经济学人财经 | 为什么何时结算交易的讨论很重要？
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MayLi，男，我要去追逐心中的太阳，还要继续努力的亚古兽
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When the pipes creak
当金融水管嘎吱作响
When the pipes creak
当金融水管嘎吱作响
Why the debate about when trades settle matters
关于交易结算周期的争论为何影响重大？
The paeans that followed the recent retirement of kkr founders Henry Kravis and George Roberts, formerly private equity’s barbarians-in-chief, are a reminder that the story of Wall Street is one of big deals, bold trades and the people behind them. Those further behind them, in the “back offices” of banks, brokers and buy-out firms, barely get a look in. Understandably so: their world is colourless compliance and “post-trade” processes, like clearing and settlement. They are the plumbers of finance, toiling behind the scenes to ensure that the pipework, well, works. Every so often, however, there’s a gurgling noise loud enough to unsettle even those cocksure colleagues out front.
首席“野蛮人”、华尔街传奇私募股权基金KKR创始人亨利·克拉维斯(Henry Kravis)和乔治·罗伯茨(George Roberts)在近期退休，随之而来的赞歌提醒人们华尔街的故事都是有关大型交易、大胆买卖以及其背后的操盘手。而幕后工作者，那些隐在银行、经纪商和收购公司的后台岗位，却很少进入人们视线。不难理解，毕竟他们的世界有的只是诸如清算和结算之类的合规性工作以及“后交易”工作流程，没有（前台）那么光鲜亮丽。他们是金融水管工，在幕后辛勤工作来确保管道正常运作。然而，这些地方时常也会出现咯咯声，嘈杂到令前台那些自负的同僚们也感到不安。
注释：
1. paean：n. 颂歌 A paean is a piece of music, writing, or film that expresses praise, admiration, or happiness.
2. toil：v. 辛苦工作 When people toil, they work very hard doing unpleasant or tiring tasks.
3. cocksure：a. 自负的 Someone who is cocksure is so confident and sure of their abilities that they annoy other people.
4. 在《门口的野蛮人》一书中，作者讲述了华尔街传奇私募股权基金KKR收购实业巨头RJR Nabisco的来龙去脉。“野蛮人”后来成为商业世界中的专有名词，用来指强势收购者。
The system for settling stock trades—ensuring the buyer gets her security and the seller his cash—came under strain during the covid-induced volatility of March 2020. It creaked again early this year amid the meme-trading frenzy in GameStop shares. A report by regulators into that episode, published on October 18th, noted drily that post-trade processes, “normally in the background, entered the public debate”. It was thanks to spiking margin calls and volatility-induced settlement risks that Robinhood, a retail broker, restricted trading in GameStop stock, causing uproar.
股票交易结算系统既要确保买方得到所需证券，又要保证卖方拿到相应现金， 因此在2020年3月新冠引发股市动荡期间承受了巨大的压力。今年早些时候，在GameStop股票模因交易狂潮中，这一系统再次嘎吱作响。调查该事件的监管部门在10月18日发布报告，淡淡地提到，“通常在幕后的'后交易程序’出现在了公众讨论中”。由于保证金激增和股市波动导致的结算风险，零售券商Robinhood限制了对GameStop股票的交易，引发了市场骚动。
注释：
1. creak：v. 嘎吱作响 If something creaks, it makes a short, high-pitched sound when it moves.
2. frenzy：n. 疯狂；狂乱；狂暴 a state of great activity and strong emotion that is often violent or frightening and not under control
3. uproar：n. 骚动 If there is uproar, there is a lot of shouting and noise because people are very angry or upset about something.
4. Meme股票是任何在社交媒体上面临散户投资者交易量过大的上市公司。总的来说，这是一种在各种社交媒体平台上“病毒式传播”的股票，通常导致股价暴涨。
Risk is a function of time. The longer between trade execution and completion, the bigger the “counterparty” risk, or the chance that one side or the other fails to pony up—as anyone caught mid-trade when Lehman Brothers or Archegos Capital collapsed can attest. And, therefore, the heftier the margin payments that brokers and investors have to post with clearing-houses.
风险随时间变化而变。交易执行和交易完成之间的间隔越长，“交易对手”风险就越高，或者说其中一方不履约的可能性就越大——任何受雷曼兄弟或Archegos资本管理危机影响而未能成功履约的投资者对此都深有体会。（风险越高，）经纪商和投资者向清算所支付的保证金就越多。
注释：
交易对手风险指交易对手不履约的。
Hence the long-running push to bring down trade-processing times—from 14 days (“T+14” in the parlance) in the 18th century, when certificates were carried on horseback and ship; to under a week following reforms in the wake of the 1968 Wall Street paperwork crunch, when a trading boom forced exchanges to close one day a week for months to allow the backroom boys to catch up; to T+5, then T+3, and, four years ago, T+2.
因此，长期以来交易所一直致力于缩短交易处理时间——从18世纪的14天（术语称为“T+14”），凭证通过马背和船运输；到1968年华尔街纸化交易危机改革后，将交易处理时间缩短为不到一周，（纸化交易危机时期，由于交易量激增，交易所被迫每周关闭一天，持续数月，以让后台工作人员赶上交易处理进度）；再到后来的T+5、T+3，直到四年前缩短到T+2。
Still, a lot can happen in two days on Wall Street, so why stop there? Spurred by the market gyrations of last year, a group representing banks, investors and clearers has been studying a move to t+1 and is expected within weeks to unveil a plan for how to get there. The signs are that the Securities and Exchange Commission will bless it. If so, the halving of settlement time could kick in as early as 2023. Europe, for one, would probably follow suit.
尽管交易时长一再缩短，但两天时间华尔街仍会发生很多事情，那为什么要止步于此呢？受去年市场波动的刺激，一个代表银行、投资者和清算所的团体一直在研究向T+1转变，预计数周内公布实现计划。种种迹象表明，美国证交会对此持积极态度。若果真如此，结算时间减半的目标最早可能会在2023年实现。欧洲等地区可能会依葫芦画瓢。
Lest anyone think the titans of finance are going soft, it should be pointed out that they are not pushing this solely for the greater good. They are as interested in cutting their own costs as systemic risks. During last year’s market turmoil, overall margin demanded by the dtcc, America’s clearing agency for stocks, jumped five-fold, to more than $30bn daily. Hundreds of billions more a year are tied up by “fails-to-deliver”, delays owing to settlement failures (the causes of which range from mistyping errors to more sinister practices such as failing deliberately in order to manipulate the price of a stock). Freeing up this capital would leave financial firms with a lot more to invest profitably.
为避免人们误以为金融大佬们在服软，应该指出他们推动此事不仅是为了更多人的利益，也是为了降低系统风险给自身带来的损失。在去年的市场动荡中，美国证券存托与清算公司(DTCC)将保证金提高了四倍，每日保证金总额高达300多亿美元。每年，因“无法交割”而冻结的资金高达数千亿美元，结算失败（其原因可能仅仅是录入错误，也可能是恶意操作，例如为了操控股价而故意延迟结算等等，不一而足）导致了交割的延迟。若能释放这部分资金，金融公司便能够获得大量的额外资金，投资获取收益。
Why then stop at one-day settlement? Evangelists for so-called distributed-ledger technology are touting the possibility of going to t+0, known as “atomic” settlement. This looks technically feasible; indeed, some broker-to-broker trades at the dtcc are already settled on a near-instantaneous basis.
那么，何苦要止步于日内结算呢？推崇所谓分布式账本技术的人，正在鼓吹T+0的可能性，即原子结算（atomic settlement）。在技术上，这看起来是可行的。事实上，在DTCC，经纪商之间的交易处理已经接近于瞬时结算了。
注释：
1. Atomic settlement means “that the transfer of two assets is linked in such a way as to ensure that the transfer of one asset occurs if and only if the transfer of the other asset also occurs— that is, settlement is conditional.”
But is it desirable? There is a big difference between reducing settlement time and eliminating it. In the latter, the buyer would have to be pre-funded and the seller immediately ready to swap. Every bit of a complex process would need to be synchronised, with no room for error. It may also require a wrenching restructuring of the giant securities-lending market, which is designed to fit with settlement with a time lag.
但这是可取的吗？缩短结算周期与消除该周期相去甚远。在后者的情况下，买方必须提前筹好资金，而卖方也需要准备好立即交易。复杂过程的每一步都需要同步进行，且不能出任何差错。而它可能也需要对庞大的证券借贷市场进行改革，这一改革过程可能举步维艰，因为目前的证券借贷市场是专门针对存在时间差的结算方式而设计的。
注释：
1. synchronised adj. operating in unison.
2. time lag n. a fairly long interval of time between one event and another related event that happens after it.
Cue cries of “Luddite!” But Buttonwood is in good company in advocating keeping some redundancy in the process. Ken Griffin, boss of Citadel, one of America’s largest marketmakers, and thus no techno-slouch, has described real-time settlement as “a bridge too far” because it requires “everything [to] work perfectly in a world where there’s still people involved”. The message is clear: pushing things too far could replace one set of risks with another, scarier one, in which a small number of failed trades set off a chain-reaction across back offices worldwide. Atomic indeed.
“卢德分子”登场！本栏支持提倡为交易过程留有余时。肯·格里芬（Ken Griffin），美国最大的做市商之一城堡投资（Citadel）的创始人，在科技方面是一把好手，但他认为实时结算“遥不可及”，因为这无异于是说“在有人参与的世界里，一切仍要完美运行”。显而易见：事情做的太过头反有害，过犹不及，一种风险消失了，取而代之的将会是另一种更可怕的风险——少数失败的交易就会触发全球后台部门的连锁反应。（原子结算）的确是原子反应。
注释：
1. Luddite n. If you refer to someone as a Luddite, you are criticizing them for opposing changes in industrial methods, especially the introduction of new machines and modern methods. （尤指反对使用新的机器和方法的）反对技术进步者；卢德分子
eg. The majority have a built-in Luddite mentality; they are resistant to change.大部分人天生有种反对技术进步的心理。他们抗拒变革。
2. Citadel 城堡投资，全球最大对冲基金之一。
拓展阅读：
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1693054549305508810&wfr=spider&for=pc&searchword=Citadel
3. no slouch at 擅长；愿意卖力工作
eg. The Welsh are no slouches at cooking. 威尔士人在烹饪方面可是好手。
翻译组：
Luc，男，在北京，喜欢睡觉
Linda，女，帝都金融民工，梦想成为翻译家
Brittany，女，会计金融美本，行业分析师，爱经济学人
Summer，女，QE在职，梦想能仗走天涯 翻译/音乐 /健康
Hannah，女，教书匠，经济学人粉丝
Des, 男，互联网金融从业者，经济学人粉丝
Emily，女，食物链底端金融民工，经济学人粉丝
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Cleo，互联网见习民工，努力做一只在知识海洋里徜徉的菜狗
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