怎样的美国大选结果对投资者有利?

Over the next few weeks, investors will be bombarded with commentary about how the outcome of the presidential election will influence the financial markets.
未来几周，投资者将会被大量研究结果淹没，这些研究试图分析美国总统大选结果将如何影响金融市场。

Before you even consider changing your portfolio based on the expected-or actual-results of the election, it's vital to analyze the conventional wisdom first.
在你根据美国大选的预期或实际结果考虑调整投资组合之前，很有必要先分析一下“传统智慧”

Is gridlock good-that is, should investors root against having the same political party control both Congress and the White House? Who is better for stock and bond returns: Republicans or Democrats?
僵持局面是好事吗？换句话说，投资者是否应该反对同一个政党同时控制国会和白宫？哪个政党赢得大选更有利于提高股市和债市的回报，共和党还是民主党？

Most of the answers you are likely to find are propaganda or wishful thinking; many are flat-out wrong. What matters are changes in interest rates, not which party passes through the White House gates.
你可能找到的大多数答案不是宣传口号就是一厢情愿的想法，其中很多答案完全错误。你真正应该关心的是利率的变化，而不是哪个政党迈入白宫的大门。

Since 1926, when reliable stock-market data began, the United States has had 15 presidents and nine elections in which control of the White House passed from one party to the other. That's a small sample. So you should take any statistical conclusion about the relationship between presidential election results and financial returns with a grain of salt the size of the Capitol dome.
从1926年有可靠的股市数据可查以来，美国总共有过15位总统，有九次选举出现白宫控制权从一个党转移到另一个党手中。这个样本不算大。因此，对于任何关于总统选举结果和金融回报之间关系的统计结论，你都应该大大地表示怀疑。

Such caveats won't stop pundits from speculating. One of their most prevalent beliefs: Gridlock is good for the stock market. (A Google GOOG -1.90% search returns 135,000 hits on the phrases 'gridlock is good' + 'Wall Street.') And a divided Congress is what many political forecasters expect, with Pres. Obama winning re-election, the Democrats keeping the Senate and the Republicans retaining the House.
尽管如此，金融界的翘楚们还是会花心思猜测一番。这些人中最流行的一个信念就是，僵持对股市来说是件好事。（在谷歌(Google)浏览器中搜索"gridlock is good"（僵持是好事）和"Wall Street"（华尔街）可以得到135,000个结果。）很多政治预测人士都认为将出现“分裂国会”的结果，奥巴马总统成功连任，民主党控制参议院，共和党控制众议院。

A hard look at the evidence, however, shows that 'gridlock isn't good for stocks,' says Robert Johnson, a finance professor at Creighton University in Omaha. In a working paper that covers 1965 through 2008, he and his colleagues found that gridlock had no effect on the returns of the big companies represented by the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. Small stocks (as measured by Dimensional Fund Advisors' small-company portfolios) returned an average of 21 percentage points less in years when Washington was in gridlock than they did when Congress and the White House were under common control.
不过，奥马哈市克瑞顿大学(Creighton University)的金融学教授约翰逊(Robert Johnson)说，仔细看看证据就会发现，僵持对股市不利。在一篇研究范围涵盖了1965年到2008年时间段的工作论文中，约翰逊和他的同事们发现，僵持对标普500指数代表的大企业的股票回报率没有影响。对小盘股（Dimensional Fund Advisors的小公司组合衡量的对象）来说，与国会和白宫在同一政党控制之下的情形相比，如果华盛顿陷入僵持，这些股票的回报率平均要低21个百分点。

Bickering does have benefits: Corporate bonds have returned an annual average of nearly nine percentage points more in gridlock years than in years of governmental harmony. 'Gridlock reduces the chances of the initiation of major government programs, which can be inflationary' and harmful to bond prices, says Prof. Johnson's colleague Gerald Jensen, a finance professor at Northern Illinois University.
不过争吵也的确有好处：与政治和谐年相比，在僵持年内，公司债的回报率平均每年高出近9个百分点。与约翰逊教授的一同参与研究工作的詹森(Gerald Jensen)说，僵持降低了政府出台重大项目的可能性，而政府项目容易引发通胀，而且对债券价格不利。詹森是北伊利诺伊大学(Northern Illinois University)的金融学教授。