深度周期性股票的价值陷阱

就像画直线比用非线性的方式思考更容易一样，购买在过去10年里上涨了很多的股票，比继续投资于那些什么都没做的股票更容易。然而，线性是为傻瓜准备的。成功的投资不是来自于你能看到什么在你面前，而是隐藏在拐角处。以重型设备制造商卡特彼勒(Caterpillar)、迪尔公司(Deere & Co.)和Joy Global为例。人们很容易爱上这些深受周期性影响的公司，它们从过去10年大宗商品价格的上涨中获益。它们的股价在这段时间里上涨了好几倍，而且理由很充分:它们的销售额和利润在这段时间里增长了两到三倍。故事只会越来越精彩。预计卡特彼勒(Caterpillar)、迪尔(Deere)和喜悦全球(Joy Global)的收益将继续以两位数增长，直至本10年。从理论上讲，这些美国偶像应该是价值投资者的天堂，因为尽管它们过去取得了成功，人们也预期它们未来会有辉煌的增长，但它们的市盈率却低至两位数。便宜! But before you run out and spend your hard-earned money on these darlings, let’s see what might be around the corner. The past few years were characterized by fairly robust growth of the global economy. Part of this was simply a recovery from the 2008 crisis; however, a significant part was spurred by global stimulus. Let’s pause for a second and think about that. The 2008 global recession took place because of substantial borrowing from underreserved financial institutions that went into global malinvestment in fixed assets. That put a hurricanelike tailwind in the sails of deeply cyclical stocks. For eight years, until 2008, their sales and earnings grew as if Google were their middle names. Investors stopped treating them like cyclical stocks; they became deep seculars. The global fixed-asset bubble burst painfully in 2008, and the deeply cyclical stock story should have been over. After all, if you build too many things that will last you decades, you will not need to make more of them for a long time, and thus you will need a lot fewer earthmovers from Caterpillar. This would have been a rational expectation — and it would have been wrong. The sales and profitability of Cat, Deere and Joy Global have already surpassed the levels they reached before the 2008 crisis. Because of massive global government stimulus — turbocharged by China’s 12 percent-of-GDP mother of all stimuli, which was further amplified by off-the-charts leverage — the asset bubble has been reinflated over the past couple of years. The stimulus came at a significant cost: the increased leveraging of governments. Last year showed that there is an upper limit to how much developed-country governments can borrow, unless they are willing to borrow at double or triple their current rates. We are very likely entering a third leg of global deleveraging. The first two were by consumers and corporations, and to a large degree took place at the expense of the governments that took over their debts. Now we are entering the most painful stage: government deleveraging, which will be destimulating to the global economy and cause a monstrous decline in fixed-asset investment. Today investing in deeply cyclical stocks is not unlike a game of musical chairs. If you own these stocks, you are coining money while the music is playing. We know what will happen when the music stops: These stocks will plummet. Caterpillar, Deere and Joy Global benefit from operational leverage. A large portion of their costs is fixed, and as their sales increase, their margins do too. Their earnings are high because their profit margins are at an all-time high, but once the global economy slows down and demand evaporates, sales will decline. Their operational leverage will start working against them because costs will not decline as fast as sales, and margins will do what they’ve always done: They’ll revert toward the mean and in this case collapse. The companies’ earnings power will be completely reset and will not resemble anything even close to what it is today. Suddenly, stocks that looked so cheap will show their true colors.

当然，很难知道音乐什么时候会停止——明天，六个月后还是两年后。泡沫不会遵循预言者设定的时间表，即使有人预测泡沫会破裂。然而，持有这些周期性很强的股票的风险回报显然已转向不利领域。如果你认为你拥有完美的音高，能听到音乐停止，并能在其他人之前抢到一把椅子，不要欺骗自己。90年代的互联网投资者认为他们可以，但他们中很少有人能优雅地坐下来。••

维塔利Katsenelson (vk@imausa.com)是丹佛投资管理协会(Investment Management Associates)的首席信息官，著有《横向市场小书》(The Little Book of Sideways Markets)一书。