考研英語閱讀材料匯編之經(jīng)濟類(3)

復習緊張，焦頭爛額？逆風輕襲，來跨考秋季集訓營，幫你尋方法，定方案！ 了解一下>>

閱讀是考研英語的重要題型之一，也是保障英語成績的關(guān)鍵題目。因此，考研學子們要充分重視英語閱讀，除了平時多多閱讀英語雜志、報紙外，還需要針對閱讀進行專項訓練。小編整理了關(guān)于考研英語閱讀題源的系列文章——考研英語閱讀材料匯編之經(jīng)濟類(3)，請參考!

Worth a Lot, but Are They Worth It?

When Institutional Investor's Alpha magazine released its annual list of the highest paid hedge fund managers last month, it allowed the rest of us to play an entertaining little parlor game: what could you buy if you made as much money as those guys?

James Simons, a 69-year-old mathematician who was at the top of the list, earned $1.7 billion, which equaled the amount of money that the federal government spent last year running its vast network of national parks. Down at No. 3 on the list, Edward S. Lampert of Greenwich, Conn.; the investor who owns a large chunk of Sears, made $1.3 billion, which, if you forget about taxes, would have allowed him to buy the entire economic output of Sierra Leone. We're talking about real money here.

Today, Alpha magazine will release another big list; and this one offers a chance to answer another, arguably more important, question: Are these billionaire hedge fund managers really worth it?

The reason hedge funds are a license to print money is their fee structure. A typical fund charges a 2 percent management fee, which means that it keeps 2 cents of every dollar that it manages, regardless of performance. Mutual funds, on average, charge about 1 percent.

On top of the management fee, hedge funds also take a big cut-usually at least 20 percent-of any profits that exceed a predetermined benchmark.

So in a good year, a fund's managers bring in stunning amounts of money, and in a bad year, they still do very well. Some quick math shows why: 2 percent of a $5 billion portfolio, which was roughly the cutoff for making Alpha's list of the 100 largest funds, equals $100 million. A fund's managers get to take that fee every single year.

Last year was actually a pretty tough year for the industry. Because hedge funds tend to make a lot of countercyclical bets-thus the name-they can often turn a profit even when The stock market falls. When it's rising broadly, though, many struggle to keep up. Last year, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index jumped 14 percent, while the average hedge fund returned less than 13 percent, after investment fees, according to Hedge Fund Research in Chicago.

But the men-and they are all men-who appear on Alpha's list of top earners don't manage average hedge funds. They manage the biggest funds in the world, the ones that are winning the Darwinian competition for capital, and many of them aren't having any trouble beating the market. One of the funds at Mr. Simons's firm, Renaissance Technologies, delivered a net return of 21 percent last year. The other returned 44 percent after fees. And Mr. Simons, who relies on a fantastically complex set of algorithms, doesn't charge " 2 and 20"-as the typical industry fees are called. He charges “5 and 44”—a 5 percent management fee and 44 percent of profits-yet he has still been doing very well by his investors for almost two decades.

I realize that a lot of people find 9-and 10-figure incomes to be inherently excessive. Or even immoral. From a strictly economic point of view, however, they are also perfectly rational. You cannot-find anyone else who is providing the same returns as the best hedge fund managers at a lower price. If you don't like it, you don't have to give them your money.

(Even if you do like it, they probably won't take your money: In exchange for being lightly regulated, hedge funds are open only to wealthy investors and big institutions.)

Thanks to their incredible performance, the biggest funds have grown far bigger in recent years. The 100 largest firms in the world managed $I trillion at the end of last year, or 69 percent of all the assets in hedge funds, according to Alpha. At the end of 2003, the top 100 had less than $500 billion, or only 54 percent of total hedge fund investments.

"The best performance is coming from the largest funds," said Christy Wood, who oversees equities investments for the California Public Employees' Retirement System, which, like a lot of pension funds, is moving more money into hedge funds.

But there is an irony to this influx of money. It all but guarantees that hedge fund pay over the next few years won't be as closely tied to performance as it has been. The hundreds of millions of dollars that have flowed into hedge funds have made it all the harder for fund managers to find truly undervalued investments. The world is awash in capital.

All that capital, of course, also translates into ever-greater management fees, regardless of a fund's performance. The flagship hedge fund at Goldman Sachs lost 6 percent last year, but it still brought in a nice stream of fees. Bridgewater Associates, which is based in Greenwich, has earned a net return of less than 4 percent in each of the last two years. Yet its founder, Raymond T. Dalio , made $350 million in 2006.

“when we have a bad year, we're essentially flat," Parag Shah, a Bridgewater executive, told me."And when we have a good year, we have a great year."

Goldman and Bridgewater may well bounce back, but the combination of extraordinary pay and ordinary performance is going to occur more and more in the coming years.

Outside of the highfliers on the Alpha list, it's already the norm. Since 2000, the average hedge fund hasn't done any better, after fees, than the market as a whole, according to research by David A. Hsieh, a finance professor at Duke. Still, even mediocre managers, after a lucky year or two, are able to attract gobs of capital and charge " 2 and 20."

So are today's hedge fund managers really worth it? Sure, but only if they deliver the sort of performance that Mr. Simons has, and very few will in the years ahead. More to the point, it's extremely difficult to know who the stars will be.

In all sorts of walks of life, people tend to think that the past is a better predictor of the future than it really is. That's why journeyman baseball player—a Yankees pitcher named Carl Pavano comes to mind-are able to sign huge contracts based on a single good season it's also why so many investors chase returns.

The genius of the world's hedge fund managers isn't only in how they invest their money. It also lies in having set up an industry that takes advantage of a timeless human trait.

詞匯注解

重點單詞

Output /'autput/

【中文釋義】n.產(chǎn)量

【大綱全義】n.產(chǎn)量，輸出(量)，輸出功率

Arguably /'a:gjuabli/

【中文釋義】adv.相對地

【大綱全義】adv.可論證地(可辯論地);相對地

Predetermine /'pri:di't?:min/

【中文釋義】v.預定，預先

【大綱全義】v.預定，注定; 預先決定…….的方向

cutoff /'k?t?:f/

【中文釋義】n.分界線

【大綱全義】n.近路，捷徑; 切開; 停止; 分界線

Broadly /'br?:dli/

【中文釋義】adv.廣泛地

【大綱全義】adv.寬廣地，廣泛地

renaissance /r?'neis?ns/

【中文釋義】n.復興，重生

【大綱全義】n. [the Renaissance]文藝復興(時期);新生，復興

Fantastically /fæn'tæstik?lli/

【文中釋義】adv.非常地

【大綱全義】adv.非常地; 空想(非常)

inherently /in'hi?r?ntli/

【文中釋義】adv.天性地，天生地

【大綱全義】adv.天性地，固有地

immoral / i'm?r?l/

【文中釋義】adv.不道德的

【大綱全義】adv.不道德的; 邪惡的

超綱詞匯

parlor n.客廳 benchmark n.基準點

countercyclical adj.反周期的 algorithm n.算法

awash adj.被浪沖打的，被海水淹沒的 gob n.大量，很多

重點段落譯文

上個月，當機構(gòu)投資者的阿爾法雜志公布了對沖基金經(jīng)理們最高薪金年度名單時，它讓我們其余的人做一個小小的室內(nèi)娛樂游戲:如果你掙的錢跟這些人一樣多，你會買什么?

69歲的數(shù)學家詹姆斯·西蒙斯高居榜首，擁有17億美元，相當于聯(lián)邦政府去年在國家公園網(wǎng)絡(luò)項目上的巨大開支。位居第三位的是康涅狄格州格林尼治鎮(zhèn)的艾德華·蘭伯特，這個投資家經(jīng)營龐大的西爾斯連鎖百貨店，年收人13億美元，如果不計算稅，能讓他買下塞拉利昂的全部經(jīng)濟產(chǎn)量。我們在這里說的是實實在在的財富。

今天，阿年法雜志即將發(fā)布另一個重要的名單，這個名單有可能回答另一個相對更重要的問題:這些擁有百萬資產(chǎn)的對沖基金經(jīng)理真的值那么多嗎?

對沖基金是印錢的通行證，他們的收費結(jié)構(gòu)可以說明這一點。不管其性能，一種典型基金收取2%的管理費，這意味著它管理的每1美元要保留2美分。而共同基金中平均收費約為1%。

對沖基金的管理費位居榜首，因此需要進行大幅削減—通常對超過預定基準點的利潤收取至少20%。

因此，在收益大的一年里，一個基金經(jīng)理可以帶來驚人數(shù)額的財富，而在虧損的一年里他們依然做得很好。簡單做一下計算就可以明白其原因:每50億美元的投資提取2%，也就是1億美元;這是阿爾法的名單上的100家最大的基金的大致分界線。一個基金經(jīng)理每年都會拿到這個數(shù)目的回報。

其實去年是一個相當艱難的一年。因為對沖基金試圖做很多反周期的賭注——就像它的名字一樣——甚至當股市下跌時，他們往往還是能扭虧為盈。而當它大幅上漲時，很多對沖基金就要努力跟上。據(jù)位于芝加哥的對沖基金研究公司稱，去年的標準普爾500股票指數(shù)跌了14個百分點，而除去投資的費用后，對沖基金平均返回不到13%。

但是阿爾法雜志的名單中的高收人者一一都是男人——并不管理平均對沖基金。他們管理世界上最大的基金，是資本市場里達爾文式競爭中的獲勝者，而且他們中的大多數(shù)都經(jīng)得起市場的沖擊。

希望各位考生能夠每天堅持閱讀，提高詞匯量和語感能力，為以后的系統(tǒng)復習打下堅實的基礎(chǔ)。最后提醒大家，夏季來臨，復習備考需注意防暑降溫。預?？佳谐晒?

相關(guān)推薦
復習指導	2017考研英語單詞中的詞根詞綴匯總	2017考研線性代數(shù)重點公式匯總
考研時間	跨考教育整理—2017年考研時間表	2016考研真題及答案解析
復試分數(shù)線	34所自主劃線高校歷年考研復試分數(shù)線	歷年考研國家線匯總（跨考教育整理）