【英语科技】黄金会是下一个泡沫吗？

It's been the amazing, runaway boom of the past decade. If you'd put your money into gold at the lows about 10 years ago, you'd have made a nearly 400% return. That's left pretty much everything else-stocks, China, let alone housing-in the dust.

But with gold now trading near record highs, the big $1,200-an-ounce question is obvious.

Is the gold rush over?

Some smart people wonder. 'The time to buy gold was in 1999, not 2010,' Harvard professor Niall Ferguson tells The Wall Street Journal-though he added that momentum might still drive it higher. Others will tell you that 'the smart money got out of gold months ago.' But then people have been saying that for years.

They could be right, of course: The future by definition is unknowable.

But if gold is a bubble, here's why it may not be over-and, indeed, may it may be about to go vertical.

First, the recent rise is deceptive. Yes, gold has risen from around $250 an ounce to $1,200. But that rise started at very depressed levels. Gold had been falling in price for two decades. In 2000-01, it was at the bottom of a very deep bear market. It had touched historic lows compared to consumer prices or other assets like shares. A lot of the past decade's boom has simply seen it recover toward longer-term averages.

Second, before we assume the gold bubble has hit its peak, let's see how it compares with the last two bubbles-the tech mania of the 1990s and the housing bubble that peaked in 2005-06.

The chart is below, and it's both an eye-opener and a spine-tingler.

It compares the rise in gold today with the rise of the Nasdaq in the 1990s and the Dow Jones index of home-building stocks in the 10 years leading up to 2005-06.

They look uncannily similar to me.

So far gold has followed the same path as the previous two bubbles. And if it continues along the same trajectory-a big if-gold today is only where the Nasdaq was in 1998 and housing in 2003.

In other words, just before those markets went into orbit.

Maybe the smart money is out of gold today. But how easily we forget that the smart money got out of these past bubbles way too early. The really smart money knows you make the most money in a bubble right at the end, when it goes manic.

There are other reasons to think that gold is still a long way from that point.

Like the futures market. It is predicting gold will rise by just a few percent a year over the next few years. That's less than you'd get from municipal bonds.

When the market thinks an investment is going to underperform munis, it's safe to say we are not in the midst of euphoria.

And take a look at the coverage of this industry. At the peak of a bubble, the Wall Street analysts covering a sector are usually all bullish. This time around? Far from it. Of the analysts covering gold-mining giant Barrick Gold, only about two-thirds are publicly bullish, according to Thomson Reuters. By Wall Street standards, that's very restrained. Among those covering Newmont Mining and Randgold Resources, it's about half.

And on an anecdotal level, this doesn't feel like the peak of a bubble. Taxi drivers and bartenders may be talking about gold. But they aren't yet handing out mining tips.

There is, of course, no guarantee gold will turn into another mania. But the fact that we now seem to live in Bubblonia-the land of perpetual bubbles-would suggest there is a current opening for the role. And in many ways, gold may be well cast.

It has a 'This time is different' story line: The world's central banks are flooding the market with liquidity. That should inevitably devalue the currencies. Gold is the only 'currency' they can't just print.

It has an army of true believers behind it, ready to claim each rise as a 'victory' and to mock skeptics with the words 'They just don't get it.'

And it's easy to untether from reality. You can't value gold by traditional financial measures, as it generates no cash flow. So there's plenty of potential to value it by other means. Eyeballs, anyone?

Dylan Grice, a strategist at SG Securities in London, thinks global conditions today could unleash another gold boom like the one in the 1970s. Then, as now, the world lost confidence in the U.S. dollar as a store of value. Back then, central banks started hoarding gold instead. Today, he notes, they are net purchasers of gold for the first time since 1988.

And although gold has risen a long way, so has the U.S. money supply. Mr. Grice calculates that even at today's prices, the bullion that the U.S. government holds in places like Fort Knox is still only worth enough to back 15% of the U.S. monetary base. That is near a record low.

At the peak of the gold mania in 1979-80, gold prices rose so far that the backing exceeded 100%. How far would gold rise if that happened again? To around $6,300 an ounce, Mr. Grice says.

Once again: I am not saying gold is going into the stratosphere. I am saying there is a good case for saying it might.

Gold is a high-risk and potentially dangerous speculation. Anyone thinking of investing needs to do some serious thinking first.

过去10年黄金经历了一场不可思议、脱缰野马般的大幅飙升。假如大约10年前你在低点投资于黄金，现在就能获得近400%的回报。这样的回报率令几乎其他所有的投资都相形见绌，包括股市、中国，更不用说楼市了。

不过，目前黄金交易价格为每盎司1,200美元，接近纪录高点，在这种情况下，有一个大问题是显而易见的。

“淘金热”是否结束了？

一些聪明人产生了这样的疑问。哈佛大学教授弗格森(Niall Ferguson)对《华尔街日报》说，买进黄金的良机是在1999年，而不是2010年。不过他也说，当前的势头可能仍会推高金价。其他人则会告诉你，几个月前有经验的投资者就已经从黄金投资中抽身了。不过，话说回来，多年来人们一直都在这么说。

Bloomberg英国央行地下室贮藏的金条当然，他们有可能是对的：从定义上说，未来本来就是不可知的。

不过，如果说黄金是个泡沫，以下就是泡沫还没有破裂──实际上还有可能继续上涨──的理由。

首先，黄金最近的涨势是具有欺骗性的。不错，黄金从每盎司约250美元涨到了1,200美元。不过，上涨开始于金价非常低迷的水平。此前的20年金价一直在下跌。2000至2001年，黄金处于一轮非常深的熊市底部。与消费者价格或股票等其他资产相比，黄金触及了历史低点。过去10年中大部分时间黄金的上涨仅仅是在朝着长期平均水平恢复而已。

其次，在我们假定黄金泡沫见顶之前，让我们把它与前两次的泡沫做个比较吧，一次是90年代的科技泡沫，一次是2005至2006年达到高潮的楼市泡沫。

以下是比较图表，让人既茅塞顿开，也脊背发凉。

图表对目前的金价上涨与纳斯达克90年代的飙升和2005至2006年之前10年中道琼斯指数中的建房类股做了比较。

在我看来，它们如此诡异地相似。

到目前为止，黄金一直在走前两次泡沫的老路。如果黄金继续沿着同样的道路走下去──这很有可能，那么今天的黄金就只是1998年的纳斯达克和2003年的楼市的翻版而已。

换句话说，也就是在纳斯达克和楼市即将疯狂之前。

或许，经验丰富的投资者如今已经退出了黄金投资。不过，我们是多么容易就忘记了他们曾在前两次泡沫中过早撤出。真正有经验的人知道能在泡沫变得疯狂的最后时刻赚最多的钱。

还有其他理由认为黄金距离疯狂的地步还很遥远。

比如，期货市场。期货市场预测未来几年中，黄金每年只会涨几个百分点。这比你在市政债券中的回报还要少。

当市场认为一种投资的表现将不及市政债券时，那么可以说我们还没有到疯狂的程度。

看看这个行业的报导。在泡沫巅峰时，报导一个行业的华尔街分析师们常常无一例外都很乐观。那么这次呢？远达不到这个水平。据汤森路透(Thomson Reuters)的数据，在报导黄金开采巨头Barrick Gold的分析师中，只有约三分之二公开表示看好。按照华尔街的标准，这一比例很有限。在报导Newmont Mining和Randgold Resources的分析师中，约有一半表示了乐观。

从零散的事例看，这感觉也并不像泡沫见顶。出租车司机和酒吧服务员可能在谈论黄金。不过他们尚未发布采矿行业的小道消息。

当然，不能保证黄金将进入又一轮的疯狂。不过，我们如今似乎生活在泡沫恒久远的泡沫时代，这样的现实表明当前还有个担纲泡沫大戏的角色空缺。从很多方面看，黄金可能都是当仁不让的主角。

这场大戏有着“这次不一样”的桥段：世界各国央行都在向市场大量注入流动性。这会不可避免地让货币贬值。黄金是唯一一种他们不能用印钞机印出来的“货币”。

它有众多对其深信不疑的拥趸，准备宣称每次上涨都是“胜利”，用“他们就是不明白”来嘲笑怀疑人士。

而且脱离现实也是很容易的。你无法用传统的金融衡量尺度来给黄金估值，因为它无法产生现金流。所以用其他方法给黄金估值具有很大的潜力。有人对此表示怀疑吗？

法国兴业证券(SG Securities)驻伦敦策略师格莱斯(Dylan Grice)认为，今天的全球状况可能会引发一轮和上世纪70年代末类似的黄金上涨。像现在一样，那时世界对美元作为保值手段失去了信心。当时，各国央行转而开始囤积黄金。格莱斯说，如今各国央行自1988年以来首次成为黄金的净买家。

尽管黄金已经上涨了很久，美国的货币供应也一样。格莱斯计算得出，即使是以今天的价格，美国政府在诺克斯堡等地持有的黄金仍只能支持美国货币基础的15%。这接近纪录低点。

在1979至1980年的黄金疯狂上涨高潮时，金价涨幅非常之大，以致于上述比例超过了100%。如果再次发生这样的情况，黄金的涨幅能到什么地步呢？格莱斯说，可以到大约每盎司6,300美元。

要再次强调的是，我并不是在说黄金价格会冲上云霄，而是在说有理由认为可能出现这种情况。

黄金是一种高风险、可能有危险的投机。任何想投资于此的人都需要先认真考虑一下。