北京分校

考试资讯

      考研英语水平的进步，不仅要记单词，还需要阅读外语文献等资料。接下来，小编为2024考研者们，整理出——2024考研英语同源外刊8月:黄金价格之谜，供考生参考。

2024考研英语同源外刊8月:黄金价格之谜

Traders have an expression to describe how unpredictable financial markets can be: “better off dumb”. Stocks or other financial markets can sometimes behave in unforeseeable ways. Analysts predicted that American share prices would collapse if Donald Trump won the election in 2016—they soared.

交易员们有一句用来形容金融市场的变幻莫测的话：“不如装聋作哑。”股票或其他金融市场有时会以不可预见的方式运行。分析人士曾预测，如果唐纳德·特朗普赢得2016年大选，美国股价将崩盘，但结果却是股价飙升。

Companies that post better-than-expected earnings sometimes see their share prices decline. Glimpsing the future should give a trader an edge, and most of the time it would. But not always.

盈利好于预期的公司有时会出现股价下跌的情况。洞察未来应该会给交易者带来优势，而且在大多数情况下确实如此。但并非总是如此。

Say you knew, at the start of 2021. that inflation was going to soar, the consequence of rampant money-printing by central banks and extravagant fiscal stimulus. In addition, perhaps you also knew that inflation would then be stoked by trench warfare in Europe.

假设你在2021年初就知道通胀将飙升，这是央行大肆印钞和过度财政刺激的结果。此外，或许你还知道，欧洲的堑壕战届时将加剧通胀。

With such knowledge, there is perhaps one asset above all others that you would have dumped your life savings into: the precious metal that adorns the necks and wrists of the wealthy in countries where inflation is a perennial problem.

有了这样的认识，也许你会把毕生积蓄都投入到一种资产中：那就是在通货膨胀长期存在的国家，戴在富人脖子和手腕上的贵金属。

Better off dumb, then. The price of gold has barely budged for two years. On January 1st 2021 an ounce cost just shy of $1.900. Today it costs $1.960. You would have made a princely gain of 3%.

还是当个哑巴吧。黄金价格近两年来几乎没有变动。2021年1月1日，一盎司黄金的价格接近1900美元。如今它的价格是1960美元。你将获得3%的丰厚收益。

What is going on? Working out the right price for gold is a difficult task. Gold bugs point to the metal’s historical role as the asset backing money, its use in fine jewellery, its finite supply and its physical durability as reasons to explain why it holds value. After all, at first glance the phenomenon is a strange one: in contrast to stocks and bonds, gold generates no cash flows or dividends.

这是怎么一回事?确定黄金的正确价格是一项艰巨的任务。黄金爱好者指出，黄金在历史上曾作为货币的支撑资产、可用于珠宝首饰、供应有限、具有良好的物理耐久性，这些都是它保值的原因。毕竟，乍一看，这种现象很奇怪：与股票和债券相比，黄金不会产生现金流或股息。

Yet this lack of income also provides a clue to the metal’s mediocre returns in recent years. Because gold generates no cash flows, its price tends to be inversely correlated with real interest rates—when safe, real yields, like those generated by Treasury bonds, are high, assets that generate no cash flows become less appealing.

然而，这种缺乏收入的情况也为黄金近年来的平庸回报提供了线索。由于黄金不产生现金流，其价格往往与实际利率成反比——当市场安全、实际收益率(如国债收益率)较高时，不产生现金流的资产就变得不那么有吸引力了。

Despite all the furore about the rise in inflation, the increase in interest rates has been even more remarkable. As a result, even as inflation shot up, long-term expectations have remained surprisingly well anchored. The ten-year Treasury yield, minus a measure of inflation expectations, has climbed from around -0.25% at the start of 2021 to 1.4% now.

尽管通胀率的上升引起了轩然大波，但利率的上升却更加引人注目。因此，即使通胀飙升，长期预期却出人意料地保持稳定。扣除通胀预期后的十年期国债收益率已从2021年初的-0.25%左右攀升至现在的1.4%。

In 2021 researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago analysed the main factors behind gold prices since 1971. when America came off the gold standard, a system under which dollars could be converted into gold at a fixed price.

2021年，芝加哥联邦储备银行的研究人员分析了自1971年美国脱离金本位制(在金本位制下，美元可以按固定价格兑换成黄金)以来金价走势背后的主要因素。

They identified three categories: gold as protection against inflation, gold as a hedge against economic catastrophe and gold as a reflection of interest rates. They then tested the price of gold against changes in inflation expectations, attitudes to economic growth and real interest rates using annual, quarterly and daily data.

他们将黄金划分为三类：抵御通胀的黄金、防范经济灾难的黄金以及反映利率的黄金。然后，他们利用年度、季度和每日数据，根据通货膨胀预期、对经济增长的态度和实际利率的变化对黄金价格进行了测试。

Their results indicate that all these factors do indeed affect gold prices. The metal appears to hedge against inflation and rises in price when economic circumstances are gloomy. But evidence was most robust for the effect of higher real interest rates. The negative effect was apparent regardless of the frequency of the data.

他们的研究结果表明，所有这些因素确实会影响黄金价格。当经济环境不景气时，黄金似乎可以对冲通货膨胀，其价格也会上涨。但证据较有力的是实际利率上升的影响。无论数据的频率如何，负面影响都是显而易见的。

Inflation may have been the clearest driver of gold prices in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s but, the researchers noted, from 2001 onwards long-term real interest rates and views about economic growth dominated. The ways in which gold prices have moved since 2021 would appear to support their conclusion: inflation matters, but real interest rates matter most of all.

研究人员指出，在20世纪70年代、80年代和90年代，通货膨胀可能是金价较明显的驱动因素，但从2001年开始，长期实际利率和对经济增长的看法占据了主导地位。2021年以来金价的走势似乎支持了他们的结论：通货膨胀很重要，但实际利率较重要。

 

重难点词汇：

rampant [ˈræmpənt] adj. 猖獗的;极端的;狂暴的

mediocre [ˌmiːdiˈoʊkər] adj. 平庸的;平凡的

furore [ˌfjʊ(ə)ˈrɔːri] n. 公愤;轰动;狂热

      综上是“2024考研英语同源外刊8月:黄金价格之谜”，希望对备战2024考研考生们有所帮助!让我们乘风破浪，终抵彼岸，考研加油!

推荐阅读：

2024考研英语同源外刊8月文章汇总

2024考研英语同源外刊7月文章汇总

2024考研英语同源外刊6月文章汇总