一個華爾街大佬的“黑色優勢”
A lot of people do not trust Wall Street. They regard it as a moneymaking machine for those who work there, which has little interest in practice in its stated aim of channelling capital into businesses and helping them to grow for the broader benefit of society. For such sceptics, Steven Cohen is Exhibit A.
許多人不信任華爾街。他們認爲華爾街只是爲在那裏工作的人服務的一個賺錢機器，在實踐中無意像其宣稱的那樣，爲企業輸送資本，並幫助企業成長壯大，從而造福於整體社會。對於這些懷疑者來說，史蒂文?科恩(Steven Cohen)是一號證據。Cohen’s former hedge fund, SAC Capital, came to dominate share trading on Wall Street before it pleaded guilty to insider trading charges in 2013 and paid $1.8bn in penalties. Cohen escaped criminal indictment himself despite being the living, breathing heart of SAC Capital (its name came from his initials) and now runs a private fund with $11bn in assets.
科恩曾經執掌的對衝基金SAC資本(SAC Capital)當年主導着華爾街的股票交易，後來在2013年承認從事內幕交易，並支付了18億美元的罰款。科恩本人逃過了刑事起訴，儘管他是SAC資本的靈魂人物（該基金名稱來自於他的姓名的首字母縮寫）。現在科恩運營着一家擁有110億美元資產的私人基金。He may be down but he has not disappeared. The signs are that he will re-enter the hedge fund business next year, after settling a civil action. “I feel I’m a very blessed person, a very happy guy, and when I look at my career in totality, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world,” the billionaire responded flatly in a recent interview when asked about SAC’s downfall.
他可能處於低谷，但並未消失。有跡象顯示，在了結一宗民事訴訟後，他將於明年再次進入對衝基金業務。這位億萬富翁最近接受了採訪，在被問及SAC資本垮臺的時候坦承道：“我覺得自己非常有福、非常快樂。當我從總體上回顧職業生涯的時候，我不想拿它跟世界上任何東西交換。”
Sheelah Kolhatkar, a New Yorker writer who has doggedly followed the SAC Capital story — the biggest Wall Street insider trading scandal since Ivan Boesky was jailed in the late 1980s — sheds plenty of light on how the hedge fund became “very blessed”. It’s a murky tale that reflects extremely badly both on Cohen and on investment banks such as Goldman Sachs that enabled him.
不懈追蹤SAC資本故事的《紐約客》(New Yorker)作家施拉哈?科哈特卡爾(Sheelah Kolhatkar)詳細揭示了這家對衝基金如何變得“非常有福”——該案是繼上世紀80年代末伊萬?博斯基(Ivan Boesky)被判刑以來華爾街最大的內幕交易醜聞。這是一個陰暗的故事，對科恩以及爲其提供便利的高盛(Goldman Sachs)等投行來說都極不光彩。Prosecutors and regulators could not nail Cohen, although they tried extremely hard. The closest they got was to jail for nine years Mathew Martoma, a close lieutenant who gained inside information about an Alzheimer’s drug from a doctor who was running its trial. There was insufficient evidence of any criminality by Cohen, although SAC profited hugely by trading in the companies involved.
檢方和監管機構無法找到科恩的罪證，儘管它們做出了極大的努力。他們取得的最大成果是將馬修?馬拓瑪(Mathew Martoma)判刑9年，後者是科恩的親信，從一位從事阿爾茨海默病藥物試驗的醫生那裏獲得了內幕信息。沒有足夠證據表明科恩的行爲構成犯罪，儘管SAC通過交易相關公司的股票斬獲暴利。
No reader of this book would conclude that Cohen is exactly innocent. He built a vast machine that relied on a web of data, some of it illicit. Even the way in which he gained legal insight leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. He paid big commissions to banks to let him know first of any new information, so he could beat other hedge funds and investors to the trade. It gave SAC what Cohen craved: an “edge” over competitors. There were, one SAC trader decided, various kinds of edge. “White edge” was expertise and insight that created legitimate trading opportunities; “grey edge” might be when a company executive dropped hints about its results — a nod and wink that did not quite amount to illegality. Then there was Martoma’s “black edge”.
任何看過科哈特卡爾撰寫的《黑色優勢》(Black Edge)的讀者都不會得出科恩清白的結論。他打造了一臺依賴大量數據的龐大機器，其中一些數據是非法的。就連他獲得合法洞見的方式也讓人皺眉。他向銀行支付鉅額佣金以便最先掌握新信息，讓他搶在其他對衝基金和投資者前面進行交易。這使SAC得到了科恩渴求的東西：領先於競爭對手的“優勢”。一位SAC的交易員當年總結道，該基金有多種優勢：“白色優勢”是創造合法交易機會的專業知識和洞見；“灰色優勢”可能是一位公司高管在透露業績線索時點頭或眨眼，這很難算得上非法行爲；還有就是馬拓瑪的“黑色優勢”。Cohen put huge pressure on traders to produce edge, but avoided knowing what shade it was. He demanded trading strategies accompanied by a “conviction rating” of one to 10, rather than an explanation of where they came from (Martoma gave his Alzheimer’s trade nine). This shielded SAC’s founder from legal jeopardy like “a moat around the company’s most valuable asset”.
科恩向交易員們施加巨大壓力，要求他們取得優勢，自己卻迴避瞭解這些優勢的性質。他要求交易策略附上1-10的“定罪評級”，而不要求解釋這些策略從何而來（馬拓瑪給他的阿爾茨海默病交易評了9級）。這使得SAC的創始人避免了法律風險，就像“保護公司最具價值財產的護城河”一樣。The quality that protected him most was the fact that he was, and always had been, a brilliant trader. He rose up the scrappy side of Wall Street, at a trading shop called Gruntal, rather than a glossy firm such as Goldman or Morgan Stanley. He was “exceptionally better than anyone else”, one former colleague recalled — original, instinctive, brazen and eager for risk.
最能保護他的特質是，他曾是、並且一直是出色的交易員。他是在華爾街好鬥的一側起家的，在一家名爲Gruntal的交易公司、而非高盛或摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)等光鮮的大公司。一名前同事回憶稱，科恩“比其他人出色得多”——具有獨創思維、直覺靈敏、毫無忌憚並且渴望冒險。Kolhatkar tells lucidly how Cohen started off as an outlier — a profane and disruptive figure who had no interest in economics, strategy, or even the companies whose shares he traded — and inexorably pulled Wall Street in his direction. He was in the vanguard of the shift in power from banks to hedge funds, the lightly regulated, freewheeling exploiters of capital.
科哈特卡爾清晰講述了科恩如何從局外人——一個粗鄙和不按牌理出牌的人物，對經濟學、策略、甚至他買賣股票的公司毫無興趣——起步，最終無情地把華爾街帶向了他的方向。他是推動力量平衡從銀行轉向對衝基金（監管寬鬆、不受約束的資本剝削者）的先驅。Along the way, he changed the notion of what “investment” meant. He bought shares not to hold them, like traditional mutual and pension funds, but to trade in and out of them rapidly. It was highly profitable but it stripped away Wall Street’s cover story of being an engine of growth for the economy. Whether or not it was legal, it was unambiguously dubious.
一路上，他改變了“投資”的定義。他買股票是爲了快速地買進賣出，而不是像傳統的共同基金和養老金基金那樣長期持有。這樣做非常賺錢，但剝去了華爾街作爲經濟增長引擎的美麗包裝。無論這麼做是否合法，它無疑都是有問題的。Cohen’s enforced absence from the industry has coincided with a tougher period for hedge funds. The question is whether humans can match computers: the growing force in finance are exchange traded funds, which mimic indexes and investment strategies at a fraction of the cost. He will be competing with a robot if he returns, and the robot has my support.
科恩被迫離開這個行業之時，適逢對衝基金較爲艱難的時期。問題是，人類能否匹敵計算機：交易所交易基金(ETF)是金融領域日益壯大的力量，它以極低的成本來模擬指數和投資策略。如果科恩重返金融業，他將與機器人展開競爭，而我支持機器人。Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street, by Sheelah Kolhatkar, Random House, RRP$28, 368 pages
《黑色優勢：內幕消息、髒錢和追蹤華爾街頭號黑手》(Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street)，施拉哈?科哈特卡爾著，蘭登書屋(Random House)出版，建議零售價28美元，368頁
