查看: 3936|回复: 3
[]BlackRock黑岩 The monolith and the markets 巨石与市场
积分原创译作
马上注册 与译者交流
才可以下载或查看，没有帐号？
本帖最后由 rainintheface 于
17:20 编辑
BlackRock黑岩
The monolith and the markets
巨石与市场
Getting $15 trillion in assets on to a single risk-management system is a huge achievement. Is it also a worrying one?
作为单个风险管理机构，能掌握价值15万亿美元的资产是一个巨大的成就。但这一机构自身是否也令人担忧呢？
Dec 7th 2013 | NEW YORK | From the print edition
1 EAST WENATCHEE, in Washington state, is known for its apples, not for its financial services. But in a data centre nestled between the orchards and hills, a cluster of 6,000 computers oversees the assets of over 170 pension funds, banks, endowments, insurance companies and others. Whirring around the clock, the machines look at what interest-rate changes, or bank collapses, or natural disasters could mean for trillions of dollars of assets. Around the world, 17,000 traders have the computers’ assessments of these risks at their fingertips when they buy or sell assets.
在华盛顿州（Washington state）的东韦纳奇（EAST WENATCHEE），最有名的是当地的苹果，而不是金融服务。但这里有一座建在果园与山丘之间的数据中心，中心内由6000台计算机组成的机群负责监督来自于超过170家退休基金、银行、捐助基金、保险公司和其他所有人的资产。这些机器日夜不停地运转，密切关注着利率变化，银行倒闭或是自然灾害对数万亿美元资产所带来的影响。在世界范围内，有17000名交易员可获得由这些机器提供的对上述风险的评估报告，当要买进或卖出资产时，这些信息就呈现在他们的指尖。
Related topics
&&2 The data centre forms the heart of BlackRock, an asset-management company that is the world’s biggest investor. Founded in 1988, it has $4.1 trillion in assets under management, making it bigger than any bank, insurance company, government fund or rival asset-management firm. It single-handedly manages almost as much money as all the world’s private-equity and hedge funds. Though its holdings are mostly equities—it is the biggest shareholder in half of the world’s 30 largest companies—it also holds bonds, commodities, hedge funds, property and just about anything anyone would ever want to invest in (see chart 1).
这一数据中心构成了黑岩（BlackRock）的心脏，黑岩是一家资产管理公司，也是全世界最大的投资者。公司成立于1988年，管理资产4.1万亿美元，这一数字使其规模超过了任何银行、保险公司、政府基金和同行。由其独自管理的资产总额相当于全世界所有的私募股权和对冲基金。尽管其资产以股权为主——它是世界30强企业中半数的最大股东——但还持有债券、货物、对冲基金、房地产和几乎所有值得投资的其他资产。
&&3 But “Aladdin”, the risk-management platform that occupies all those computers in the orchards, is not just used to look after BlackRock’s $4 trillion. The firm makes its facilities available in whole or in part to managers looking after $11 trillion more, a tally that has recently been growing by about $1 trillion a year. All told, Aladdin keeps its eyes on almost 7% of the world’s $225 trillion of financial assets. This is unprecedented—and it means flaws in the system could matter to more than just BlackRock, its investors and its customers. If that much money is being managed by people who all think with the same tools, it may be managed by people all predisposed to the same mistakes.
这个名为“阿拉丁（Aladdin）”的风险管理平台拥有着所有这些位于苹果园中的计算机，但这一平台不止是被用作打理黑岩的4万亿美元资产。该公司还将这一设施完全或部分供经理人使用，这些经理人照看着另外11万亿美元资产，这一数字目前还在以每年约1万亿的速度增加。总的来说，阿拉丁负责监督全世界225万亿美元金融资产中的约7%。
Encounter in the dawn
&&4 BlackRock is, according to one of the architects of Aladdin, “perpetually neurotic” about risk. Company lore attributes this neurosis to a $100m loss which nearly ended the career of its co-founder and chief executive, Larry Fink, in 1986. A wunderkind at First Boston, an investment bank, Mr Fink had risen to its management committee in his early 30s after pioneering the art of repackaging income streams such as mortgage payments and car loans into bonds. First Boston profited handsomely from this pioneering work in debt securitisation—until an unexpected fall in interest rates wrong-footed Mr Fink’s traders.
根据阿拉丁的一位设计师的说法，黑岩对风险“永远都保持敏锐”。这种保持敏锐的企业文化来自于一笔1亿美元的损失，这次失败在1986年差一点就葬送了公司合伙创始人兼首席执行官拉里·芬克（Larry Fink）的职业生涯。芬克曾供职于“第一波士顿银行（First Boston）”，他在这家投资银行被誉为奇才，30岁出头就凭借着开创了将诸如抵押贷款支付和购车贷款之类的现金流重新打包成债券的做法而晋升至该行管理委员会。第一波士顿银行凭借这一创新在债务证券化领域中获利丰厚——直到一次意外的利率下调打乱了芬克手下交易员的业务节奏。
&&5 Mr Fink was sidelined, leaving him time to ponder how Wall Street’s titans understood the risks they took to make money. He set up BlackRock as much to offer clients a better understanding of risk as to manage their money. Originally a part of Blackstone, a private-equity firm, it was sold in 1994 and floated in 1999. Today it is worth $51 billion, making it America’s 17th largest financial firm by market value.芬克就此丢掉了饭碗，他随即把时间都用来思索华尔街（Wall Street）巨头们是如何判断为获利所担负的风险。他创立了黑岩公司，在为客户管理资金的同时提供对风险更准确的判断。黑岩最初是私募股权企业黑石（Blackstone）的一部分，于1994被出售，又于1999年上市。黑岩目前价值510亿美元，以市值计是美国第17大金融企业。
&&6 BlackRock quickly earned a reputation for understanding the complex securities dreamed up by ever more creative Wall Street types. Whereas buyers of a company’s shares only need to understand that one business, buyers of a mortgage-backed security of the sort Mr Fink pioneered must look at how several thousand underlying loans will perform. BlackRock took up the challenge. Its analytical legwork, originally undertaken by a humble Sun Microsystems workstation wedged between the fridge and the coffee machine in BlackRock’s one-room office, was the key to the firm’s early success as an asset manager specialising in bonds.
黑岩很快就赢得了声誉，它能对复合型债券做出准确判断，而这些债券是由想象力空前的华尔街投行所空想出来的。相对于在购买某一企业股票时买家只需了解本行业状况，在购买与芬克所开创产品相类似的抵押担保债券时，买家就必须观查隐藏在债券下的数千项贷款的表现。黑岩就承担起了这一挑战。其分析的苦差事最初是由一台由太阳微系统公司（Sun Microsystems）生产的简陋工作站完成的，这台设备就在公司的单间办公室里，塞在冰箱和咖啡机之间，这项工作对公司初期的成功至关重要，使公司跻身为一家专长于债券的资产管理者。
&&7 By 2008, after 20 years of growth and the acquisition of part of Merrill Lynch, BlackRock had more than $1 trillion under management. As crashing banks revealed how spectacularly poorly the financial world had understood the complex and shady instruments it had put its money into, BlackRock, far from needing a bail-out, was something of an antidote. When the American government found itself owning or guaranteeing toxic assets, it turned to BlackRock, which was seen as having more limited conflicts of interest than everyone else concerned, to analyse, value and sell them. The company got similar business from Greece and Britain. Larry Fink became a Washington insider, his name floated as a chief for bailed-out banks, or later as a potential treasury secretary. In 2009, as others retrenched, BlackRock snapped up Barclays’ asset-management business, boosting the assets under its control to more than $3 trillion.
到2008年，经过20年的发展，再加上对美林（Merrill Lynch）部分资产的并购，黑岩得以管理的资产总额超过了1万亿美元。银行的倒闭揭示出，金融界在投资于复杂而见不得光的金融工具时，对这类工具的认识是何其肤浅，相比之下远离救助的黑岩就成为了解决这类问题的一剂良药。当美国政府意识到自身持有或担保有毒资产时，就把目光投向了黑岩，政府认为，与其他机构相比，由黑岩来管理这些资产所带来的利益冲突更为有限，希望由黑岩来负责分析、评估和出售这些资产。该公司也从希腊和英国获得了类似的业务。拉里·芬克由此成为了华盛顿的内幕人士，有人建议由他来出任受救助银行的总裁，后来又有人提议他担当财政部长。2009年，随着其他金融机构缩减开支，黑岩毫不犹豫地收购了巴克莱银行（Barclays）的资产管理业务，此举推动其管理资产总额突破3万亿美元。
&&8 It looks set to grow further. As post-crisis regulations cut the banking industry back down to size, much of what the banks used to own is flowing to capital markets. Pension funds, sovereign-wealth funds, endowments, insurance companies and asset managers will all look to buy them there, and many will do so through BlackRock. The company also has opportunities for growth in its thriving business with smaller clients (a third of its work is for retail investors saving for their retirement or a college fund). American personal bank accounts currently contain $10 trillion earning virtually no interest.
显而易见的是，公司注定还会成长。随着后危机时代的监管措施缩减了银行业规模，过去由银行所拥有的许多资产正流入资本市场。退休基金、主权财富基金、捐助基金、保险公司和资产管理人都想要购买这些资产，而且许多机构都会借助黑岩来达到这一目的。该公司还有机会在其红火的小客户业务上取得增长（其业务的三分之一来自于为退休或上大学而储蓄的小额投资者）。目前在美国个人银行账户中，有总额达10万亿美元的资金几乎不会产生任何利息。
&&9 One reason investors flock to BlackRock is that its purchase of the Barclays business made it a huge force in “passive” investment products such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs); these now account for 64% of its assets under management. Such instruments aim merely to track indices—the S&P 500, London’s FTSE and their equivalents in the bond world—and charge far lower fees than “active” mutual funds or hedge funds, which need to cover pricey research and trading teams. That said, BlackRock is not averse to earning such fees: with over $1 trillion in assets, its active management business is one of the biggest there is. Indeed some outsiders suspect that, as both businesses get bigger, accommodating the different cultures associated with ETFs and active management may become a problem for the company.
投资者涌向黑岩的一个原因是，其对巴克莱银行业务的收购使其在诸如上市交易基金（exchange-traded funds，ETFs）这样的“被动”投资产品上拥有了巨大的影响力；这些产品目前占其管理资产总额的64%。这些金融工具的目标仅仅是跟随大盘指数——标普500（S&P 500），伦敦富时（FTSE）以及债券市场的类似指数——并且其收费比“主动的”共同基金或对冲基金要低的多，这些基金要为研究和交易团队支付高额费用。这表明黑岩满足于这样的收费：其拥有超过1万亿美元资产规模的主动管理业务才是其现有最大收益来源之一。一些外部人士推测，随着两项业务的增长，如何调和ETFs和主动管理业务的不同文化将成为该公司的难题。
10 Since BlackRock mostly just invests its customers’ money on their behalf, it is, it says, a much safer source of financing for the economy than banks, which can find themselves without the money to pay off their depositors, and thus crash. As long as the firm does not become an investor in its own funds, which it shows no sign of doing, BlackRock can plausibly claim to offer little if any systemic risk. As with smaller asset managers, such as Vanguard, Fidelity or PIMCO, a fall in the value of the assets under management matters to the investors concerned, but has no knock-on effects. Regulators fret about some aspects of BlackRock’s operations, such as money-market funds—banklike vehicles which struggled in 2008. But mostly they seem to accept the arguments put forward by BlackRock and its lobbyists.
黑岩主要是代表客户进行投资，它宣称自身在为经济体融资来源方面比银行要安全得多，这些银行有可能缺乏资金以向储户兑现，并因此走向破产。只要不成为自身基金的投资者——目前还没有采取这一行动的迹象——黑岩就有理由宣称，在其业务中即使存在系统性风险，这种风险也是微乎其微的。同较小规模的资产管理人，如Vanguard，FIdelity和PIMCO一样，所管理资产价值的下跌会影响到所涉及的投资者，但不至于造成连锁反应。监管当局对黑岩运作方式中的某些方面一直感到担忧，如货币市场基金——这种类似银行的金融载体就在2008年陷入了困顿。但总的来说，他们似乎接受了黑岩及其游说团体的观点。
11 Mr Fink encourages the perception that the company is merely big, not special—perhaps even a little dull. He delights in drawing a contrast between the flashiness of Wall Street and his nondescript midtown Manhattan offices. He pulls a face when reminded that a former lieutenant described BlackRock as “one of, if not the, most influential financial institutions in the world.” Speak to anyone in markets, however, and they will agree with the assessment. “If you are looking to buy anything, or sell anything, or invest anything, it’s very difficult to get around BlackRock,” says the boss of a large European insurer.
芬克认为，该公司只不过是大一点而已，并无特殊——或许甚至还有点呆板。他乐于把其位于曼哈顿（Manhattan）中心区的朴素办公室与金碧辉煌的华尔街做对比。当被提醒到曾有一位前中尉军官将黑岩描述成“即使不是全世界最有影响力的金融机构，也是其中之一”时，他立马拉下脸来。然而若是对市场中的任何人讲这番话，他们就都会对这样的评价表示赞同。“如果你想买什么，或卖什么，再或是要投资什么，那你就很难绕开黑岩，”欧洲一家大型保险商的老板这样说道。
12 Because BlackRock is often their largest shareholder (see chart 2), companies care what it thinks, even if the nature of its ETF business means that its level of investment in them is to some extent predetermined (to track indices, the company needs to keep hold of large chunks of the biggest companies on the market). When Stuart Gulliver took over HSBC, a bank, in early 2011, he flew to New York to ask for Mr Fink’s support. And BlackRock prides itself on getting access to market-moving information just as any investment bank’s trading desk would. Marketing presentations boast of the “access advantage” enjoyed by BlackRock, using “deep relationships with government and corporate issuers” to put it “in the flow of the most current information”. That advantage is at least in part a factor of its awesome size.
由于黑岩通常是许多企业的最大股东，因此这些企业非常关心黑石的想法，即使ETF业务的本性意味着其对这些企业的投资规模从某种程度上说是预先设定的（为跟随大盘指数，该公司需要维持对市场上最大的几家企业拥有较高的持股份额）。斯图瓦特·格列佛（Stuart Gulliver）于2011年初接管汇丰银行（HSBC）时，就飞往纽约（New York）寻求芬克的支持。黑岩引以为豪的是能像任何投行的交易台那样获取市场动向。有许多营销策划都标榜拥有黑岩所享受的“渠道优势”，即利用“与政府和企业发行人的深厚关系”将自身置于“最实时的信息流中”。这一优势至少可以部分解释其惊人的规模。
The sentinel
13 There is another way that BlackRock is singularly important. A recent report by the Office of Financial Research, an arm of the US Treasury, contained a warning that asset managers which provide “consulting or pricing services to other asset managers [are] creating interconnections and dependencies that increase their importance in financial markets.” And through Aladdin, BlackRock provides such services on an epic scale.
而从另一个角度也能揭示出黑岩显著的重要性。美国财政部下属的金融研究办公室（Office of Financial Research）最近发布了一份报告，报告中警告，有一些资产管理人通过“向其他同行提供咨询或定价服务，在彼此间建立相互关联并使对方产生依赖，从而提升自身在金融市场的地位。”而凭借着阿拉丁，黑岩就能以极大规模来提供这类服务。
14 Who exactly pays to gain the system’s insights is not a matter of record, but a fair number of BlackRock’s asset-management rivals use it, as do banks, pension funds and insurers. Deutsche Bank’s investment arm, which manages EUR934 billion ($1.3 trillion), announced in November that it was migrating to the platform. Including those of BlackRock itself, Aladdin keeps track of 30,000 investment portfolios. Some of the clients use just the risk- about a third use Aladdin to manage their portfolios and process trades, too. The $400m the company can expect in annual fees from outside users goes a long way to meeting the costs of the system and the nearly 2,000 employees who run it.
究竟是谁在为获取这一系统对市场的深入分析而付费，目前还无迹可寻，但有一大堆黑岩的同行会利用它，银行、退休基金和保险商也会用到。管理着9340亿欧元（合1.3万亿美元）资产的德意志银行（Deutsche Bank）投资部门于11月宣布将迁移至这一平台。包括黑岩自身投资在内，阿拉丁总共关注着3万种投资组合。有一些客户仅使用风险管理服务；而约三分之一的客户会利用阿拉丁管理其投资组合并处理交易。该公司预计，每年向外部用户收取的费用达4亿美元，这远不够负担该系统成本以及负责其运行的近2000名雇员的薪水。
15 Aladdin, like the little Sun machine next to the company’s original fridge, is there to help people who manage money understand what they own. An institution like CalPERS—which uses Aladdin to keep track of the $260 billion it has invested to pay for the pensions of Californian public employees—needs to understand when its bonds will come to maturity, or how its assets will move if interest rates fall, or what would happen if a counterparty went bust. Aladdin is the tool it uses for the job.
就原来像摆在公司原来冰箱旁边的那个小型太阳机，阿拉丁的存在就是要帮助管理资金的人分析判断所掌握的资产。像CalPERS这样的机构——其利用阿拉丁来追踪其用于支付加州公共事业雇员退休金的2600亿美元投资——需要判断持有的债券何时到期，以及如果利率降低资产将如何变化，在或是当交易方破产时会出现什么情况。而阿拉丁就是为其完成这类工作的工具。
16 The system is based on a large and, its creators say, particularly well quality-controlled trove of historical data. On the basis of that information it uses “Monte Carlo” methods, which produce a large, randomly generated sample of the huge range of possible futures, to build up a statistical picture of what could happen to all sorts of stocks and bonds under a range of future conditions. These risk assessments cover both likely futures that matter day-to-day, and less probable but highly salient ones. A portfolio can, say, be stress-tested by being put through market turmoil modelled on that which followed Lehman Brothers’ collapse, to see what happens. Users can see their portfolio’s predicted response to a “tapering” of the Federal Reserve’s asset-buying programme or to the onset of a global flu pandemic.
设计者表示，该系统的基础是一个大型的，并且拥有极佳质量控制的历史数据库。在这些信息的基础上，系统采用“蒙特卡洛（Monte Carlo）”法，生成一个大型的随即样本，样本中涵盖了众多未来可能出现的情形，以此建立一个统计模型，揭示在一系列未来条件下所有种类的股票和债券的表现。这些风险评估过程中包括了可能每天都会发生的状况，以及并不时常出现但表现极为突出的事件。比如，某一投资组合可被置于模拟雷曼兄弟公司（Lehman Brothers）破产后的市场混乱环境中进行压力测试，以观察其反应。这样用户就能够看到其投资组合在应对美联储（Federal Reserve）资产购买计划规模递减或开始出现全球流感大流行时的预计表现。
17 The aim is not just to figure out how each stock, bond and derivative in a portfolio would move. It is also to check how correlated those movements are, and how that correlation could amplify a shock. For example: combining shares in an Indonesian bank, a bond issued by a European power company and a basket of mortgages secured on Canadian shopping malls might seem like a sensibly diversified portfolio. But some changes in credit availability might set them all tumbling. That is the sort of thing that Aladdin, having tracked such assets through previous crises, is meant to spot. Armed with insights from these simulations, traders managing large, complex portfolios can tweak their holdings accordingly.
这样做的目的不只是找出投资组合中每一种股票、债券和衍生品的未来市场表现。还在于检查这些表现之间的相互关联，以及这种联系会如何放大对市场的冲击。例如，把一家印度尼西亚银行的股票、一家欧洲电力企业的债券和以加拿大的购物中心为担保的一揽子抵押贷款结合起来，这看似是一种合理的多样化投资组合。但是可用信贷一旦生变就有可能使它们全部陷入重挫。而这就是阿拉丁通过分析以往危机来追踪这类资产所要查明的风险。凭借对这些模拟行为的分析结论，管理着大量而复杂的投资组合的交易员就能够及时调整其持有的资产。
18 This sounds like a useful force for stability, and to the extent that it provides a deeper understanding of risk it probably is. But the sheer size of the endeavour brings two linked worries to mind. The first is that institutions which buy this level of risk analysis from a third party are diverting resources away from developing those skills internally. “There’s no way you can get the same understanding of risk if you developed the capability in-house, versus getting it off the shelf,” says an investment manager at a $500 billion-plus fund which looked at implementing Aladdin.
这种做法听起来有助于维护市场稳定，并在这一意义上提供对可能的风险更深入的见解。但如此规模的大胆尝试从相互关联的两个方面引发了人们的忧虑。首先，购买这一层面风险分析服务的机构是在自废武功。“如果你自身拥有这种能力，与不具备这项能力相比，就不可能对风险产生同样的认识，”一位投资经理人说道，他来自于一家拥有资产超过5000亿美元的基金，正是这家基金负责监督阿拉丁的使用情况。
19 Not doing your own risk analysis means there is a danger that you will not fully understand the analysis done on your behalf. “You can look at all these risk reports and you get numb to what it actually means,” the investment manager says. Receiving three-dimensional bar charts by the bushel from BlackRock’s models is of limited use without the internal procedures necessary to make the best use of them, and a lack of in-house capability might lead those procedures to atrophy.
自己不做风险分析就意味着你将无法完全领会以你的名义所作的分析，这样做是危险的。“看遍所有这些风险报告，你会被其实际意义所麻木，”这位投资经理人说道。即使收到一大筐来自黑岩模型的三维条形图，如果没有必要的内部分析流程以最佳地利用这些图表，那么它们的意义也会非常有限，并且缺乏自身分析能力还可能使这些流程陷入停滞。
Broken circuit
20 If companies do not understand the risks they are taking that is mainly their lookout (though if they are big and highly leveraged, the danger spreads). The second worry is more systemic. The market price for any asset is in theory arrived at by buyers and sellers independently forming their own views of the asset’s worth, often using competing methodologies to reach their conclusions. BlackRock’s success means that more and more of the market is thinking in the same way. As participants each start fretting about broadly similar things, such as how a slowdown in emerging markets might impact their portfolios, they will be guided in part by BlackRock’s analysis. Buyers, sellers and regulators may all be relying on the same assumptions, simply because they are all consulting Aladdin. In a panic, this could increase the risk of all of them wanting to jump the same way, making things worse.
如果企业不了解所承担的风险，那么大体上他们就将自食其果（尽管如果这些企业规模大、负债高，威胁就会蔓延开来）。另一方面的担忧则更为系统性。从理论上说，任何一种资产的市场价格是由买卖双方独立对资产价值做出的评估结果所决定的，在评估中通常是以相互冲突的方法形成各自结论。黑岩的成功意味着在市场中越来越多投资者的思维方式趋于一致。随着每一个投资者都开始对广泛出现的诸如新兴市场增速放缓将如何影响其投资的这类问题而感到担忧时，他们就会寻求黑岩所做分析作为部分指导。买家、卖家和监管者可能都会依赖于相同的设想，仅仅因为他们都在咨询阿拉丁。在混乱中，这样的做法会增加所有人的风险，大家都以相同的方式逃生会让情况变的更糟。
21 Privately, some market participants fret that BlackRock’s genie is creating a new orthodoxy when it comes to analysing assets. That is especially true for complex structures which require its forensic expertise to unpick. “Nobody understands some of this stuff” without going through BlackRock, says a portfolio manager who uses Aladdin and regularly trades with the firm. A potentially worrying development is that it is now possible to engineer bonds to maximise the chances of BlackRock investing in them.
有一些投资者私下担心，黑岩这套神奇的系统在分析资产时是在创造新的投资准则。对于一些结构复杂的投资组合就更是如此，这些疑团需要依靠该系统的专门技术才能解开。&如果不借助黑岩，那么就“没有人能搞清楚这类投资”，一位投资经理人说道，他也在使用这套系统，并且与黑岩存在日常交易。一个引发人们潜在忧虑的发展趋势是，目前已经有可能设计出一些债券产品，使黑岩对这类产品进行投资的可能性最大化。
22 The disturbing parallel is with credit-rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s in the run-up to 2008. Investors blindly relied on the agencies’ analysis of financial constructs underpinned by subprime mortgages, many of which were engineered in such a way as to ensure AAA-rated status but subsequently defaulted anyway. BlackRock’s models are undoubtedly more sophisticated than the credit-rating agencies’, and their use is not mandated by regulators. But Mr Fink is the first to admit that they are flawed, too: “If you believe models are going to be right, you’re going to be wrong.”
这类似于2008年前在危机潜伏期中针对穆迪（Moody's）和标普（Standard & Poor's）这样的信用评级机构的不安情绪。投资者盲目依赖这些机构对复杂金融产品的分析，这些产品都是是以次级抵押贷款为支撑，其中许多是以迎合分析机构的方式来设计的，以确保其三A评级，然而它们最终都陷入了违约。黑岩所采用的模型毫无疑问要比信用评级机构的更为复杂，并且对这类模型的使用不受监管者制约。但芬克率先承认，这些模型也是有错误的：“如果你相信模型会是正确的，那你就会犯错。”
23 The question is whether BlackRock’s clients understand that they are not meant to rely on Aladdin’s prognostications for investing. BlackRock executives insist their models are designed to validate ideas that have been arrived at independently by clients rather than to generate them. That said, the company’s marketing materials talk of Aladdin’s services as a way to “see opportunities” in markets.
问题在于黑岩的客户是否清楚他们并不是打算依靠阿拉丁的预测进行投资。黑岩高官坚称，他们的模型是用来验证独立提供给客户的分析结论，而非制造结论。这就是说，该公司的营销部门是将阿拉丁提供的服务看做在市场中“发现机遇”的一种方式。
24 Mr Fink concedes the theoretical possibility of a herd mentality taking hold among users of Aladdin, but he is adamant that no such thing is happening in practice. “People can use our methodology or not,” he says. “Our models teach you the kerbs of the road, they don’t tell you the speed you should be travelling, or where the curves are in the road.” Most of what Aladdin does could be replicated in other systems like Bloomberg, Charles River, a consultancy, also provides very widely used analytic tools.
芬克承认，理论上在阿拉丁用户中有可能存在从众心理，但他坚信，在实际操作中不会出现这种情况。“人们可以选择是否使用我们的方法，”他说。“我们的模型是告诉你路有多宽，而不是你能开多快，或是在哪里转弯。”阿拉丁所做的大部分工作可以通过其他系统如Bloomberg来重演，他指出；而一家名为Charles River的咨询公司，也在提供被广泛应用的分析工具。
25 Half a dozen Aladdin users polled by The Economist, speaking on condition of anonymity, seemed to confirm this. They all said that they use BlackRock to supplement their own risk analysis, not as a substitute. “BlackRock’s analysis is one element our staff look at when we make investment decisions, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they guide us one way or another,” says a boss at a rival asset-management firm. Other factors are more likely to lead to groupthink in financial markets, he says. “My [staff] read The Economist, and the people they trade with read it too. That doesn’t make me nervous.”
有6位接受《经济学人》抽样调查的匿名阿拉丁用户表现出对这一观点的认可。他们都表示，使用黑岩的服务是为了补充他们自己的风险分析，而不是将其替代。“黑岩的分析结果是我们在做出投资决策时所关注的一个因素。但这并不意味着由这些结果来指导我们的投资，”一家资产管理同行的老板说道。其他一些因素更有可能影响金融市场中的集体决策，他说。“我的员工都看《经济学人》，他们的交易对象也看。但是这也没让我感到紧张。”
26 BlackRock’s diverse product range is good for its shareholders (who have seen their shares rise over 40% so far this year), and its ETFs have saved investors billions of dollars in fees. The company is widely expected to keep growing, though it may face some difficulties. The performance of its actively managed funds, while broadly good, is patchier than its supposed informational advantage might suggest, and the larger this part of the business gets, the harder it becomes to beat the market. The ETFs, for their part, will look less alluring in equity markets less bullish than those of the past few years.
黑岩多样化的产品线对股东有利（今年到目前为止，股价已上涨超过40%），其所持有的ETF为投资者节省了数十亿美元的费用。该公司被广泛看好，有望保持增长，尽管也可能面临一些困难。由黑岩主动管理的基金普遍表现良好，这样的表现与其分析结论更是格格不入，这部分业务的规模越大，该公司就越难跑赢市场。在不如前几年红火的股票市场中，ETF将失去吸引力。
27 And BlackRock’s perpetually “neurotic” outlook still looks like something that would have served the world well in 2008, had it been wider spread. But one lesson of that crisis was that investors needed to do their own legwork. If models are always wrong, as BlackRock posits, it should perhaps be a little worried that so many people are using the ones it offers. Maybe it is a source of correlation Aladdin could be asked to look out for.
黑岩所一贯坚持的“中立”态度至今仍体现出其意义，如果这类做法在2008年能得到推广，那就将造福世界。但那场危机也告诫投资者，要做好自己的苦差事。如果模型总是出错，就如黑岩所设想的那样，那么该公司就得操点心了，有这么多人正在使用着由其提供的模型。这家公司或许就是阿拉丁所要探寻的必然联系的源泉。
From the print edition: Briefing
1. 但这一机构自身是否也令人担忧呢？
＝》但这一 成就 自身是否也令人担忧呢？
2. commodities 不是 货物，是 大宗商品。
3. Sun Microsystems 中国大陆分公司原称作“太阳计算机系统（中国）有限公司”，现为“甲骨文（中国）软件系统有限公司”
4. That said, BlackRock is not averse to earning such fees:&&
不是“这表明黑岩满足于这样的收费”
而是：话说如此，黑岩并不厌恶 这些“主动的”共同基金 的收费。
5. “如果你自身拥有这种能力，与不具备这项能力相比，就不可能对风险产生同样的认识，”
＝》自身开发风险管理系统，与掏钱购买服务相比，所获得的对风险的理解完全不能同日而语。
6. That said, the company’s marketing materials talk of Aladdin’s services as a way to “see opportunities” in markets. 这就是说 ，该公司的营销部门是将阿拉丁提供的服务 看做 在市场中“发现机遇”的一种 方式。
＝》话说如此 ，该公司的营销部门可是将阿拉丁提供的服务 鼓吹成 在市场中“发现机遇”的一种 方法。
7. “Our models teach you the kerbs of the road, they don’t tell you the speed you should be travelling, or where the curves are in the road.”
“我们的模型是告诉你 路有多宽 ，而不是你 能 开多快，或是在哪里转弯。”
＝》 “我们的模型是告诉你 路边（路的边界、马路牙子）在哪里，而不是你 应该 开多快，或是在哪里转弯。”
8. The performance of its actively managed funds, while broadly good, is patchier than its supposed informational advantage might suggest, and the larger this part of the business gets, the harder it becomes to beat the market.&&由黑岩主动管理的基金普遍表现良好，这样的表现与其分析结论更是格格不入，这部分业务的规模越大，该公司就越难跑赢市场。
＝》由黑岩主动管理的基金的表现 虽说普遍良好，但还是与其鼓吹的信息优势（上文）不太协调；而且这部分业务的规模越大，（该业务）就越难跑赢市场。
9. neurotic 不是 中立，是 神经质，文中指blackrock小心谨慎的样子；neutral 才是 中立。
10. If models are always wrong, as BlackRock posits, it should perhaps be a little worried that so many people are using the ones it offers. Maybe it is a source of correlation Aladdin could be asked to look out for.
如果模型总是出错，就如黑岩所设想的那样，那么该公司就得操点心了，有这么多人正在使用着由其提供的模型。这家公司或许就是阿拉丁所要探寻的必然联系的源泉。
＝》如果模型总是会出错，就如黑岩所断言的那样，那么，有这么多人正在使用着由其提供的模型，这件事就有点让人担心了。这种 “模型集中化风险” 所带来的相关性，或许可以让阿拉丁 去探寻一下。
原创译评 +1
Powered by}