中国股市的历代上涨显示了人群的力量

The scorching rally in Chinese stocks over the past week or so underlines one of the key rules of markets: always keep an eye on the crowd.
过去一周左右，中国股市的火热反弹凸显了市场的关键规则之一：始终关注人群。

Shortly before an extended market holiday, authorities in Beijing sent a forceful message that enough was enough. The economy is stuck (by Chinese standards — most western economies would be delighted with growth rates of a bit above 4.5 per cent) and the stock market had been bleeding out for months.
在延长的市场假期前不久，北京当局发出了一个强有力的信息，即受够了。经济陷入困境（按照中国的标准——大多数西方经济体会对略高于4.5%的增长率感到高兴），股市已经流血数月。

So the central bank and other authorities unleashed a volley of turnaround measures, ranging from interest rate easing, to lighter demands on banks to stuff reserves away, to direct stock market-boosting efforts and the promise of fiscal support to come. Are these fiscal measures super detailed? No. Will a sliver of a percentage point off interest rates turn the long-suffering property sector around? Also no. But do traders care about that? Again, no.
因此，央行和其他当局出台了一系列扭亏为盈的措施，从放宽利率，到减轻对银行的准备金要求，再到直接提振股市的努力和即将到来的财政支持承诺。这些财政措施是否非常详细？不。利率下调一个百分点能否扭转长期遭受重创的房地产行业？也不是。但交易员关心这些吗？同样，没有。

The result, then, is a rip-your-face-off rally for the ages. The CSI 300 index of Chinese stocks added more than 20 per cent in less than a week. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index is now the best-performing major market in the world this year, having added 30 per cent, compared with a relatively puny 19 per cent in the US S&P 500.
因此，结果是一场历久弥新的拉力赛。中国股票的沪深 300 指数在不到一周的时间里上涨了 20% 以上。香港恒生指数现在是今年全球表现最好的主要市场，上涨了 30%，而美国标准普尔 500 指数的涨幅相对较小，只有 19%。

Timing played a role here — the broad assumption was that Beijing would hold out for longer before taking anything like this kind of action. Scale matters, too; Deutsche Bank says the fiscal stimulus is a “big deal” that, when measured against the size of the economy, is the third biggest of its kind for the country ever — a Mario Draghi-style “whatever it takes” moment.
时机在这里发挥了作用——人们普遍认为，北京在采取此类行动之前会坚持更长时间。规模也很重要;德意志银行（Deutsche Bank）表示，这项财政刺激计划是一件“大事”，如果以经济规模衡量，它是该国有史以来第三大的财政刺激计划——这是马里奥·德拉吉（Mario Draghi）式的“不惜一切代价”的时刻。

It could take months until we know the real economic impact. But markets are not hanging around to find out. That is because before this injection of support, investors were just allergic to China. Bank of America’s regular survey of fund managers found last month that “macro pessimism was centred on China” with growth expectations at the lowest point in the three years the bank has been tracking them in this form.
我们可能需要几个月的时间才能知道真正的经济影响。但市场并没有闲逛寻找答案。这是因为在这次注入支持之前，投资者只是对中国过敏。美国银行上个月对基金经理的定期调查发现，“宏观悲观情绪集中在中国”，增长预期处于该银行以这种形式跟踪它们的三年来的最低点。

At around the same time, I spoke to Amundi’s chief investment officer, Vincent Mortier, who said he had “never seen such a big pushback” from clients against the idea of putting money to work there. He was making the case that it was unwise to avoid China entirely, but the conversation was a non-starter. The bet was “totally, totally dead”, he said.
大约在同一时间，我与 Amundi 的首席投资官 Vincent Mortier 进行了交谈，他说他“从未见过客户对将资金投入其中的想法有如此大的反对”。他声称完全避开中国是不明智的，但这次谈话并没有开始。他说，这个赌注“完全、完全死了”。

Pity the hedge fund manager who told me this week he almost took that as a trigger to buy China, but backed out. As any good professional investor will tell you, when everyone seems to hate a particular corner of global markets, it is time to buy. But it can be hard to pluck up the courage.
可惜对冲基金经理本周告诉我，他几乎把这当作买入中国的导火索，但后来退出了。正如任何优秀的专业投资者都会告诉你的那样，当每个人都似乎讨厌全球市场的某个特定角落时，是时候买入了。但要鼓起勇气可能很困难。

It is not the first time this year that the power of positioning has been made clear, with the other prime example being Japan. In its quarterly markets review earlier this month, the Bank for International Settlements noted that “concentrated hedge fund positions” played a key role in the speed and size of the Japanese “turbulence” in early August.
这已经不是今年第一次明确定位的力量了，另一个典型的例子是日本。在本月早些时候的季度市场回顾中，国际清算银行（Bank for International Settlements）指出，“集中的对冲基金头寸”在 8 月初日本“动荡”的速度和规模中发挥了关键作用。

Carry trades — selling currencies with low interest rates and buying those with higher rates — were unusually popular with hedgies in the run-up to August’s shake-out, the BIS said. Over the period from 2022, that meant there was a lot of speculative money buying dollars at the expense of yen — a force that helped cram the yen down to its lowest point in decades. Carry trades, and related bets around US stock market volatility, became an unusually weighty influence on hedge fund returns.
国际清算银行表示，套利交易——卖出低利率货币并买入利率较高的货币——在 8 月洗牌前夕受到对冲投资者的异常欢迎。从 2022 年开始，这意味着有大量投机性资金以牺牲日元为代价购买美元——这种力量帮助日元跌至几十年来的最低点。套利交易以及围绕美国股市波动性的相关押注对对冲基金回报产生了异常重大的影响。

At the same time, speculators gravitated towards buying Japanese stocks too. This was all fine until, in early August, it abruptly wasn’t. A scare over US growth that raised expectations of interest rate cuts hit these strategies on several fronts, denting the dollar, particularly against the yen where it was especially stretched, and fuelling volatility in stocks. The exits from this correlated set of trades proved to be crowded on the way out.
与此同时，投机者也倾向于购买日本股票。这一切都很好，直到 8 月初，它突然变得不正常了。对美国经济增长的恐慌提高了对降息的预期，从多个方面打击了这些策略，削弱了美元，尤其是兑日元，美元尤其紧张，并加剧了股市的波动。事实证明，这组相关交易的退出在退出过程中很拥挤。

Cue an alarming drop in the dollar-yen exchange rate and, on one especially scary Monday, a double-digit decline in the Japanese stock market — the biggest fall since the great crash three decades ago and leaving a shadow over the “buy Japan” thesis that had become popular. “Crowdedness, combined with high leverage, set the stage for the amplification of stress and cross-asset spillovers,” the BIS report said.
美元兑日元汇率出现令人担忧的下跌，在一个特别可怕的星期一，日本股市出现了两位数的跌幅——这是自三十年前大崩盘以来的最大跌幅，给已经流行的“买日本”论点留下了阴影。“拥挤，加上高杠杆率，为压力的放大和跨资产溢出创造了条件，”国际清算银行的报告称。

Other examples are easy to find, such as the massive accumulation of bets on US chipmaker Nvidia — a stock that became overcrowded over the summer and shed a third in value in six weeks.
其他例子很容易找到，例如对美国芯片制造商英伟达（Nvidia）的大量押注——该股在夏季变得过度拥挤，并在六周内贬值了三分之一。

With all that in mind, it is worth looking for the points of greatest consensus among investors now, just in case it makes sense to take the other side. For instance, the same survey from BofA that said China was a contrarian buy also pointed to buying commodities, which investors are avoiding on the greatest scale since 2017.
考虑到所有这些，现在值得寻找投资者之间达成最大共识的点，以防万一站在另一边是有意义的。例如，美国银行的同一项调查称中国是逆向买入，也指出投资者正在以 2017 年以来的最大规模避免购买大宗商品。

Thematically, the biggest point of consensus is for a soft landing in the US economy — an expectation held by nearly 80 per cent of fund managers. That many clever people can’t all be wrong about something, right?

katie.martin@ft.com