《金融时报》|散户投资者前景依旧黯淡且困惑
先生，我注意到爱丽丝·罗斯在《市场择时错误代价高昂》（《金融时报》财富版，11 月 20 日）一文中的观点。文中引述斯堪迪亚公司的说法，称其投资平台上的行为反映出许多投资者根据富时指数的走势来买入英国股票——指数走高时买得更多，走低时买得更少——这种操作方式是投资业绩不佳的根源，也进一步印证了大多数投资者是自己最大敌人的说法。
Sir, I refer to Alice Ross’s article “Market timing errors prove too costly” (FT Money, November 20). The article quoted Skandia saying that behaviour on its investment platform reflects the fact that many investors buy UK equities in response to what the FTSE has been doing – buying more when it is high and less when it is low – a recipe for poor investment performance adding further justification to the notion that most investors are their own worst enemy.
但这并非新闻。美国颇具影响力的达尔巴研究多年来持续追踪共同基金的资金流向，结论是：由于投资者在错误时点频繁进出基金，共同基金投资者的平均回报率明显低于基金本身的平均水平。
But this is not new news. The influential Dalbar study in the US has been monitoring mutual fund investment flows for years and concludes that the average investor in mutual funds has significantly underperformed the average mutual fund due to their own behaviour of swapping in and out of funds at the wrong moments.
由此你可能会得出这样的结论：基金超市提供的便捷换仓服务（表面上没有摩擦成本）对投资者回报的损害恐怕大于帮助。
This might lead you to conclude that the service that fund supermarkets offer in allowing investors to switch easily between funds for no apparent frictional costs is probably doing more damage than good to investor returns.
再加上基金超市存在无法逾越的利益冲突——它们从产品提供商而非客户那里获得报酬，而英国金融服务管理局在最近发布的平台监管建议中回避了这一问题——我只能推测，散户投资者的前景依然黯淡且令人困惑。
Combine that with the insurmountable conflict of interest that fund supermarkets have in being paid by product providers rather than their customers, something the Financial Services Authority has shied away from tackling in its recent publication on proposed platform regulation, and I can only surmise that the outlook for retail investors continues to look poor and confused.
Terry Smith
Terry Smith
Financial Times
Financial Times