In June, economists will mark the 10th anniversary of the end of the Great Recession. But even as traumatic memories of that crisis recede, investors collectively have grown more jittery in anticipation of the next one. Market volatility has soared as relatively minor economic setbacks trigger frequent, dramatic selloffs. And over the past 12 months, at the same time that U.S. stock indexes have notched new records, mutual-fund shareholders have pulled out about $100 billion more from stock mutual funds and ETFs than they put in—a sign of mounting unease among Main Street savers.

Ask the pros and they’ll tell you that the caution underlying those jitters is justified. Indeed, 77% of economists expect a recession by the end of 2021, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, with slowing corporate earnings in the U.S. and sluggish growth abroad stacking the deck against the economy. Investors tend to forget, however, that not all recessions trigger market crashes. David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, argues that the severe impact of the past two recessions has conditioned us to expect the worst. “We often assume when we have a bear market, it’s going to be a grizzly bear,” says Kelly. “But it might just turn out to be a koala bear.”

That said, even koalas have teeth, and nobody wants to get bitten. Here, Fortune’s writers take a look at five lesser-known economic indicators that offer reliable clues about a future slowdown, along with advice about how to react—without overreacting—to bears of any size.

今年6月经济学家将宣布大衰退已结束10年。不过，尽管那次危机带来的痛苦回忆已经消散，但整体而言投资者想到下一次衰退时会变得更为惶恐。市场波动性大幅上升，原因是较小的经济回落引发了频繁的大规模抛售。过去12个月，就在美股指数连创新高之际，投资者从共同基金和交易所交易基金（ETF）中净撤资约1000亿美元，这表明老百姓越发感到不安。

说到好的一面，经济学家会告诉你这些紧张表现背后的谨慎心态合情合理。实际上，据美国国家经济研究局介绍，77%的经济学家预计2021年底前美国经济将出现衰退，届时公司利润增速将下滑，海外经济的缓慢增长也将为美国经济设下陷阱。但投资者往往会忘记并非所有衰退都会造成股市崩盘。摩根大通资产管理公司首席全球策略分析师大卫·凯利指出，此前两次衰退的严重影响让我们习惯于做出最坏打算。凯利说：“我们经常假设，如果出现熊市，那将是一头‘大灰熊’，但实际上它也许只是一只‘树袋熊’。”

不过，就算是树袋熊也有牙齿，而且任何人都不想被咬。下面，《财富》杂志撰稿人将探讨五个不那么知名但能为今后的经济滑坡提供可靠线索的经济指标，同时就如何应对提出建议，以便大家对任何尺寸的“熊”都不会反应过度。

The Yield Curve

When low rates augur bad news

For five days in late March, the three-month Treasury bill paid higher interest than the 10-year note—and cast a gloomy cloud over many investors’ outlooks. The event was an example of the one omen economists rely on more than any other to predict recessions: an obscure-sounding metric called the inverted yield curve. “Not only is it the most reliable, it’s really the only one,” says Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s chief investment officer of global fixed income.

The yield curve is the gap between interest payouts (“yields”) on long-term government bonds—say, 10-year Treasuries—and yields on their short-term counterparts, such as the two-year note or three-month T-bill. Normally long-term bonds pay more, because investors are willing to hold on to a bond for a decade only if they’re compensated more for their patience and risk—so the curve is positive. But occasionally, investors become convinced that interest rates and stock returns will be so low in the future that they’re better off buying long-term bonds now, to lock in today’s yields (even if they’re relatively low) and own an asset that will be less risky than the alternatives. They buy more, driving yields below short-term rates; the yield curve goes negative, or “inverts”; and economists and investors fear bearish times ahead.

Is the yield curve a reliable recession predictor? “Not only is it the most reliable, it’s really the only one,” says one investor.

It’s a phenomenon that has preceded the past nine recessions since 1957, according to economic data from the Federal Reserve. There’s just one big caveat: Flat or inverted curves have also generated at least three false alarms—most recently during the dotcom boom times of 1998, when, after an inversion, the stock market proceeded to rise 55% before it peaked. As Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist for CFRA, put it in a research note: “While all trout are fish, not all fish are trout.”

There’s reason to think this latest fish is one to throw back. Kelly of J.P. Morgan notes that historically, the Fed has to raise interest rates much higher than they are today before the curve inverts. “You need a bubble, you need excess, you need above-average growth before we have a problem,” adds Andrew Slimmon, managing director at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Other experts argue that the indicator is no longer meaningful in the post–financial crisis era, as unprecedented bond buying by central banks has distorted bond spreads. Still, when people tell Slimmon the predictor doesn’t apply anymore, he says, “My response is, ‘Explain to me why, every time in the past, this is consistent?’ ” One other trend that anxious investors often miss: Even should the yield curve invert again and stay inverted, investors will still likely have at least a year to adjust their portfolios before a recession hits. Adjusting might mean rotating into less highly valued stocks, keeping more in cash, and scooping up shorter-term bonds while their higher yields last. —Jen Wieczner

收益率曲线

低利率预示坏消息的时候

3月底的5天里，3个月期美国债的收益率超过了10年期美国债，这给许多投资者的预期蒙上了一层阴云。这样的情况正是经济学家最为看重的衰退预兆，它有一个很难懂的名字，叫做收益率曲线倒挂。贝莱德全球固定收益部门首席投资官瑞克·莱德说：“它不光是最可靠的，其实也是唯一的。”

收益率曲线是长期（比如10年期）政府债券所付利息（“收益”）和短期（比如2年期或3个月期）政府债券所付利息之差。长期债券的收益通常较高，因为在回报大于他们付出的耐心和承担的风险时，投资者才愿意将一只债券持有10年之久。所以收益率曲线会在零以上。但投资者偶尔也会相信今后的利率和股票回报率将非常低，所以他们最好现在就买进长期债券，从而锁定现有收益率（尽管目前收益率也较低）并持有风险不像另类投资那么高的资产。投资者增持会造成长期债券收益率低于短期债券，从而使收益率曲线跌至零以下，也就是“倒挂”。这将使经济学家和投资者担心今后的局势将变差。

收益率曲线是可靠的衰退预兆吗？一位投资者说：“它不光是最可靠的，其实也是唯一的。”

美联储的经济数据显示，1957年以来的九次经济衰退前都出现了这种情况。此外，需要强调的只有一点，那就是持平或倒挂的收益率曲线至少发出过三次假警报。最近的一次是在1998年的互联网热潮期间，那次倒挂后美股继续上涨了55%，随后才见顶。正如股票独立研究机构CFRA首席投资策略分析师山姆·斯托沃在研究报告中所述：“虽然鳟鱼都是鱼，但并非所有的鱼都是鳟鱼。”

有理由认为可以把这条最新出现的“鱼”扔回水里去。摩根大通的凯利指出，历史上，收益率曲线倒挂前美联储都不得不把利率提高到远高于目前的水平。摩根史丹利投资管理公司董事总经理安德鲁·斯利蒙也称：“出现问题前得有泡沫，有过剩，有高于平均水平的增长率。”而其他专家认为，后金融危机时代该指标已经没有意义，原因是各家央行空前的购债行为已经扭曲了债券收益率差。但对于此项指标已不再适用的说法，斯利蒙说：“我的回答是‘告诉我为什么以前每次都是这样呢？’”焦虑的投资者往往看不到另外一种走向，那就是尽管收益率曲线再次倒挂而且一直保持倒挂状态，但衰退来袭前投资者仍可能有至少一年时间来调整投资。这样的调整也许意味着转向估值不那么高的股票，更多地保留现金以及趁其收益率较高时增持期限较短的债券。—Jen Wieczner

Auto Loans

America’s other subprime problem

U.S. auto sales bounced back long ago from their Great Recession lows, but car buyers aren’t doing so well. At the end of 2018, more than 7 million Americans were in “serious delinquency,” or 90 days past due, on their auto loan payments, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That total represents an all-time high—and a further spike could send troubling ripples through the broader economy.

As the New York Fed noted, the numbers indicate “not all Americans have benefited” from a strong labor market. Borrowers between the ages of 18 and 29 had the highest delinquency rate of any age group, in another sign of how younger adults—often saddled with student debt obligations that sap their disposable income—are struggling to establish themselves.

But cash-strapped borrowers aren’t the only destabilizing factor. As big banks like ¬JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have stepped back from the sector, nonbank lenders that specialize in auto finance have filled the void. Many of them are “not regulated as prudently as banks are,” according to Mayra Rodríguez Valladares, managing principal at financial consultancy MRV Associates, and “have been loosening their underwriting standards.”

As a result, there is more borrowing than ever—with $1.27 trillion in loans outstanding at the end of 2018—and an unusually high percentage of borrowers are risky. Some 22% of auto loans, and 50% of those underwritten by auto-finance companies, qualify as subprime, according to the New York Fed. “We’re seeing loans where people are paying 29% interest for a loan on a 10-year-old [used] car,” says Eric Poe, COO of CURE Auto Insurance, based in Princeton, N.J. Wall Street has fueled this dynamic via its appetite for auto loan asset-backed securities, whose total outstanding value reached a record $222.8 billion in 2018, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA).

Overstretched young borrowers, loose regulations, iffy loans “securitized” for investors. If that pattern gives you a queasy sense of déjà vu, you aren’t alone: Analysts agree that the dynamics are similar to the subprime mortgage lending boom that preceded the last recession. The good news is that the auto loan market is far smaller than the mortgage market. (Subprime mortgages alone represented around $1.3 trillion of the mortgage market in 2007—larger than the entire auto loan market today.) And the effects of any crisis would be smaller too. Still, a spike in delinquencies would likely be bad news for investors in banks with auto loan exposure, for some insurance companies, and, of course, for the automakers themselves. Buckle up, and watch the road. —Rey Mashayekhi

汽车贷款

美国的另一个次贷问题

美国汽车销售早已从大衰退时的低点反弹，但购车一族的情况并不是那么好。纽约联储银行的数据显示，2018年底有700多万美国人“严重拖欠”汽车贷款，也就是逾期90天，这是一个前所未有的数字。如果它进一步上升，就有可能对整个经济产生令人不安的影响。

正如纽约联储银行所说，这个数字表明火热的就业市场“并非惠及所有美国人”。在各年龄段中，18-29岁的贷款购车者的拖欠率最高。这再次表明年轻成年人的自立之路是如何的困难——他们的可支配收入往往都消耗在了学生贷款上。

但手头吃紧的借款人并非唯一的不稳定因素。摩根大通和富国银行等大型银行已退出这个领域，专营汽车金融业务的非银行贷款机构则填补了这些空缺。财务咨询公司MRV Associates负责人维拉·罗德里格斯·瓦拉达雷斯介绍说，其中许多机构“受到的监管都不像银行那么谨慎”，而且“一直在降低贷款标准”。

因此，美国汽车贷款规模达到了历史最高点——截至2018年底，汽车贷款余额为1.27万亿美元，而且有风险的借款人所占百分比也异乎寻常的高。纽约联储银行的数据显示，约22%的车贷属于次级贷款，在汽车金融公司的贷款中，这个比例则为50%。新泽西州普林斯顿市汽车保险公司CURE Auto Insurance首席运营官埃里克·坡说：“我们看到有人为已经开了10年的[二手]车贷款，而且利率是29%。”华尔街对汽车贷款类资产支持证券的偏好在这方面起到了推波助澜的作用。美国证券业与金融市场协会的数据表明，2018年此类证券的流通在外总价值已达到创纪录的2228亿美元。

贷款过多的年轻人、松懈的监管以及面向投资者的问题贷款“证券化”。对于这样的“组合”，感觉似曾相识的人可不只你一个。分析师都认为这种情况类似于上次衰退前飞速扩张的次级抵押贷款。好消息是汽车贷款市场要比抵押贷款市场小得多（2007年，抵押贷款市场中约有1.3万亿美元的次贷，比目前整个汽车贷款市场的规模还大）。如果出现车贷危机，其影响也会较小。不过，对从事车贷业务的银行的投资者、部分保险公司，当然还有汽车厂商来说，拖欠贷款人数增多可能是个坏消息。请大家系好安全带，并且注意路况。—Rey Mashayekhi

China’s Consumers

Forget GDP—keep an eye on retailers and tourists

Over the course of a single day this January, Apple lost $74 billion in market capitalization, after warning investors that spending in the country it most relied on for growth—China—was slowing. Investors in Ford Motor Co. and Japanese electronics giant Panasonic endured similarly ugly days soon after, for the same reason, a reminder of how broad and bitter the impact of a Chinese slowdown could be.

The question is how to forecast that slowdown. The usual barometer of a nation’s economic health, GDP, is widely seen as unreliable in China. Local governments are rewarded for hitting growth targets set by the central government and so self-report impressive numbers; many commentators believe the central government also smooths out the data. Chang-Tai Hsieh, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, coauthored a paper earlier this year making the case that China had overstated GDP by about 15% in 2016.

Even if the figures were reliable, GDP arguably can’t fully capture a rapidly changing ecosystem in which consumer spending is overtaking heavy industry as an economic driver. “GDP doesn’t tell you if a project is good or bad, or if services are useful,” says Yukon Huang, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and former China director at the World Bank. “It just tells you what is being produced—and it doesn’t matter if it’s ghost cities or roads that don’t go anywhere.”

For a more trustworthy indicator, many investors look at household expenditures and personal income data, published by China’s National Bureau of Statistics (available on its website in English, as well as in news reports). Hsieh argues that those reports’ survey-driven methodology makes them harder to manipulate. Professional investors, meanwhile, reinforce that information with harder-to-find consumer data that’s completely outside the state’s control. Andy Rothman, an investment strategist at mutual fund firm Matthews Asia, cites import-export statistics and data on Chinese tourism spending in Japan as examples.

“GDP doesn’t tell you if a project is good or bad, or if services are useful,” says one China expert.

What story are Chinese consumers telling the world right now? It’s a cautiously upbeat one, and one that suggests they won’t be the trigger for the next recession. Income growth slowed in the fourth quarter of 2018, to 6.5% year over year, its slowest pace since 2016. Retail activity remains robust: In fact, consultancy eMarketer expects Chinese retail spending to hit $5.6 trillion this year—-exceeding American retail spending for the first time ever. The warning sign to watch for: Nicholas Lardy, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says investors should worry if income growth lags China’s reported GDP growth rate over multiple quarters. That would be a signal to reduce exposure to emerging markets, where business fortunes rise and fall with China. —Lucinda Shen

中国消费者

忘掉GDP，盯紧零售商和游客

今年1月，苹果公司警告投资者说，作为该公司在增长方面最为倚重的市场，中国的消费增速正在放慢。此后短短一天内，苹果的市值就蒸发了740亿美元。不久之后，福特汽车和日本电子行业巨头松下的投资者也遇到了相似的“糟心日子”，而且原因也一样。这让人们再次意识到中国经济放缓的影响会有多么的广泛和严重。

问题在于怎样预见到中国经济将放缓。外界普遍认为，国家经济健康状况的常用指标GDP对中国来说并不可靠。地方政府实现中央制定的增长目标可以得到嘉奖，所以他们会报出让人眼前一亮的数字，而且许多评论人士都认为中央政府会熨平这些数据。芝加哥大学经济学教授谢长泰今年早些时候参与撰写的报告认为，中国将2016年GDP高估了15%左右。

就算以上数字可靠，也可以认为GDP无法让人全面把握一个快速变化的生态系统——在这个系统中，消费开支正在取代重工业的经济引擎地位。卡内基国际和平研究院高级研究员、世界银行前中国业务局局长黄育川说：“GDP并不能告诉你一个项目是好是坏，或者服务是否有用。它只是告诉你正在生产哪些东西，而且它是否包括那些鬼城和闲置道路也不重要。”

为找到更可信的指标，许多投资者都把目光投向中国国家统计局公布的居民开支和个人收入数据（该局网站上有英文信息，新闻报道中也可看到这些数字）。谢长泰认为，这些统计报告采用基于调查的方法，这提高了操控数据的难度。与此同时，职业投资者用更难找到的而且完全不受政府控制的消费者数据强化了这些信息。共同基金公司Matthews Asia投资策略分析师安迪·罗斯曼举的实例包括进出口统计数据和中国游客在日本的消费额。

一位中国专家说：“GDP并不能告诉你一个项目是好是坏，或者服务是否有用。”

现在中国消费者正在给世界讲什么故事呢？这个故事谨慎乐观，而且表明中国消费者不会是下一次衰退的诱因。2018年第四季度中国居民收入同比增速降至6.5%，是2016年以来的最低点。零售则依然活跃。实际上，咨询公司eMarketer预计今年中国零售支出将达到5.6万亿美元，历史上首次超越美国。说到要关注的警示信号，彼得森国际经济研究所高级研究员尼古拉斯·拉迪认为，如果收入增速连续几个季度低于中国公布的GDP增速，投资者就应该感到担心。那就是降低新兴市场仓位的信号，因为这些地区的商业形势会随着中国起起落落。—Lucinda Shen

Corporate Debt

How much borrowing is too much?

Even in good times, servicing the interest on a hefty debt load can hurt a company’s profitability. In the face of a slowing economy or rising interest rates, you get a double or triple whammy. All of which makes it sobering to realize that global business debt now exceeds $66 trillion, up from $29 trillion before the financial crisis, according to consultancy McKinsey.

Total U.S. corporate debt remains near its all-time high of 73.5% of GDP, at about $15 trillion. Corporate bond debt hit $9.2 trillion at 2018’s close, according to securities industry estimates. And although interest rates have been low, much corporate debt represents higher-risk, more-expensive borrowing. At the end of February, more than 20% of U.S. corporate debt was rated in riskier junk categories, according to Fitch Ratings, and 46.7% was classified BBB, one step above junk.

Some industries are swimming in more debt than others. Patrick Finnegan, a senior director at Fitch Ratings, identifies health care, pharma, food and beverage, and energy among the sectors that have built up heavy leverage, with much of it going to fund mergers and acquisitions. Leverage isn’t inherently bad, of course, if a company’s earnings are strong enough. To figure out whether a given company’s debt load is manageable, McKinsey partner Susan Lund recommends checking whether its interest coverage ratio—revenue divided by interest payments—is at least 1.5. Lund estimates that 5% to 6% of U.S. companies fail to clear that bar, while as many as 25% of companies in emerging markets fall short.

That latter figure is troubling because businesses in emerging markets, including China, are particularly dependent on bank debt—that is, loans. This debt is largely opaque—it’s not easy for investors to tell how much companies have borrowed. And bank debt is more likely to be “variable rate,” meaning that interest payments on the loans go up if rates rise more broadly in the market.

To reduce exposure to corporate debt if rates spike, Tom Graff, head of fixed income and a portfolio manager at Brown Advisory, suggests steering clear of bond ETFs, whose prices could get very volatile if investors stampede out when interest rates rise. (Try open-end mutual funds or direct bond buying instead.) And in both the bond and stock markets, look for clean balance sheets: If a company has a heavy debt load, now’s a good time to walk on by. —Erik Sherman

公司债务

借多少钱才算过多？

即使是在情况良好的时候，为巨额债务偿还利息也有可能削弱公司的盈利能力。面对不断减速的经济或持续上升的利率，公司受到的打击将是前者的两倍或三倍。咨询公司麦肯锡的统计显示，全球公司债务现已突破66万亿美元，而金融危机前的规模为29万亿，鉴于前述原因，了解这些数字会让人变得清醒。

美国公司总负债为15万亿美元左右，占美国GDP的73.5%，接近历史最高点。据证券行业估算，2018年底美国公司债券总额达到9.2万亿美元。同时，尽管利率一直很低，但很大一部分公司债务的风险和成本都较高。惠誉评级的数据显示，截至今年2月底，风险较大的垃圾级债券占美国公司债券的20%以上，另有46.7%的债券评级为“BBB”，比垃圾级高一档。

部分行业在债务中陷得较深。惠誉评级资深主管帕特里克·芬尼根指出，杠杆已经很高的行业包括医疗保健、制药、食品饮料和能源，而且其杠杆换取的很大一部分资金都用在了并购上。当然，杠杆本身并不坏，前提是公司利润够多。麦肯锡合伙人苏珊·隆德建议，要判断某家公司的负债是否可控，就要看它的利息覆盖率，或者说收入除以利息支出的商是否至少达到1.5。隆德估算，5%-6%的美国公司无法满足这项要求，在新兴市场，不达标的公司则多达25%。

第二个数字令人不安，原因是中国等新兴市场的公司特别依赖银行债务，也就是贷款。这类债务并不透明——投资者要弄清楚公司借了多少钱并非易事，而且银行债务更有可能采用“可变利率”，那就意味着如果市场中的利率出现较大范围的上升，源于银行贷款的利息支出就会增多。

独立投资管理公司Brown Advisory固定收益和投资经理汤姆·格拉夫建议，要想在利率突然上升时降低公司债务对自己的影响，就要避开债券ETF，原因是投资者因为利率上涨而争相抛售时，ETF的价格可能出现非常剧烈的震荡（可以考虑开放式共同基金或直接购买债券）。同时，在债券和股票市场都要寻找没有资产负债问题的公司——如果一家公司债台高筑，最好现在就转身离开。—Erik Sherman

Corporate Profits

As workers get more, shareholders could get less

For decades, it’s been one of Warren Buffett’s guiding principles: When corporate profits swell to a disproportionately large share of GDP, the Omaha sage has cautioned, the competitive nature of capitalism exercises a gravitational force that pulls them back to historical norms. Profitability shrinks, and stock returns become sluggish, or worse.

If that principle holds true, investors could be facing a rough ride. By some measures, Buffett’s gravitational shift is already underway. U.S. earnings peaked at 11% of GDP in 2012, but in the fourth quarter of 2018, they still accounted for 9.3%, or 2.6 percentage points higher than the 60-year average (see chart), suggesting they have further to fall. Analysts polled by FactSet forecast a year-over-year decline in earnings per share for the S&P 500 of 4.2% in the first quarter, and zero growth in the second.

The change reflects a tipping of the balance back toward labor. Since 2000, the share of GDP going to salaries, wages, and bonuses has dropped from 46% to 43%; lately, that trend is reversing. “America now has 7 million job openings, more than one for every unemployed worker,” says Ryan Sweet of Moody’s Analytics. That tightening labor market and the increased rates at which workers are leaving jobs for new ones are why wages are growing at 3.1%, twice the pace of 2010. Ordinarily, these trends would continue pressuring profits, and suppressing share prices, across the economy.

But there’s one investor who thinks we may have entered a new normal that could sustain higher profitability for a long time—and that investor, surprisingly enough, is Warren ¬Buffett. At the 2018 annual investor meeting for Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett acknowledged that the Internet, social media, and data revolutions have spawned an “asset-light economy,” driven by tech giants that generate floods of profits from mere trickles of capital. Amazon, Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Facebook, and Microsoft dominate their industries, and their powerful brands and enormous scale swell their revenues per customer and lower their costs of attracting new ones. It’s not coincidental that those five companies now account for 12% of the S&P 500’s profits. While they, too, face rising labor costs, they don’t need nearly as much labor (or plants, or inventories) to generate hefty sales.

The takeaway: The profitability of the tech titans will decline more gradually than margins in other industries, which should help their stocks outperform too. Overall U.S. stock returns will likely be lower than what investors have grown used to. But if workers pocketing higher wages are a reason for that slowdown, that will be a silver lining. —Shawn Tully

A version of this article appears in the May 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Decoding the Market’s Messages.”

公司利润

员工拿得多，股东得到的就可能变少

几十年来，沃伦·巴菲特秉承的指导原则中一直有这么一条，那就是当公司利润在GDP中的占比达到不成比例的高点时，资本主义的竞争属性就会产生吸引力，进而把这个比例拉回到历史正常水平。这位奥马哈圣人担心，公司盈利能力将下降，股票回报率也会变得很低，甚至更糟。

如果这条原则仍然适用，投资者就有可能要经历一段艰难旅程了。就某些指标而言，巴菲特所说的吸引力已经开始发挥作用。2012年美国的公司利润/GDP比例在11%见顶，但到了2018年第四季度，公司利润仍占GDP的9.3%，比60年来的平均值高2.6个百分点。这表明它还会进一步下跌。金融数据和分析公司FactSet调查的分析师预计，今年第一季度标普500指数的每股收益将同比下滑4.2%，第二季度则会出现零增长。

上述变化表明平衡点正在重新向劳动者靠拢。2000年至今，薪酬、工资和奖金在GDP中的比重从46%降至43%；最近其走势开始反转。Moody’s Analytics实时经济部门负责人瑞安·斯威特说：“美国目前有700万个职位空缺，待业者平均每人一个以上。”劳动力供应吃紧以及企业员工离职速度加快使工资上涨了3.1%，是2010年增速的两倍。通常，这些情况会不断给整个经济带来利润压力，同时抑制股价。

但有一位投资者认为我们或许已经进入了可以长期维持较强盈利能力的新常态，而他正是沃伦·巴菲特，这确实让人惊讶。在伯克希尔-哈撒韦的2018年投资者大会上，巴菲特承认互联网、社交媒体以及数据革命已经孕育出了“轻资产经济”，推动其发展的是仅凭少量资本就创造出高额利润的大型科技公司。亚马逊、苹果公司、谷歌母公司Alphabet、Facebook和微软主导着各自的行业，它们强有力的品牌和巨大的规模提高了单用户收入，同时降低了吸引新用户的成本。这五家公司目前占标普500指数利润的12%并非巧合。虽然它们的劳动力成本也在上升，但这些公司根本不需要那么多的人手（或者厂房、库存）就能使销售达到很高的水平。

结论：和其他行业的利润率下跌相比，科技巨头盈利能力的下滑将较为平缓，这还应有助于它们在股市上领跑。美股整体回报率可能会低于投资者已经习惯的水平。但如果员工拿了更多工资是股市回报率下滑的原因之一，那就有希望。—Shawn Tully（财富中文网）

本文刊登在2019年5月出版的《财富》杂志上，题为《解码市场信号》（Decoding the Market’s Messages）。

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林