【英语财经】“2016年美国股市可能出现大滑坡” Bear raises alarm over ‘different’ kind of crisis

A well-known fund manager who foresaw the Japanese crash, the dotcom bubble and the global financial crisis has predicted that markets will be “ripe for a major decline” some time in 2016, potentially triggering government bankruptcies.

Jeremy Grantham , founder and chief investment strategist of GMO, a $118bn investment house based in Boston in the US, expects the stock market to continue to march higher during the coming year, eventually sucking in retail investors and setting up a serious decline around the time of the US elections late next year.

The famously bearish and often prescient money manager said this could trigger a “very different” type of crisis, because many governments had become considerably more indebted and much of the liabilities had shifted to the balance sheets of central banks.

Given that central banks were able to create money to recapitalise themselves, this “could be a crisis we could weather”, Mr Grantham said.

“If not, then we’re talking the 1930s, where you have a chain-link of government defaults.”

Unlike many asset managers or analysts, Mr Grantham does not fret greatly over the impact of the Federal Reserve lifting interest rates for the first time in almost a decade this year. He points out that the US central bank raised interest rates 13 times between 2004 and 2006 without troubling the ebullience of the time.

“And now we are behaving hysterically at the prospect of just one? It’s a bit of a joke, really,” he said.

“We might have a wobbly few weeks when they do move, but I’m sure the Fed will stroke us like you wouldn’t believe and the markets will settle down,

and most probably go to a new high.”

However, such a scenario was likely to draw in retail investors who for the most part had stayed on the sidelines of the great bull market since 2009.

And their participation could push the S&P 500 into valuations that were two standard deviations away from the long-term norm by the time of the US elections, which Mr Grantham classified as a bubble.

Mr Grantham is uncertain what could trigger the next crisis, and pointing out that bubbles do not burst simply because financial assets are overvalued.

But he argued that by late next year markets would probably be extremely vulnerable to a crash, given lofty valuations.

一位曾经预见到日本经济崩溃、网络泡沫及全球金融危机的知名基金经理预测称，金融市场将在2016年的某个时候“出现大滑坡”，有可能引发政府破产。

总部位于美国波士顿、旗下管理着1180亿美元的大型基金管理公司GMO的创始人和首席投资策略师杰里米?格兰瑟姆(Jeremy Grantham)预计，美国股市将在未来一年继续走高，最终吸引散户投资者大举进场，然后在明年晚些时候美国大选前后大幅下跌。

这位知名的看跌者、常有先见之明的基金经理称，这可能引发一场“非常不同”的危机，因为许多国家的政府已经负债累累，而大量债务被转移到了央行的资产负债表上。

鉴于央行能够发行货币，进行自我融资，这“可能是一场我们能够驾驭的危机”，格兰瑟姆说。

“如果不行的话，那我们就可能回到上世纪30年代，看到一连串政府违约。”

与许多资产经理或分析师不同，格兰瑟姆对今年美联储(Federal Reserve)将在近10年来首次加息的影响并不感到特别焦虑。他指出，美联储在2004年至2006年之间13次加息,也没有影响当时的股市乐观情绪。

他说：“而现在我们对一次加息的前景表现得这么歇斯底里？这有点像个玩笑，真的。”

“当他们采取行动时，我们可能会有几周时间的动荡，但我肯定美联储会以我们料不到的方式安抚我们，市场将稳定下来，而且极有可能达到新高。”

不过，这种局面很可能会吸引散户投资者进场；2009年开始的此轮牛市期间，此前散户基本上一直持观望态度。

他们的参与可能会推高标准普尔500指数(S&P 500)，到美国大选时，股票估值可能会离长期水平有两个标准差，格兰瑟姆将之归类为泡沫。

格兰瑟姆不确定什么会引发下一场危机，并指出泡沫不会只是因为金融资产被高估就会破裂。

但他认为到明年末，由于估值过高，市场极有可能崩盘。

译者/何黎