经济学人下载:华尔街新宠--量子计算(1)

High-tech finance 

高科技金融

Quantum for quants 

量化交易量子化

Wall Street's latest shiny new thing: quantum computing 

华尔街新宠：量子计算

The finance industry has had a long and profitable relationship with computing. It was an early adopter of everything from mainframe computers to artificial intelligence. For most of the past decade more trades have been done at high frequency by complex algorithms than by humans. Now big banks have their eyes on quantum computing, another cutting-edge technology. 

金融业和计算技术长期保持着有利可图的关系。在采用从大型主机到人工智能等各种技术时，这个行业都是领头羊。在过去十年的大部分时间里，由复杂算法驱动的高频交易的交易量已经超过了人工交易。现在，大银行又盯上了另一项尖端技术——量子计算。

This is the idea, developed by physicists in the 1980s, that the counter-intuitive properties of quantum mechanics might allow for the construction of computers that could perform mathematical feats that no non-quantum machine would ever be capable of. The promise is now starting to be realised. Computing giants like Google and IBM, as well as a flock of smaller competitors, are building and refining quantum hardware. 

上世纪80年代物理学家提出，借助量子力学种种与直觉相悖的特性或许可以发明出量子计算机，实现非量子计算机永远无法企及的运算壮举。这一愿景现已开始逐渐演变为现实。谷歌和IBM等计算巨头以及一大批较小的竞争对手都在打造和完善量子硬件。

Quantum computers will not beat their classical counterparts at everything. But much of the maths at which they will excel is of interest to bankers. At a conference on December 10th William Zeng, head of quantum research at Goldman Sachs told the audience that quantum computing could have a "revolutionary" impact on the bank, and on finance more broadly.

量子计算机虽然并不会在所有领域都能击败经典计算机，但它们擅长解决的许多数学问题却让银行家颇感兴趣。在12月10日的一次会议上，高盛集团的量子研究负责人威廉·曾告诉听众，量子计算可能给这家银行以及更广泛的金融产业带来“革命性”影响。

Many financial calculations boil down to optimisation problems, a known strength of quantum computers, says Marco Pistoia, the head of a research unit at JPMorgan Chase, who spent many years at IBM before that. Quantum quants hope their machines will boost profits by speeding up asset pricing, digging up better-performing portfolios and making machinelearning algorithms more accurate. A study by BBVA, a Spanish bank, concluded in July that quantum computers could boost credit-scoring, spot arbitrage opportunities and accelerate so-called "Monte Carlo" simulations, which are commonly used in finance to try to model the likely behaviour of markets. 

马可皮斯托亚是摩根大通研究部门的负责人，曾在IBM工作多年，他表示，许多金融运算都可以归结为最优化问题，而这正是量子计算机的一个已知强项。有量子计算加持的量化投资机构希望通过加速资产定价、挖掘表现更好的投资组合、提高机器学习算法的准确性来提升利润。西班牙对外银行（BBVA）在7月完成的研究称量子计算机可以增强信用评分、发现套利机会并加速“蒙特卡罗模拟——金融业广泛使用这种模拟来预测市场动向。