CHAPTER 4 第四章
MORE BIG TWISTS AND TURNS IN THE ECONOMY AND MARKETS
金融和市场的那些大起大落
1987 and 1988 werefilled with more of those big twists and turns that helped shape me and myapproach to life and investing. We were one of the few investment managers whowere short stocks ahead of “Black Monday,” October 19, 1987, then the largestsingle-day percentage decline in the history of the stock market. We got a lotof attention because we were up 22 percent when most others were down a lot.The media dubbed us as among the “Heroes of October.”
Naturally, I wasfeeling pretty good going into 1988. I had grown up in an era of highvolatility and had learned that the best way to play it was to get a hold of abig move and ride it. We used ourindicatorsto catch shifting fundamentals and our technicaltrend-following filters to confirm that price movements were consistent withwhat the indicators were suggesting. When they both pointed in the samedirection, we had a strong signal; when they were at odds, we had little or nosignal. But as it turned out there was hardly any volatility in 1988, and soour technical filterswhipsawedus and we ended up giving back a bit more than half our 1987 gains. That stung,but it also taught us some important lessons and prompted Bob and me to replaceour technical trend-following filter with better value measures and riskcontrols.
Until then our systemshad been completelydiscrete—wewould flip from a fully long position to a fully short one when we crossed apredetermined threshold (much as we switched from bonds to cash for the WorldBank). But we weren’t always equally confident in our views, and we’d also getkilled paying transaction costs when we crossed back and forth. That drove Bobcrazy. I can remember him running laps around the office building to calm himselfdown. So at the end of the year, we moved to a more variable system thatallowed us to size our bets in relation to how confident we were. These andother improvements Bob made to our systems have paid off many times since.
Not everyone atBridgewater saw things as Bob and I did. Some in the company doubted thatsystemization could work, especially when the systems didn’t do well, which,like normal decision making, happened every now and then. It took a lot ofreasoning to persuade some of the people I worked with to press on. But even ifI couldn’t convince them, they couldn’t change my mind, because they couldn’tshow me why our approach of clearly specifying, testing, and systemizing ourlogic wasn’t preferable to making decisions less systematically.
All great investorsand investment approaches have bad patches; losing faith in them at such timesis as common a mistake as getting tooenamoredof them when they do well. Because mostpeople are more emotional than logical, they tend to overreact to short-termresults; they give up and sell low when times are bad and buy too high whentimes are good. I find this is just as true for relationships as it is forinvestments—wise people stick with sound fundamentals through the ups anddowns, while flighty people react emotionally to how things feel, jumping intothings when they’re hot and abandoning them when they’re not.
Despite our relativelypoor investment performance, 1988 was a great year for Bridgewater, because byreflecting on and learning from our poor performance, we made systematicimprovements. I have come to realize that bad times coupled with goodreflections provide some of the best lessons, and not just about business butalso about relationships. One has many more supposed friends when one is upthan when one is down, because most people like to be with winners and shunlosers. True friends are the opposite.
I got a lotout of my bad times, not just because they gave me mistakes to learn from butalso because they helped me find out who my real friends were—the friends whowould be with me through thick and thin.
译文:1987-88年间 充满了跌宕起伏的故事,同时也帮助我,教育了我和我的生活以及投资理念。 在1987年10月19日股票市场历史上单天最大跌幅,又被成为“黑色星期一”的那天,我们是市场中少数几家做短期股票投资的投资经理人,当大多数人损失惨重时我们却上扬了22%,这样我们收到了大量的关注。当时的媒体称呼我们为“10月英雄”。
很自然的,进入1988年我感觉非常好。我已经驾轻就熟、如火纯情的驾驭投资。我们使用标识捕捉摇摆的根基以及技术趋势的过滤系统以确定价格活动规律和系统标识揭示的规律一致。当两者都指出同一个方向,我们就有了强烈的信号;当他们不一致时,我们有很少或几乎没有信号,但是1988年当市场显示出存在几乎可以确定的波动信号,我们的技术过滤也欺骗了我们,我们只得到了相当于1987年一半多的收入。那次上当,也教给我们一些重要的教训并提示鲍勃和我用更好的价值估算和风险控制来重新设置我们的技术趋势过滤技术。
直到我们的系统已经完全离散、非连续的---我们会从一个完全的长方位转向一个完全的短方位市场-当我们穿过预先设定的门槛(差不多是我们从债券转向了现金从世界银行)。但是我们并不总是对自己的观点那么自信,当我们来回摇摆时我们也停止了支付交易成本。那快把鲍勃逼疯了。我依旧记得他在办公室周围的山坡上奔跑以便让自己冷静下来。所以在1988年底,我们开始运行一套更多变量的系统,这样允许我们以自信度来度量那些生意。鲍勃做的这样那样的改进,已经多次为此支付了。
在桥水不是所有人都像我和鲍勃那些看事情。公司的一些人怀疑系统是否能起作用,尤其当系统做的不好的时候,比如就像一些普通的决策制定,那些可能随时发生的。总是要花大量的理由去说服工作伙伴去强制执行。但即使如果我不能使他们确认,他们也不能改变我的主意,因为他们没有向我展示任何接近或清晰的,指定的,经得起测试的,系统化的,比系统做出的我们的逻辑更可取的办法。
所有的伟大投资人和投资机构都有瑕疵;在当时丧失忠诚是一件很普遍的过失,尤其那些做的不错而且相当迷恋这种感觉的人。因为大多数人都是情感大于理智,他们倾向于对短期结果过于反应了;他们放弃并低价卖出当时机不好时,却在时机大好时高位买进。我发现这根投资是一样的联系—聪明人总是听从基本面的反应,而不管大盘上涨或下跌,然而愚蠢的人总是凭感觉行事,大热时跳进去,低位时抛弃。
如果不考虑自己那点可怜的投资表现,1988年对于桥水来说是个伟大的年份,因为通过市场表现反馈和学习,我们进行了系统改进。我终于意识到糟糕的时候通常伴随好的反映提供了最佳教材,不仅仅关于业务也包括联系。一个人志得意满时的朋友总是多过他落魄时,因为大多数人喜欢和赢家玩而远离输家。真正的朋友恰恰相反。
我有太多落魄的时候,不仅仅因为他们给了我从错误中学习,也因为他们帮我找出那些人是真正的朋友—那些不管你富有还是贫穷都能陪伴你的人。
读后感:股市的韭菜、小白是不是都是这样的:牛市高位买进,熊市低价放出,吐血撤离,却不知熊市正是低价买进的好时机。但并不关注基本盘,总是人云亦云,没有自己的分析和判断,也不关心国家政策。
作者还在末尾教了大家真正的朋友的标准和表现:显然作者在这几年中的大起大落让他见识了朋友的真面目。也好这样就知道那些人是虚情假意了。
现代社会赢家通吃的状况很普遍,失败者注定孤独终老,也是常态,心要放平和哦。
short stocks==短期投资-股票投资
Enamored=迷恋于 倾心于;
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我是007李小军,以上是我自己的翻译,也许不会太准确,我能保证也不会偏离作者的意思太远,不至于误导各位,谢谢观看。
007-4478李小军
2018-6-27
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