IN PRAISE OF SHORT SELLERS 赞扬做空者 摘自《纽约客》2015-03-23 （中英对照）

IN PRAISE OF SHORT SELLERS 赞扬做空者 In November, 2013, Whitney Tilson, who runs a small hedge fund called Kase Capital Management, gave a presentation to a group of money managers. Tilson’s talk was about a flooring company called Lumber Liquidators. In the previous two years, its profits had more than doubled and its stock had risen sevenfold. But Tilson made a case for selling the company short—betting on its stock to fall. He thought that its profit margins were unsustainably high and suspected that it had driven down costs by buying wood illegally harvested in Siberia. (The company denies buying illegally logged wood but says that it may face criminal charges relating to this issue.) Months later, a whistle-blower contacted him. “He said the story was much bigger than the sourcing of illegal hardwood,” Tilson told me. The contact alleged that the company was saving money by buying laminates made of wood soaked in formaldehyde (a carcinogen) from Chinese factories, and that the resins these factories used also contained the substance. Tilson hired a lab to test the laminates, and it found formaldehyde levels two to seven times the limit established as safe by California, on which forthcoming federal standards are based. A small investor named Xuhua Zhou had already published a detailed report alleging similar problems. 惠特尼•蒂尔森经营一家名为Kase资本管理的小型对冲基金公司。2013年11月，他为一群基金经理做了一个简短的报告。蒂尔森的报告主要是关于一家名为Lumber Liquidators的地板公司。在过去两年里，该公司的利润涨幅超过一倍，股价也上涨了七倍。但蒂尔森做出了卖空该公司的决定¬¬——打赌该公司的股价会跌。他认为该公司的高利润率是不可持续的，怀疑该公司为了压低成本，购买在西伯利亚非法采伐的木材。（该公司否认购买非法采伐的木材，并且称此举可能会招致刑事指控。）数月之后，有举报人联系他。蒂尔森告诉我说“故事远比购买非法采伐木材更严重。” 该人称，该公司通过从中国工厂购买浸泡在甲醛（一种致癌物质）中木头做成的复合材料来压低成本，这些工厂使用的树脂也包含该物质。蒂尔森聘请了实验室测试复合材料，发现其甲醛含量是美国加州规定安全极限的二到七倍,即将面世的联邦标准也是根据该州的安全极限建立的。一名为周旭华的投资者也已经发布了一则关于反映类似问题的详细报告。 Shorting Lumber Liquidators turned out to be a good call. On March 1st, “60 Minutes” aired a blistering exposé on the company. The segment included tests showing high formaldehyde levels and hidden-camera interviews in which workers in China admitted lying about quality. The next day, Lumber Liquidators’ stock fell twenty-five per cent. It then recovered a bit as the company mounted a P.R. offensive—insisting that its products were safe and that “60 Minutes” had used “improper” testing procedures. But the stock is still down more than forty per cent in the past three weeks. Short selling—borrowing an asset in order to sell it, in the hope of buying it back after the price has fallen—has been a part of markets at least since the seventeenth century. But Lumber Liquidators’ tumble is the result of something new: the rise of the activist short. Traditionally, shorting has been seen as unsavory, even corrupt. Many people blamed it for the Great Crash of 1929, and the practice is illegal in some countries. During the financial crisis of 2008, many countries, including the U.S., banned the short selling of financial stocks. Regulators have generally been skeptical of shorts. When the hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman shorted the mortgage insurer MBIA, alleging accounting problems, he was investigated by the New York State Attorney General’s office. Short sellers, not surprisingly, tended to keep their heads down. But in recent years they have been going public. 做空Lumber Liquidators竟然是一件好事。3月1日，“60分钟”节目也对该公司进行了爆料。包括检测出含高水平甲醛的测试以及隐藏摄像头采访中国工人承认隐瞒了质量问题。第二天，Lumber Liquidators的股价跌了25%。接下来，该公司进行了危机公关，声称该公司产品是安全的并指责“60分钟”采用了不恰当的测试程序，股价略有反弹。但在接下来的三周，该公司股价仍旧下跌超过40%。所谓卖空，即为了卖出，而借入某资产，并寄希望在价格下跌的时候再买入，至少从17世纪开始，做空已经成为市场的一部分。但Lumber Liquidators股价暴跌是新的情况导致的：空头的兴起。传统意义上，做空一直令人讨厌并认为会滋生腐败。很多人将1929年的大萧条归责于空头，并且在很多国家，做空一直被认为是非法的。2008年金融危机，包括美国在内的很多国家都禁止金融股做空。监管机构一般也对空头持怀疑态度。当对冲基金经理比尔，阿克曼做空抵押债券保险商MBIA，并指控其会计问题，他因此被纽约总检察官办公室调查。毫无疑问，卖空者要倾向于低头行事。但近几年，越来越多的空头出现在公众视野中。 In 2011 and 2012, a small short-selling firm called Muddy Waters made a name for itself by exposing fraud at a series of Chinese companies that were listed on North American exchanges. Last summer, a short-selling outfit called Gotham City Research published a report excoriating the financial accounting of Gowex, a Spanish telecom company. Within days, the company’s C.E.O. had resigned and Gowex had filed for bankruptcy. Battles between shorts and the companies they attack have even become front-page news, as with Ackman’s billion-dollar bet (so far unsuccessful) against Herbalife. 2011年和2012年，一家名为浑水的小型空头公司，因为揭露在北美上市的一系列中国公司的欺诈行为而名噪一时。去年，一个名为高谭研究的做空机构发布了一份谴责西班牙电信公司Gowex财务作假的报告。几天之内，该公司的首席执行官辞职，Gowex也随之申请破产保护。空头和该公司之间的战争一度成为头版新闻，也包括阿克曼做空康宝莱公司数十亿的赌注（至今未果）。 Many investors are unhappy about activist shorts and argue that they have an incentive to drive down a company’s stock price with false allegations and then cash out at the bottom—a practice known as “short and distort.” This is Lumber Liquidators’ current defense: it says that it is the victim of “a small group of short-selling investors who are working together.” Shorting and distorting does happen, and is illegal. But the rise of activist shorts has been, on the whole, a good thing. All kinds of forces conspire to push stocks higher: investor overconfidence, corporate puffery, and Wall Street’s inherent bullish bias. Shorting helps counterbalance this, and it contributes to the diversity of opinion that healthy markets require. In 2007, a comprehensive study of markets around the world found that ones where short selling was legal and common were more efficient than ones where it was not. And a 2012 study concluded simply, “Stock prices are more accurate when short sellers are more active.” 许多投资者对激进的做空者表示不满并争辩说，他们是故意用错误的指控拉低某公司股价，然后再现金抄底——该作法被成为“做空和扭曲”。以下是Lumber Liquidators的辩解：称他是“一小群做空者联合起来的受害者”。做空和扭曲也的确发生了，并且是违法的。但是总体而言，空头的兴起，是一件好事儿。很多力量都合谋推高股价：投资者过度自信，企业吹嘘以及华尔街固有的看涨偏见。空头有助于使以上力量趋于平衡，有助于提供健康市场所需的多样化观点。2007年对世界各地的市场进行全面的分析发现，做空合法和较普遍的市场比不允许做空的市场更有效率。2012年研究得出一个简单的结论，“空头越活跃，股价越准确。” Short sellers can also play a vital role in uncovering malfeasance. Stock exchanges do almost no vetting of companies, as long as they meet financial requirements. Wall Street analysts run the risk of alienating clients if they’re too bearish. And regulators don’t have the resources to look closely at thousands of companies. In that environment, short sellers—precisely because they get rich from bad news—help keep the market honest. The most famous example is the Enron scandal: it was a short seller, James Chanos, who suggested that the emperor had no clothes. A recent study of markets in thirty-three countries concluded that shorting helps “discipline” executives and reduces the likelihood of earnings manipulation. Of course, short sellers are often wrong, and that may yet prove to be the case with Lumber Liquidators. But the fact that the company’s response to the charges was to attack short sellers should give investors pause. In a 2004 study, Owen Lamont, a business-school professor, looked at more than two hundred and fifty companies that had gone after short sellers—filing lawsuits, calling for S.E.C. investigations, and so on. Their long-term performance was dismal: over three years, their average stock-market return was negative forty-two per cent. That suggests that, if you react to bad news by shooting the messenger, it may be because you know the message is true. 做空者对于揭露渎职侵权起着至关重要的作用。只要公司符合财务要求，交易所几乎不对公司进行审核程序。对华尔街分析师而言，如果太过看空，将冒着失去客户的风险。监管机构也没有足够的资源仔细审核成千上万的公司。在这种环境下，做空者正是因为有很多负面的消息，才有助于提高整个市场的真实性。最著名的例子就是安然丑闻：是一个名为詹姆斯•查诺斯的做空者，揭穿了皇帝的新装。最近一份对33个国家市场的研究得出结论，做空者有助于提高管理层的纪律性以及减少利润操纵的可能性。当然，做空者也很有可能是错误的，Lumber Liquidator的例子也可能被证明是这样。但是事实上，公司回应指控，是将要针对卖空者发起攻击，应该给投资者喘息的时间。某商学院的教授欧文•拉蒙特在2004年的研究中发现，超过250家公司针对卖空者，提起诉讼，要求美国证券交易委员会进行调查等等。他们的长期表现很惨淡：超过三年，他们的平均股市回报率为-42%。这表明，如果对负面消息反应过激，这很可能是因为你知道消息是真的。 译者： 风景