Is There an AI Bubble? The Nifty Fifty Show It Isn’t That Simple


投资者需要一个新名词来形容一个没有泡沫但失望风险仍高于正常水平的市场。


芯片制造商英伟达的估值很高，但由于人工智能方面的投入，该公司最近的销售额增长了两倍。

人工智能(AI)正在催生泡沫吗？也许不是，但这波涨势仍有风险。 6park.com
Is artificial intelligence blowing a bubble? Probably not, but the rally is still risky. 6park.com
    
在眼下由AI憧憬带动的美国股市中，英伟达(Nvidia)已成为无可争议的领跑者。这家美国芯片制造商以及采购其产品来训练AI模型的科技巨头的估值都很高。这些公司合称为美股“七雄”(Magnificent Seven)。一些投资者担心泡沫可能正在膨胀。 6park.com
Nvidia has become the undisputed leader in a stock market powered by AI hopes. Valuations are lofty for both the U.S. chip maker and the technology giants that are buying its products to train their AI models—a group dubbed the Magnificent Seven. Some investors worry a bubble may be inflating. 6park.com
    
如今投资者无论是满怀憧憬还是感到恐惧，都可以借鉴20世纪70年代广为人知的“漂亮50”(Nifty Fifty)股票的命运。它们当时也都是实力雄厚的蓝筹公司，估值极高。这些公司的高估值是否真的合理，至今仍争论不休。 6park.com
The famous “Nifty Fifty” stocks of the 1970s are one guide to today’s hopes and fears. They were also powerful blue-chip corporations with extravagant valuations. Whether they ended up justifying them is still a matter of debate.



沃顿商学院(Wharton School)教授Jeremy Siegel在1998年发表的一篇知名文章中认为这是合理的。他指出，包含所有这些股票的一个投资组合总回报低于美股整体水平，但相差微乎其微，而且只是相对于1972年12月市场的最高点而言。 6park.com
In a famous 1998 article, Wharton School professor Jeremy Siegel argued that they did. A portfolio containing all of them had a lower total return than U.S. stocks overall, he showed, but by a minuscule margin and only relative to the very peak of the market in December 1972. 6park.com
   
四年后，波莫纳学院(Pomona College)的Jeff Fesenmaier和Gary Smith对此提出了质疑。鉴于从未有过一份官方的“漂亮50”股票名单，Siegel将菲利普莫里斯(Philip Morris)和通用电气(General Electric)等许多当时市盈率低于25倍的股票纳入他自己的名单。如果将“漂亮50”定义为50只估值最高的股票，那么其表现应会严重跑输大盘。 6park.com
Four years later, Pomona College’s Jeff Fesenmaier and Gary Smith disputed this. Since there was never an official list of the Nifty Fifty, Siegel included many stocks such as Philip Morris and General Electric, which had price-to-earnings ratios under 25. Defined as the 50 priciest stocks, the Nifty Fifty would have severely underperformed.  6park.com
    
两份名单中有一些共同的股票，Fesenmaier和Smith将这一组股票称为“超棒24”(Terrific 24)。要是投资者在1972年12月将1,000美元平均投资于这些股票，现在他们的银行账户中应会有95,000美元，这其中还经历了新冠疫情暴发后美股表现极其惨淡的时期。如果投资者当初购买的是标普综合1500指数成分股，那么他们现在将拥有18.5万美元。这些股票中，只有四家公司——麦当劳(McDonald's)、礼来(Eli Lilly)、默克(Merck)和得州仪器(Texas Instruments)——在此期间跑赢了大盘。 6park.com
Some stocks are common to both lists—a group that Fesenmaier and Smith dubbed the Terrific 24. Had investors split $1,000 equally between them in December 1972, they would now have $95,000 in the bank, following a particularly dismal performance since the pandemic. If investors had instead bought the S&P Composite 1500 index, they would have $185,000. Only four firms in the list—McDonald’s, Eli Lilly, Merck and Texas Instruments—have outperformed the market during this period. 6park.com
     
然而，Siegel有一点并没有说错。自1972年12月以来的51年中，“超棒24”中只有四家公司破产，其中宝丽来(Polaroid)和伊士曼-柯达(Eastman Kodak)的破产原因相同，那就是胶片摄影技术衰落。在12家仍独立运营的公司中，除了施乐(Xerox)和IFF这两个有待商榷的例外，其他公司仍然是大型蓝筹股。 6park.com
Yet Siegel still had a point. In the 51 years since December 1972, only four of the Terrific 24 have gone bust. Two of those—Polaroid and Eastman Kodak—were caused by the same event: the decline of analog photography. Of the 12 that remain stand-alone businesses, all still count as big blue chips, with the arguable exceptions of Xerox and IFF.  6park.com
    
诚然，1972年的多数热门股如今都面临着较冷淡的市场预期，这对“新经济”公司有利。不过，这些大公司能做到屹立不倒是非常难能可贵的。 6park.com
Sure, most of 1972’s hot stocks face cooler expectations in today’s market, which favors “new economy” firms. But the resilience of these big companies is still impressive. 6park.com
   
相比之下，在20世纪90年代末的互联网股票大牛市行情中，有大量互联网经济企业亏损。少数公司茁壮成长，以亚马逊(Amazon.com)、eBay和Booking.com最为突出。有些公司存活下来但默默无闻，如被IAC收购的Ask Jeeves。不过，在1999年大涨的70多只互联网股票中，大部分都已全军覆没。 6park.com
Contrast that with the late 1990s dot-com rally, which featured myriad loss-making online-economy ventures. A few thrived, notably Amazon.com, eBay and Booking.com. Some survived in obscurity, such as Ask Jeeves, which was acquired by IAC. Among the 70-odd internet stocks that rocketed in 1999, though, most were completely wiped out.

 6park.com


反观2021年的空白支票公司狂潮。一些上市后收入微薄的初创公司试图将尚不存在的技术应用于尚不存在的市场。空中出租车制造商就是一个例子。跟踪之前那些空白支票公司的Solactive旗下De-Spac指数峰值水平下降了90%。 6park.com
Or take the blank-check mania of 2021. In some cases, the revenue-light startups that went public—air taxi manufacturers, for example—wanted to apply tech that didn’t yet exist to a market that didn’t yet exist. Solactive’s De-Spac Index, which tracks former blank-check vehicles, is down 90% from its peak. 6park.com
   
当然，不高估老牌企业的盈利潜力也很重要。即使在“超棒24”中，选择投资估值最低的五只股票也会带来更好的回报：投入1,000美元可带来24.8万美元的回报。 6park.com
Of course, not overvaluing the earnings potential of established businesses is important. Even within the Terrific 24, picking the cheapest five stocks led to far better results: $1,000 would have turned into $248,000. 6park.com
    
但这种选股在性质上与猜测业务是否存在是不同的，就比如现如今的氢气卡车、21世纪初的宠物食品线上销售，或是18世纪英国南海公司吹嘘的垄断利润。这真正诠释了什么是泡沫：即如果泡沫破灭，你将失去一切。 6park.com
But this is different from speculating whether there is a business at all, be it in hydrogen trucks today, online sales of pet food in the early 2000s, or monopoly profits for the British South Sea Company in the 18th century. This is the true meaning of a bubble: If it pops, you lose it all. 6park.com
    
这轮AI助推下的美股涨势之所以看似有泡沫，是因为大语言模型的商业应用规模仍是未知的。风投资本现在正涌向大量初创企业，其中大多数无疑都将以失败告终。 6park.com
The AI rally can appear bubbly because the magnitude of the commercial application of large language models remains anyone’s guess. Venture Capital is now flocking to a panoply of startups, most of which will doubtless fail. 6park.com
    
但在美国股市上很难看到真正的泡沫。首先，IPO依然低迷。此外，对于像Alphabet这样的蓝筹股软件公司来说，通过生成式AI技术改善用户界面的商业案例几乎是肯定存在的，而这些公司已在芯片领域进行了大规模投资。英伟达2023年第四季度销售额同比增长两倍多。正因为如此，该股在一年内飙升240%的情况下市盈率仍只有31倍、低于近期平均水平。 6park.com
But it is hard to see a true bubble in the stock market. For one, initial public offerings remain subdued. Also, a business case for improving user interfaces through generative AI is almost certain to exist for blue-chip software companies like Alphabet, which are already investing massively in chips. Nvidia’s sales more than tripled in the fourth quarter of 2023 relative to a year earlier. This is why the stock’s price-to-earnings ratio is 31, below the recent average despite a 240% gain over one year. 6park.com
    
思科(Cisco)的案例说明了真正的风险所在。虽然该公司在2000年时126倍的市盈率显然有水分，但市盈率过高最终在很大程度上由盈利的波动体现出来。思科的问题不在于股价是否有泡沫，而在于向本身就是泡沫的公司销售网络设备。 6park.com
The case of Cisco illustrates where the real risk lies. While its price-to-earnings ratio of 126 in the year 2000 was clearly overblown, a big part of the problem ended up being the volatility of the earnings. The issue wasn’t being in a bubble, but selling networking equipment to firms that were. 6park.com
    
当数字化热潮褪去后，市场供过于求，思科的利润增速突然减半。从那时起，投资者开始将思科视为一家平淡无奇的硬件公司，如今其股价仍未达到互联网泡沫时的顶峰。 6park.com
When the digital rush ended, leaving the market oversupplied, Cisco’s profit growth suddenly halved. Investors have since come to value it as an unexciting hardware firm, and its shares are still shy of their dot-com peak.  6park.com
   
这就是那种应会让英伟达和AMD、Arm和阿斯麦(ASML)等其他芯片公司陷入困境的情形。不过对它们有利的一点是，与2000年的思科相比，这些公司的客户在财务上要可靠得多。 6park.com
This is the scenario that should trouble Nvidia and other chip companies, such as AMD, Arm and ASML. In their favor, they have a far more financially reliable customer base than Cisco did in 2000. 6park.com
    
说到蓝筹股，泡沫这个词就不恰当了，即使巨额利润被用来为前景极不确定的业务做准备。这样的市场应该叫什么名字呢？答案显而易见。 6park.com
When it comes to blue-chip stocks, the term bubble is a misnomer, even if vast profits are being spent and made to prepare for a business with highly uncertain prospects. What should such a market be called instead? Answers on a postcard.