[转帖]中印熊市为何尚未严重拖累经济？

林帆

即使在全球信贷危机发生前，许多跨国企业就对中国和印度的新兴中产阶级寄予厚望。目前美国经济可能正步入衰退，来自这两个人口逾10亿的亚洲大国新消费者的需求，也就显得更为重要。

因此，中印两国股市不断暴跌值得忧虑。过去两年，中印两国的城市中产阶级都卷入了购买股票的热潮。然而，印度股市较其峰值水平已下跌了四分之一，中国股市更是自高点跌落近一半。

坏消息是，这两国都有大批牢骚满腹的投资者，至少在短期内，他们对股市的狂热情绪已破灭。而好消息则是，这对经济的影响不大。

在美国，如果股市出现目前中国这样44%的下跌，经济会严重受损，而中国迄今能从容应对。即使去年出现了短线交易的狂潮——当时每天早上券商门口都排起了长队，中国的股市文化仍相对肤浅——活跃投资者可能只有1000万到2000万。

股票交易帐户开户高峰出现在去年5月，而到去年10月市场触及历史高位时，开户热情已开始消退。此外，与2005年的低点相比，中国内地股市仍上涨逾3倍，这意味着很多投资者仍然是赚钱的。

上海白领职员黄丽英(音译)表示：“目前我只是损失掉了去年的投机收益。这就好比我又重新回到了起点。”她今年30多岁，从去年2月份开始投资股市。

最重要的是，股市上涨速度太快，还未来得及对消费产生强劲效应。苏格兰皇家银行(Royal Bank of Scotland)经济学家本•辛芬德费尔(Ben Simpfendorfer)表示：“消费领域对股价上涨的反应滞后，而且仅做出了有限反应，因此支出的潜在回落也将较为有限。”

然而，这并不意味着政府能对市场很放心，因为股市暴跌令很多投资者不爽。同时，鉴于中国政府对市场的强大影响力——国家持有上市股票中的70%——这些投资者很清楚该责怪谁。

汇丰(HSBC)中国市场策略师Steven Sun表示：“市场崩盘引发社会不稳定的风险很高，在目前通胀侵蚀购买力的情况下更是如此。”

与此同时，印度股市下跌对经济的连带影响似乎更为明显，股市低迷影响了消费品及房地产市场的信心。

在达拉勒大街(Dalal Street)上的孟买证交所(Bombay stock exchange)，散户投资者情绪消沉。这些人通常站在交易大厅外，一边看着巨大的报价屏幕，一边在树荫下品尝着小摊上的东西。

散户投资者Prakash Achariya表示：“多数人都曾寄予厚望，希望市场回报一直居高不下。”他掏出一张手写的股票投资组合表，显示他的股票组合是如何缩水约23%，减至大约13.5万卢比(3385美元)的。

但在印度，拥有股票的人也太少，不足以对经济产生重大影响。印度第二大基金公司ICICI保诚资产管理公司(ICICI Prudential Asset Management)副董事总经理Nilesh Shah称：“在美国，存在问题但不存在恐慌。在印度存在恐慌，而问题没那么严重。”

与1月初近21000点的高点相比，孟买证交所Sensex 30指数的跌幅约为25%，但与一年前相比，该指数仍上涨了19%。

多数投资时间较长的散户投资者都清楚，在过去几年中，印度股市已令他们受益颇丰，从2004年12月至今，累计上涨近2.5倍。散户投资者持股的市值相对较小，仅为11%左右，只有少数散户投资者蒙受严重损失。

此外，印度人只有一小部分储蓄投入股市，因此，当前股市下跌给更广泛经济领域带来的连锁效应，不太可能在金融体系中造成系统性问题。

Even

before the global credit crunch, many multinationals were pinning huge hopes on the new middle classes in China and India. Now that the US could be entering a recession, demand from new consumers in Asia's 1bn-plus giants is even more important.

As a result, the slumping stockmarkets in both countries are a cause for concern. Over the past two years, sections of the urban middle classes in China and India have been consumed by a fever for buying shares. Yet middle-class Indians have watched the market fall by a quarter from its peak and the Chinese by almost half.

The bad news is that both countries have large groups of disgruntled investors whose enthusiasm for stockmarkets has – at least in the short-term – been dashed. The good news is that it is having only a modest impact on the economy. 

In the US, a 44 per cent drop in stocks such as the one currently experienced in China would severely hurt the economy, but China is so far taking the blow in its stride. Even after the huge day-trading boom last year, when lines formed every morning outside brokerage offices, equity culture is still relatively shallow – there are probably only 10-20m active investors.

The peak in opening share trading accounts was May last year and by the time the market reached its all-time high in October, enthusiasm had already waned. Moreover, the mainland market is up more than three times from its low in 2005, meaning many investors are still sitting on profits.

“So far I have only lost the profit I made from speculating last year,” says Huang Liying, a Shanghai office worker in her 30s who began investing in February last year. “It is like I am back at the beginning again.”

Most of all, the surge in the market was so rapid that it did not translate into a strong effect on spending. “Consumption responded belatedly and only modestly to the rise in stock prices, so the potential pullback in spending will be limited,” says Ben Simpfendorfer, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland.

However, that does not mean the government can be too relaxed about the market, because the slump has left many unhappy investors. And given Beijing's huge influence over the market – the state owns 70 per cent of listed shares – they are in no doubt about who is to blame.

“The risk of social instability due to the market crash is running high, especially at a time when inflation is biting purchasing power,” says Steven Sun, China market strategist at HSBC.

In India, meanwhile, the economic fall-out appears to be stronger and the gloom in the stockmarket has helped to damp sentiment in the consumer goods and property markets.

At the Bombay Stock Exchange on Dalal Street, the mood is sullen among the crowd of retail investors who typically stand outside watching a huge price screen while eating from hawkers' carts under the shade of some trees.

“Most people had very high hopes that market returns would never come down,” said Prakash Achariya, a retail investor. Pulling out a hand-written sheet charting his share portfolio, he shows how it has shrunk in value by about 23 per cent to about Rs135,000 ($3,385).

Yet in India also, equity ownership is too narrow to create a substantial economic effect. “In the US, there is [a] problem but no panic. In India there's a panic but less of a problem,” says Nilesh Shah, deputy managing director of ICICI Prudential Asset Management, India's second biggest fund manager.

The Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark stock index, the Sensex 30, is down about 25 per cent from its peak in early January of almost 21,000 points but it remains 19 per cent higher than a year earlier.

Most longer term retail investors know the stock market has given them a fabulous ride over the past few years, rising almost 2.5 times since December 2004. Retail investors hold a relatively modest amount of market capitalisation, about 11 per cent, and only a small number of these are suffering serious losses.

In addition, Indians put only a fraction of their savings into equities, so the ripple effects on the wider economy of the present falls in the stock market are unlikely to create systemic problems in the financial system