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Finance & economics
财经版块
Buttonwood
梧桐树专栏
The new gold
新黄金
Safe-haven demand and solar panels have sent silver's price soaring.
避险需求和太阳能板使白银价格飙升。
It is a fabulous time to be a gold bug.
现在是成为黄金投资者的绝佳时机。
Not long ago, outing yourself as one was a good way of getting people to back away from you at an investment conference.
不久前，在投资会议上公开承认自己是黄金投资者会让人们对你敬而远之。
The popular image was of someone in possession of their own electricity generator, stacks of water-purification tablets and several years’ supply of tinned food.
黄金投资者在大众心目中的形象是那种拥有自己的发电机、堆放着大量的净水药片和够吃好几年的罐头食品的人。
Now it just features a shrewd investor.
现在这个形象只是精明的投资者。
Since the start of 2023 the shiniest asset’s price has soared by nearly 60% in dollars.
自2023年初以来，这一最耀眼的资产的价格已飙升近60%（以美元计算）。
That is more than any of the world’s leading share indices—including, after a turbulent couple of weeks, America’s S&P 500.
这超过了全球所有主要股指，包括经过了几周动荡后的美国标普500指数。
Yet the sweetest vindication goes to fans of another precious metal.
然而，最甜蜜的证明被另一种贵金属的爱好者收入囊中。
Even gold enthusiasts tend to view an ardent interest in silver as somewhat eccentric.
即使是黄金爱好者也往往认为对白银的狂热兴趣有些古怪。
To traders it is the “poor man’s gold” or “the devil’s metal”.
对交易者来说，白银是“穷人的黄金”或“魔鬼的金属”。
For years those nicknames were justified by silver’s lacklustre returns and the wild ride its price took along the way.
多年来，这些绰号被证明是合理的，因为白银的回报率一直不尽如人意，而且其价格经历了剧烈的波动。
The devil’s metal is still not for the faint-hearted.
魔鬼的金属依然不适合胆小之人投资。
But it has almost kept pace with gold over the past year and has outperformed it over the past five.
但白银在过去一年中几乎与黄金保持同步，并在过去五年中表现优于黄金。
With investment flows now following returns, a once-niche asset is inching towards the mainstream.
随着投资现金流现在开始追随回报，这个曾经小众的资产正逐渐走向主流。
Logic suggests that silver’s price should move similarly to gold’s.
逻辑表明，白银的价格走势应该与黄金相似。
It, too, is rare, pretty and inert, and so has been used to forge jewellery and coins for millennia.
白银同样稀有、漂亮、惰性，因此数千年来一直被用来制作珠宝和硬币。
This long-established role as a store of value lends it “safe-haven” appeal when investors are nervous.
白银长期以来有价值储存作用，当投资者感到紧张时，它便具有了“避险”的吸引力。
As with gold, the fixed amount of silver in the Earth’s crust ought also to make it a good hedge against inflation.
与黄金一样，地壳中的白银数量是固定的，这也应使其成为对抗通胀的好工具。
Sure enough, both metals’ recent rallies came as investors fretted over geopolitical chaos and persistently rising prices.
可以肯定，这两种金属最近的上涨都是因为投资者对地缘政治混乱和物价持续上涨感到担忧。
In doing so they overcame another common tendency, for their prices to fall when real interest rates rise and vice versa, since they generate no income.
这样一来，金银克服了另一个常见趋势，即当实际利率上升时，金银的价格下跌，反之亦然，因为金银不产生收入。
So much for theory.
理论部分就讲到这里。
In practice, different levels of mining supply and industrial demand ensure that the silver-to-gold price ratio is changing all the time.
在实际中，不同水平的矿产供应和工业需求确保了白银与黄金的价格比率始终处于不断变化之中。
Over the long term, that has led to decades of disappointment for silverites.
从长期来看，这导致白银支持者数十年来的失望。
For most of the 1970s you would have needed to sell 30 to 40 ounces of silver to buy one of gold.
在20世纪70年代的大部分时间里，你需要卖出30到40盎司的白银，才能买到一盎司的黄金。
Today it would be more like 90.
如今，这个数字可能会接近90。
