研究預報 下輪危機將在2020年到來

It is not only hindsight that is 20/20. While other bond fund managers are explaining why they failed to see this year’s fall in interest rates, Jeffrey Gundlach, who did, is talking not about the past but about the future, and his next piece of foresight is focused on – believe it or not – 2020.

並非只有事後回看才能看清楚。在一些債券基金經理人解釋他們爲何沒能預測到今年利率下跌的同時，預測到這一點的傑弗裏•岡拉克(Jeffrey Gundlach)談的卻不是過去，而是未來，他的下一項預測主要聚焦於2020年。

“A lot of things seem to be pointing to the year 2020 as an interesting timeframe,” he says, sipping cool lemonade in the Los Angeles heat. Mr Gundlach is the founder of Double- Line, which went from a standing start in 2009 to $50bn in assets, becoming the fastest start-up in the fund management industry.

“大量情況似乎指向了2020年，那是值得關注的一年，”他在炎熱的洛杉磯邊喝檸檬汽水邊說。岡拉克於2009年創立了DoubleLine，從無到有把資產做到了500億美元，成爲基金管理行業發展最快的初創企業。

When a bond market maven says “interesting”, be scared. What is good for fixed income is rarely good for the economy as a whole, and Mr Gundlach has a whole list of interesting:

當一位債市專家說“值得關注”時，就要警惕了。有利於固定收益業務的環境，很少有利於整體經濟，岡拉克列出了一整張值得關注的情況清單：

a wall of high-yield debt that companies will need to refinance; soaring federal government deficits as baby-boomers drain social security and healthcare funds; ageing populations in China and other emerging markets; and the Federal Reserve’s Treasury holdings maturing too.

企業將需要爲大量高收益債券安排再融資；二戰後生育高峯期出生的人消耗社保和醫療資金，導致聯邦政府赤字大幅攀升；中國和其它一些新興市場人口不斷老化；美聯儲(Fed)持有的美國國債也將到期。

His conclusion? By 2020 the Fed may well be resurrecting quantitative easing, its palliative for troubled markets. “It seems like one of the consequences of this zero interest rate policy is you’ve pushed out the problem of refinancing, of rolling over, but you’ve really compounded the magnitude of it and it seems to be focused around the 2020s.”

他的結論是？到2020年，美聯儲很可能重啓量化寬鬆(QE)，這是其對付市場困境的緩和之計。“看來，這一零利率政策的後果之一，是你延後了再融資、債務滾轉的問題，你真的加劇了問題的規模，似乎到2020年代前後將會集中體現。”

Mr Gundlach has agreed to squeeze an interview in before a trip to New York state, where he is circling the auction of his home town American football team, the Buffalo Bills, hoping to become a minority investor and to ensure they stay in the down-at-heel city on the US side of Niagara Falls.

岡拉克同意在出發之前擠出時間接受採訪，他正要前往紐約州參加他家鄉的美式足球隊水牛城比爾(Buffalo Bills)隊的拍賣，希望成爲該隊少數股東，以確保該隊繼續留在尼亞加拉瀑布美國一側的這座破落城市。

Quantitative easing has been kind to Jeffrey Gundlach the art collector – Mondrian and Jasper Johns are among the personal holdings stolen and then returned after an art theft in 2012 – but it may not be so much for Jeffrey Gundlach the putative sports team owner. These are precisely the luxury assets, along with London and New York real estate and classic Ferraris, that have soared in value as money has been pumped into the system, he says.

量化寬鬆對身爲藝術品收藏家的傑弗裏•岡拉克還算不薄——2012年，他的個人藏品失竊隨後又被找回，其中有蒙德里安(Mondrian)和賈斯帕•瓊斯(Jasper Johns)的作品——但對於可能成爲體育專業隊老闆的傑弗裏•岡拉克來說可能不太一樣。他說，這些絕對是奢侈資產，類似於倫敦和紐約的房地產以及經典法拉利(Ferraris)，隨着大量貨幣被注入金融體系，這些資產的價值都已大漲。

Mr Gundlach’s star status, supreme self-confidence and strong record stretching back to his career in TCW, the investment management company, made him an obvious heir to the “bond king”, Bill Gross, even before the Pimco founder hit a period of poor returns and negative headlines this year.

岡拉克的明星地位、超級自信以及可追溯到他在投資管理公司TCW的出色業績記錄，使他成了“債券之王”比爾•格羅斯(Bill Gross)的顯而易見的繼承人，即使在太平洋投資管理公司(PIMCO)創始人遭遇一段糟糕回報時期、今年又成爲頭條負面新聞之前就是如此。

DoubleLine’s assets under management pale next to the $1.9tn at Pimco, and Mr Gundlach’s Total Return Fund and his smaller but more comparable Double- Line Core Fixed Income fund add up to $36bn versus the $223bn in Mr Gross’s flagship fund. But where Pimco called the bond market wrong at the start of the year, when the overwhelming consensus was for 10-year Treasury yields to march upwards from 3 per cent, Mr Gundlach reckoned on weak economic growth and weak housing and a slide in yields. Today they are below 2.5 per cent.

Pimco資產管理規模達1.9萬億美元，DoubleLine相對要遜色得多。岡拉克管理的總體回報基金(Total Return Fund)以及規模更小、但更具可比性的DoubleLine核心固定收益基金(Core Fixed Income Fund)資產總共爲360億美元，而格羅斯的旗艦基金資產規模達2230億美元。但今年初，市場共識認爲10年期美國國債收益率將從3%升高，Pimco誤判了債市走勢，而岡拉克則預測經濟增長緩慢、住房市場疲軟，以及債券收益率下滑。現在，10年期美國國債收益率低於2.5%。

“If you Google ‘interest rates will fall in 2014’ what pops up is a whole bunch of articles that say bond prices will fall in 2014 because yields will rise. It picks up the search in a convoluted way. There’s only a couple that actually specifically answer that request and one of them is ‘Gundlach says interest rates will fall in the first half of 2014’. But I thought it was one of the easiest calls.”

“如果你用谷歌(Google)搜索‘2014年利率將下降’，會搜出一大堆文章，說由於收益率上升，2014年債券價格將會下跌。谷歌以一種令人費解的方式提供搜索結果。只有兩篇文章真正迴應了搜索請求，其中一篇是‘岡拉克表示2014年上半年利率將會下降’。但我認爲那是最容易作出的預測之一。”

Even after a 4 per cent print for second-quarter GDP (inflated, he says, by inventory stocking), he believes forecasters and equity investors will eventually be disabused of the idea that the US economy is reaching “escape velocity”.

甚至在媒體公佈第二季度國內生產總值(GDP)增長4%之後（他說，增加庫存的行爲使這個數字有所膨脹），他認爲，預測者和股票投資者最終將放棄美國經濟正在接近“逃逸速度”的觀點。

They cling to the idea, he says, “and then all of a sudden they won’t. It’s kind of like punching a pumpkin. It’s the same thing, the same thing, the same thing and then all of a sudden it all caves in. I would be surprised to see full-year 2014 GDP exceed 2 per cent.”

他說，他們仍在堅持這個觀點，“接着，突然之間他們就會不再堅持了。就像是用拳頭猛擊南瓜。一下又一下，似乎毫無反應，然後突然間南瓜就被砸陷了。要是2014年全年GDP增長率超過2%，我會感到很吃驚。”

That does not mean DoubleLine is not positioning to capitalise on growth of sorts, at least in mortgages, where the government is trying to persuade private capital to fund loans without guarantees from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Mr Gundlach is close to signing a deal with a mortgage originator that will offer loans that do not qualify for those guarantees and can therefore be bundled into securities with a higher yield, which DoubleLine will place in its hedge fund.

這並不意味着DoubleLine不準備利用增長的機會，至少是在抵押貸款領域，政府正努力勸服私人資本出資支持未經房利美(Fannie Mae)和房地美(Freddie Mac)擔保的貸款。岡拉克已接近跟一家抵押貸款發起機構簽署協議，該機構將提供不滿足上述擔保條件、並因此可以被打包成高收益證券的貸款。DoubleLine將在其對衝基金中配置這類證券。

“I think people who are looking for the catalyst for the next mortgage meltdown are fighting the last war,” says Mr Gundlach, dismissing the notion that private-label mortgages would be subprime by another name. “I think the chance of that is really almost infinitesimal.”

“我認爲，那些尋找下一次抵押貸款崩盤導火索的人，正在打上一場戰爭，”岡拉克說，他對私營部門的抵押貸款將成爲又一種次貸的觀點不屑一顧。“我認爲，這種可能性真的幾乎是微乎其微。”

No, the next crisis will be something else, he says. Something on that list. And something that requires 2020 vision.

他表示，不，下一場危機將不同於次貸危機。很可能會源於前述清單上的某種情況，需要我們準確預計到的某種情況。