Beyond Buffett 在巴菲特之後
Does value investing still work?
價值型投資仍管用嗎？
Asset management is in turmoil 資產管理陷入混亂
Nov 14th 2020
For a moment this week investors could afford to ignore stockmarket superstars like Amazon and Alibaba. As news of a vaccine broke, a motley crew of more jaded firms led Wall Street higher, with the shares of airlines, banks and oil firms soaring on hopes of a recovery. The bounce has been a long time coming. So-called value stocks, typically asset-heavy firms in stodgy industries, have had a decade from hell, lagging behind America’s stockmarket by over 90 percentage points. This has led to a crisis of confidence among some fund managers, who wonder if their framework for assessing firms works in the digital age. They are right to worry: it needs upgrading to reflect an economy in which intangibles and externalities count for more.
在本周有段時間，投資者可以忽略像亞馬遜和阿里巴巴之類的股市巨星。隨著疫苗的消息傳出，一群雜七雜八、死氣沉沉的公司帶領華爾街股市走高。這波反彈睽違已久，包含航空、銀行和石油公司的股票在復甦的希望下飆升。所謂價值型股票通常是傳統產業的重資產公司，這些股票已在谷底十年，落後美國股市超過90個百分點。這導致一些基金經理人的自信陷入危機，他們懷疑自己對公司估價的框架是否適用於數位時代。他們的擔心是對的：價值型模型需要升級，來反映無形資產和外部性在經濟日益重要。
For almost a century the dominant ideology in finance has been value investing. It has evolved over time but typically takes a conservative view of firms, placing more weight on their assets, cashflows and record, and less on their investment plans or trajectory. The creed has its roots in the 1930s and 1940s, when Benjamin Graham argued that investors needed to move on from the pre-1914 era, during which capital markets were dominated by railway bonds and insider-dealing. Instead he proposed a scientific approach of evaluating firms’ balance-sheets and identifying mispriced securities. His disciple, Warren Buffett, popularised and updated these ideas as the economy shifted towards consumer firms and finance in the late 20th century. Today measures of value are plugged into computers which hunt for “factors” that boost returns and there are investors in Shanghai loosely inspired by a doctrine born in Depression-era New York.
近一個世紀以來，金融領域的主要意識形態一直是價值型投資。它隨著時間進化，但通常對公司持保守態度，它更重視公司的資產、現金流量和表現紀錄，而較少關注他們的投資計劃或軌跡。該信條起源於1930年代和1940年代，葛拉漢主張，投資者須揮別1914年以前的時代，那時期資本市場盛行鐵路債券和內線交易。他提議改用一套科學方法來評估公司的資產負債表，藉此辨識估價錯誤的證券。當20世紀後期隨著經濟轉向消費公司和金融，他的門徒巴菲特推廣和更新這些想法。如今，價值型衡量指標開始內建電腦，以獵取能夠提高報酬的「因子」，而上海的投資人大致受到大蕭條時代紐約產生的信條的啟發。
The trouble is that value investing has led to poor results. If you had bought value shares worth $1 a decade ago, they would fetch $2.50 today, compared with $3.45 for the stockmarket as a whole and $4.65 for the market excluding value stocks. Mr Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has lagged behind badly. Despite its efforts to modernise, value investing often produces backward-looking portfolios and as a result has largely missed the rise of tech. The asset-management industry’s business model is under strain, as our special report this week explains. Now one of its most long-standing philosophies is under siege, too.
麻煩在於價值型投資導致糟糕的結果。如果你十年前買進價值1美元的價值型股票，今天可賣得2.50美元，相較下，股市大盤漲到3.45美元，價值股除外的股票值4.65美元。巴菲特的波克夏公司嚴重落後。儘管努力現代化，但價值型投資通常產生「回顧過去」的投資組合，因此大致上錯過科技股漲勢。資產管理行業的商業模式正面臨壓力，正如我們本周特別報導解釋的，如今它最悠久的理念也遭圍攻。
Value investors might argue that they are the victims of a stockmarket bubble and that they will thus be proved right eventually. The last time value strategies did badly was in 1998-2000, before the dotcom crash. Today stockmarkets do indeed look expensive. But alongside this are two deeper changes to the economy that the value framework is still struggling to grapple with.
價值型投資者可能會主張，他們是股市泡沫的受害者，且最終將被證明是正確的。最近一次價值型策略表現不佳是在1998-2000年，即網路股崩盤之前。如今股票市場確實顯得昂貴。但是同時還有兩個更深層的經濟變化，價值型模型仍努力在設法克服。
The first is the rise of intangible assets, which now account for over a third of all American business investment—think of data, or research. Firms treat these costs as an expense, rather than an investment that creates an asset. Some sophisticated institutional investors try to adjust for this but it is still easy to miscalculate how much firms are reinvesting—and firms’ ability to reinvest heavily at high rates of return is crucial for their long run performance. On a traditional definition, America’s top ten listed firms have invested $700bn since 2010. On a broad one, the figure is $1.5trn or more. Intangible firms can also often scale up quickly and exploit network effects to sustain high profits.
首先是無形資產的增長，無形資產現占美國所有商業投資超過三分之一--想像數據或研究，企業將這些成本視為支出，而不是創造資產的投資。一些經驗豐富的機構投資者試圖對此調整，但仍容易錯估公司再投資金額有多少----而公司能否以高報酬率大量再投資，對長期表現至關重要。按照傳統定義，美國前十大上市公司自2010年來已投資7,000億美元。從廣義上說，這數字是1.5兆美元或更多。無形資產企業通常也可以迅速擴大規模，並利用網路效應來維持高利潤。
The second change is the rising importance of externalities, costs that firms are responsible for but avoid paying. Today the value doctrine suggests you should load up on car firms and oil producers. But these firms’ prospects depend on the potential liability from their carbon footprint, the cost of which may rise as emissions rules tighten and carbon taxes spread.
第二個變化是外部性的重要性日益增加，外部性是企業有義務但避免支付的成本。今天價值型理念建議你應該買進汽車公司和石油生產商股票。但是這些公司的前景取決於碳足跡的潛在負債，隨著排碳法規趨嚴和排碳稅的普及，公司成本可能會上升。
Value investing’s rigour and scepticism are as relevant as ever—especially given how frothy markets look. But many investors are still only just beginning to get their heads round how to assess firms’ intangible assets and externalities. It is a laborious task, but getting it right could give asset management a new lease of life and help ensure that capital is allocated efficiently. In the 1930s and 1940s Graham described how the old investing framework had become obsolete. Time for another upgrade.
價值型投資的縝密性和懷疑性一如既往地重要，尤其是鑑於市場看起來泡沫四溢。但是，許多投資者仍只是剛開始弄懂如何評價公司的無形資產和外部性，這是一項艱巨的任務，但是正確執行可賦予資產管理嶄新的生命，並有助確保有效地分配資本。葛拉漢在1930年代和1940年代描述舊的投資框架是如何過時，是時候再一次升級了。
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