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Finance & economics
财经版块
Crisis watch
危机观察
Stupidly dangerous
愚蠢且危险
How chaotic markets took the financial system to the brink.
混乱的市场如何把金融体系逼至危机边缘。
For a good few hours on April 9th, disaster beckoned.
4月9日连续好几个小时，灾难似乎渐行渐近。
Share prices had been falling for weeks.
股价已连续下跌数周。
Then the market for American Treasury bonds—normally among the safest assets available—started convulsing, too.
随后美国国债市场（通常是最安全的资产之一）也开始剧烈震荡。
The yield on ten-year Treasuries leapt to 4.5%, up from 3.9% days earlier.
十年期国债收益率跃升至4.5%，较几天前的3.9%有所上升。
That meant bond prices, which move inversely to yields, had cratered.
这意味着债券价格（与国债收益率走势相反）已大幅下跌。
The failure of both risky and supposedly safe assets at once threatened to destabilise the financial system itself.
风险资产与理应安全的资产的同时失利已威胁到了金融体系本身的稳定。
Then everything changed.
然后一切都变了。
Late in the day, Donald Trump blindsided investors by saying he would delay many of the tariffs that had sparked the panic, for 90 days.
当天晚些时候，唐纳德·特朗普突然宣布，将推迟90天实施引发了恐慌的许多关税，此举令投资者措手不及。
Share prices surged: America’s S&P 500 index closed up 10%, marking its best day since 2008.
于是股价大幅上涨：美国标准普尔500指数收盘上涨10%，创下自2008年以来的最佳单日表现。
Treasury yields remain elevated, but as the chaos elsewhere subsides, that has less potential to cause damage.
国债收益率仍处于高位，但随着其他市场的混乱逐渐平息，其造成破坏的可能性已有所减弱。
The financial system came perilously close to the brink, and it is important to understand why, since the turbulence may well return.
金融体系一度岌岌可危地濒临崩溃边缘，理解个中缘由至关重要，因为动荡很可能会卷土重来。
Warning bells have been ringing everywhere.
警钟已在各处敲响。
Volatility gauges, derived from the insurance premiums traders pay to protect themselves from wild swings, have soared, though after Mr Trump’s announcement they fell back somewhat.
波动率指标源自交易者为防范市场剧烈波动而支付的保险费，这一指标已大幅飙升，不过在特朗普宣布推迟关税的消息后又有所回落。
For risk managers at banks and hedge funds, such moves can be a prompt to tell trading desks to offload risky positions, lowering the chances of a big loss.
对于银行和对冲基金的风控经理来说，此类波动可能促使他们指示交易部门抛售风险头寸，从而降低巨额亏损的可能性。（注：头寸即可运用的资金总和。）
If this happens at many institutions at once, the selling can make markets even wilder.
如果这种情况同时在多家机构发生，那么抛售行为会让市场变得更加动荡。
The dash for cash even sent the gold price down for a time.
抢换现金的行为甚至一度导致金价下跌。
Such stresses are deeply uncomfortable because they recall the last time the Treasury market seized up, at the onset of the covid-19 pandemic.
这种压力令人深感不安，因为它让人回想起上次国债市场陷入停滞的情景，那是在新冠疫情爆发之初。
Back then, heavy trading led to a liquidity shortage, meaning the difference between “buy” and “sell” offers widened sharply and the market became much less able to absorb large orders.
当时，大量交易导致流动性短缺，这意味着买卖价差急剧扩大，市场消化大额订单的能力大幅下降。
Trades that could take place moved prices far more than they normally would have done, adding to the volatility.
可能发生的交易对价格的影响远超平常，从而进一步加剧了市场波动。
Eventually the Federal Reserve had to buy large quantities of bonds to stabilise the market.
最终美联储不得不大量购入债券以稳定市场。
“Swap spreads” suggested a similarly alarming dynamic was in play this week.
“互换利差”暗示本周出现了同样令人担忧的动态。
These measure the gap between Treasury yields and interest-rate swap rates, which are the average of the overnight rates traders expect.
互换利差衡量的是国债收益率与利率互换率之间的差距，而利率互换率是交易者预期的隔夜利率平均值。
The two usually move together, since an alternative to buying a Treasury bond and receiving its fixed yield is to deposit money in the overnight market and earn a rolling interest rate there instead.
两者通常同步变动，因为购买国债并获取固定收益的替代方案就是将资金放入隔夜市场并赚取滚动利率。
But on April 9th yields on ten-year Treasuries rose to a record-breaking 0.6 percentage points higher than the rate on equivalent swaps.
但在4月9日，十年期国债收益率比同等互换利率高出0.6个百分点，创下历史新高。
The growing gap suggested that usual customers were reluctant to buy, given the enormous uncertainty haunting markets, according to Martin Whetton of Westpac, an Australian bank.
澳大利亚西太平洋银行的马丁·惠顿表示，日益扩大的差距表明，鉴于市场笼罩着巨大的不确定性，普通客户不愿购买国债。
Fire-sales probably exacerbated the damage.
抛售可能加剧了损失。
Wall Street banks have hit their hedge-fund clients with the steepest margin calls since 2020, meaning they must stump up cash to cover their lossmaking positions across asset classes.
华尔街银行向对冲基金客户提出了2020年以来最严苛的保证金追缴通知，这意味着客户必须提供现金来弥补各类资产中的亏损头寸。
Government bonds are among the easiest things to sell to raise the necessary funds (as is gold).
政府债券是最容易变现以筹集所需资金的资产之一（黄金也是）。
Yet if it is losses on these positions that triggered the margin calls in the first place, selling can make things worse.
然而，如果正是这些头寸的亏损首先触发了追加保证金的要求，那么抛售可能会让情况变得更糟。
It pushes prices down further, creating a self-reinforcing “doom loop” in which margin calls prompt sales, which prompt yet more margin calls.
这会进一步压低价格，形成一个自我强化的“厄运循环”，即追加保证金的要求引发抛售，而抛售又引发更多追加保证金的要求。
This is what happened in 2022 when British pension funds rapidly offloaded holdings of gilts to meet margin calls, sending prices down and yields up even faster.
2022年英国养老基金为满足追加保证金要求而快速抛售优质证券时，就出现了这种情况，导致证券价格下跌、收益率加速上升。
Eventually the Bank of England had to step in to break the spiral.
最终，英格兰银行不得不介入，从而打破这一恶性循环。
