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纽约时报 | 中国对冲基金之王的覆灭(上)

2016-04-11 NYT 英文联播


ALEX W. PALMER


At 10:33 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1 of last year, the highway police in Ningbo, an industrial city on China’s eastern coast, posted a seemingly innocuous message to their official microblog. 

去年11月1日周日上午10:33,中国东部沿海工业城市宁波的交通警察在官方微博上发布了一条貌似无关痛痒的消息。

innocuous: something that's innocuous isn't harmful or likely to cause injury.

例句:He would instead give a talk on an innocuous topic such as Islamic history.


“Due to sudden traffic control,” the message read, “all the entrances and exits of the G15 Expressway at Hangzhou Bay Bridge have been closed.”

“因临时性交通管控,杭州湾大桥所有G15高速路进出口关闭。”


That weekend, Xu Xiang, one of the wealthiest men in China, had been visiting Ningbo, his hometown, to attend his grandmother’s 100th birthday party. As the founder of Zexi Investment, one of China’s most successful hedge funds, Xu had consistently produced returns that were truly unbelievable: His worst-performing fund had grown by nearly 800 percent in five years. 

那个周末,中国最富有的人徐翔造访家乡宁波,出席祖母百岁寿宴。徐翔是中国最成功的对冲基金之一——泽熙投资的创始人,一直以来,他创造的回报令人难以置信:五年间,表现最差的基金也增长近800%。


He had also survived countless corruption investigations, market falls, purges and other scares. 

他从数不清的腐败调查、市场暴跌、大盘清洗等各式市场恐慌中绝处逢生。


Yet even as his legend grew, Xu remained intensely secretive. He had amassed a fortune by trading on knowledge and information no one else had, rumors no one else knew — a strategy perfectly crafted for China, where information is tightly controlled and reluctantly released. (Almost every source I approached for this article would only speak to me anonymously, fearing government reprisal or harm to their business.) 

日益成为传奇人物的徐翔一直低调神秘。他交易着不为人知的信息和传言,从而积聚了大量财富——在信息受到严格控制、发布勉强的中国,这一策略如鱼得水。(我撰写这篇文章时,几乎所有消息源都要求匿名,害怕政府报复或伤害到自己的生意。)


Even as Xu grew richer and more powerful, he kept nearly every detail about his personal life and his trading techniques jealously hidden.

徐翔日渐财雄势大,可个人生活和他令人垂涎的交易技巧的每个细节都不为人知。


That equilibrium seemed certain to crumble on June 12, when the Chinese stock market began a free-fall. In the span of three weeks, the market lost a third of its value. It continued to careen downward throughout the summer, with major declines on July 27 and Aug. 24.

那种平衡在6月12日中国股灾时看来注定要崩塌。三周时间内,市值缩水三分之一,整个夏天大盘继续震荡下挫,7月27日和8月24日又两次大跌。

careen: Whether it’s an unsteady ship, a speeding bus, or a person who is woozy, use the verb careen to describe something that’s teetering from side to side.

例句:His songs are loose and unstoppable, like a jalopy with the brakes cut, careening downhill in a cloud of dust.


On the second of these, named Black Monday by The People’s Daily, the Shanghai composite index fell by 8.5 percent, its worst single-day tumble in eight years. In the span of two and a half months, $5 trillion was wiped out of the market.

第二次大跌时,人民日报称之为“黑色星期一”,彼时上证综指下跌8.5%,创造了八年来最大单日跌幅。两个半月内,5万亿美元从市场蒸发殆尽。


The ripples were felt around the globe. On Black Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 1,000 points shortly after opening, and the FTSE 100 index in London lost $116 billion. Yet Xu somehow managed to survive this free-fall unscathed.

全球市场都因此受到波及,黑色星期一当天,道琼斯工业指数开盘后迅速跌落1000点,伦敦富时100指数损失1160亿美元,可在股市自由落体中,徐翔却毫发无伤。


Despite his wealth, the party in Ningbo had been a low-key affair. Xu’s family shared his taste for anonymity. His wife preferred the subway to her chauffeured car, and his grandmother still lived in the same middle-class neighborhood where Xu grew up. 

尽管财富惊人,宁波的寿宴却很低调,徐家人也隐姓埋名。妻子喜欢坐地铁而不是坐豪车,奶奶住在徐翔长大的中产阶级社区。


But the festivities were interrupted a little before 10:30 that Sunday, when Xu received a message bearing a warning: The authorities were coming for him.

然而就在周日10:30稍早,庆典被打断,徐翔收到警告消息:政府要抓你。


Xu left the party immediately and sped north on the G15 Expressway toward Shanghai. He crossed the Fenghua River, which bisects Ningbo, and curved along Hangzhou Bay, racing toward the bridge.

徐翔迅速离开寿宴,沿G15高速疾驰北上上海。他穿过宁波市内的奉化河,沿杭州湾通过大桥。


But he didn’t know about the police blockade. When he reached the bridge, the authorities ushered him from his car and shuttled him to the side of the expressway to an office of the highway patrol.

他不知道警察封了路。通过大桥时,警方从车里把他叫出来,送他到高速路一旁的公路检查站。


For all the secrecy and intrigue that had long surrounded Xu, the moment of his downfall was strikingly prosaic. That evening, .

徐翔一贯神秘诡异,可他落马的一刻却如此平淡无奇。当天晚上,一张照片出现在互联网上。


Dressed in a white Armani coat, gray button-down shirt and rimless glasses, he is clean-shaven, with pudgy cheeks and a receding mop of unruly black hair. Someone out of frame is carefully pulling back the sleeve on Xu’s coat, revealing the clasp of a handcuff around his wrist. 

他身穿阿玛尼外套和灰色扣角领衬衫,戴无边眼镜,胡子刮得干净,双颊圆胖,一头散乱稀疏的黑发。站在相框外的人小心翼翼地扯着他的外套袖子,露出手腕上锁着的手铐。


Xu stares directly into the camera, seemingly unmoved or uncomprehending. If he is surprised or distraught, his face betrays no hint of it. It is the only known photograph of the man who, until that morning, had been the king of China’s stock market.

徐翔盯着镜头,茫然无措,既不惊奇,也不悲伤,表情不行于色。当时,这还是“中国股市之王”唯一为人所知的一张照片。


The story of Xu Xiang starts with the beginning of the Chinese market itself. Xu, who grew up in a quiet, lower-class neighborhood of hardscrabble shops and public housing projects in Ningbo, was a freshman in high school when China opened its first stock exchange in nearby Shanghai in 1990. 

徐翔的故事与中国股市共沉浮。他成长在宁波一个商铺和公房混杂的贫困社区。1990年中国在上海开放第一家股票交易所时,他还是高一学生。


Market fever spread quickly through Ningbo, which had a long history as a commercial hub and a proud business culture. Stocks were a natural fit, and a few trading outposts opened.

市场热情很快席卷宁波,这里历来是中国商业中心,有着悠久的商业文化。炒股票可谓顺理成章,此后这里开了几家交易大厅。


Xu began trading while still in high school. He was entirely self-taught: His parents, a retired factory worker and a homemaker, knew nothing about investing. 

徐翔上高中时就开始炒股,他全靠自学成才:父亲是工厂退休工人,母亲是家庭主妇,对投资一窍不通。


“I studied the stock market by reading books and attending lectures and by studying foreign investment techniques,” Xu later told Caixin, a Chinese news organization, in one of the few interviews he has given. 

徐后来对《财新》说:“我通过看书、听讲座来学习股市,我学习外国投资技巧。”这是他接受的为数不多的采访。


After graduating from high school, he skipped China’s infamous college entrance exam and borrowed 30,000 renminbi (roughly $5,000) from his parents to trade full time. He would later say that he had actually been born in 1993 — the year he first started trading stocks.

高中毕业后,他没有参加声名狼藉的中国高考,他从父母处借了30000元(约5000美元)全职炒股。他后来说自己1993年才真的出生,那一年他开始股票交易。


At the time, millions of Chinese were opening stock accounts with an enthusiasm that proved long-lasting and transformative. Between Shanghai and a second exchange in Shenzhen, the market grew from a capitalization of $61 billion in 1993 to $10 trillion by the summer of 2015. 

当时,数百万中国人开立股票账户,这种热情持久且促进了变革。从沪市开放到深市开放,市场从1993年的610亿美元增长到2015年夏天的10万亿美元。


Unlike in the United States, where institutional investors dominate the market, China’s 200 million mom-and-pop investors make roughly 85 percent of all trades. According to a survey by the State Street Center for Applied Research, 81 percent of these trade at least once a month. 

和美国机构投资者左右市场不同,中国2亿家庭投资者约占股票交易的85%。研究显示,81%的股民至少每月交易一次。


But less-experienced individual investors are easily swayed by rumors and operate with a poor understanding of market fundamentals, making them easy prey for more systematic and sophisticated traders. 

然而经验不足的个体投资者容易受谣言左右,对市场基本原理理解有限,容易成为有系统的精明投资者的猎物。


“All these small individual investors are called ‘chives’ in the market,” says Hong Yan, a finance professor at the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance. “They get cut over and over again, but they come back every time, like little weeds.”

上海高级金融学院金融学教授严弘说:“所有这些散户被称为‘韭菜’,他们就像野草一样,一茬一茬地被收割。”


In his early days, Xu worked from the Galaxy Securities trading hall on South Liberation Road in Ningbo. Stock prices were written in chalk on blackboards, and arbitrary rule changes affecting stock issuance and corporate disclosure constantly jostled an already unpredictable market. 

徐翔早年间在宁波解放南路的银河证券交易大厅工作。当时股价用粉笔写在黑板上,股票发行和公司披露规则的随意变动让本已难以预测的市场持续动荡。


In 1992, the Shanghai index grew by 167 percent — then tumbled roughly 75 percent between April 1993 and July 1994. The fact that China Galaxy Securities was a state-owned enterprise offered little protection; as Xu cut his teeth, the traders around him won and lost fortunes almost overnight.

1992年,上证指数增长167%,1993年4月到1994年7月间又跌去75%。银河证券是国有企业,这也难以提供保护。在徐翔成长过程中,周围的投资者或一夜暴富,或一夜破产。


On an overcast Monday morning last December, I visited Galaxy. The building itself had hardly changed from the days when Xu first set foot inside. Located beside a pharmacy that glowed with blue lights, the eight-story structure seemed on the verge of physical collapse. 

去年十二月一个阴沉的周一早上,我造访了银河证券。这栋建筑和徐翔第一次踏足时没有什么变化,它坐落在一个闪着蓝灯的药店旁,八层建筑看起来濒临倒塌。


A wide concrete staircase, littered with cigarette butts and sun­flower seeds, led up to the main trading hall on the second floor, which, by 9 a.m., was packed with haggard-looking investors. 

宽敞的水泥楼梯上满地烟头和瓜子皮,上了二楼就来到交易大厅,九点钟就挤满了面容憔悴的投资者。


Directly opposite the trading board, hung above a small statue of a golden bull, was a red banner urging traders to “stay away from illegal securities activities.”

大盘下是一座小金牛雕像,正对面是一面红标语,呼吁交易者“远离非法证券交易”。


The heady tumult of those early days in China’s stock market shaped what would become Xu’s signature style: Buy quickly, sell quickly and always go big. It was the familiar ethos of day trading, but taken to the extreme within a Wild West market in which information was scarce, unreliable or nonexistent. 

中国早期股市的大起大落塑造了徐翔的标志性风格:快买、快卖、玩大的。这听起来颇像日间交易准则,却把信息匮乏、不实或压根没有信息的“狂野西部”市场发挥到极致。


Xu won renown so quickly that by 1995, at 19, he was rumored to be the subject of a heated dispute between two powerful Shanghai gangsters. Having seen the lucrative potential of the market, and the exceptional returns of the young trader, both men wanted Xu as their own personal investor. 

19岁的徐翔就声名鹊起,传说成为上海两大黑帮争抢的对象。两个大佬看到市场的巨大利润和这名年轻交易员的巨大回报能力,都想让他成为自己的私人投资人。


Several sources told me that the dispute was eventually settled by a leader from one of China’s infamous triad gangs — and that, improbably, the episode later became the inspiration for a series of Hong Kong gangland movies about stock-market geniuses.

多个消息源显示争端最终由中国臭名昭著的三合会的一个头目出面解决,这一故事不可思议地成为香港描写股市天才的诸多黑帮电影的素材。


As Xu’s fame grew, so did his network. By the late 1990s, he became the unofficial captain of a group popularly known as the Ningbo Death Squad. The squad made its reputation by manipulating cheap, relatively unknown stocks, which in the Chinese market are not allowed to rise or fall more than 10 percent in a single trading day.

徐翔名声日隆,他的网络也日益扩张。九十年代末,他成为被称为“宁波敢死队”的非正式头目。这一组织以操纵一些廉价、相对冷僻的股票闻名,中国股市不允许股票单个交易日涨跌幅超过10%。


To game the system, the squad devised a strategy: Out of nowhere, it would place a gigantic order for a chosen stock. Other traders, seeing the sudden upward movement in price, would flood in, pushing the stock toward its daily 10-percent limit. 

为操纵这一制度,敢死队设计了如下策略:无端选定一只股票,重单买入,其他交易者看到股价突然上涨也会跟进,于是股价涨停。


Once the stock hit the limit on the first day, the momentum became self-perpetuating. Eager traders rushed to buy the stock as soon as the market opened the next day, propelling it toward the 10-percent limit once again. 

第一天股票涨停后,涨势就会自我强化。第二天一开盘,急切的交易者抢着购买该股,再次推到涨停。


The movement generated its own publicity and easy profits. After a few days, the squad would sell out, and the stock would tumble back to a lower price as other traders followed. 

这一动向给自己做了宣传,轻而易举就能获利。几天后,敢死队抛空,股价跌回其他交易者跟风时的低位。


In the American context, this tactic was reminiscent of present-day schemes in “penny stocks,” but with much higher stakes, and playing out in a regulatory environment that mirrored the early days of the United States market. 

这一手法让人想到美国的“神仙股”,可股价更高,这出现在美国股市早期的监管环境下。


One Chinese day trader I talked to spoke in reverent tones about the turn-of-the-century American stock picker Jesse Livermore, who made and lost several multimillion-dollar fortunes before killing himself in 1940 at 63.

和我聊天的一个中国日间交易者用充满敬意的口吻谈到世纪之交的美国选股人Jesse Livermore,后者因为数千万美元得而复失,1940年63岁时自杀。


As the squad gained notoriety, other traders began to monitor the buy orders coming from the Galaxy trading hall — any stock they picked was guaranteed to attract attention, and a corresponding surge in buy orders. Profit was almost unavoidable.

随着敢死队声名远扬,其他投资者开始跟踪银河证券大厅的买单,这里的选股保证会受人关注,相应股票也会暴涨,获利不可避免。


Despite Xu’s preference for anonymity — he eschewed flashy purchases while other squad members parked new sports cars conspicuously in front of the trading hall — the group took on a mythical status. 

徐翔隐姓埋名,他从不露富,不像其他张扬的敢死队成员,把全新跑车停在交易大厅前,总之这一组织变得很神秘。


There was a series of books by two self-proclaimed “Ningbo masters,” as well as traveling seminars that promised to teach legions of novice investors the moneymaking secrets of the Ningbo Death Squad. Copycat death squads popped up in other Chinese cities. 

甚至还有两个自诩“宁波大师”的人写了不少书,举办了诸多旅行研讨会,承诺向新手传授“宁波敢死队”赚钱的秘密。山寨的敢死队在中国其他城市也层出不穷。


The attention was not all positive. After a 2003 article in The China Securities Journal raised questions, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the country’s chief market watchdog, assigned a special czar to investigate the trading practices at Galaxy Securities and five other Ningbo trading halls. 

引发注意并不全是好事。2003年《中国证券周刊》刊文质疑后,中国股市监管机构中国证监会派特别调查组调查银河证券和宁波其他五个交易所的交易情况。


In the process, the czar called in a number of big-name local traders for an “informal discussion session.” The squad disappeared from the market, only to return a week later when the czar released a public statement saying he had found no evidence of wrongdoing. 

调查时,监管机构把当地几个有名气的大户叫到一起开了个“非正式座谈会”。敢死队暂时从市场上消失,一周后当监管机构发布公告称没有发现违规证据,他们又回来了。


Whatever the traders’ methods, they were pulling in millions, and Ningbo — and the greater Chinese economy — was thriving.

不论交易者用了什么法子,他们赚的盆满钵满,宁波和整个中国经济都繁荣起来了。


By 2005, Xu had outgrown his hometown. He needed to be closer to power and money on a scale that Ningbo couldn’t provide. With his usual perfect timing, he moved to Shanghai with hundreds of millions of renminbi just as the country’s hedge-fund industry was taking off. 

2005年,他的势头超出了自己的故乡,他需要距离宁波罩不住的权力和金钱更近一点。他以一贯精准的时点,带着数亿人民币搬到上海,彼时中国的对冲基金刚刚开始腾飞。


The industry existed in some form as early as the 1990s, but in those days the amounts traded were small — China’s economy was still developing — and there was no local expertise or legal framework. What funds did exist operated in the shadows, absent any type of government regulation. 

对冲基金在九十年代就以某种形式存在了,看当时体量很小,中国的经济还在发育当中,当地也没有专业人士或法律框架。基金在暗地里操作,没有政府规制。


“Who could run hedge funds?” a former Chinese regulatory official says. “At that time, it was an open question.”

“谁能玩对冲基金,当时,这是个开放性问题。”一位前中国监管者说。


It was only in 2005 that a revision to China’s Securities Law helped pave the way for hedge funds. Those funds that decided to operate openly within the new framework became known as “sunshine funds,” to distinguish them from funds who kept their participants hidden. 

中国证券法2005年修订后,为对冲基金铺平了道路。对冲基金决定在新框架下公开操作,成为“阳光基金”,这就和那些隐瞒参与者的基金区分开来。


As this was happening, a new class of wealthy Chinese, enriched by the country’s rapid economic boom, suddenly found themselves with billions of renminbi to invest. 

这时,中国经济快速蓬勃发展生产的新富,突然发现自己有数亿计的人民币可供投资。


“It was just the perfect storm,” says Zhang Howhow, the director of strategy at KPMG in Hong Kong. “People were starting to study the regulations more closely, more seriously, to find a relatively legal way to approach this as a business. The market was going up, and you have a group of high-net-worth individuals.” 

毕马威香港战略主任Zhang Howhow说:“这是完美风暴,人们开始更加认真严肃地学习法规,找到相对合法的办法做生意。市场大了,你就有了一干高净值投资者。”

译者注:“完美风暴”指独立发生时没有危险性但一并发生时会带来灾难性后果的事件组合。例如在复杂的打包金融产品中,单个次级贷违约行为并不会显著增加风险,但当所有的次级贷同时发生风险时,就迎来了所谓“雷曼时刻”。


This was Xu’s chance “to build a proper hedge fund in China — the biggest, the most successful.”

这就是徐翔“在中国建立一家真正的对冲基金”的机会——“最大的,最成功的”对冲基金。


On Dec. 7, 2009, Xu founded Zexi Investments with 30 million renminbi — a little under $4.5 million — in capital. The name was a homage to the two men Xu admired most: “Ze” for Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, and “xi” for Emperor Kangxi, the longest-ruling emperor in Chinese his­tory. 

2009年12月7日,徐翔出资3000万人民币(不足450万美元)创立泽熙投资。名字取自徐翔崇拜的两个人,“泽”是中华人民共和国缔造者毛泽东,“熙”是康熙,中国历史上在位最长的皇帝。


In March 2010, Xu opened Zexi’s first fund with one billion renminbi. It was technically a sunshine fund, but because it had fewer than 200 investors, he wasn’t required to divulge the names of his clients.

2010年3月,徐翔开立泽熙第一只基金,融资10亿元。从技术上讲,这是一只阳光基金,但因投资者不足200人,因此不要求透露客户名单。


As a boss, Xu was obsessive and untiring. Friends say he had no hobbies or interests outside the stock market. He arrived at Zexi’s sleek Shanghai office each morning at 8:45, and often stayed until 2 a.m. 

徐翔作为老板,专注而勤勉。朋友说他除了炒股外没有其他爱好,他每天早上8:45来到泽熙在上海漂亮的办公室,一直待到凌晨两点。


From his seat at the back of the firm’s trading floor, he personally directed Zexi’s investments, even as the firm’s assets approached 30 billion renminbi. 

他坐在公司交易区后的座位上亲自指挥投资,公司资产接近300亿元时依然如此。


He remained intensely secretive. The firm’s researchers did not know if he had heeded their stock recommendations until they saw their performance assessments at the end of each year. “Xu Xiang is always trading,” a longtime friend said. “If he’s not trading, he’s thinking about trading.”

他相当神秘,直到年底评估时,公司研究员才知道自己的投资建议是否被采纳。他的一个老朋友说:“徐翔不是在炒股,就是在思考炒股。”


In meetings, Xu was glued to two smartphones, one displaying market prices and the other pinging with news about economic developments. He preferred to let others speak, and when he did interject, his answers were brief and dismissive. 

开会时,徐翔两部手机不离手,一部显示股价,一部盯着最新的经济动态。他喜欢让别人先说话,他打断别人时,言辞简短,含着轻蔑。


One Western fund manager said he seemed as if he was “bored of answering questions and would rather get back to trading.” He dressed informally, sometimes in tracksuits.

一个西方基金管理人说他看起来“厌烦回答问题,宁愿回去炒股”。他穿着随意,有时穿运动衫。


As he had in Ningbo, Xu regularly poured billions into big, risky bets that always seemed impeccably timed. He focused on buying stocks that were either small and relatively unknown or sinking toward bottom-dollar price, then pulled out as soon as he made a profit. 

和他在宁波时一样,徐翔每每在完美无缺的时点以数十亿元豪赌,他专注于购买小盘或不大知名或跌破发行价的股票,获利后果断撤出。


The strategy was partly a reaction to the peculiarities of the Chinese market. Practices common among United States hedge funds, like short-selling stocks to protect against downturns in the market (in other words, hedging), are restricted in China, where regulators treat them with suspicion. Instead, fund managers rely almost exclusively on buying and selling stocks at just the right time.

这种策略可谓对中国特色股市的反应。美国对冲基金通过卖空股票对冲市场下挫的一般性操作在中国受到限制,监管者对此疑虑重重。于是,基金管理人全然依赖在正确的时点买卖股票。


The results Xu achieved were unbelievable — perhaps literally. Between March 2010 and October 2015, Zexi’s Fund No. 1 produced a return of more than 3,270 percent, even while the Shanghai Stock Exchange index grew by only 11.6 percent. Other Zexi funds grew at similarly startling rates. 

徐翔的成就难以置信,光看数字就可见一斑。2010年3月到2015年10月,泽熙基金1号的回报率是3270%,此间上证指数只增长了11.6%。泽熙其他资金也以同样的惊人速度增长。


By 2015, Xu controlled at least 28 billion renminbi, the most of any Chinese hedge-fund manager. An adoring public, aspiring to his rags-to-riches tale, called him “China’s Carl Icahn,” “Xu the Legend” and “Hedge Fund Brother No. 1.”

到2015年,徐翔控制了至少280亿元,成为中国最大的对冲基金管理人。公众们对他崇拜有加,传颂他白手起家的故事,将他誉为“中国的卡尔·伊坎”和“对冲基金一哥”。



(未完待续)


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