2013年投资建议

The headlines have been unnerving for investors all year, perhaps never more so than now, with financial markets bracing for the worst as Congress and President Obama wrangle over a budget deal.

整整一年来发生的资讯事件都令投资者紧张不安，但当前的状况也许更加令人提心吊胆，在美国国会(Congress)和奥巴马总统(President Obama)就预算协议争执不休之际，金融市场正在准备迎接最坏的局面。

Daisy Maxey, a special writer for Dow Jones Newswires, sat down with three fee-only financial advisers to discuss what lies ahead for investors and how they can best manage a continuing parade of uncertainties, from the immediacy of the fiscal cliff to longer-term tax and economic issues.

道琼斯通讯社(Dow Jones Newswires)特约作者马克西(Daisy Maxey)与三位只收咨询费的理财顾问一起，讨论了投资者未来将面临何种局面以及如何更好地应对纷至沓来的不确定因素（从迫在眉睫的财政悬崖到中长期税收和各类经济问题）。

The panelists were:

参与讨论的理财顾问有：

· Greg Plechner, principal and wealth manager, Modera Wealth Management LLC, Westwood, N.J., and Boston

·普莱克纳(Greg Plechner)，Modera Wealth Management LLC负责人兼财富管理师，该公司在新泽西州韦斯特伍德(Westwood)及波士顿设有办公室

· Marjorie Fox, chief executive officer, Fox, Joss & Yankee LLC, Reston, Va.; and

·福克斯(Marjorie Fox)，弗吉尼亚州雷斯顿(Reston) Fox, Joss & Yankee LLC首席执行长

· Drew Tignanelli, president, Financial Consulate Inc., Hunt Valley, Md.

·蒂尼亚内利(Drew Tignanelli)，马里兰州亨特瓦利(Hunt Valley) Financial Consulate Inc.总裁

Here are edited excerpts of their discussion.

以下是经过编辑的讨论内容节眩

Get Past the Headlines

跳过消息面

MS. MAXEY: It's been another very difficult year for investors. What should they expect from the economy and markets in the coming year?

马克西：对投资者来说，今年又是非常艰难的一年。明年他们将面临怎样的经济和市场形势呢？

MR. PLECHNER: If you ignore the headline news, it's really been a great year for investors across the board. Whether you were invested domestically, internationally, even real estate, you had double-digit returns. Even high-quality fixed income has had mid-single-digit returns.

普莱克纳：如果忽略那些资讯事件的话，今年各类投资产品的走势都很棒。不论你投资国内、国外，甚至房地产，回报率都是两位数。就连投资级固定收益产品的回报率都在4%-6%之间。

I don't think it's been a very volatile year, by the traditional measures of volatility. There's certainly a lot of angst, and maybe that's a factor that you need to look at for your clients. But as a long-term investor you need volatility to be rewarded for investing in riskier assets.

我认为，如果以传统波动性指标来衡量，今年并不算非常动荡的一年。当然有很多令人忧虑的问题，也许这是你要为客户考虑的因素。但作为长期投资者，要想在投资风险较大的资产时获得回报，波动性是必不可少的条件。

MS. MAXEY: Are you expecting a similar environment in the coming year?

马克西：各位认为明年的市场环境是否会与今年类似？

MR. PLECHNER: Yes. It's a matter of managing our clients' expectations of what the fiscal cliff means, what is the impact of Europe on your portfolio, what could rising interest rates do to your portfolio. All you have control over is how you react to those scenarios. So that's where we focus a lot of our time.

普莱克纳：是的。我们要做的是管理客户的预期，譬如有关财政悬崖含义的预期，有关欧洲危机对投资组合影响的预期，有关利率上升对投资组合影响的预期。你所能控制的无非是如何应对这些情境。因此，我们在这方面要倾注很多时间。

MS. FOX: If you're looking for headline risk, you can easily find things beyond the fiscal cliff─the slowdown in China, the recession in Japan, the euro debt crisis, the recession in many of the euro nations, slowing corporate profits. But our firm and our clients are long term. I'm optimistic.

福克斯：如果寻找消息面风险的话，你能很容易地找到财政悬崖以外的问题──中国经济增长放缓，日本经济衰退，欧洲债务危机，许多欧元区国家经济衰退，企业利润下滑。但我们公司和我们的客户都是长期投资者。我是比较乐观的。

MR. TIGNANELLI: We are concerned about 2013. The Federal Reserve is manipulating the bond market. It's economically illogical that interest rates on two-year, five-year and 10-year Treasurys should be at the rate they're at when the rate of inflation over the last four years has averaged 2.3%. People are actually losing money in the bond market after inflation, yet they're fleeing to the bond market as if it's this panacea of investments. That's a problem, and it's going to blow up sooner or later.

蒂尼亚内利：我们对2013年感到担忧。联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve, 简称Fed)在操纵债券市常过去四年的平均通货膨胀率为2.3%，从经济角度来看，两年、五年和10年期美国国债利率处于当前水平是不合逻辑的。如果将通货膨胀因素考虑在内，投资债券市场其实是赔钱的，但人们仍然纷纷逃往债券市场，把它当作投资的灵丹妙药。这是一个问题，迟早会爆发。

That doesn't mean there aren't great investment opportunities like we found this year, but there's a lot of danger, and investors have to be alert to that.

这并不是说明年没有像今年这么好的投资机会，但会有许多危险，投资者必须对此保持警惕。

Better Late Than Never

迟做总比不做好

MS. MAXEY: A lot of money is still on the sidelines. Should investors be taking on more risk?

马克西：许多投资者仍在持币观望。投资者是否应该承担更多风险？

MS. FOX: Well, the train left the station about 3½ years ago. The answer is yes. If they haven't already, they should certainly tiptoe back in. But investors should always have an allocation to equities consistent with their risk tolerance, so it's not a question of jumping in and jumping out.

福克斯：三年半前就应该如此了。答案是肯定的。如果你还没有这样做的话，你肯定应该回过头去做。但投资者应该始终按照自己的风险承受能力，将一定的资金配置在股票中，因此这不是忽进忽出的问题。

MS. MAXEY: Are there particular emerging-markets investments you like? Should investors avoid Europe?

马克西：各位有没有特别青睐的新兴市场投资品种？是否应该避免投资欧洲？

MR. TIGNANELLI: I'm not avoiding Europe. But Asia is clearly my favorite. Almost 50% of our equity assets are focused on Asia. I think small-cap stocks in Japan could be one of the most fascinating buying opportunities I've seen since 1980. When the price gets down to these kinds of levels, it's hard not to be invested in Japan. But China is more interesting─1.2 billion people who don't have refrigerators, air conditioners, cars, and they all want them now.

蒂尼亚内利：我并没有避免投资欧洲，但亚洲市场显然是我的最爱。我们的股票资产有近50%是专注于亚洲的。我认为日本的小型股为人们提供了1980年以来最吸引人的买进机遇之一。当价格降至这样的水平时，很难不对日本进行投资。但中国更让人感兴趣──中国有12亿人，很多人没有电冰箱、空调、汽车，现在都想购买这些东西。

MR. PLECHNER: In the emerging markets, we like Europe and Japan. We do have some exposure to China, but even though China has this amazing growth opportunity, you can easily make the argument that India has the same opportunities in terms of number of people, size and demographics. So we don't try to cherry pick any one country to invest in. It's more to be broadly diversified and take sort of a world market-cap approach to the countries we invest in.

普莱克纳：那些正在摆脱困境的市场中，我们看好欧洲和日本。我们在中国确实有一些风险敞口，但尽管中国拥有令人惊喜的增长机遇，但从人口数、面积和人口统计特征等方面来看，印度显然也有同样的机遇。因此我们不会遴选任何单一的国家来投资。我们更多是采用多元化投资，在选择投资的国家时采取的是综合考虑全球市值的方式。

Worries All Around

担忧无处不在

MS. MAXEY: How do you advise your clients to handle their emotions during market volatility?

马克西：在市场动荡时期，各位会在情绪管理方面向客户提出什么建议呢？

MR. PLECHNER: We spend a lot of time in the initial engagements with our clients, getting to know every detail of their finances, what are your short-term, midterm and long-term cash needs. That gives us the confidence when we do hit a difficult market cycle to say, look, we've done the planning, we've got a pretty good handle on where you're at now and there's no need to be reactionary.

普莱克纳：我们在与客户初次签约时会花很多时间，要了解他们财务状况的每个细节，以及他们短期、中期和长期的现金需求。这样一来，当我们真的遇到严峻的市场周期时，我们就有信心说，看，我们已经做了规划，我们能够很好地控制现在的情况，没必要太保守。

Another part of that process is behavior modification. A simple example of that is, you don't necessarily want to be buying more of something when it's already gone up in value.

这一过程的另一组成部分是修正投资行为。举个简单的例子，当某种东西已经升值时，你不一定要购买更多。

MS. MAXEY: What about inflation? Is that something you're worried about going into 2013? Are you recommending Treasury inflation-protected securities, gold, commodities, corporate bonds?

马克西：各位对通货膨胀有何看法？你们是否担心2013年的通货膨胀问题？各位推荐投资通货膨胀保值证券、黄金、大宗商品和公司债券吗？

MR. PLECHNER: One of the most highly correlated investments to changes in the Consumer Price Index is short-term TIPS. We would just caution that if you're in longer-term TIPS, one of the things that you have to be willing to accept is somewhat severe interest-rate volatility. So that's something that we've done defensively; for long-term inflation protection, longer-term TIPS are probably a better investment. We also invest in commodities and gold. Those two have some characteristics of inflation hedges, but they're imperfect. They're also not taxed very nicely, so you need to be aware of that when you invest in those. And you have to be willing to accept volatility.

普莱克纳：与消费者价格指数(Consumer Price Index)相关性最强的投资产品之一是短期通货膨胀保值债券(Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities，TIPS)。我们只须提醒投资者注意一点，那就是如果投资中长期TIPS，你必须要接受比较剧烈的利率波动。因此，我们在投资中长期TIPS时是比较谨慎的；要防范长期通货膨胀风险，中长期TIPS应该是更好的投资选择。我们还投资大宗商品和黄金。这两种产品具有一定的通货膨胀保值特性，但它们并非完美无缺。它们的税率较高，所以在投资这些产品时必须要注意。此外，你还必须愿意接受较强的波动性。

Over the long term, one of the best ways to protect purchasing power is equities.

从长期来看，保护购买力的最佳方式之一是股票。

MS. MAXEY: Investors are very focused on the fiscal cliff. With so much uncertainty, what are the major tax concerns for investors in your minds, going into 2013?

马克西：投资者对财政悬崖非常关注。在不确定因素如此多的情况下，各位认为进入2013年后投资者面临的主要税务问题是什么？

MS. FOX: There's concern about ordinary-income tax rates. In response to that, some investors are choosing to convert their traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, pay the income taxes down at a lower rate and then be out from under required minimum distributions taxed at a much higher rate down the road.

福克斯：目前存在有关普通所得税率的担忧。为应对这一问题，一些投资者选择将传统个人退休账户(traditional IRA)转换为罗斯个人退休账户(Roth IRA)，这样他们可以较低的税率缴纳所得税，未来也不必受最低提款要求（税率要高得多）限制。

They're also concerned about higher capital-gains tax rates. Some are selling. That may or may not be a good idea. If they were going to sell in January, then maybe it's a good strategy to sell in December and avoid higher capital-gains tax rates. But if they were going to hold the investment for many years, then they're giving up those dollars used to pay their capital-gains taxes. They're out of the portfolio, and any return they could have earned on those dollars is no longer there.

他们还担心资本利得税税率上调。一些投资者在卖出。这种策略是好是坏很难说。如果他们本来准备明年1月份卖出的话，那么在今年12月份卖出是一种好策略，可以避免资本利得税上调。但如果他们本来准备将投资持有很多年，那么提前卖出就等于放弃了这些可用来支付资本利得税的资金。一旦退出投资组合，投资者本来能够靠那些投资赚得的回报也就没有了。

They're making charitable bequests. I think the most interesting thing that I have seen is all kinds of contributions to donor-advised funds. You can make a contribution to a donor-advised fund this year and actually not make grants to charities until next year or years beyond that. So what they're saying by their actions is maybe we're not going to see an unlimited charitable deduction. Or they may be saying, 'I realized capital gains by selling appreciated assets, so I've got to minimize taxes this year by increasing my charitable deduction.'

还有人在进行慈善捐赠。我认为我见到的最有意思的事情是人们为捐赠人指导型基金(donor-advised fund)做的各种捐赠。今年你可以为捐赠人指导型基金捐一些钱，但赠款可以在明年或者今后一些年中再到位。这样做可能是因为，他们认为慈善捐赠减税额今后可能会受到限制。他们的用意也可能是：“我通过出售已升值的资产兑现了资本利得，因此今年我必须提高慈善捐赠减税额，以尽量少交税。

MR. TIGNANELLI: If you know you're going to sell an asset, sell it in 2012. But I would never sell a stock that I have no anticipation of selling and then buy it back a second later just because I believe the capital-gains rate is going to be lower this year than in the future. Because if I hold a stock until the day I die, it's 0% capital-gains tax for my family.

蒂尼亚内利：如果你确定要卖出某种资产的话，那就在2012年卖出吧。但我绝不会仅仅因为认为资本利得税率以后会上调，就把一只原本无意卖出的股票卖掉，随后又很快把它买回来。因为如果我持有一只股票直到去世，那么对我家人来说，这只股票的资本利得税就是0%。

I don't like making decisions because of taxes. I make decisions on taxes after I make a good economic decision, and if there's a tax differential, I go with the better tax differential.

我不喜欢根据税率来做决定。我会在做好与经济相关的决策后再做与税务相关的决定，如果有税差的话，我会采用比较有利的税差。

The second thing is you have to consider gifting. You have a $5.12 million gift exclusion this year. Next year, who knows what it's going to be?

第二件事是，你必须考虑赠与问题。今年你有512万美元的赠与税免征额。明年谁知道会怎样呢？

MS. FOX: Our advice to our clients is, take a strategy to a point, but don't go whole hog, because it may turn out that that strategy, with hindsight, is no longer appropriate. So hedge your bets when it comes not only to investing but to tax strategy as well.

福克斯：我们对客户的建议是，一项策略可以参考，但不可尽信，因为回过头看，该策略可能就不妥了。因此，要同时从投资和税务策略这两方面对你的下注进行保值。