【经济学人】AI 已经接管了股市.接下来轮到债券市场

AI has taken over the stock market. The bond market is next

AI 已经接管了股市。接下来轮到债券市场

Judging credit risk of the AI boom is difficult

判断 AI 热潮的信用风险并不容易

THE RAPID spread of new technological infrastructure is usually accompanied by booms in bond markets. The emergence of a liquid market for corporate credit on both sides of the Atlantic in the 19th century reflected the express growth of the railway industry. Before the arrival of railway operators with their vast investment needs—to buy land, lay tracks and ship goods—corporate finance was the province of small banks. Afterwards it became coupled first with national, then with international bond markets.

新技术基础设施的快速铺开，通常会伴随着债券市场的繁荣。19 世纪，大西洋两岸企业信贷流动性市场的出现，反映了铁路行业的飞速发展。在铁路运营商出现之前，企业融资主要是小银行的领域；而铁路运营商有巨大的投资需求，需要购买土地、铺设轨道并运输货物。此后，企业融资先是与国内债券市场结合，随后又与国际债券市场结合。

The latest techno-infrastructure frenzy, this time over artificial intelligence, is likewise stoking a bond-market boom. Since January Meta, Nvidia and Oracle have launched individual bond offerings worth $25bn apiece to fund their AI ambitions—more than any of them has ever raised in equity. So has SpaceX, which added the same sum to the $86bn that Elon Musk’s rockets-to-robots business raised from stock-market investors last month. In March Amazon, whose computing cloud hosts lots of AI workloads, sold $37bn in bonds. Alphabet issued a rare £1bn, $1.4bn, 100-year bond in Britain in February as part of a £5.5bn debt sale, plus more paper in Swiss francs, days after it raised $20bn at home.

最新一轮技术基础设施狂热，这一次围绕 artificial intelligence，同样正在刺激债券市场繁荣。自 1 月以来，Meta、Nvidia 和 Oracle 分别发行了价值 250 亿美元的债券，用来资助它们的 AI 雄心——这一金额超过了它们各自以往任何一次股权融资。SpaceX 也是如此。Elon Musk 这家从火箭到机器人业务的公司，上个月刚从股市投资者那里融资 860 亿美元，随后又增加了同样规模的债券融资。3 月，Amazon 出售了 370 亿美元债券。Amazon 的云计算业务承载着大量 AI 工作负载。2 月，Alphabet 在 Britain 发行了一只罕见的 10 亿英镑，也就是 14 亿美元，100 年期债券，这是其 55 亿英镑债务发行的一部分；此外，在其本土融资 200 亿美元后的几天内，它还发行了更多以瑞士法郎计价的债券。

Morgan Stanley expects $350bn-400bn in AI-related investment-grade issuance this year in America. That would be nearly a fifth of a record $2.3trn in high-quality dollar-denominated bonds that the bank forecasts firms will sell in America. Another $50bn may come from junk bonds linked to AI projects, out of total high-yield issuance of $440bn. The Bank for International Settlements, central banks’ central bank, recently warned that AI projects may not make enough money to repay the debt that financed them. If bond investing is the “negative art” of choosing what to avoid rather than what to buy, as it is sometimes described, how much avoiding must bond investors do?

Morgan Stanley 预计，今年美国将发行 3500 亿至 4000 亿美元与 AI 相关的 investment-grade，也就是投资级债券。这将接近该行预测美国企业今年将出售的 2.3 万亿美元高质量美元债券中的五分之一，而 2.3 万亿美元本身将创下纪录。另有 500 亿美元可能来自与 AI 项目相关的垃圾债券，而今年高收益债券总发行量预计为 4400 亿美元。被称为“央行的央行”的 Bank for International Settlements 最近警告称，AI 项目可能无法赚到足够的钱来偿还为它们融资的债务。如果债券投资有时被描述为一种 “negative art”，也就是选择避开什么，而不是选择买什么的“负面艺术”，那么债券投资者到底需要避开多少东西？

In some ways, the AI bonanza makes the corporate-bond market appear a little safer. The total debts of America’s five “hyperscale” cloud giants—Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle—climbed by $228bn in the six months to March. That is nearly five times more than any such two-quarter increase in the past. The first four of the firms have for years churned out more profit than they know what to do with, so enjoy strong credit ratings. Microsoft’s debt is considered safer than Uncle Sam’s. Only Oracle, the smallest and least profitable of the five, receives a middling “B” grade from big credit-rating agencies, though so do the issuers of about half of American corporate bonds these days.

从某些方面看，AI 盛宴让企业债券市场显得稍微更安全一些。美国五家 “hyperscale” 云计算巨头——Alphabet、Amazon、Meta、Microsoft 和 Oracle——的总债务在截至 3 月的六个月里增加了 2280 亿美元。这几乎是过去任何两个季度类似增幅的五倍。前四家公司多年来创造的利润多到不知该如何使用，因此享有强劲信用评级。Microsoft 的债务甚至被认为比美国国债还安全。只有 Oracle，也就是五家公司中规模最小、盈利能力最弱的一家，从大型信用评级机构那里获得中等的 “B” 级评级，尽管如今约一半美国企业债发行人也处于类似评级水平。

You might expect a debt-raising boom to raise the spreads on corporate bonds, a measure of their risk relative to safe Treasuries. But thanks to the creditworthiness of the biggest issuers, spreads remain at around 0.8 percentage points on average, close to the lowest in a quarter of a century.

你可能会以为，债务融资热潮会推高企业债券的 spreads，也就是相对于安全国债的利差，这是一种衡量风险的指标。但得益于最大债券发行人的信用质量，企业债平均利差仍保持在约 0.8 个百分点，接近 25 年来的最低水平。

Investors are also beginning to be more discerning between the safe debt of the hyperscalers and bonds funding some of the riskier projects with which the tech giants are associated. In April QTS Data Centers, a firm owned by Blackstone, a giant manager of private assets, issued $4.6bn in bonds to fund an immense data centre in Georgia, of which Microsoft will be a client. Initially the bonds’ yield was 1.1 percentage points higher than for the equivalent Microsoft debt. Since then the spread has widened to 1.6 points.

投资者也开始更仔细地区分两类债务：一类是 hyperscalers 本身的安全债务，另一类是为某些风险更高、但与科技巨头相关的项目融资的债券。4 月，Blackstone 旗下的 QTS Data Centers 发行了 46 亿美元债券，用于资助 Georgia 州一个巨型数据中心，Microsoft 将成为该数据中心的客户。最初，这些债券的收益率比同等 Microsoft 债务高出 1.1 个百分点。此后，这一利差扩大到 1.6 个百分点。

On the surface, the ballooning issuance of riskier debt looks like a bigger cause for concern. The wave of junk bonds, set off last May by a $2bn bond offering from CoreWeave, which rents out top-tier chip capacity, is swelling. In addition, CoreWeave and fellow “neoclouds” like Nebius and Iren have all issued billions of dollars in convertible bonds this year, which investors can swap for a certain number of the issuer’s shares.

表面上看，风险较高债务发行量膨胀似乎更令人担忧。去年 5 月，CoreWeave 发行了 20 亿美元债券，由此掀起了一波垃圾债券浪潮，而这股浪潮正在扩大。CoreWeave 是一家出租顶级芯片算力的公司。此外，CoreWeave 以及 Nebius 和 Iren 等同类 “neoclouds”，也就是新型云计算公司，今年都发行了数十亿美元 convertible bonds，也就是可转换债券。投资者可以把这些债券换成发行公司一定数量的股票。

The division between safer and riskier debt may be misleading, however. Historically, financial instability has tended to build up around assets that investors believe to be safe rather than those they already see as sketchy.

然而，把债务分为更安全和更高风险两类，可能具有误导性。从历史上看，金融不稳定往往不是围绕那些投资者已经认为可疑的资产积累，而是围绕那些他们相信安全的资产积累。

When railway defaults surged in the wake of the financial panic of 1873, it led to a worldwide depression. No such cataclysm looks imminent today. It is clear, though, that avoiding duds will be harder than ever. The AI revolution is proceeding at such a blistering pace that some early winners have already turned into losers, then, occasionally, back into winners—and vice versa. Divining which companies will come out on top, and be able to redeem their bonds when they mature in 10, 30 or, in Alphabet’s case, 100 years’ time, will require more negative artfulness than ever.

1873 年金融恐慌之后，铁路债务违约激增，并引发了一场全球性萧条。今天似乎并没有这样的灾难迫在眉睫。不过，很明显，避开失败者将比以往任何时候都更难。AI 革命正以如此惊人的速度推进，以至于一些早期赢家已经变成输家，然后偶尔又重新变成赢家——反过来也一样。要判断哪些公司最终会胜出，并能在 10 年、30 年，或者像 Alphabet 那样在 100 年后债券到期时偿还债务，将需要比以往更高超的“负面艺术”。

全篇重点词汇：

corporate credit /ˈkɔːpərət ˈkredɪt/ 企业信贷；企业债务融资。lending to companies through loans or bonds.

investment-grade /ɪnˈvestmənt ɡreɪd/ 投资级的。describing bonds considered relatively safe by credit-rating agencies.

spread /spred/ 利差。the difference between the yield on a corporate bond and a safer benchmark such as government bonds.

junk bond /dʒʌŋk bɒnd/ 垃圾债券；高收益债券。a bond with a low credit rating and higher risk of default.

convertible bond /kənˈvɜːtɪbl bɒnd/ 可转换债券。a bond that can be exchanged for a certain number of the issuer’s shares.

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