比亚电视台(CBS)的广告业务可能难以再现去年秋季的佳绩，当时业绩的放大得益于选举广告的投放。而派拉蒙(Paramount)疲软的夏季票房表现是拖累该公司业绩的另一因素。

实际上，从9月5日（国会投票决定保留对媒体所有权诸多限制的次日）起，维亚康姆成交活跃的B股股票已经下跌约17%。这对维亚康姆可谓非同寻常，因为该股在熊市的大部分时间里一直逆市而行。

上周，一些忠诚的分析师开始为该股申辩，称其跌势是异常波动，建议乘机买入。看涨的理由总是要归功于维亚康姆CBS、Showtime、MTV、Nickelodeon、派拉蒙和西蒙与舒斯特国际出版公司(Simon & Schuster)等资产的良好品质。的确如此。但是，美国在线时代华纳(AOL Time Warner)、沃尔特-迪斯尼(Walt Disney)和Fox Entertainment也分别拥有令人艳□的媒体资产。

维亚康姆所拥有的其他公司没有的资产是其通过Infinity Broadcasting广播电台获得的广播业务。广播收入仅占公司总收入的9%，但这部分业务的利润率高昂，所贡献的利息、税项、折旧和摊销前利润占到公司利润总额的19%。因此，地方广告需求的风险对维亚康姆影响很大。

Infinity电台在25－54岁人群收听率的下滑幅度甚至超过了整个行业收听率的降幅。广播电台业务的衰竭使得一些投资者怀疑，公司是否还将受到更多不利趋势影响。

德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)的马科斯(Drew Marcus)认为，收听率的下降仅仅意味著维亚康姆的广播业务不再从其他媒体公司手中抢占占有率。同时，他认为，地方广告需求的疲弱使经济反弹力度前景难料。

为了重振业务，Infinity进行了管理层重组，维亚康姆也似乎意欲加大投入提高收听率。一位观察人士称，在维亚康姆上周的预警消息中，真正值得注意的是管理层表示今年利润率不会有所提高。公司将利润增长预期下调至与收入增长一致。因此，公司的增长在很大程度上寄希望于广告市场的复苏。

他还指出，维亚康姆已经连续三年下调业绩预期，市场对此已经置若罔闻。即使在最近的下跌之后，维亚康姆的股价和美国在线时代华纳、Fox和Tribune等其他媒体公司相比也不低廉。
部分投资者表示，伊士曼柯达(Eastman Kodak)大幅削减股息可能导致估值上升。人们认为，公司将因此有意集中资源以期从不断下滑的胶片市场中获得最大的现金回报，同时有选择性地收购高增长业务。

伊士曼柯达宣布将每股1.80美元的年度派息额削减至50美分，受此影响，公司股价下跌6.40美元，至21.40美元。

公司称，收购计划将使2006年每股收益达到3美元。但没有人对其预期有充分的把握，因而不愿贸然买进，特别是在公司以往收购业务表现不一、数码照相业务只是暂告成功的情况下。

在经历了三个日历年度的股市下跌之后，实际上华盛顿－纽约政治金融世界的所有权势各方都急切地盼望股市上涨。

经纪商和共同基金公司急于改善收益，Fed希望防止资产缩水、市场调整方向刺激经济增长。布什(Bush)政府需要华尔街的强势来加大连任的希望。财政部和国会企盼资本所得税的增长来弥补激增的财政赤字。

唯一希望股市下跌的人群恐怕是数千名习惯作空的对冲基金经理。

人们普遍认为，减税、政府支出的增加和低利率带来的充裕资金推动了股市今年的反弹。同时，国会清除对公司业绩不利因素的友善举动也起到了积极作用。

减税法案给公司带来的一大益处是公司可以加速新近收购资本品的折旧。这实际上降低了这些投资的税后成本，为公司开发新的技术产品提供了巨大的暂时的推动力。

另外，国会拟定的新方案将带来深远影响，该方案允许公司在计算未来养老金债务现值时使用更高的折现率。

如果国会真的做此调整，毫无疑问美国股市将受益于企业收益数据的改善。投资者已经对养老金缺口可能对收益的不利影响视而不见，该法规的调整将使这一问题更容易被忽略。

投资者只顾眼前的心态在对待航空类股问题上可能表现得最为明显。航空类股自3月初市场低点上涨了一倍以上，AMR、大陆航空(Continental)、达美航空(Delta)和西北航空(Northwest)等传统的大型航空公司股票较面临破产风险时的股价水平大幅上涨。

但是，根据贝尔斯登(Bear Stearns)分析师斯特恩(David Strine)最新的广泛研究，市场可能没有充分考虑该行业养老金帐户的窘境。这四大航空公司养老金帐户缺口总计139亿美元，而养老金计划总资产为178亿美元。Strine预计，它们需要缴纳的养老金数额将由今年的5.94亿美元上升至2004年的18亿美元。

Hong Kong's Stock Euphoria May Fade Sooner Than Later


Investors tend to be either manic or depressive when it comes to the Hong Kong stock market. Right now, a clear sense of mania is in the air.

The benchmark Hang Seng Index closed Friday a few points short of a 15-month high, shaking off Monday's global stock-market selloff to rise 3% on the week. Leading the way, the Hang Seng property subindex surged 7.2% Wednesday amid growing optimism that the battered real-estate market is poised to rebound. With foreign money pouring in, share-trading volume Thursday exceeded HK$21 billion (US$2.71 billion), the most active day in 3? years.

"Hong Kong is all about confidence, and recently we've seen a big reversal," said William Pitman, a director at Henderson Global Investors in Hong Kong.
Yet some investors already are concerned another bout of depressive doubt could be closer than most people think. Hong Kong's heady expectations for an economic rebound could fall short, and some analysts say property stocks in particular have rocketed up too fast.

"Investor expectations in Hong Kong are still fickle," said David Cheung, an investment director at Prudential Asset Management in Hong Kong. "They can change easily."

Sentiment has brightened during recent weeks as Hong Kong's ties with the mainland have improved, property prices have shown signs of perking up and the long period of deflation appears to be waning. In yet another sign of renewed investor confidence, the Hong Kong dollar was lifted briefly to the upper limits of its peg to the U.S. dollar, hitting its strongest level in more than five years.

Start with the economy. While most Asian countries eased pressure on their economies through currency devaluations, Hong Kong's currency peg meant the city instead had to suffer through years of deflation. CLSA Emerging Markets economist Jim Walker said this period of falling prices is coming to an end. For next year, he forecast Hong Kong's gross domestic product to grow at 8.9% and private consumption to rise 5.3%.

"After a long period of self doubt the phoenix is flying again," Dr. Walker wrote in a recent report.

He may be more bullish than others, but the consensus clearly is for a solid rebound. HSBC said Hong Kong unemployment is likely to peak during this quarter at 9%, falling to between 8.2% and 8.4% by year end, while an improving global economy should boost Hong Kong exports 10% next year. Standard Chartered Bank said tourism has recovered much faster following the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome than many anticipated. Local airlines are resuming their pre-SARS flight schedules, long before they had expected, and hotel-occupancy rates are climbing toward between 70% and 80%.

Hong Kong's improving relationship with the mainland is seen as another positive for market sentiment. Massive protests in response to a proposed antisubversion law in Hong Kong caught Beijing off guard and led the Hong Kong administration, with Beijing's backing, to postpone the legislation indefinitely.

China is implementing policies designed to invigorate Hong Kong's soft economy, which it views as the root of the discontent. Those policies include a free-trade pact with Hong Kong and plans for a bridge that would link Hong Kong to manufacturing bases on the western part of the Pearl River Delta, in Guangdong province.

CLSA Emerging Markets strategist Christopher Wood said he sees Hong Kong at the center of a regional theme: Asian stock-market leadership passing from technology companies and exporters to companies more geared to growing domestic demand. Export-heavy markets such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, he notes, have been falling for most of this month.

"We are at a turning point," Mr. Wood said. Other markets geared to domestic demand, such as India, Thailand and Indonesia, have enjoyed double-digit gains during the past 16 months. But the Hang Seng Index was essentially flat during that period, so it has more room to run, Mr. Wood suggested.

Even so, some investors fear that the recent burst of interest in Hong Kong stocks could be disruptive during the short term. The high trading volumes reflect in part a surge of hedge-fund and other "hot money" that could exit as quickly as it came, especially if lofty economic forecasts fall short of expectations or if SARS makes a reappearance.

"Sudden moves in markets like this make me hesitant," said Alexander Muromcew, an international fund manager with Loomis Sayles in San Francisco. He said he is holding off adding Hong Kong stocks, anticipating a potential near-term correction.

Others say the fast rise in property stocks is running too far ahead of a recovery in the physical market, where prices are off 70% from their 1997 peaks. Share prices for developers such as Sun Hung Kai Properties, Henderson Land Development and New World Development have advanced 80% or more since April. Those gains suggest a rise of about 20% in property prices during the next year, Prudential's Mr. Cheung said.

"Is that going to be the case?" he asked. "I think not."

Derek Cheung, head of property research at HSBC Securities, noted that the big property-stock rally has coincided with one of the worst earnings seasons for developers in years. Sung Hung Kai, for instance, reported Thursday its smallest fiscal-year profit since 1992. While HSBC's Mr. Cheung sees a sector recovery by 2005, "this is not going to happen overnight, and the market is acting like it will happen overnight."
狂躁港股或渐趋平静

进入香港股市的投资者要么容易狂躁，要么容易抑郁。而目前，似乎狂躁的迹象更为明显。

基准的恒生指数上周五收盘略低于15个月高点，全周上涨3%，摆脱了上周一全球股市下跌的阴影。地产类股领涨，上周三恒生地产分类指数暴涨7.2%，因为越来越多的投资者预计低迷的房地产市场即将复苏。由于外资涌入，香港股市成交量上周四超过210亿港元（27.1亿美元），成为3年半以来交投最为活跃的一天。

Henderson Global Investors驻香港的管理人士威廉?皮特曼(William Pitman)说，香港市场目前人气高涨，最近出现了翻天覆地的变化。

但一些投资者仍然担心会始料不及地出现另一轮低迷态势。人们对香港经济复苏的盲目预期可能会落空，一些分析师认为地产类股的反弹速度过快。

Prudential Asset Management驻香港的投资部负责人David Cheung说，香港投资者的心态很不稳定，他们的预期会轻易地改变。

随著香港与大陆关系的加强，近几周市场人气有所改善，地产价格出现上扬迹象，长期的通货紧缩似乎也在逐渐消逝。投资者恢复信心的另一个迹象是，港元汇率被推高至钉住美元汇率的上限，达到5年多来最高水平。

先谈谈经济基本面。在多数亚洲国家通过货币贬值缓解经济压力的同时，香港的联系汇率制却导致其经受了数年的通货紧缩。但里昂证券新兴市场(CLSA Emerging Markets)的经济学家吉姆?沃克(Jim Walker)说，这种通货紧缩的局面即将结束，他预计香港明年GDP将增长8.9%，私人消费将增长5.3%。

沃克在最近发表的报告中称，在经历了长时间的自我怀疑后，香港这只凤凰终于展翅高飞了。

他可能比其他经济学家更加乐观，但市场对香港的普遍预期显然也是强劲反弹。汇丰(HSBC)称，香港失业率可能在本季度达到9%的顶点，到年底将回落至8.2%-8.4%的水平，同时全球经济复苏将推动香港出口明年增长10%。渣打银行(Standard Chartered Bank)称，非典型肺炎(SARS)过后，旅游业的复苏远远好于预期。本地航空公司的航班数量已经恢复到SARS疫情之前的水平，酒店入住率也攀升至70%-80%。

香港与大陆关系的改善被视为提振市场人气的另一因素。针对反颠覆法的大规模抗议活动最终导致香港政府在北京的同意下无限期地推迟了该法案的实施。

中央政府正在采取提振香港经济的一系列措施，包括与香港签订自由贸易协定，以及计划建造港珠澳大桥等。

里昂证券新兴市场的策略师克里斯托福?伍德(Christopher Wood)说，香港即将成为亚洲经济发展的主旋律：亚洲股票市场的引领者已经从技术公司和出口公司转变为与本地需求密切相关的公司。而严重依赖出口的国家和地区，例如日本、韩国和台湾，本月大多数时间股市下跌。

伍德说，香港股市正处于转折点。其他受本地需求带动的市场，例如印度、泰国和印尼，过去16个月股市出现了两位数的攀升。但恒生指数这段时间基本持平，因此存在更大的上涨空间。

即便如此，一些投资者仍然担心人们对香港股市的热情会转瞬即逝。高额的成交量从某种程度意味著一些对冲基金和其他游资可以像进入时那样迅速撤资，特别是在经济预期不能实现或者SARS疫情卷土重来的情况下。

Loomis Sayles驻旧金山的国际基金经理卢米斯?赛尔斯(Loomis Sayles)说，他担心会出现上述情况，因此一直很犹豫。他说，他一直没有增持香港股票，预计短期内该市场可能出现回调。

其他人士称，地产类股涨速过快，远远超前于地产行业的复苏，与1997年相比，香港地产价格已经缩水70%。自4月份以来，新鸿基地产(Sun Hung Kai Properties)、恒基地产(Henderson Land Development)、新世界发展(New World Development)等地产发展商的股票已经上涨了80%。这种涨幅预示明年地产价格上涨20%左右。

但赛尔斯说，果真能出现这种情况吗？他看未必。

汇丰证券(HSBC Securities)的地产研究部负责人Derek Cheung指出，伴随著地产类股大幅反弹的却是地产发展商多年以来最差的收益季节。以新鸿基地产为例，该公司上周四公布了1992年以来最低的利润水平。虽然Cheung预计到2005年香港地产业会实现复苏，但他表示，这不是一夜之间就能实现的，而市场的表现却好像这可以马上实现一样。

业绩稳健股成为市场宠儿 Suddenly, Investors Find Solid Stocks All the Rage


The stock market once again appears to be under adult supervision.

This year's impressive climb for stocks has been dominated by a startling rise for some of the market's flimsiest and most untested companies, including many thought to be on their last legs just 11 months ago. As investors rediscovered their appetite for risk, they seemed more willing to roll the dice on companies with clouded prospects, including tech and telecom shares.

But there are signs that that has begun to change in recent weeks, and investors who miss the shift could see their gains vaporized while missing out on the next leg up in the bull market.

"We're really in the greed-management stage right now," says Rich Steinberg of Steinberg Global Asset Management, who has been selling shares of his big winners and buying recent market laggards.

With some large investors hoping to lock in their profits, the focus for the first time in more than a year appears to be shifting to solid, established, profitable companies. Many savvy investors bet the switch will continue in the months ahead, with more stable stocks, like dividend-paying companies, doing the best, and many of the biggest gainers of the year in for a difficult autumn.

Why the change? In part because the market has hit a wall, with the Nasdaq down 6.2% since Sept. 18 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 3.6% amid a round of profit-taking and hand-wringing by investors. In fact, the Nasdaq Composite Index had its biggest weekly decline since April 2002. New worries are surfacing that this year's run-up -- particularly in the dicier corners of the market -- won't be matched by better profits.

As those concerns have settled in, high dividend-paying stocks, which have lagged behind the broader market over the past year, finally have matched the performance of low- and nondividend paying stocks.

One dividend-paying stock that some investors think will do well if the market turns tough on techs and other highfliers: ExxonMobil Corp., which has outperformed all other Dow stocks lately and could have more room to rise as energy prices stay strong. 3M Co. also could buck an otherwise rough market, some investors say, citing analyst upgrades and a recent spike in prices even as the overall market weakened.

That is a big shift. For the year, the high-yielding stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index -- those that yield more than the index's yield of 1.61% -- have returned just 8.8%, compared to 25.7% for the low and no-yielding names.

But over the past four weeks, the high-yielding stocks have actually beaten the low-yielders, albeit by a tiny amount. On a market cap weighted basis, the high-yielding names are up 0.4% while the low-yielding companies are up just 0.36%.

Ironically, dividend payers have fallen behind in a year when dividends have gotten more attention than they had in years, a consequence of the tax cut that slashed rates on dividends by half for many taxpayers.

With the market appearing to have stalled, more-mature dividend payers are likely to continue to catch up to their more-volatile cousins, which tend to lead during a fast-rising market.

While hundreds of companies raised their dividends earlier this year, the wave of increases slowed considerably in the past two months. Then last week dividends took the stage again when homebuilder Lennar Corp. jacked up its payout from five cents a year to $1, a 1,900% jump, and McDonald's Corp. raised its dividend by 70% from 23.5 cents to 40 cents a year. Both stocks jumped on the news, with McDonald's bucking the trend on Wednesday's 150-point down day.

The next day investors turned their wrath on Eastman Kodak Co. when it slashed its dividend by 72% to 50 cents from $1.80, sending the photo company's shares down nearly 18%.

Dividend increases should pick up again when third-quarter-earnings season begins in early October and then again at the end of the year, says Howard Silverblatt, an analyst at Standard & Poor's. "We're going to go through another wave," of dividend increases, he predicts.

Specifically, analysts are eyeing energy companies, such as ChevronTexaco Corp. and Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., and cash-rich banks like Citigroup Inc., which has been a strong recent performer. Industrial companies, including Great Lakes Chemical Corp., which has lots of free cash flow relative to its stock price, and consumer-goods maker Procter & Gamble Co., which is nearly flat over the past year, but up nearly 6% in the past four weeks, also should do well, while expensive tech stocks could hit a wall. One example: Sonus Networks Inc., a highflying telecom company that many hedge funds say has climbed too far, too fast, and has fallen more than 15% in the last week. Even tech giant Intel Corp. is down 6% since the market peaked earlier this month.

Already, some of the money managers who rode the rally are paring back their more-expensive stocks. Mr. Steinberg of Steinberg Global Asset Management in Boca Raton, Fla., has sold shares in Alcoa Inc., McDonald's, Citigroup and Charles Schwab Corp. recently and bought shares in energy companies like ChevronTexaco, seeking strong earnings and dividends. "We're going to go back to people getting total return with the dividend," he says, adding that the market's most volatile stocks are poised for a fall.

At the current valuations of some companies, earnings will need to be absolutely fabulous for the stocks to keep rising. "You're going to start to see companies meet expectations, but they're not going to blow out the quarter and people will sell on the news, that will cause the rotation back to reality," Mr. Steinberg says.

One example: Juniper Networks Inc., which earned a total of just five cents a share in the first two quarters of this year, hit $18 on Sept. 4, up from a little more than $4 last October, on high hopes for the future. But now it is down to $15 and could go lower if investors continue to focus on companies with stellar current earnings, rather than those promising outsize profits way down the road.

In some cases there is no logic behind one stock's rise and another's stall, but some money managers are dumping what has gone up and seeking names that have been left behind. John Schneider , a money manager with Pimco Equity Advisors, is selling some of his best performers, including copper producer Phelps Dodge Corp., which is up nearly 50% this year. In exchange, he bought paper-and-timber producer Bowater Inc., which has lagged behind the market. Both companies will gain from an economic rebound, but Phelps Dodge could be vulnerable, he says.
业绩稳健股成为市场宠儿

成熟稳健的股票似乎已再度开始主导市场。

今年股市令人印象深刻的几次上涨大多发生在那些最微不足道、最未经考验的公司身上，而其中许多公司仅在11个月之前还被认为已经濒临绝境。当投资者对风险的兴趣再度燃起，他们似乎更愿意将赌注押在那些前景不甚乐观的公司上面，其中甚至包括科技股和电信股。

但最近几周有迹象表明这种趋势开始发生变化。如果不能觉察到这种变化，投资者将错过下一次牛市行情，眼睁睁看著他们已经获得的利润被蒸发得一乾二净。

Steinberg Global Asset Management的斯泰因贝格(Rich Steinberg)卖掉了大幅上涨的股票，买进一些近来涨势滞后的股票。

随著某些大投资者希望锁定利润，股市重心一年多以来首次转向稳健、口碑好的赢利公司。许多精明的投资者预言未来几个月这种趋势还将继续，派息公司等股价稳定的股票将表现最佳，而许多今年涨幅最大的股票秋天的日子将不太好过。

为什么会出现这种转变呢？部分原因是股市碰到一定阻力。9月18日至今，在投资者的获利回吐和绝望之中，那斯达克综合指数和道琼斯工业股票平均价格指数分别下跌6.2%和3.6%。事实上，这是2002年4月以来那斯达克综合指数最大的当周涨幅。开始有人担心今年走势较好的股票--特别是投资者孤注一掷的股票--可能不会有太大的获利。

在这样的忧虑情绪之中，去年涨势滞后于大盘的高派息股票的表现终于追上了低派息或不派息的股票。

某些投资者认为，如果科技股和其他高价股走势不好，有一只派息股票将会表现不错，它就是埃克森美孚(Exxon Mobil Corp., XOM)。该股最近走势好于道琼斯指数所有其他成份股。鉴于能源价格持续居高不下，该股还会有更大的上涨空间。某些投资者认为，3M公司(3M Co., MMM)也可能逆市上扬，原因是分析师上调该股评级，而且大市走软的时候3M仍一枝独秀。

这是一个很大的转变。今年，标准普尔500指数成份股的平均派息率为1.61%，其中高派息率股票的股权回报率为为8.8%，而低派息率或无派息的股票股权回报率竟高达25.7%。

但是，在过去的4周中，高派息的股票事实上已经战胜了低派息率的股票，虽然只是略胜一筹。从市值上看，高派息股票市值增长了0.4%，而低派息股票市值仅仅增长了0.36%。

颇具嘲讽意味的是，今年的投资者比过去更加重视股息，因为根据最新的减税法案，许多投资者的股息所得税率减少了一半。派息公司偏偏在这个时候落在了后面。

尽管今年早些时候数百家公司提高了股息，但过去两个月提高股息的势头却大幅放缓。上周，派息再次成为市场热点。Lennar Corp.年派息从5美分提高到1美元，增加了1,900%；麦当劳(McDonald's Corp., MCD)将年股息从23.5美分提高到40美分，增幅70%。消息公布后，两只股票双双上扬，麦当劳在周三股指下跌150点的情况下逆市上涨。

第二天，伊士曼-柯达公司(Eastman Kodak Co., EK)将股息由1.80美元削减到50美分，减幅达72%。气愤的投资者纷纷抛出该股，使其股价下跌近18%。

标准普尔的分析师希佛布朗(Howard Silverblatt)指出，10月初和今年年底的第三、四季度收益季节，提高股息的现象还将再次增多。他预计，届时将有新一轮的增加派息活动。

分析师尤其看好雪佛龙德士古(ChevronTexaco Corp., CVX)和英荷皇家石油公司(Royal Dutch Petroleum)等能源公司，以及股价最近走高的花旗集团(Citigroup Inc.)等现金流丰富的银行。相当于股价来说自由现金流较为丰富的Great Lakes Chemical Corp.等工业股，以及去年表现平平但过去4周几乎上涨6%的消费品生产商宝洁公司(Procter & Gamble Co., PG, 又名:宝硷公司)都应该涨势不错。股价较高的科技股可能将受到挫折。一个例子就是Sonus Networks。许多对冲基金公司指出，该股上涨幅度过高、涨速过快，上周该股跌幅果然超过15%。甚至连科技巨头英特尔(Intel Corp.)也从本月早些时候市场冲高回落以来，下跌了6%。

某些投资经理已经开始利用股市上涨的时机减持某些股价更高的股票。Steinberg Global Asset Management的斯泰因贝格最近卖出了美国铝业公司(Alcoa Inc., AA)、麦当劳、花旗集团和嘉信理财(Charles Schwab Corp., SCH)的股票，买进收益和股息都很强劲的雪佛龙德士古等能源股。他指出，股价波动最大的股票将会下跌。

从某些公司目前价值来看，股价若要保持上涨需要有相当可观的收益作支持。

一个例证就是Juniper Networks Inc.。该公司今年前两个季度每股收益仅为5美分，但因其前景向好，股价从去年10月的4美元多一点上涨至9月4日的18美元。但该股目前跌至15美元，可能还会继续下跌。

有的时候，股价上涨或停顿没有道理可讲，但某些投资经理是在进行获利回吐，买进涨势滞后的股票。Pimco Equity Advisors经理施奈德(John Schneider)正在抛售走势最佳的股票，其中包括黄铜制造商费尔普斯-道奇(Phelps Dodge Corp., PD)，该股今年几乎上涨50%。同时，他买进了生产商Bowater Inc.的股票，该股走势落后于大盘。施奈德指出，两家公司都可能受益于经济反弹，但费尔普斯-道奇可能会稍显脆弱一些。

美国股市：难忘十月

No Reason to Say 'Eeek,' So Far


It's October, a month when some people's thoughts turn to witches, goblins ... and stock-market declines.

Even though the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up nearly 300 points in the first three days of this month, some experienced investors begin biting their nails at this time of year. They think back to October 1929, when stocks crashed, and to October 1987, when they crashed again, as well as to some smaller but still-startling October declines in other years. Sure, the worriers say, it is a little emotional. But that doesn't make them much more comfortable, especially given their jitters about corporate profits and the strength of the economy.

"A lot of people are nervous," says David Briggs, head of stock trading at Pittsburgh mutual-fund group Federated Investors. "I had it a little, too," he admits, pointing out that he recently wrote a market commentary acknowledging his "Octoberphobia."

A look at market history, it should be noted, indicates that October has seen more stock gains than declines. It is in September that stocks have been most likely to decline; they fell this September. Lately, in fact, October has been a month for big rallies, as investors become (rightly or wrongly) hopeful about stock performance in the coming year. Since 1998, stocks have shown gains in every October -- sometimes big ones.

Many investors, in fact, dismiss October worries as goofy. They point out that there are a lot of differences between 1987, the year of the most-recent crash, and now -- most prominently interest rates. In 1987, the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was rising fast and hit 10% right before the crash, contributing to the pressure on stocks. Now, it is hovering around 5%, and the 10-year note, which is now the benchmark, is yielding just over 4%.

But that hasn't stopped some people from passing around stock charts showing surprising parallels between the patterns for the current year and for 1987. One of the charts bears the artistic name "Three Peaks and the Domed House," because the pattern sort of looks like that.

Market-research group Ned Davis Research in Venice, Fla., even decided to publish an analysis of the "Three Peaks and the Domed House" chart. Its conclusion: The pattern (showing three jumps in the shape of inverted V's, a more gradual topping out and then, in 1987, a sharp drop) clearly can be seen both this year and in 1987. Of course, this year's chart doesn't include the drop, and the two years are sharply different in other ways.

Mr. Briggs says he doesn't expect a crash, and he has advised money managers at Federated not to sell their stock positions. But he has suggested they consider rotating some money into their less-jumpy stocks for a while, just in case of volatility -- especially given that quarterly earnings reports are on the horizon.

"My guess is that the market probably is going to be choppy into the early part of November," Mr. Briggs says.
Still, there is no denying that, when crashes have come, it has tended to be in October. Of the 20 biggest one-day percentage drops in the Dow industrials, eight have come in October. These include the two-day crash of 1929; the 1987 crash; an 8% plunge one week after the 1987 crash; the "echo" or "minicrash" of October 1989; and a 7% plunge in October 1997. Of the 10 biggest drops, half were in October, including the two major crashes.

Is that just a coincidence? Perhaps. But there may be reasons for October to be dangerous. In October, people are settling in after summer vacations. Governments are focusing on policy changes. Both governments and companies are looking ahead to the future, sometimes trying to accomplish things before year's end. If they err, the errors sometimes occur in the fall.

This year, as was the case in 1987, the U.S. has become embroiled in a shoving match with foreign countries over currency issues. In 1987, the dollar was near a seven-year low against the mark. Now, the dollar is near a three-year low against the yen.

"I don't see a replay of '87," says Henry Herrmann, chief investment officer at mutual-fund group Waddell & Reed in Overland Park, Kan. "But if I could be really wrong, it would be because of the currency market. It is in nobody's best interest for the dollar to have a big decline."

But he, Mr. Briggs and others point out that, in many ways, the current situation is different.

Now, as in 1987, stocks are sitting on big gains. But in 1987, the Dow industrials had more than tripled from their bottom in 1982. This time, they are up 31% from their low, which occurred just one year ago.

Then, investors were worried about inflation and an overheating economy, and both gold prices and interest rates were rising. Now, gold is up, but interest rates remain low and inflation fears are almost nonexistent.

Then, computer-driven selling contributed to the losses. Today, there still is plenty of computer-driven trading, though traders insist it is more diverse and less prone to provoking a crash.

Another possible parallel is something analysts call investor sentiment. In 1987, investors had become overoptimistic after five years of stock gains. Among investment-newsletter writers who expressed a bullish or bearish view, about 75% were bullish by August 1987, according to a survey by a publication called Investors Intelligence in New Rochelle, N.Y. (Bullishness actually declined after that.) Today, the survey shows bullishness back to the 1987 level: 74%.

"There is a lot of risk out there," says Michael Burke, editor of Investors Intelligence. "Stock valuations are still very high, and everybody is taking an optimistic spin on things." Heavy optimism can be bad for stocks, because it means people have moved a large percentage of available money into stocks and that they are susceptible to disappointment, which would cause them to sell.

But investment advisers say that many ordinary investors still have vivid memories of the bear market and aren't as upbeat as the newsletter writers seem to be. Options selling also indicates a high level of nervousness. On that score as well, the feeling is that the investment climate still isn't as extreme as it was in 1987.

"You don't have as much of a manic situation as in '87," says Tim Hayes, global stock strategist at Ned Davis Research. He sees closer parallels between the mood in 1987 and that during the stock bubble of the late 1990s, he says. "Are we headed for a crash? I just don't see the evidence of that," Mr. Hayes says.

After rising almost 200 points Wednesday, the first trading day in October, the Dow industrials finished the week up 259.23 points, or 2.8%, at 9572.31 -- including a gain of 84.51 points, or 0.9%, on Friday. Counting just the three days of October, the Dow has risen 297.25 points.

Even some analysts who expect a stock pullback say they doubt we will see a crash.

"October is a month where we have had big breaks in the past. Anybody who has been around knows that," says Phil Roth, chief technical market analyst at New York brokerage firm Miller Tabak. "If you get the stock market and the bond market and the dollar down, that can develop into a panicky situation, but that isn't happening."

He adds, "The pattern since June looks like a top to me -- not a disastrous top, but a top. I think there is more weakness ahead, and then a buying point."

Mark Twain, who often complained of his losses in the stock market (he was a much better writer than investor), put it this way in a famous quotation: "October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February."

Friday's Market Activity

Technology issues led the market, while blue-chip shares advanced in broad buying sparked by the first rise in U.S. payrolls since January.

Hewlett-Packard jumped 78 cents, or 4%, to $20.30, after saying it is launching a marketing campaign targeting customers of Sun Microsystems. Nasdaq-traded Sun, which warned of an unexpected quarterly loss earlier in the week, gained 11 cents, or 3.4%, to 3.31.

Adtran (Nasdaq), a supplier of transmission products to the telecommunications industry, advanced 9.15, or 14%, to 72.64, after saying it expects third-quarter earnings of between 41 cents and 42 cents a share, above analysts' target of 36 cents. The company's fourth-quarter forecast also exceeded Wall Street's expectation.

3M rose 1.75, or 2.5%, to 73.03, after Lehman Brothers upgraded the stock to "overweight" from "equal weight," saying the company could deliver earnings-per-share growth of between 12% and 14% in 2004. Lehman raised its per-share earnings target to $3.45 from $3.35.

Traders say the market is vulnerable to losing some ground this week as investors take profits after last week's gains. Companies will begin posting quarterly earnings results, with Alcoa scheduled to report Tuesday. Alcoa climbed 1.02, or 3.8%, to 28.15.

AT&T fell 56 cents, or 2.7%, to 20.24, after Merrill Lynch said uncertainties in the company's consumer and enterprise-business segments will make it hard to attract buyers, despite speculation AT&T could be ripe for acquisition.

After a morning halt, Biovail fell 6.67, or 18%, to 31.10, as the drug company lowered its third-quarter revenue target, in large part because of a traffic accident involving a truck carrying a large shipment of its antidepressant drug Wellbutrin XL.

The job report led shares of staffing companies higher. Monster Worldwide (Nasdaq) rose 2.61, or 10%, to 28.50; Robert Half International gained 2.14, or 11%, to 21.60; and Manpower advanced 2.43, or 6.4%, to 40.23.
美国股市：难忘十月

又是一个十月，一些人不禁想到：股市又要跌了。

今年十月的头3天，道琼斯指数累计已上涨了将近300点。尽管如此，回想起1929年、1987年十月发生的股市崩盘，和其他几个年份里虽然规模稍小但依然令人后怕的下跌情形，一到每年的这个时候，一些富有经验的投资者还是不免感到神经紧张。

这种情绪似乎是有些多愁善感。但实际情况确实无法让他们感到安慰，特别是在公司利润和经济复苏力度都不理想的情况下。

匹兹堡一家共同基金集团Federated Investors股票交易负责人布瑞格斯(David Briggs)说，许多人感到提心吊胆。即便是他自己，在最近撰写的一篇市场评论中也承认自己染上了“十月恐惧症”。

回顾历史上的市场行情，值得注意的是十月出现的上涨行情其实多于下跌。最有可能出现下跌的月份不是十月，而是九月。在刚刚过去的这个九月，股市就跌了。事实上，近年来，在十月倒是常常会因投资者对未来一年的股市满怀希望而有大幅反弹的行情出现（他们的愿望有时能够成为现实，有时也会落空）。1998年以来，每逢十月股市都会上涨，涨幅有时还颇为可观。

实际上，许多投资者都认为对十月的担心纯属多虑。他们指出，目前的情况与1987年的最近一次崩盘出现时，有这样那样种种差别。其中最显著的是利率方面的差别。1987年，30年期美国国债收益率迅速上升，在崩盘之际刚好达到10%，从而给股市带来了压力。而当前美国国债的收益率一直徘徊在5%左右，基准10年期美国国债的收益率更是刚刚达到4%。

但一些人还是在传递著显示今年与1987年有惊人相似之处的股市图表。有一张图表更是起了个艺术化的名称：“三个顶部与圆形屋”(Three Peaks and the Domed House)，原因是目前股市的形态与此类似。

市场研究机构Ned Davis Research甚至准备出版对“三个顶部与圆形屋”的分析报告。它的结论是：今年和1987年都明显出现了这种形态（三个V形反弹，随之逐步从高点回落，然后在1987年出现了大幅下挫）。当然，今年的图表中还没有包括这次下挫，而且这两年在其他许多方面有明显不同。

布瑞格斯预计股市不会崩盘，并建议Federated的基金经理不要卖出其股票头寸。但他也建议考虑将部分资金暂时投入波动较小的股票中，以防止出现剧烈波动，尤其是在即将公布季度收益的时期。

布瑞格斯说，他认为市场可能在11月上旬前呈震荡走势。

但不可否认的是，许多崩盘都发生在十月。道琼斯工业股票平均价格指数历史上20个最大的单日跌幅中，有8个发生在十月。这其中包括1929年连续两天的暴跌；1987年的大跌；1987年崩盘后一周下跌8%；1989年10月的下挫；及1997年下跌7%。在前10个最大的单日跌幅中，有一半发生在十月，其中包括两次最主要的崩盘。

这难道只是巧合吗？也许。但10月份之所以危险可能也存在一些原因。10月份人们已从假期中安定下来，政府关注于政策调整。政府和公司都在著眼未来，有时还希望在年底前能解决一些问题。如果其中出现失误，有时就会导致股市下跌。

今年同1987年的情形一样，美国与部分国家再次陷入有关汇率问题的争论之中。1987年时，美元兑德国马克达到了近7年的低点。现在美元兑日圆达到了近3年来的低点。

共同基金Waddell & Reed的首席投资长赫曼(Henry Herrmann)说，他预计87年的一幕不会重现。但他、布瑞格斯及其他人都指出，目前的情况在许多方面有所不同。

同1987年一样，当前的股市也是涨幅巨大。但在1987年，道琼斯指数是1982年低点的3倍以上，此番股指仅比一年前的低点上涨了31%。当时，投资者担心通货膨胀和经济过热，金价和利率均不断走高。而现在，金价虽在走高，但利率却维持在低位，对通货膨胀的担忧也基本上不存在。

当时，程式卖盘导致了大盘的下跌。目前，尽管仍有许多程式交易，但交易员认为已经非常分散，不易导致市场崩盘。

另一个类似的地方是分析师所称的投资者人气。1987年时，在连续5年上涨后，投资者变得过于乐观。据Investors Intelligence所做的调查，在表达看涨或看跌的投资通讯作者中，1987年8月有约75%的人看涨股市（看涨股市的比例从那以后就开始降低）。现在的调查显示，看涨股市的人又回到了1987年时74%的水平。

投资顾问称，许多普通投资者对熊市仍记忆犹新，并未像投资通讯的作者那样持乐观态度。期权卖盘也表明了市场的紧张程度仍然较高。从这点来看，给人的感觉是投资人气并不像1987年那样膨胀。

Ned Davis Research的全球股票策略师海斯(Tim Hayes)说，他认为1987年的市场情绪与90年代末时非常接近，并未看到股市正在走向崩盘的迹象。

在上周三（十月的第一个交易日）上涨约200点后，道琼斯指数上周共上涨259.23点，收于9572.31点，涨幅2.8%，其中包括上周五上涨的84.51点。10月份的前3天，股市共上涨了297.25点。

即使是预计将出现回调的部分分析师也对将发生崩盘持怀疑态度。纽约经纪公司Miller Tabak的技术分析师罗斯(Phil Roth)说，10月份在过去一直是一个充满大好机会的月份，每个曾身临其境的人都知道这点。

美国著名小说家马克?吐温(Mark Twain)经常抱怨他在股市中的巨额亏损（他是一个优秀的作家，但不是一个优秀的投资者），因此才有了这样一段名言：“10月，对投机来说显得特别危险；同样危险的其他月份是7月、9月、4月、11月、5月、3月、6月、12月、8月和2月。”