未发生的崩盘：华尔街恐慌发作的 5 个教训

【中美创新时报2024 年 8 月 8 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）周三，华尔街的过山车之旅继续，股价再次下跌。投资者深吸了一口气。他们认为世界不会终结。那么我们从这一事件中学到了什么？《波士顿环球报》专栏作家拉里·埃德尔曼（Larry Edelman）对此作了下述报道。

周三，华尔街的过山车之旅继续，股价再次下跌。

但这与周一席卷全球市场的恐慌引发的暴跌完全不同。无论是什么引发了那次抛售——可能是对经济的担忧、日元升值和科技股定价过高——投资者目前已经认定世界不会终结。

那么，我们从这一事件中学到了什么？

教训 #1

就像小孩子一样，华尔街不能很好地处理过渡。

过去两年，美联储一直以高利率对抗通胀。出乎意料的是，它几乎成功了，没有引发经济衰退。

现在，央行官员们正转向降息，可能从 9 月中旬开始。他们希望延续四年的经济扩张，并在失业率进一步恶化之前遏制失业率上升。

但交易员、分析师和经济学家抨击美联储等待太久才降低贷款利率。周一的市场崩盘部分反映了人们对政策制定者落后于形势的担忧，这让限制性利率有更多时间抑制消费者支出和商业投资。

这并不是投资者第一次因美联储政策变化而大发雷霆。

2018 年 12 月，美联储官员进行了第九次加息，旨在将借贷成本恢复到 2008 年金融危机前的水平，股市大幅下跌。类似的事件——臭名昭著的“缩减恐慌”——发生在 2013 年，当时美联储表示将减少在同一次金融危机期间作为紧急措施实施的债券购买计划。

教训 #2

经济数据可能同时发出相互矛盾的信号。

上个月就业市场的疲软引发了萨姆规则，这是衡量失业率上升的指标，与 1970 年以来每次经济衰退的开始相对应。

但决定经济衰退何时开始和结束的私人机构美国国家经济研究局在做出判断时考虑的不仅仅是失业率（通常是在事发数月或数年后）。其中许多指标——包括国内生产总值、雇主招聘、个人收入、消费者支出和零售额——都表明经济已经降温至美联储认为更可持续的速度。

事实上，事实证明，当美联储在 2022 年 3 月开始加息以降低自 1980 年代初以来的最高通胀率时，经济比美联储所希望的更具弹性。

从 4 月到 6 月，GDP 以可观的 2.8% 的年化率增长。雇主继续招聘与疫情前 2019 年大致相同的人数。

如今，央行首选的通胀指标仍高于其 2% 的目标，但这只是因为它依赖于一个没有人真正支付的古怪房价估计。

教训 3

在一个全球联系的经济体中，有无数个变动因素，实现软着陆（在没有痛苦的失业的情况下恢复到 2% 的通胀率）几乎是不可能的。

利率是一种生硬的工具，没有手册来指导以多快或多大幅度提高利率，或何时降低利率。​​

上周，在他和其他政策制定者投票将基准贷款利率维持在 23 年来的最高水平后，美联储主席杰罗姆·鲍威尔表示，经济稳健，就业市场“强劲但没有过热”。他说，这给了官员们回旋的余地，让他们等到他们确定通胀不再是问题。

但投资者是一群没有耐心的人。鲍威尔愿意冒险一试，至少在 9 月 17 日至 18 日官员下次开会之前，这引发了人们对经济正在借来的时间的潜在担忧。

教训 4

投资者并不总是理性的。

美联储周三做出“不采取行动”的利率决定后，股市立即上涨。标准普尔 500 指数上涨 1.6%。

周四和周五，在两份报告显示就业市场进一步失去动力之后，该指数合计下跌 3.1%，本周下跌不到 1%。

周一股市大跌。导火索是东京股市暴跌 12%，这是自 1987 年金融危机以来最糟糕的一天。

此次下跌与美国经济关系不大——全球投资者正在退出因日元快速升值而脱轨的热门交易——但它引起了足够多的不安，以至于美国股市在纽约开盘时暴跌。标准普尔 500 指数下跌 3%。

经济学家兼《纽约时报》专栏作家保罗·克鲁格曼 (Paul Krugman) 如此说道：“大多数抛售股票和其他资产的人并没有进行宏观经济分析；他们抛售是因为价格下跌。”

换句话说，两年来最大的市场暴跌主要是由于“旅鼠”们纷纷跳下悬崖。

最后的想法（教训 #5）

自 7 月 16 日创下历史新高以来，标准普尔 500 指数已下跌 8.3%。（今年以来上涨了 9%。）

此次回落反映了人们对经济和科技股的深深怀疑，科技股因人工智能尚未证实的潜力而飙升，投资者怀疑价格是否已经脱离现实。

经济已录得 46 个月的增长，远低于战后 64 个月的平均扩张期。

没有人知道下一次经济衰退何时到来。美联储有效的降息行动可能会让企业在明年保持活力。

但追踪经济健康状况的最佳方式是过滤掉股市噪音，关注 GDP、就业、收入和利率等基本面。

题图：周三，股价连续第二天上涨，收复了周一抛售的几乎所有损失。Richard Drew/美联社

附原英文报道：

The meltdown that wasn’t: 5 lessons from Wall Street’s panic attack

Investors took a deep breath. They decided the world isn’t about to end. So what did we learn from this episode?

By Larry Edelman Globe Columnist,Updated August 7, 2024

Wall Street’s roller-coaster ride continued Wednesday, with stocks falling again.

But it was nothing like Monday’s fear-induced plunge that swamped markets around the world. Whatever sparked that sell-off — likely a cocktail of concerns about the economy, a spike in the value of the Japanese yen, and overpriced tech stocks — investors, for now, have decided the world isn’t about to end.

So, what did we learn from this episode?

Lesson #1

Like young children, Wall Street doesn’t handle transitions well.

The Federal Reserve has spent the past two years fighting inflation with high interest rates. Defying expectations, it has nearly succeeded without causing a recession.

Now, central bankers are pivoting to rate cuts, probably starting in mid-September. They hope to extend the four-year economic expansion and contain the rise in unemployment before it gets much worse.

But traders, analysts, and economists are slamming the Fed for waiting too long to lower lending rates. Part of Monday’s market meltdown reflected worries that policy makers were behind the curve, leaving more time for restrictive rates to throttle consumer spending and business investment.

It wasn’t the first time investors have thrown a fit amid a change in Fed policy.

Stocks fell sharply in December 2018 when officials made the ninth in a series of rate hikes aimed at bringing borrowing costs back to levels in place before the 2008 financial crisis. A similar incident — the infamous “taper tantrum” — happened in 2013 after the Fed said it would reduce a bond-buying program implemented as an emergency measure during that same financial crisis.

Lesson #2

Economic data can flash conflicting signals at the same time.

The weakening of the job market last month triggered the Sahm rule, a measure of rising unemployment that has corresponded to the start of every recession since 1970.

But the National Bureau of Economic Research, the private group that determines when recessions start and end, considers more than just the jobless rate when making its call (usually months or years after the fact). And many of those measures — among them gross domestic product, employer hiring, personal incomes, consumer spending, and retail sales — show an economy that has cooled to what the Fed considers a more sustainable pace.

In fact, the economy has proven more resilient than the Fed could have hoped when it began hiking interest rates in March 2022 to bring down the highest inflation since the early 1980s.

GDP expanded at a respectable 2.8 percent annualized rate from April to June. Employers continue to hire in about the same numbers as 2019, before the pandemic.

Today, the central bank’s preferred inflation gauge remains above its 2 percent target, but only because it relies on a quirky estimate of home prices that no one actually pays.

Lesson #3

Nailing a soft landing — returning to 2 percent inflation without painful job losses — is next to impossible in a globally linked economy with a gazillion moving pieces.

Interest rates are a blunt tool, without a handbook for how fast or how far to raise them, or when to lower them.

Last week, after he and fellow policy makers voted to keep their benchmark lending rate at a 23-year high, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the economy was solid and the job market was “strong but not overheated.” That, he said, gave officials the leeway to wait until they were sure inflation was no longer a problem.

But investors are an impatient lot. Powell’s willingness to roll the dice, at least until officials next meet on Sept. 17-18, stoked an underlying anxiety that the economy is living on borrowed time.

Lesson #4

Investors aren’t always rational.

Immediately after the Fed’s “no action” rate decision on Wednesday, stocks rose. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 1.6 percent.

On Thursday and Friday, following a pair of reports showing the job market losing more steam, the index shed a combined 3.1 percent, leaving it down less than 1 percent for the week.

Then stocks hit the fan on Monday. The trigger: a 12 percent plunge in stock prices in Tokyo, the worst day since the 1987 crash.

The decline had little or nothing to do with the US economy — global investors were exiting a popular trade that was derailed by a quickly appreciating yen — but it rattled enough nerves that US stocks plunged when trading started in New York. The S&P 500 fell 3 percent.

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman put it this way: “Most people selling stocks and other assets weren’t engaging in macroeconomic analysis; they were selling because prices were falling.”

In other words, the biggest market rout in two years was largely the result of lemmings following each other over the cliff.

A final thought (Lesson #5)

The S&P 500 has lost 8.3 percent since hitting a record high on July 16. (It’s up 9 percent for the year.)

The retreat reflects deep doubts about the economy and tech stocks, which soared so high on the unproven potential of artificial intelligence that investors are wondering whether prices have become detached from reality.

The economy has recorded 46 months of growth, well shy of the post-war average for expansions of 64 months.

Nobody knows when the next recession will arrive. An effective rate-cutting campaign from the Fed might keep business humming into next year.

But the best way to track the economy’s health is to filter out the stock market noise and focus on fundamentals like GDP, jobs, incomes, and interest rates.