How To Time The Market (Don t Do It)

嗨，投资者。你想成为一位伟大的短线炒作人士吗？听我的准没错。为什么你的英雄（也就是鄙人）在周一抛售了杠杆率很高的金融类交易所交易基金ProShares Ultra Financials，在短短不到两个月的时间里就赚了一倍的钱。这么轻而易举。每个人都这样做不就得了？问题是他们做不了。实际上，没有人能在短线炒作上成为常胜将军，包括你的英雄在内。每周或每天都预测市场走势或判断应该作空还是作多，这真是太难了。如果你不同意我的说法，看看统计结果显示的短线炒作风险就知道了。截至周一收盘，标准普尔500指数较3月9日的收盘低点涨了34.1%。在那期间的39个交易日中，仅仅5个交易日就占了涨幅的60%以上，其中有两个交易日甚至占了40%。如果在这几个股市飙升的交易日里，你没有投资或是作空，那算你点背。毫无疑问，你或许可以通过短线炒作大赚一笔。如果从1月1日至3月6日，你作空金融类股，之后再作多（而且是通过杠杆率较高的交易所交易基金来操作的），那么你会赚5倍以上的钱。不过也只有在回头看的时候才能看清这一走势。能赚上5倍的钱真是需要好运气，不过概率上讲或许真有这样的人。当然，每个投资者都希望自己是那个好运的人。不过正如金融家伯纳德•巴鲁克(Bernard Baruch)说的，如果一个投机者有一半的时候是对的，表现就已经是异于常人了。有鉴于此，最近有关长期“买进并持有”的投资法则已死的谈论令人颇为不安。由于2008年熊市暴跌，很多投资者都放弃了长期投资，开始短线炒作。而眼下是最不该这样做的时候。对于那些在23月份股市一片黑暗的时候惶恐不安的投资者们来说，如果当时他们持有，而不是一会买进一会卖出，猜测某一天是该作空还是作多，他们现在的情况会好的多。《华尔街日报》4月份的两篇绝妙文章──《更多投资者对“买进并持有”说BYEBYE》和《理财顾问放弃“买进并持有”，改用新的战术》描述了有多少郁郁寡欢的散户投资者和理财顾问转向短线炒作杠杆率较高的交易所交易基金，来治疗过去的伤痛。当然，华尔街将欣然“被迫”发展新的配置战略，以及创建尽可能多的能带来手续费收入的工具。去年11月Direxion推出的杠杆率为3倍的交易所交易基金每日吸引了数十亿美元的交易量。周一，Grail Advisors推出了首个活跃型的定性交易所买卖基金。这是一只与共同基金类似的管理良好的投资组合，它有悖于低成本指数交易所交易基金的最初概念，可那又怎么样呢？给人们他们想要的。投资者应该小心谨慎。我也买卖交易所交易基金，不过只占我个人资产的很小一部分。而大部分资产都留给了“买进并持有”多为指数基金的投资。这样，五年来，我每年只损失约1%，比标准普尔500指数大约强一个百分点。这并不是个令人激动的表现，不过如果我当初短线炒作，毫无疑问会比这还要糟。回想2008年10月，我在一个月内就因Financial Select Sector SPDR上的一笔交易亏掉了一半。不过我也在两个月里在ProShares Ultra Financials上赚了一倍的钱。人在赌的时候就会发生这样的事，会有赢有输。所以，短线炒作的人，听好了：你的英雄说，可以小小地炒作一下。不过要明白你这样做是为了获得吹牛的资本，而不是为了赚钱。因为到你炒作的时候，恐怕已经没什么赚头了。Evan Newmark（编者按：本文作者Evan Newmark曾在华尔街工作了20余年，目前已远离各大投行自己在进行股票投资。本栏目文章选自他在Deal Journl上的博客Mean Street。栏目内容都与华尔街有关。）


Hey, investor. You want to be a great market-timer?Just listen to me. Why just Monday, your hero (again, that would be me) closed out his position in ProShares Ultra Financials, symbol UYG, the leveraged financial sector ETF, and doubled his money in less than two months.So easy. Why doesn't everyone just do it?Well, that is because they can't. In fact, practically no one can be a consistently great market-timer, including your hero.It is simply too hard to guess on a week-to-week or day-to-day basis the market's direction and whether you should be short or long. If you disagree, just look at what a statistical crapshoot market timing can be.As of Monday's close, the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index was up 34.1% from its closing low on March 9th. Just five of the past 39 trading days accounted for more than 60% of this rise. Two days alone accounted for 40% of it.If you were out of the market on those days or short, you were out of luck.No doubt, you can make a killing from market timing. If from Jan. 1 you were short the financials until March 6, or betting that prices would decline, and then you went long-and if you did this all with triple leveraged ETFs - you would be up more than 500% on your money.But only looking backward can you see the trends. Good luck finding anyone who pulled off the 500% return, though probabilities suggest that there may be someone.Of course, every investor wants to think he can be that special one. But as financier Bernard Baruch opined, 'If a speculator is correct half the time, he is hitting a good average.'This is what makes all the recent talk about the death of long-term 'buy and hold' investing so troublesome. With the bear-market pummeling of 2008, many investors are giving up on long-term investing and starting to time the market.They are doing so at just the wrong time.Investors who panicked in the dark days of February and March would have been much better off holding stocks then jumping in and out of the market, guessing whether to be short or long on a given day.Two excellent WSJ pieces from April, 'More Investors Say Bye-bye to Buy and Hold' and 'Advisers Ditch Buy and Hold for New Tactics' described how many unhappy retail investors and financial advisers are turning to market timing with leveraged ETFs to cure their past ills.Of course, Wall Street will happily oblige by creating new allocation strategies and as many fee-generating vehicles as it can. The Direxion three-times leveraged ETFs launched in November have attracted daily volume in the billions of dollars.And Monday, Grail Advisors launched the first 'qualitative' actively managed ETF. A managed portfolio of stocks akin to a mutual fund runs counter to the original concept of low-cost indexed ETFs, but so what? Give the people what they want.Investors ought to tread carefully. I trade ETFs but with only a very small portion of my personal wealth. The bulk of it is set aside for 'buy and hold' index-fund heavy investing.With that money, I'm down just about 1% annually over five years, outperforming the S&P 500 by about one percentage point. That isn't too exciting, but my efforts at market timing would inevitably have been worse.Recall that in October 2008, I managed to lose half my money with a trade in the Financial Select Sector SPDR, symbol XLF, in a month's time. So big deal, if I doubled my money on the UYG trade in two month's time. That is what happens when you gamble. You win some. You lose some.So market timers, listen up. Your hero says that it is okay to go ahead and play around. But recognize you're doing it for bragging rights - and not for the money. Because there probably won't be any of that left by the time you're done.Evan Newmark