《金融时报》|散户投资者前景依旧黯淡且困惑
今天出版的英国《金融时报》刊登了特里·史密斯先生致编辑的这封信。
Today's Financial Times published the following letter to the Editor from Terry Smith.
先生，我注意到艾丽丝·罗斯的文章“择时交易错误代价高昂”（《金融时报》财富版，11 月 20 日）。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买英国股票是看富时指数表现行事——指数高时买得多，指数低时买得少——这种做法注定投资业绩不佳，也进一步印证了那种看法：多数投资者是自己最大的敌人。
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.
不过这并非新消息。美国颇具影响力的达尔巴研究公司多年来一直跟踪共同基金的资金流向，结论是：由于投资者总在错误时机频繁申购赎回基金，普通投资者的业绩明显跑输基金平均水平。
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.
由此你或许会得出这样的结论：基金超市允许投资者在基金之间低成本随意转换，这种服务对投资者回报而言，弊大于利。
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难以克服的利益冲突——它们由产品提供商付费，而不是由客户付费——而英国金融服务管理局在最近发布的相关平台监管提议中对此避而不谈。我只能推测，散户投资者的前景依然黯淡而迷茫。
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