For generations, the way to answer the question 'How'd the market do today?' was easy: Just say what the Dow Jones Industrial Average did. But not now.
对好几代美国人来说，要回答“市场今天表现如何？”这个问题很容易，只要说“看看道琼斯指数去”就行了。可这招现在不灵了。
Now, the stock market often seems out of sync with the credit crisis embroiling the financial system. Thursday was a case in point. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shot higher when the stock market opened, on hopes the bailout plan getting hashed out in Congress would offer a salve to the financial system.
眼下，股市表现似乎常常与正困扰整个金融体系的信贷危机是脱节的。周四就可以看出这一点。道琼斯工业股票平均价格指数开盘走高，投资者希望国会即将通过的拯救计划将给金融体系送上一副良药。
But the short-term credit markets that lie at the center of the crisis were telling a different story. Libor, a widely followed benchmark interest rate for many dollar loans between banks that is set each morning in London, jumped by the largest amount since 1999, rising to 3.77% from 3.48%. A similar measure set in the morning in New York, NYFR, also registered a sharp gain.
但处于当前这场金融风暴中心的短期信贷市场却是另一番景象。作为银行间市场美元贷款的基准利率，伦敦银行同业拆息(Libor)从3.48%跃升至3.77%，幅度之大为1999年以来所仅见。与之类似的基准利率纽约银行同业拆息(NYFR)同样大幅上升。
Jumps in Libor and NYFR are a sign that banks are becoming increasingly wary of doing business with one another. Thursday's moves could have been a sign that credit-market participants didn't think Washington was moving ahead fast enough with its bailout plan, thought it is moving in the wrong direction, or that a major player is in deep trouble, said Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners.
Libor和NYFR的跃升显示，各银行越来越不愿意与同行进行业务往来。MKM Partners的首席经济学家迈克尔•达达(Michael Darda)说，从这两个基准利率周四的动向看，或是信贷市场参与者认为华盛顿推出其救助计划的速度够快（尽管方向不对），或是一家主要参与者目前陷入了大麻烦。
'It's very disconcerting,' he said. 'There have been several occasions when the credit market and the equity market diverged over the past year and in virtually every case it was the stock market that was wrong.'
他说，这让人非常不安，过去一年中已出现过几次信贷市场与股票市场走势背离的情况，实际上每一次事后都证明股市的方向是错的。
In mid-July, for example, the stock market began a monthlong move higher. But the difference between Libor and three-month overnight index swaps, which represent what the market thinks the Federal Reserve's overnight lending rate will average over the next three months, shifted higher, reflecting rising concern in the credit markets. Thursday, the difference between the two reached two percentage points, up from 0.8 point at the start of the month.
以今年7月为例，当时股市开始了一轮长达一个月的上涨行情。但Libor与三个月期隔夜拆息指数掉期之间的息差却在扩大，后者反映了市场对美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve)隔夜拆款利率未来三个月平均水平的预期。这表明信贷市场的担忧情绪正在上升。周四，这二者之间的息差达到了两个百分点，而本月初时仅为0.8个百分点。
'We still have massively dysfunctional credit markets,' said Douglas Cliggott, chief investment officer at Dover Capital Management. 'Debt is still the oxygen of this economy, so if we can't find a way to get the credit engine going, we're going to have a pretty nasty recession.'
Dover Capital Management的首席投资长道格拉斯•克里格特(Douglas Cliggott)说，我们的信贷市场仍然存在着严重的功能缺陷，债务依然是经济运行的氧气，所以如果我们无法使信贷引擎发动起来，我们将遭遇一场严重衰退。
Stocks have never been a perfect window into the health of the financial system. But during other crises they were a better reflection of what was happening because they were closer to the action. In the 1987 crash, problems with quick-fire stock-trading strategies played a major role. The 1998 financial crisis began as a debt problem, but because Long Term Capital Management -- the hedge fund at the center of the storm -- was forced to sell large stock positions, stocks soon reflected the magnitude of the crisis. The 2000 bust was a stock-centered phenomenon that came with the bursting of the dot-com bubble.
虽然股市从不是反映金融体系健康状况的灵敏晴雨表，但在以往的金融危机期间，股市对金融市场真实情况的反映却比这次要强，因为股市与市场行为的关系更紧密。比如速买速卖的股票交易策略就对1987年那场股灾负有重要责任。而1998年的金融危机虽然发端于债务问题，但由于身处风暴中心的对冲基金长期资本管理公司(Long Term Capital Management)被迫大量抛售股票，这场危机的危害很快便在股市上反映了出来。2000年那场因互联网泡沫破裂而产生的金融危机股市更是整个事件的主角。
The role of stocks in the current crisis is less direct. Investors are attempting the difficult calculus of gauging how credit problems will affect the economy, and thereby profits. Measures of financial stress are often opaque and information is scant -- making for an uncertain environment where a lot of stock market activity has come down to 'me wondering what you're wondering about what I'm wondering,' said William Sterling, chief investment officer at Trilogy Global Advisors.
而股市在当前这场危机中所扮演的角色却不那么直接。投资者目前都在试图破解信贷问题将在多大程度上影响经济增长和企业利润这一难题。人们缺乏衡量金融状况恶化程度的明确指标，相关信息也嫌不足，用Trilogy Global Advisors首席投资长威廉•斯特林(William Sterling)的话说，这营造了一种不明朗氛围，这种状况下股市活动很大程度上变成了一种投资者相互猜对方心思的游戏。
In addition to the uncertain environment, many financial firms have become so stressed that their shares are now little more than all-or-nothing bets on whether they will be able to survive. That makes them incredibly volatile, giving confusing signals to investors who watch them to gauge what is happening in the financial system.
此外，许多金融公司的处境目前是如此险恶，现在买进或卖出它们的股票几乎可以和赌它们能否生存下去划等号。这都使金融公司的股票具有令人难以置信的高波动性，不时向希望通过观察这些股票走势来判断金融市场状况的投资者传递各种令人困扰的信号。
Many investors watch Libor to gauge market stress. Typically, it is compared with other rates that it would normally trade in line with, such as overnight index swaps and the yield on the three-month Treasury bill. Other measures include rates on short-term IOUs issued by banks and companies known as 'commercial paper,' the Markit CDX index, which moves based on the cost of insuring against the default of 125 investment-grade companies and the fed-funds rate.
新多投资者通过观察Libor来评估金融市场压力。他们通常关注Libor与隔夜拆款利率指数掉期和三个月期美国国债收益率等相关利率的息差。投资者关注的其他指标还有银行和企业所发行商业票据的利率，以及Markit CDX指数，后者是基于防范125家投资级公司出现信贷违约的保险成本以及联邦基金利率的变动情况计算出来的。
But the measure to watch can be a moving target. For some time, credit analysts were glued to the ABX, an index of credit-default swaps tied to different subprime mortgage-backed securities, which began signaling the extent of the subprime problem in late 2006. But the index has now fallen by so much, and has become so volatile, that its value as a predictor has fallen.
但这些投资者关注的指标却都不大靠得住。有段时间信贷分析师们曾很看重ABX指数，它反映了各种次级抵押贷款支持证券相关信用违约掉期的价格变动情况。该指数从2006年起就反映出次贷问题的波及范围。但这个指数目前已经跌得一塌糊涂，而且波动非常厉害，因此它作为预测指标的价值也就下降了
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