《金融时报》恍然大悟，我发现了基金命名之道
上个月，加州公务员退休基金（Calpers）——全球最大的养老基金之一——宣布撤回其对对冲基金的 40 亿美元投资。这引发了一些严肃的问题，其中最关键的是：当初为何要投资对冲基金。
Last month Calpers, the California Public Employees’ Retirement Scheme, one of the world’s largest pension funds, announced it was withdrawing its $4bn investment in hedge funds. This raises some serious issues, not the least of which is why it invested in hedge funds in the first place.
在截至 2014 年 6 月 30 日的财年中，Calpers 的对冲基金组合仅获得 7.1% 的回报，而其整体基金回报为 18.4%。但 2013-14 年并非对冲基金的唯一糟糕年份，Calpers 的差劲表现也并非罕见。2013 年，对冲基金平均回报率为 7.4%，跑输标普 500 指数 23 个百分点，并且连续第五年跑输大盘。
In its fiscal year ended June 30 2014, Calpers earned just 7.1 per cent on its hedge fund portfolio compared with 18.4 per cent on its fund overall. But 2013-14 was not a uniquely bad year for hedge funds and neither was Calpers’ poor experience unusual. The average hedge fund returned an average of 7.4 per cent in 2013, underperforming the S&P 500 Index by 23 per cent and underperforming the market for the fifth straight year.
从某种意义上说，对冲基金相对于基准的落后表现并非 Calpers 这类基金的主要问题——它本来也许就不该在意指数基准——但对冲基金的表现不如 Calpers 在其他投资中能够及已经取得的成果，则更加成问题；此外，Calpers 在 2013-14 年向这些对冲基金支付了 1.35 亿美元的费用。
In a sense the underperformance of hedge funds against a benchmark is not the main problem for a fund such as Calpers which should probably ignore index benchmarks anyway, but the underperformance of hedge funds compared to what Calpers can and has achieved in other investments is more problematic – as is the fact that it paid $135m in fees in 2013-14 to those hedge funds.
西蒙·拉克在其 2012 年出版的《对冲基金幻象》一书中指出，在 1998 年至 2010 年期间，对冲基金经理的费用占所获总回报的 86% 至 98%。“对冲基金”一词已变成描述一种有利于基金经理的收费结构的说法，而非对某种特定投资方法的描述。
In his 2012 book The Hedge Fund Mirage, Simon Lack presented evidence that over the period 1998-2010 hedge fund managers’ fees accounted for between 86 per cent and 98 per cent of total returns earned. The term “hedge fund” has become a means of describing a fee structure which benefits the fund managers rather than a description on any particular methodology of investment.
对冲基金有时会辩护称，落后表现并非放弃它们的充分理由，因为它们的策略与市场总体趋势不相关，当市场逆转时，这些策略将被证明是有价值的。若不是它们在 2008-09 年金融危机期间的可悲表现——当时众多对冲基金被证明是杠杆化的纯多头基金，而非以任何方式进行了对冲，这个辩护将更加可信。
The defence which is sometimes raised for hedge funds is that this underperformance is not a good reason to abandon them, as their strategies are uncorrelated to the general trend in markets and that will prove worthwhile when markets go into reverse. This would be more credible if it weren’t for their lamentable performance during the financial crisis of 2008-09 when so many of them proved to be leveraged long-only funds rather than hedged in any way which would justify the name.
然而，也许还有另一种方式来发现 Calpers 对冲基金组合中的潜在问题。在其涉足的 24 只对冲基金中，至少有 11 只基金名称中含有“Eureka”（我找到了）一词。“Eureka！”是古希腊语中一个词语的翻译，意为“我找到了！”，据称阿基米德在发现通过测量不规则物体排水量来计算其体积的方法时喊出了这个词语。如今，它已经变成了与金子发现有关的一个词语，尤其是在 19 世纪 40 年代末至 50 年代的加州淘金热期间。
However, there may have been another way of spotting the incipient problem in Calpers’ hedge fund portfolio. Of the 24 hedge funds involved, no less than 11 had the word Eureka in their title. “Eureka!” is the translation of an ancient Greek word meaning “I have found it!” which Archimedes is alleged to have exclaimed upon discovering the way to measure the volume of an irregular object by measuring its displacement of water. More recently, it became a term associated with the discovery of gold, especially in the California gold rush of the 1840-50s.
以如此著名的科学发现或找到财富来命名基金，是在让自己栽跟头或让投资者失望，但如果你是在试图向 Calpers 推销基金，那么显然会带来极大的好处。
Naming your fund after such a well-known scientific discovery or finding riches was setting yourself up for a fall or your investors for disappointment, but it was clearly of great benefit if you were trying to market your fund to Calpers.
这使得我想起了基金名称的问题。你可能熟悉能力圈的概念，伟大的投资家沃伦·巴菲特和他的合伙人查理·芒格经常提到这一点。该概念认为，只有坚持投资于自己理解的事物，你才更有可能在投资中取得成功，这似乎是显而易见的直觉，但许多投资者往往忽视了这一点。
This brings me to the subject of fund names. You may be familiar with the concept of the circle of competence, often quoted by the great investor Warren Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger. The idea is that you are only likely to succeed in investing if you stick to investing in things which you understand, which seems intuitively obvious but is often disregarded by many investors.
基金的名称往往预示着你可能不理解它们的运作方式（或者可能不打算让你理解）。对我来说，例子多的是，但我想知道，比如“法兴英国逐步下跌防御性踢出计划”的投资者认为他们拥有的是什么。
Names of funds are often a clue to the fact that you may not understand what they do (or perhaps aren’t meant to). I am spoilt for choice with regard to examples, but I wonder what investors in the “SocGen UK Step Down Defensive Kick-out Plan” think they own, for example.
许多基金名称也违反了史密斯的法则，发出了警告信号，该法则指出，如果某个词语的反义词是那么不合逻辑以至于你永远不会说出口，你就永远不应该使用这个词语。例如，你可能会发现有人提及“前瞻性规划”。有人做过任何“后向性规划”吗？充其量，“前瞻性规划”是同义反复。有多少公司说它们将通过“选择性收购”实现增长？当然，没有公司会说它们有不分青红皂白地收购的政策（即使在某些情况下现实显然就是如此）。
Many fund names also send warning signals by breaching Smith’s Law which states that you should never use a phrase if its opposite is so illogical that you would never say it. For example, you may find individuals who refer to “forward planning”. Has anyone ever done any backward planning? At best, forward planning is tautology. How many companies say they will grow by means of “selective acquisitions”? Of course, none would say they have a policy of indiscriminate acquisitions (even though that is surely the reality in some cases).
我们该如何看待 Sanlam 全球最佳创意基金？会有人推销“最差创意”基金吗？如果我是该集团的投资者，我可能会担心自己在他们的任何其他基金中得到了什么。那 Pimco 的基本面优势基金又如何？也许费用会更低，以吸引投资者进入“基本面劣势”基金？
What are we to make of the Sanlam Global Best Ideas Fund? Would anyone ever market a Worst Ideas fund? If I were an investor with the group I might be concerned about what I was getting in any of their other funds. How about Pimco’s Fundamental Advantage Fund? Would the fees perhaps be lower to attract investors into a Fundamental Disadvantage fund?
Terry Smith
Terry Smith
Financial Times
Financial Times