2017年10月12日
資産価格が全域で高い。心配するときではないか? 超金融緩和政策が終わりに近づいてきているが、注意深く行動するときだ。
Asset prices are high across the board. Is it time to worry?
With ultra-loose monetary policy coming to an end, it is best to tread carefully
Oct 7th 2017
資産価格が全域で高い。心配するときではないか?
超金融緩和政策が終わりに近づいてきているが、注意深く行動するときだ。
IN HIS classic, “The Intelligent Investor”, first published in 1949, Benjamin Graham, a Wall Street sage, distilled what he called his secret of sound investment into three words: “margin of safety”. The price paid for a stock or a bond should allow for human error, bad luck or, indeed, many things going wrong at once. In a troubled world of trade tiffs and nuclear braggadocio, such advice should be especially worth heeding. Yet rarely have so many asset classes—from stocks to bonds to property to bitcoins—exhibited such a sense of invulnerability.
classic:〔古典となる芸術の〕最高傑作
sage:賢人
distilled:〈情報経験など〉を要約する
nuclear braggadocio:大ぼら吹き
heeding:傾聴する
classes:種類
exhibited:示す
Dear assets are hardly the product of euphoria. No one would mistake the bloodless run-up in global stockmarkets, credit and property over the past eight years for a reprise of the “roaring 20s”, or even an echo of the dotcom mania of the late 1990s. Yet only at the peak of those two bubbles has America’s S&P 500 been higher as a multiple of earnings measured over a ten-year cycle. Rarely have creditors demanded so little insurance against default, even on the riskiest “junk” bonds. And rarely have property prices around the world towered so high.
euphoria:(一時的な)歓喜, 幸福感
bloodless:冷酷な
run-up:(価格などの)急上昇
reprise:繰り返し
echo:繰り返し
towered:〈人建物などが〉 ≪…の上に≫ 高くそびえる
American house prices have bounced back since the financial crisis and are above their long-term average relative to rents. Those in Britain are well above it. And in Canada and Australia, they are in the stratosphere. Add to this the craze for exotica, such as cryptocurrencies (see Free exchange), and the world is in the throes of a bull market in everything.
stratosphere:成層圏〘対流圏(troposphere)の上〙
craze:熱狂
exotica:異国風の事物〘芸術作品風俗など〙
cryptocurrencies:暗号通貨◆暗号化技術に基づく仮想通貨
throes:苦しみ
bull market:強気市場
Where’s the beef?
Asset-price booms are a source of cheer, but also anxiety. There are two immediate reasons to worry. First, markets have been steadily rising against a backdrop of extraordinarily loose monetary policy. Central banks have kept short-term interest rates close to zero since the financial crisis of 2007-08 and have helped depress long-term rates by purchasing $11trn-worth of government bonds through quantitative easing. Only now are they starting to unwind these policies.
Where’s the beef? :その話には中身があるのか?
depress:引き下げる
The Federal Reserve has raised rates twice this year and will soon start to sell its bondholdings. Other central banks will eventually follow. If today’s asset prices have been propped up by central-bank largesse, its end could prompt a big correction. Second, signs are appearing that fund managers, desperate for higher yields, are becoming increasingly incautious. Consider, for instance, investors’ recent willingness to buy Eurobonds issued by Iraq, Ukraine and Egypt at yields of around 7%.
bondholdings:保有債権
largesse:(人に金物を与える)寛大さ
desperate:欲しくてたまらない
incautious:無謀な
But look carefully at the broader picture, and there is some logic to the ongoing rise in asset prices. In part it is a response to an improving world economy. In the second quarter of this year global GDP grew at its fastest pace since 2010, as a recovery in emerging markets added impetus to longer-standing upswings in Europe and America. As our special report this week argues, emerging-market economies have come out of testing times in far more resilient shape.
impetus:推進力
More significant still is the behaviour of long-term interest rates. They have fallen steadily since the 1980s and remain close to historic lows. And that underpins all sorts of other asset prices (see article). A widespread concern is that the Fed and its peers have grossly distorted bond markets and, by extension, the price of all assets. Warren Buffett, the most famous disciple of Ben Graham, said this week that stocks would look cheap in three years’ time if interest rates were one percentage-point higher, but not if they were three percentage points higher.
disciple:弟子
But if interest rates and bond yields were unjustifiably low, inflation would take off—and puzzlingly it hasn’t. This suggests that factors beyond the realm of monetary policy have been a bigger cause of low long-term rates. The most important is an increase in the desire to save, as ageing populations set aside a larger share of income for retirement. Just as the supply of saving has risen, demand for it has fallen. Stagnant wages and the lower price of investment goods mean companies are flush with cash. All this suggests that interest rates will stay low by historical standards.
flush:〈トイレなどが〉水が(どっと)流れる
Beware of the bull
Still the most dangerous, anti-Graham motto of investing is “this time is different”. It would be daft to assume that asset prices must remain high come what may. Many hazards could derail the economy and financial markets, from a debt crisis in China to an American-led trade war or an outbreak of fighting on the Korean peninsula. And when the next recession comes, policymakers have less fiscal and monetary ammunition to fight it than they had in previous downturns. Prudence therefore suggests caution.
this time is different:今回は違う
daft:愚かな
Prudence:思慮分別
One option is for central bankers to raise rates more enthusiastically and less predictably, to jolt financial markets and remind investors that the world is volatile. Yet there are obvious perils with this course. The tightening might prove excessive, tipping economies into recession. And with inflation in most big economies below central bankers’ target, sharply higher rates are hard to square with their mandate.
predictably:予想通りに
jolt:をガタガタ揺さぶる
square:と両立させる
Instead, caution calls for gradualism. To minimise disruption, the reversal of quantitative easing should be stretched out. The Federal Reserve has set a good precedent by proposing to reduce its bondholdings at a leisurely pace and flagging the change well in advance. When the time comes, its peers should follow suit. Of these, the European Central Bank faces the trickiest challenge, because it has acted as, in effect, the backstop to euro-zone bond markets, a mechanism that otherwise the currency bloc still lacks.
stretched:引き伸ばす
leisurely:ゆっくりした速さで
follow suit:先例に倣う
trickiest :巧妙な
backstop:〘野球〙バックネット
But the main safety valve lies elsewhere, with banks and investors. Bitter experience has shown that debt-funded assets can magnify losses, causing financial crises. For this reason banks must be able to withstand any reversal of today’s high asset prices and low defaults. That means raising bank capital in places where it is too low, especially the euro zone, and not backsliding on strenuous “stress tests” as America’s Treasury proposes. In the end, however, there may be no escape for investors from the low future returns and even losses that high asset prices imply. They and regulators should take a leaf out of “The intelligent Investor”, and make sure that they have a margin of safety.
backsliding:(悪い状態への)逆戻り
strenuous:精力的な
stress tests:健全性審査◆急激な景気低迷などに対して金融機関が経営に耐えられるかどうかを調べる金融機関監督当局による審査。
take a leaf out of:から見習う
だんだん金利を上げ、今ままでの超金融緩和政策を引き締めていくが、それは急にするべきではない。企業も、今までのような資産価値の上昇を期待してはいけない。引き締めは政府も企業もそれなりに、慎重に対応するべきだろう。ベンジャミン・グラハムが言った「安全域」を注意深く探っていく必要がある。
金曜日。今日は乗鞍の旅行からも取る日だ。ではまた明日。
With ultra-loose monetary policy coming to an end, it is best to tread carefully
Oct 7th 2017
資産価格が全域で高い。心配するときではないか?
超金融緩和政策が終わりに近づいてきているが、注意深く行動するときだ。
IN HIS classic, “The Intelligent Investor”, first published in 1949, Benjamin Graham, a Wall Street sage, distilled what he called his secret of sound investment into three words: “margin of safety”. The price paid for a stock or a bond should allow for human error, bad luck or, indeed, many things going wrong at once. In a troubled world of trade tiffs and nuclear braggadocio, such advice should be especially worth heeding. Yet rarely have so many asset classes—from stocks to bonds to property to bitcoins—exhibited such a sense of invulnerability.
classic:〔古典となる芸術の〕最高傑作
sage:賢人
distilled:〈情報経験など〉を要約する
margin of safety:安全域、安全範囲、安全性◆【略】MOS
tiffs:(親しい者同士の)いさかいnuclear braggadocio:大ぼら吹き
heeding:傾聴する
classes:種類
exhibited:示す
invulnerabilit:〔攻撃などに対して〕傷つかない[影響されない]こと
Dear assets are hardly the product of euphoria. No one would mistake the bloodless run-up in global stockmarkets, credit and property over the past eight years for a reprise of the “roaring 20s”, or even an echo of the dotcom mania of the late 1990s. Yet only at the peak of those two bubbles has America’s S&P 500 been higher as a multiple of earnings measured over a ten-year cycle. Rarely have creditors demanded so little insurance against default, even on the riskiest “junk” bonds. And rarely have property prices around the world towered so high.
euphoria:(一時的な)歓喜, 幸福感
bloodless:冷酷な
run-up:(価格などの)急上昇
reprise:繰り返し
echo:繰り返し
towered:〈人建物などが〉 ≪…の上に≫ 高くそびえる
American house prices have bounced back since the financial crisis and are above their long-term average relative to rents. Those in Britain are well above it. And in Canada and Australia, they are in the stratosphere. Add to this the craze for exotica, such as cryptocurrencies (see Free exchange), and the world is in the throes of a bull market in everything.
stratosphere:成層圏〘対流圏(troposphere)の上〙
craze:熱狂
exotica:異国風の事物〘芸術作品風俗など〙
cryptocurrencies:暗号通貨◆暗号化技術に基づく仮想通貨
throes:苦しみ
bull market:強気市場
Where’s the beef?
Asset-price booms are a source of cheer, but also anxiety. There are two immediate reasons to worry. First, markets have been steadily rising against a backdrop of extraordinarily loose monetary policy. Central banks have kept short-term interest rates close to zero since the financial crisis of 2007-08 and have helped depress long-term rates by purchasing $11trn-worth of government bonds through quantitative easing. Only now are they starting to unwind these policies.
Where’s the beef? :その話には中身があるのか?
depress:引き下げる
The Federal Reserve has raised rates twice this year and will soon start to sell its bondholdings. Other central banks will eventually follow. If today’s asset prices have been propped up by central-bank largesse, its end could prompt a big correction. Second, signs are appearing that fund managers, desperate for higher yields, are becoming increasingly incautious. Consider, for instance, investors’ recent willingness to buy Eurobonds issued by Iraq, Ukraine and Egypt at yields of around 7%.
bondholdings:保有債権
largesse:(人に金物を与える)寛大さ
desperate:欲しくてたまらない
incautious:無謀な
But look carefully at the broader picture, and there is some logic to the ongoing rise in asset prices. In part it is a response to an improving world economy. In the second quarter of this year global GDP grew at its fastest pace since 2010, as a recovery in emerging markets added impetus to longer-standing upswings in Europe and America. As our special report this week argues, emerging-market economies have come out of testing times in far more resilient shape.
impetus:推進力
More significant still is the behaviour of long-term interest rates. They have fallen steadily since the 1980s and remain close to historic lows. And that underpins all sorts of other asset prices (see article). A widespread concern is that the Fed and its peers have grossly distorted bond markets and, by extension, the price of all assets. Warren Buffett, the most famous disciple of Ben Graham, said this week that stocks would look cheap in three years’ time if interest rates were one percentage-point higher, but not if they were three percentage points higher.
grossly:ひどく
distorted:歪めるdisciple:弟子
But if interest rates and bond yields were unjustifiably low, inflation would take off—and puzzlingly it hasn’t. This suggests that factors beyond the realm of monetary policy have been a bigger cause of low long-term rates. The most important is an increase in the desire to save, as ageing populations set aside a larger share of income for retirement. Just as the supply of saving has risen, demand for it has fallen. Stagnant wages and the lower price of investment goods mean companies are flush with cash. All this suggests that interest rates will stay low by historical standards.
unjustifiably:不当に
set aside:蓄えておくflush:〈トイレなどが〉水が(どっと)流れる
Beware of the bull
Still the most dangerous, anti-Graham motto of investing is “this time is different”. It would be daft to assume that asset prices must remain high come what may. Many hazards could derail the economy and financial markets, from a debt crisis in China to an American-led trade war or an outbreak of fighting on the Korean peninsula. And when the next recession comes, policymakers have less fiscal and monetary ammunition to fight it than they had in previous downturns. Prudence therefore suggests caution.
this time is different:今回は違う
daft:愚かな
come what may:何が起ころうと
ammunition:(議論などでの)情報, 攻撃[防衛]手段Prudence:思慮分別
One option is for central bankers to raise rates more enthusiastically and less predictably, to jolt financial markets and remind investors that the world is volatile. Yet there are obvious perils with this course. The tightening might prove excessive, tipping economies into recession. And with inflation in most big economies below central bankers’ target, sharply higher rates are hard to square with their mandate.
predictably:予想通りに
jolt:をガタガタ揺さぶる
square:と両立させる
Instead, caution calls for gradualism. To minimise disruption, the reversal of quantitative easing should be stretched out. The Federal Reserve has set a good precedent by proposing to reduce its bondholdings at a leisurely pace and flagging the change well in advance. When the time comes, its peers should follow suit. Of these, the European Central Bank faces the trickiest challenge, because it has acted as, in effect, the backstop to euro-zone bond markets, a mechanism that otherwise the currency bloc still lacks.
gradualism:漸進主義
disruption:混乱stretched:引き伸ばす
leisurely:ゆっくりした速さで
follow suit:先例に倣う
trickiest :巧妙な
backstop:〘野球〙バックネット
But the main safety valve lies elsewhere, with banks and investors. Bitter experience has shown that debt-funded assets can magnify losses, causing financial crises. For this reason banks must be able to withstand any reversal of today’s high asset prices and low defaults. That means raising bank capital in places where it is too low, especially the euro zone, and not backsliding on strenuous “stress tests” as America’s Treasury proposes. In the end, however, there may be no escape for investors from the low future returns and even losses that high asset prices imply. They and regulators should take a leaf out of “The intelligent Investor”, and make sure that they have a margin of safety.
backsliding:(悪い状態への)逆戻り
strenuous:精力的な
stress tests:健全性審査◆急激な景気低迷などに対して金融機関が経営に耐えられるかどうかを調べる金融機関監督当局による審査。
take a leaf out of:から見習う
だんだん金利を上げ、今ままでの超金融緩和政策を引き締めていくが、それは急にするべきではない。企業も、今までのような資産価値の上昇を期待してはいけない。引き締めは政府も企業もそれなりに、慎重に対応するべきだろう。ベンジャミン・グラハムが言った「安全域」を注意深く探っていく必要がある。
金曜日。今日は乗鞍の旅行からも取る日だ。ではまた明日。