股市学会适应特朗普Twitter言论

Until this week the state of Ivanka Trump’s clothing brand was mostly of interest to fashion bloggers. No longer. Last week, the retail chain Nordstrom decided to stop stocking her clothes after sales of the Trump fashion label tumbled.

直至上周以前，关注伊万卡•特朗普(Ivanka Trump)服装品牌王国的，主要是时尚博客写手。如今再也不是这样了。最近，在特朗普(Trump)时尚品牌的销量大幅下滑之后，美国零售连锁店诺思通(Nordstrom)决定停止销售伊万卡的服装。

Her father took revenge via his @realDonaldTrump account. He tweeted: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom . . . Terrible!”

伊万卡的父亲通过其id为@realDonaldTrump的Twitter账号实施了反击。他发消息称：“@Nordstrom对我的女儿如此不公……太差劲了!”

This is shocking on many levels. Never mind the fact that it looks unseemly for a president to attack any individual companies via Twitter, the onslaught against Nordstrom marks the first time that President Donald Trump has used his White House pulpit to protect his family brand (rather than merely complain about a policy issue). This crosses a new, and petty, line.

从许多层面来说，这么做都令人震惊。且不提一位总统通过Twitter网站向个别公司发起攻击看上去不够得体。对诺思通的抨击标志着，身为美国总统的唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)首次动用白宫讲坛捍卫其家族品牌(而不是仅仅抱怨某个政策问题)。此举跨过了一条新的、小家子气的红线。

But there is a second, even more important, twist to this tale, one that might offer unexpected reassurance for corporate boards. After the tweet attack, Nordstrom’s share price briefly dipped. But it ended the day 4.1 per cent higher — even though the overall Standard & Poor’s rose by just 0.1 per cent.

但是，这个故事还有更重要的二次曲折，它可能给企业董事会带来出乎意料的慰藉。在特朗普在Twitter上发动攻击之后，诺思通股价虽短暂下跌，却在当天收涨4.1%——尽管大盘标普(S&P)指数只上涨了0.1%。

This is striking. And it may not be a fluke. The Financial Times has crunched data on 30 cases in which companies have been targeted by that @realDonaldTrump account. The sample size is small and the data only start on January 1. However, this limited analysis shows that Mr Trump’s tweets have had surprisingly little effect on share prices so far, irrespective of the media hullabaloo.

这一点很有意思，而且它也许不是个别现象。英国《金融时报》曾对30宗案例的数据加以分析，这些案例中的企业都被@realDonaldTrump账号攻击过。样本的数量很少，相关数据也只是从1月1日才开始统计。然而，这一有限的分析显示：到目前为止，不论有没有媒体炒作，特朗普在Twitter发布的消息对股价的影响都出乎意料地低。

Yes, an assault has sometimes dented a stock: when Mr Trump complained about Toyota’s Mexican plants on January 5, for example, the Japanese company’s share price fell about 1.2 per cent in the following 24 hours; similarly, the share price of CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, tumbled about 0.65 per cent on January 25 after an attack on the news station.

没错，有时候一次攻击确实会影响一支股票：比如，1月5日特朗普抱怨丰田(Toyota)在墨西哥建厂后，这家日企的股价在24小时内下跌了大约1.2%;与此类似，1月25日抨击有线新闻网(CNN)后，CNN母公司时代华纳(Time Warner)的股价下跌了0.65%左右。

But when Mr Trump criticised General Motors on January 3, the carmaker’s share price rose nearly 0.89 per cent in the first 24 hours after the market was open. When he attacked CNN on January 16, Time Warner shares rallied more than 0.77 per cent.

但是，1月3日特朗普批评通用汽车(General Motors)后，这家汽车制造商的股价在开盘后24小时内上涨近0.89%。而1月16日他抨击CNN时，时代华纳股价上涨逾0.77%。

And while there is a little more evidence that a positive presidential tweet can boost a share price, the impact is relatively small. Fiat Chrysler and Ford, for example, enjoyed a share price rally after presidential praise. But when a Trump tweet celebrated Fox on Jan 21, the share price of its parent company, 21st Century Fox, actually fell.

与此同时，尽管有少量证据证明总统积极的Twitter消息可能提振一只股票的价格，其影响相对较小。比如，在得到总统赞赏后，菲亚特克莱斯勒(Fiat Chrysler)和福特(Ford)股价曾出现上扬。但是，1月21日特朗普在Twitter上说福克斯(Fox)好话后，其母公司21世纪福克斯(21st Century Fox)的股价实际上下跌了。

One might argue it is difficult to infer too much from a mere month’s worth of data, particularly given that, overall, the markets seem to be behaving in some perverse ways. Most notably, the overall level of stock market volatility has been astonishingly low since the start of the year, even though indices of global political and economic uncertainty stand at two-decade highs. This suggests that investors are so optimistic — or complacent — about the outlook for growth, that they will shrug off any amount of bad news, including bizarre tweets.

人们可以辩称，从仅仅一个月的数据很难推断太多东西，尤其是考虑到整体而言市场的表现似乎有些反常。最值得注意的是，自年初以来，即使全球政治和经济不确定性指标都处于20年来最高水平，但股市的整体波动水平一直低得令人惊讶。这似乎表明投资者对增长前景非常乐观(或者说自满)，以至于他们对任何数量的坏消息，包括奇怪的Twitter帖子，都不加理会。

Another caveat: no one knows whether Mr Trump will actually turn his Twitter threats into tangible actions. If he ever slaps real import tariffs on car companies with plants in Mexico, for example, that will produce a much more dramatic effect than if he merely tweets about that threat.

另一个问题在于：没人知道特朗普会不会把Twitter上的威胁化为实际行动。例如，如果他真的对在墨西哥建厂的汽车企业实施进口关税，那造成的影响会比只在Twitter上进行威胁大得多。

But leaving aside those caveats, the message from the data is clear: corporate boards do not necessarily need to press the panic button if they end up in the president’s cross hairs. Yes, the experience will be deeply unpleasant. And yes, company boards certainly need to prepare. And, unsurprisingly, most large companies have already done this by conducting practice “drills” that borrow some of the public relations lessons learnt from weathering activist attacks.

但是抛开这些局限性，这些数据发出的信息是清楚的：如果企业成为总统的靶子，企业董事会不一定需要慌乱。没错，这种体验会很不愉快。没错，企业董事会的确需要做好准备。而且，并不令人意外的是，大多数大型企业已经通过实战“演练”做好了准备——借助它们从应对活动人士的攻击中学到的一些公关经验。

In spite of all these war games — or, more accurately, precisely because these are taking place — those tweets may be losing some of their ability to shock. Investors and companies are adapting quietly to a new paradigm.

尽管(或者更准确地说是因为)有所有这些战争游戏，那些Twitter帖子可能失去了一些冲击力。投资者和企业正在悄悄适应一种新的范式。

That will not please Mr Trump — he is a man who wants to wield power, after all. Nor will it reassure people who worry about the longer-term damage to America’s reputation, and business confidence, that might be caused by these capricious tweets.

对此特朗普不会感到高兴——毕竟，他是一个想要呼风唤雨的人。另一方面，那些担忧特朗普“任性”的Twitter帖子可能在长期损害美国声誉和商业信心的人，也不会因此安心。

But the next time that the president tries to bully a company with his @realDonaldTrump account — and there almost certainly will be a next time — corporate boards would do well to remember Nordstrom. Although the president is very powerful, there are limits to his practical and symbolic power, even if no one quite knows exactly where those limits will really lie.

但下次总统试图用他的@realDonaldTrump恫吓一家企业的时候——几乎可以肯定会有下一次——企业董事会最好记住诺思通的例子。尽管总统的权力很大，他的实权力和象征性权力是有界限的，即使没人准确知道这些界限究竟应该划在哪里。

gillian.tett@ft.com

译者/何黎