经济学人：
Everywhere you look, stockmarkets are breaking records. American equities, as measured by the S&P 500 index, hit their first all-time high in more than two years in January, surged above 5,000 points in February and roared well above that level on February 22nd when Nvidia, a maker of hardware essential for artificial intelligence (AI), released spectacular results. The same day, Europe’s STOXX 600 set its own record. Even before Nvidia’s results had been announced, Japan’s Nikkei 225 had surpassed its previous best, set in 1989. Little surprise, then, that a widely watched global stockmarket index recently hit an all-time high, too (see chart 1).
放眼望去，股市都在打破纪录。以标准普尔 500 指数衡量的美国股市 1 月份创下两年多来的首次历史新高，2 月份飙升至 5,000 点以上，2 月 22 日，当人工智能（ai），发布惊人成果。同一天，欧洲斯托克斯 600 指数创下了自己的纪录。甚至在 Nvidia 的业绩公布之前，日本日经 225 指数就已经超越了 1989 年创下的历史最高纪录。因此，备受关注的全球股市指数最近也创下历史新高也就不足为奇了（见图 1）。
This is quite a turnaround. Stocks slumped in 2022, when faced with fast-rising interest rates, and wobbled last March, during a banking panic. Now, though, both episodes look like brief interruptions in equities’ long march higher. Despite middling economic growth and the covid-19 pandemic, stockmarkets have offered annual returns, after inflation, of more than 8% a year since 2010, including dividends (cash payments to shareholders, funded by company profits) and capital gains (when the price of a share increases). These returns have been better than those produced by bonds and housing. Indeed, they have been better than those produced by just about any other asset class.
这是一个很大的转变。 2022 年，面对快速上升的利率，股市暴跌，并在去年 3 月的银行业恐慌期间出现波动。不过，现在看来，这两起事件都像是股市上涨长征中的短暂中断。尽管经济增长中等且受到新冠肺炎 (covid-19) 疫情的影响，自 2010 年以来，股票市场在扣除通货膨胀因素后的年回报率仍超过 8%，其中包括股息（向股东支付的现金，由公司利润提供资金）和资本利得（当价格上涨时）股增加）。这些回报比债券和房地产带来的回报要好。事实上，它们比几乎任何其他资产类别产生的产品都要好。
If the boom has a home, it is America. A hundred dollars invested in the S&P 500 on January 1st 2010 is now worth $600 (or $430 at 2010’s prices). However you measure them, American returns have outclassed those elsewhere. Almost 60% of Americans now report owning stocks, the most since reliable data began to be collected in the late 1980s. Many of them, as well as many professional investors, have a question. Is the stockmarket surge sustainable or the prelude to a correction?
如果说繁荣有一个根源的话，那就是美国。 2010 年 1 月 1 日投资于标准普尔 500 指数的 100 美元现在价值 600 美元（按 2010 年价格计算为 430 美元）。无论你如何衡量，美国的回报率都超过了其他地方。目前，近 60% 的美国人表示拥有股票，这是自 20 世纪 80 年代末开始收集可靠数据以来最多的美国人。他们中的许多人，以及许多专业投资者，都有一个疑问。股市上涨是可持续的还是回调的前奏？
For as long as stockmarkets have existed there have been those predicting an imminent crash. But today, in addition to the usual doomsaying, a chorus of academics and market researchers argues that it will be tough for American firms to deliver what is required over the long-term to reproduce the extraordinary stockmarket returns seen in recent years. Michael Smolyansky of the Federal Reserve has written about the “end of an era”, and warned of “significantly lower profit growth and stock returns in the future”. Goldman Sachs, a bank, has suggested that the “tailwinds of the last 30 years are unlikely to provide much boost in the coming years”. Jordan Brooks of AQR Capital Management, a quantitative hedge fund, has concluded that “a repeat of the past decade’s equity market performance would require a heroic set of assumptions.”
自股市存在以来，就有人预测股市即将崩盘。但如今，除了通常的悲观论调之外，学术界和市场研究人员一致认为，美国公司将很难提供长期所需的东西来重现近年来股市的非凡回报。美联储的迈克尔 · 斯莫良斯基 (Michael Smolyansky) 曾撰文谈到 “一个时代的终结”，并警告 “未来利润增长和股票回报率将大幅下降”。高盛银行表示，“过去 30 年的顺风顺水不太可能在未来几年提供太大的推动力”。定量对冲基金 aqr Capital Management 的乔丹 · 布鲁克斯 (Jordan Brooks) 得出的结论是，“要重现过去十年的股市表现，需要一套大胆的假设。”
That is, in part, because valuations are already at eye-popping levels. The most closely followed measure of them was devised by Robert Shiller of Yale University. It compares prices with inflation-adjusted earnings over the previous decade—a long enough period to smooth out the economic cycle. The resulting cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings ratio, or CAPE, has never been higher than 44.2, a record reached in 1999, during the dotcom bubble. The previous peak was in 1929, when the CAPE hit 31.5. It now stands at 34.3 (see chart 2).
部分原因是估值已经达到令人瞠目结舌的水平。最受关注的衡量标准是耶鲁大学的罗伯特 · 希勒 (Robert Shiller) 设计的。它将价格与过去十年的通货膨胀调整后的收入进行了比较——这段时间足以平滑经济周期。由此产生的经周期调整的市盈率（Cape）从未高于 44.2，这是 1999 年互联网泡沫期间创下的纪录。上一个峰值是在 1929 年，当时海角达到 31.5。现在为 34.3（见图 2）。
Rarely have corporate profits been valued so highly. And the outlook for the profits themselves is also challenging. To understand why, consider the fundamental sources of their recent growth. We have employed Mr Smolyansky’s methodology to examine national-accounts data for American corporations. Between 1962 and 1989 net profits increased in real terms by 2% a year. After that, profits accelerated. Between 1989 and 2019 they increased by more than 4% a year. We find similar trends across the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. As a share of GDP, corporate profits were steady from the 1970s to the 1990s, then doubled (see chart 3).
企业利润很少受到如此高的重视。利润本身的前景也充满挑战。要了解原因，请考虑其近期增长的基本来源。我们采用斯莫良斯基先生的方法来检查美国公司的国民账户数据。 1962 年至 1989 年间，净利润每年实际增长 2%。此后，利润加速增长。 1989 年至 2019 年间，每年增长超过 4%。我们在经合组织（主要由富裕国家组成的俱乐部）中发现了类似的趋势。从 20 世纪 70 年代到 90 年代，企业利润占 GDP 的比例稳定，然后翻了一番（见图 3）。
Market of mirrors 镜子市场
Yet much of this strong performance is, in a sense, a mirage. Politicians have reduced the tax burden facing corporations: from 1989 to 2019 the effective corporation-tax rate on American firms dropped by three-fifths. Since companies were giving less money to the state, corporate profits rose, leaving them with more money to pass on to shareholders. Meanwhile, over the same period borrowing became cheaper. From 1989 to 2019 the average interest rate facing American corporations fell by two-thirds.
然而，从某种意义上说，这种强劲的表现在很大程度上只是海市蜃楼。政客们减轻了企业面临的税收负担：从 1989 年到 2019 年，美国企业的有效企业税率下降了五分之三。由于公司向国家提供的资金减少，公司利润增加，从而有更多的钱可以转嫁给股东。与此同时，同期借贷变得更加便宜。从 1989 年到 2019 年，美国企业面临的平均利率下降了三分之二。
Mirroring Mr Smolyansky, we find that in America the difference in profit growth during the 1962-1989 period and the 1989-2019 period is “entirely due to the decline in interest and corporate-tax rates”. Extending this analysis to the rich world as a whole, we find similar trends. The surge in net profits is really an artefact of lower taxes and interest bills. Measures of underlying profits have grown less impressively.
与斯莫良斯基先生一样，我们发现，在美国，1962-1989 年期间和 1989-2019 年期间利润增长的差异 “完全是由于利率和公司税率的下降”。将这一分析扩展到整个富裕世界，我们发现了类似的趋势。净利润的飙升实际上是税收和利息支出降低的结果。基本利润指标的增长并不那么令人印象深刻。
Now companies face a serious problem. The decades-long slide in interest rates has reversed. Risk-free interest rates across the rich world are about twice as high as they were in 2019. There is no guarantee that they will fall back to these lows—let alone decline fairly steadily, as they tended to in the decades before the pandemic.
现在公司面临着一个严重的问题。长达数十年的利率下滑趋势已经扭转。发达国家的无风险利率约为 2019 年的两倍。无法保证利率会回落到这些低点，更不用说像大流行前几十年那样相当稳定地下降了。
As for taxes, the political winds have changed. True, Donald Trump may see fit to cut America’s corporation-tax rate if he wins in November. But our analysis of 142 countries finds that in 2022 and 2023 the median statutory corporate-tax rate rose for the first time in decades. For instance, in 2023 Britain increased its main rate of corporation tax from 19% to 25%. Governments have also established a global minimum effective corporate tax rate of 15% on large multinational enterprises. Once it has bedded in, such companies will probably pay between 6.5% and 8.1% more tax, leaving a smaller pool of net profits.
至于税收，政治风向已经改变。诚然，如果唐纳德 · 特朗普 (Donald Trump) 在 11 月获胜，他可能会认为削减美国的公司税率是合适的。但我们对 142 个国家的分析发现，2022 年和 2023 年法定企业税率中位数几十年来首次上升。例如，2023 年英国将主要公司税税率从 19% 提高到 25%。各国政府还对大型跨国企业制定了 15% 的全球最低有效企业税率。一旦生效，这些公司可能会多缴纳 6.5% 至 8.1% 的税，从而留下更少的净利润。
What needs to happen, then, for American stocks to keep offering exceptional returns? One possibility is that investors pay for even more stretched valuations. In a world in which interest and tax bills remain constant for the next decade while real earnings grow at 6% a year—an optimistic scenario—America’s CAPE would need to rise to 51 to reproduce the overall returns seen from 2013 to 2023. That would be higher than it has ever gone before.
那么，美国股市需要怎样做才能继续提供卓越的回报呢？一种可能性是投资者为更高的估值付出代价。在未来十年利息和税费保持不变而实际收入每年增长 6%（乐观的情况）的世界中，美国的开普敦需要升至 51 才能重现 2013 年至 2023 年的总体回报。比以往任何时候都高。
Now make things grimmer and assume that valuations revert towards their means. The CAPE drifts towards 27, near the average since the end of the dotcom bubble. Assume, too, that interest and tax bills rise. Rather than clocking in at 25% of earnings, they drift up to 35%, or around the level in the first half of the 2010s. In this more realistic world, to generate even half the returns equity investors enjoyed since 2010, real earnings would have to grow at 9% per year. Only twice in the post-war period has America achieved this sort of growth, according to Mr Brooks, and in both cases the economy was rebounding from busts—once from the dotcom bubble and once from the global financial crisis of 2007-09.
现在让事情变得更加严峻，并假设估值将回归其均值。斗篷逐渐接近 27，接近互联网泡沫结束以来的平均水平。还假设利息和税单增加。它们不是占盈利的 25%，而是上升至 35%，或接近 2010 年代上半叶的水平。在这个更加现实的世界中，要获得自 2010 年以来股票投资者所享有的回报的一半，实际收益必须以每年 9% 的速度增长。布鲁克斯表示，美国在战后时期只实现过两次这种增长，而且两次都是经济从萧条中反弹——一次是从互联网泡沫中反弹，一次是从 2007-09 年的全球金融危机中反弹。
Many investors hope that ai will ride to the rescue. Surveys of chief executives suggest great enthusiasm for tools that rely on the technology. Some companies are already adopting them, and claim that they are producing transformative productivity gains. If deployed more widely, the tools may allow companies to cut costs and produce more value, juicing economic growth and corporate profits.
许多投资者希望人工智能能够拯救这一局面。对首席执行官的调查表明，人们对依赖该技术的工具抱有极大的热情。一些公司已经在采用它们，并声称它们正在带来革命性的生产力提升。如果更广泛地部署，这些工具可以帮助企业削减成本并创造更多价值，从而促进经济增长和企业利润。
Play the fool 装傻
Needless to say, this is a heavy burden for a technology that is still nascent. Moreover, technological developments are far from the only trend that will affect business in the coming years. Firms face an uncertain geopolitical climate, with global trade flat or declining depending on the measure. In America both parties are sceptical of big business. The battle against inflation is also not yet won: interest rates may not fall as far or as fast as investors expect. In recent decades you would have been foolish to bet against stockmarkets, and timing a downturn is almost impossible. But the corporate world is about to face an almighty test. ■
不用说，这对于一项尚处于萌芽阶段的技术来说是一个沉重的负担。此外，技术发展远不是影响未来几年业务的唯一趋势。企业面临着不确定的地缘政治环境，全球贸易持平或下降，具体取决于衡量标准。在美国，两党都对大企业持怀疑态度。对抗通胀的战斗也尚未取得胜利：利率下降的幅度或速度可能不会像投资者预期的那么快。近几十年来，如果你做空股市，那就太愚蠢了，而且预测经济低迷的时机几乎是不可能的。但企业界即将面临严峻的考验。
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