一个华尔街大佬的“黑色优势”
许多人不信任华尔街。他们认为华尔街只是为在那里工作的人服务的一个赚钱机器，在实践中无意像其宣称的那样，为企业输送资本，并帮助企业成长壮大，从而造福于整体社会。对于这些怀疑者来说，史蒂文•科恩(Steven Cohen)是一号证据。
Cohen’s former hedge fund, SAC Capital, came to dominate share trading on Wall Street before it pleaded guilty to insider trading charges in 2013 and paid $1.8bn in penalties. Cohen escaped criminal indictment himself despite being the living, breathing heart of SAC Capital (its name came from his initials) and now runs a private fund with $11bn in assets.
科恩曾经执掌的对冲基金SAC资本(SAC Capital)当年主导着华尔街的股票交易，后来在2013年承认从事内幕交易，并支付了18亿美元的罚款。科恩本人逃过了刑事起诉，尽管他是SAC资本的灵魂人物(该基金名称来自于他的姓名的首字母缩写)。现在科恩运营着一家拥有110亿美元资产的私人基金。
He may be down but he has not disappeared. The signs are that he will re-enter the hedge fund business next year, after settling a civil action. “I feel I’m a very blessed person, a very happy guy, and when I look at my career in totality, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world,” the billionaire responded flatly in a recent interview when asked about SAC’s downfall.
他可能处于低谷，但并未消失。有迹象显示，在了结一宗民事诉讼后，他将于明年再次进入对冲基金业务。这位亿万富翁最近接受了采访，在被问及SAC资本垮台的时候坦承道：“我觉得自己非常有福、非常快乐。当我从总体上回顾职业生涯的时候，我不想拿它跟世界上任何东西交换。”
Sheelah Kolhatkar, a New Yorker writer who has doggedly followed the SAC Capital story — the biggest Wall Street insider trading scandal since Ivan Boesky was jailed in the late 1980s — sheds plenty of light on how the hedge fund became “very blessed”. It’s a murky tale that reflects extremely badly both on Cohen and on investment banks such as Goldman Sachs that enabled him.
不懈追踪SAC资本故事的《纽约客》(New Yorker)作家施拉哈•科哈特卡尔(Sheelah Kolhatkar)详细揭示了这家对冲基金如何变得“非常有福”——该案是继上世纪80年代末伊万•博斯基(Ivan Boesky)被判刑以来华尔街最大的内幕交易丑闻。这是一个阴暗的故事，对科恩以及为其提供便利的高盛(Goldman Sachs)等投行来说都极不光彩。
Prosecutors and regulators could not nail Cohen, although they tried extremely hard. The closest they got was to jail for nine years Mathew Martoma, a close lieutenant who gained inside information about an Alzheimer’s drug from a doctor who was running its trial. There was insufficient evidence of any criminality by Cohen, although SAC profited hugely by trading in the companies involved.
检方和监管机构无法找到科恩的罪证，尽管它们做出了极大的努力。他们取得的最大成果是将马修•马拓玛(Mathew Martoma)判刑9年，后者是科恩的亲信，从一位从事阿尔茨海默病药物试验的医生那里获得了内幕信息。没有足够证据表明科恩的行为构成犯罪，尽管SAC通过交易相关公司的股票斩获暴利。
No reader of this book would conclude that Cohen is exactly innocent. He built a vast machine that relied on a web of data, some of it illicit. Even the way in which he gained legal insight leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. He paid big commissions to banks to let him know first of any new information, so he could beat other hedge funds and investors to the trade. It gave SAC what Cohen craved: an “edge” over competitors. There were, one SAC trader decided, various kinds of edge. “White edge” was expertise and insight that created legitimate trading opportunities; “grey edge” might be when a company executive dropped hints about its results — a nod and wink that did not quite amount to illegality. Then there was Martoma’s “black edge”.
任何看过科哈特卡尔撰写的《黑色优势》(Black Edge)的读者都不会得出科恩清白的结论。他打造了一台依赖大量数据的庞大机器，其中一些数据是非法的。就连他获得合法洞见的方式也让人皱眉。他向银行支付巨额佣金以便最先掌握新信息，让他抢在其他对冲基金和投资者前面进行交易。这使SAC得到了科恩渴求的东西：领先于竞争对手的“优势”。一位SAC的交易员当年总结道，该基金有多种优势：“白色优势”是创造合法交易机会的专业知识和洞见;“灰色优势”可能是一位公司高管在透露业绩线索时点头或眨眼，这很难算得上非法行为;还有就是马拓玛的“黑色优势”。
Cohen put huge pressure on traders to produce edge, but avoided knowing what shade it was. He demanded trading strategies accompanied by a “conviction rating” of one to 10, rather than an explanation of where they came from (Martoma gave his Alzheimer’s trade nine). This shielded SAC’s founder from legal jeopardy like “a moat around the company’s most valuable asset”.
科恩向交易员们施加巨大压力，要求他们取得优势，自己却回避了解这些优势的性质。他要求交易策略附上1-10的“定罪评级”，而不要求解释这些策略从何而来(马拓玛给他的阿尔茨海默病交易评了9级)。这使得SAC的创始人避免了法律风险，就像“保护公司最具价值财产的护城河”一样。
The quality that protected him most was the fact that he was, and always had been, a brilliant trader. He rose up the scrappy side of Wall Street, at a trading shop called Gruntal, rather than a glossy firm such as Goldman or Morgan Stanley. He was “exceptionally better than anyone else”, one former colleague recalled — original, instinctive, brazen and eager for risk.
最能保护他的特质是，他曾是、并且一直是出色的交易员。他是在华尔街好斗的一侧起家的，在一家名为Gruntal的交易公司、而非高盛或摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)等光鲜的大公司。一名前同事回忆称，科恩“比其他人出色得多”——具有独创思维、直觉灵敏、毫无忌惮并且渴望冒险。
Kolhatkar tells lucidly how Cohen started off as an outlier — a profane and disruptive figure who had no interest in economics, strategy, or even the companies whose shares he traded — and inexorably pulled Wall Street in his direction. He was in the vanguard of the shift in power from banks to hedge funds, the lightly regulated, freewheeling exploiters of capital.
科哈特卡尔清晰讲述了科恩如何从局外人——一个粗鄙和不按牌理出牌的人物，对经济学、策略、甚至他买卖股票的公司毫无兴趣——起步，最终无情地把华尔街带向了他的方向。他是推动力量平衡从银行转向对冲基金(监管宽松、不受约束的资本剥削者)的先驱。
Along the way, he changed the notion of what “investment” meant. He bought shares not to hold them, like traditional mutual and pension funds, but to trade in and out of them rapidly. It was highly profitable but it stripped away Wall Street’s cover story of being an engine of growth for the economy. Whether or not it was legal, it was unambiguously dubious.
一路上，他改变了“投资”的定义。他买股票是为了快速地买进卖出，而不是像传统的共同基金和养老金基金那样长期持有。这样做非常赚钱，但剥去了华尔街作为经济增长引擎的美丽包装。无论这么做是否合法，它无疑都是有问题的。
Cohen’s enforced absence from the industry has coincided with a tougher period for hedge funds. The question is whether humans can match computers: the growing force in finance are exchange traded funds, which mimic indexes and investment strategies at a fraction of the cost. He will be competing with a robot if he returns, and the robot has my support.
科恩被迫离开这个行业之时，适逢对冲基金较为艰难的时期。问题是，人类能否匹敌计算机：交易所交易基金(ETF)是金融领域日益壮大的力量，它以极低的成本来模拟指数和投资策略。如果科恩重返金融业，他将与机器人展开竞争，而我支持机器人。
Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street, by Sheelah Kolhatkar, Random House, RRP$28, 368 pages
《黑色优势：内幕消息、脏钱和追踪华尔街头号黑手》(Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street)，施拉哈•科哈特卡尔著，兰登书屋(Random House)出版，建议零售价28美元，368页
John Gapper is the FT’s chief business commentator
本文作者为英国《金融时报》首席商业评论员
Photograph: Bloomberg 图片来源：彭博
