摩根士丹利投资管理亚洲区负责人Mike LEVIN：顺势而为，多元投资

10月26—27日，全球财富管理论坛·2024上海苏河湾大会顺利召开。摩根士丹利投资管理亚洲区负责人Mike LEVIN（迈乐文）在主题论坛“踏浪而行：全球市场波动下的金融业发展趋势”上发表演讲。

Mike LEVIN表示，第一，资产管理和财富管理的重要性正在日益增加，两者相辅相成。近年来被动管理型资产的规模增速高于主动管理型资产，导致公募市场整体利润率持续下降，私募市场成为行业的主要竞争方向之一，但大部分投资者对流动性风险及其相关成本的认识仍然不足。第二，人口变化是支撑资产管理行业规模增长和重要性提升的十分重要的因素。全球人口老龄化趋势促使个人投资者更多依靠资本投资来保障退休生活，中国的个人养老金计划因此展现出巨大潜力和广阔发展前景。第三，尽管全球市场的波动性在短期内集中显现，但从长期来看全球市场的整体波动性仍然相对较低。因此，“顺势而为、多元投资”依然是行业的主要趋势和机会所在。

过去三十年来，中国一直是摩根士丹利开展业务的理想市场，我们也充分感受到了中国市场的开放和友好。对于摩根士丹利而言，上海是一个颇为特殊的地方。早在30年前，摩根士丹利便在上海设立了在中国的首批办事处之一。随后，摩根士丹利携手中国建设银行以及其他国内外合作伙伴，于1995年合资成立了中国国际金融有限公司（简称“中金公司”），这是当时中国内地第一家中外合资投资银行。摩根士丹利投资管理于2008年便参股了摩根士丹利基金（前身为摩根士丹利华鑫基金），并在去年完成全资控股。

谈及当前的金融业发展趋势，我们不得不提中国资本市场的开放，这也是我有生之年所经历的最重要的行业趋势。中国于2001年加入世界贸易组织（“WTO”），并在2002年开始实施合格境外机构投资者制度，再之后股票市场与债券市场的互联互通陆续推出。短短二十几年，中国资本市场已发生了翻天覆地的变化。

即便经历了过去几年疫情的挑战，中国的股票市场和固定收益市场依然蓬勃发展，如今已经成为世界第二大资本市场。中国的股票市值在2002年约为4600亿美元，如今已经达到将近12万亿美元，是2002年的26倍左右。

接下来，我们先深入探讨行业的几大新趋势，然后谈谈如何结合这些新趋势以应对全球市场的波动。

首先，资产管理和财富管理的重要性正在日益增加，两者相辅相成。过去十年，资产管理行业的规模已经翻倍，达到约1280亿美元，超过了全球GDP的规模。根据麦肯锡（Mckinsey）的数据，2023年全球近一半的资金净流量来自于财富管理行业的客户。这说明了资产管理和财富管理的重要性，也印证了客户信托责任的神圣性。

聚焦行业内部，我们也观察到了管理费的“杠铃效应”。一方面，被动管理型资产的规模增速高于主动管理型资产，公募基金的整体管理费正在下降。

被动型投资能够让客户以更高的流动性、更低的成本、更合理的费用配置指数资产，因此这类投资工具的增长是非常有利于客户的。同时，这也为主动管理创造了机会，主动管理投资需要提高责任标准，以证明其略高的管理费用是合理的。

管理费的下降，叠加越来越高的运营成本、技术投资，以及日益严格的监管要求和客户期待，导致公募市场的整体利润率正在下降。

另一方面，管理费较高的另类资产已成为资产管理行业的主要收入来源，并且其规模也在迅速扩张。另类资产的增长得益于有一定流动性限制的产品规模激增，这种产品结构设计旨在吸引那些财富管理客户。由此来看，私募市场成为行业的主要竞争方向之一也就不足为奇了。

自2022年股票市场和固定收益市场同时缩量以来，私募市场为财富管理客户提供服务的规模有望持续增长。虽然从分散风险的角度看，这是好事，但令我担忧的是，更广泛的投资者群体对流动性风险和相对应成本的认识依然过低。

个人投资者对公募市场的波动非常敏感，与之形成鲜明对比的是，他们却认为私募市场的波动更低、估值更稳定、风险更低。

如果是在市场繁荣、杠杆成本较低、退出选择丰富的情况下，私募市场的回报率看起来相当具有吸引力。然而在流动性选择有限的当下，私募市场的业绩会出现显著分化，如果某些资产管理公司在私募股权、私人信贷和房地产领域实力较弱，其出现亏损的几率也很大。

根据麦肯锡的研究，全球几乎一半的资金都来自美国和欧盟以外的地区。亚洲市场是资产管理行业日益重要的增长来源。有趣的是，包括中国在内，超过四分之三的资产由立足本土的管理公司获取。

人口变化是支撑资产管理行业规模增长和重要性提升的十分重要的因素，尽管这一趋势不太引人注目。在人口寿命普遍延长的趋势下，政府资助的社会保障计划和收益确定型养老金计划并非长久之计。老百姓需要通过资本投资获取更多的退休保障，而非仅靠劳动回报。

能够享受税收优惠的固定缴款型养老金计划是增加退休收入的另一可行方案，美国的401K和IRA计划、澳大利亚的某些年金计划、日本的个人储蓄账户以及中国的个税递延型个人养老金计划（养老金体系的第三支柱）都是很好的例子。虽然中国的个人养老金计划还处于起步阶段，资金吸纳的速度较慢，但我认为它的重要性不言而喻，且具备长远的前景。

事实上，帮助投资者应对多变的市场环境是资产管理行业永恒的主题。

这要从哈里·马科维茨（Harry Markowitz）说起，他在1952年首创了现代投资组合理论，并因此荣获诺贝尔奖。他提出通过构建一个由相关性较低的资产构成的多元化投资组合，以实现风险调整后的收益最大化。

从本质上讲，一项投资对投资组合效率的贡献比其单独的风险收益特征更为重要。正如马科维茨所说，“分散投资是投资中唯一免费的午餐”。

虽然战略性分散投资是应对波动最简单且最有效的方式，但实际上大多数人并非都能做到。面对全球市场的波动，即使是专业投资者也可能会表现出本土偏好，并倾向于投资近期回报最好的资产类别，而非从前瞻性角度投资最有潜力的资产类别。

譬如过去三年全球投资者从中国股票市场大幅撤资就是一个相关个例。但根据马科维茨的理论，撤出参与全球第二大股票市场的资金并非优化投资组合的最佳方式。

实际上，与全球金融危机之前相比，2010年以来市场的整体波动性水平相对较低。由于信息获取能力的增强、快速交易能力的提高，以及程序化交易可能带来的短期波动，市场波动集中在更短的时间。

究其本质，投资者所寻求的是对未来收益的折现，而对未来预期的变化会比以前更快地反应在市场上。举个例子，今年8月份是4年来全球股市波动最大的一个月，原因包括美国经济数据疲软，7月非农新增就业仅11.4万人，以及日本央行将利率上调了15个基点。这些数据或政策措施似乎不足以让日经指数创下自1987年黑色星期一以来的最大单日跌幅（-12.4%）。

让我感到惊讶且备受启发的是，全球大多数股票市场在8月份都收高了。因此，当我们谈论全球市场波动时，我在想我们是否关注的时间范围太短了。

如果观察全球股票市场的月度和年度回报率，情况就有所不同。以MSCI全球指数为例，自2009年以来的15年中，MSCI全球指数有8年的涨幅超过15%，只有1年（即2022年）的跌幅超过10%，且其过去15年的年标准差均低于18%。此外，今年10个月中有8个月的月回报率为正。

再举个例子，彭博巴克莱全球综合指数在过去15年中有10年是上涨的。在信用违约率较低和信用利差收窄的当下，风险组合更多与利率风险而非信贷基本面挂钩。当前起始收益率相对具有吸引力，全球货币政策也正变得更加宽松，在软着陆的基本情景下，信用违约事件不太可能急剧增加。

综上所述，当下我们需要做到“顺势而为，多元投资”。以上分享的行业趋势既是机会，也是我们为投资者提供服务的责任所在。

总结而言，受益于更丰富的投资解决方案，包括低成本的被动指数投资、主动管理投资以及创新的跨资产类别的另类投资，资产管理公司能够打造多样化、更具韧性和更高效的投资组合，从而帮助投资者应对极端的市场环境。

与此同时，鉴于财富管理客户面临着更多的选择和更复杂的产品，以及资产管理公司在帮助投资者拥有更体面的退休生活上发挥着日益重要的作用，我们有责任开展投资者教育，并在投资时充分考虑投资者的风险承受能力和流动性需求。摩根士丹利投资管理可以为全球范围的客户提供全球性的解决方案。

Good morning. My name is Michael Levin and I’m Head of Morgan Stanley Investment Management in Asia.

Thank you for inviting me to join the Global Asset Management Forum in Shanghai and share some thoughts on Financial Industry Trends Amid Global Market volatility.

Shanghai is a special place for Morgan Stanley as we set-up one of our first offices in China here 30 years ago. That was followed by helping to establish the first Sino-Foreign investment Bank in 1995 called China International Capital Corporation or “CICC” in partnership with China Construction Bank as well as other domestic and foreign partners.

China has been a welcoming home for Morgan Stanley and a great place to do business over the past three decades. For MSIM, we initiated our investment in our fund management joint venture in 2008 and took full ownership of MSIM China just last year.

As we talk about industry trends today, I have to say that the most significant financial trend in my lifetime has been the opening up of China’s capital markets. It’s amazing to think that China only joined the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) in 2001 and the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor program was first established in 2002. The Stock and Bond Connect programs are just a decade old.

Even with the challenges of the last couple years, China’s equity and fixed income markets are now the second largest in the world. For perspective, China’s equity market capitalization was about $460bn in 2002 and is now roughly 26 times the size at approximately $12 trillion.

Now, let’s cover a few industry trends that I think are relevant and then we can tie that into navigating global market volatility.

The most basic trend is the growing importance and symbiotic nature of asset and wealth management. The asset management industry has doubled to around $128tn in the past decade, which is bigger than global GDP. And, according to Mckinsey, nearly half of global net flows in 2023 came from wealth clients. To me, that helps to frame the importance of our industry and the sacredness of our fiduciary duty to clients.

We are seeing a fee barbell. On one side, passive assets are growing faster than actively-managed assets and there is fee compression across public asset investment strategies.

The growth of more efficient vehicles to access index exposures in a liquid, low-cost way and a moderation of fees is great for clients. It also creates opportunities for active management while increasing the standards of accountability to justify marginally higher fees.

When combined with increasing operational complexities, technology investment, regulatory requirements and heightened servicing expectations, this translates into lower industry profitability in public markets.

At the same time, higher-fee Alternative assets are already the largest contributor to industry revenues and are expanding at a far more rapid clip. This growth is supported by a proliferation of semi-liquid structures designed to appeal to those same wealth clients driving net flows. So, it should come as no surprise that private markets have become one of the primary industry battlegrounds.

The secular growth in private market offerings to wealth clients is likely to be sustained following the experience of simultaneous drawdowns of equity and fixed income markets in 2022. While that’s generally a good thing in terms of diversification, I worry that the perception of the risks and the cost of illiquidity for this broader population of investors is still too low.

In contrast to hyper-sensitivity to public markets volatility, on average, individual investors have come to believe that less frequent and more stable valuations in private markets mean that the risk is lower.

In a buoyant market with cheap leverage and abundant exit options, private market returns all look pretty good. It’s during more difficult times with limited liquidity options when we will see significant dispersion in performance, including losses among weaker managers in private equity, private credit and real estate.

Sticking with our friends at McKinsey, they show that almost half of global flows are coming from outside the US and EU. Naturally, Asia is an increasingly important source of growth for the asset management industry. Interestingly, including in China, over three-quarters of those assets are won by domestic managers.

The unglamorous mega-trend that underpins the scale, importance and sustained growth of our industry is demographics. As we are learning, government-sponsored social security programs and defined benefit pensions are not durable solutions to support aging populations with longer lifespans. Individuals need to generate returns on capital in lieu of returns on labor.

Tax-advantaged defined contribution programs have become a viable solution to augmenting retirement income. We see this with 401K and IRA plans in the US, certain types of superannuation funds in Australia, the Nippon Individual Savings Account in Japan and the third-pillar of China’s pension system with tax-deferred individual retirement accounts. While initial uptake has been slow, I believe the China private pension program is important and holds long-term promise.

Time to discuss the topic of global market volatility because helping investors navigate diverse markets conditions is a fundamental, timeless premise of our industry.

For me, this starts with Harry Markowitz who pioneered Modern Portfolio Theory in 1952, which won him the Nobel Prize. If I could attempt to summarize the theory, it’s a framework for maximizing risk-adjusted return over time through building a diversified portfolio of less correlated investments.

In essence, the contribution of an investment to the efficiency of a portfolio is more relevant than its individual risk-return characteristic. As Markowitz said, “diversification is the only free lunch in investing.”

While strategic diversification would be my simplistic answer to how to manage volatility, it’s actually not what most people typically do. Amid global volatility, even sophisticated investors tend to exhibit home bias and gravitate to the asset class that has delivered the best returns in the recent past rather than what is the best thing to do on a forward-looking basis.

A perfect example of this would be global investors withdrawing a disproportionate amount of capital from China over the past 3 years. Harry Markowitz would tell you that withdrawing from participation in the second largest equity market in the world is not the best way to optimize your portfolio.

In actuality, market volatility has been relatively subdued since 2010 compared to prior to the GFC. The one thing that we see or at least perceive is the concentration of volatility into shorter periods of time due to enhanced access to information, the ability to transact quickly and programmatic trading that likely exacerbates short-term volatility.

By nature, markets seek to discount future earnings and changes to those expectations are incorporated more quickly than was possible before. August was the most volatile month for stocks in 4 years on weaker economic data in the US, only creating 114,000 new jobs in July, and a 15-basis point rate hike by the Bank of Japan. This data or policy measure would hardly seem like a sufficient catalyst for the Nikkei to have its largest single day drop since Black Monday in 1987 with a loss of -12.4%.

What’s amazing and informative to me is that most equity markets finished the month of August higher. So, when we talk about global market volatility, I wonder whether we are focusing on too short-term of a period.

If you look at the monthly and yearly returns, the story is different. Rather than cherry-pick the US, let’s look at the MSCI World. In the 15 years since 2009, the MSCI World was up by more than 15% in 8 of the years and only down by more than 10% in 1 year, which was 2022. And the annual standard deviation is below 18% for all multi-year periods. In addition, monthly returns have been positive in 8 of 10 months this year.

The Bloomberg Barclays Agg has been up 10 of the last 15 years. If we look at default rates being low and credit spreads being tight, the current risk profile has been more closely tied to interest rate risk than credit fundamentals. Today, starting yields are relatively attractive, global monetary policy is turning more accommodative and the soft-landing scenario is unlikely to trigger a sharp increase in defaults.

Time to pull this all together. I go back to the first clause in the title of these speeches while adding my own two words, which is “ride the tide and diversify.” The industry trends that I’ve outlined give us both the tools and responsibility to serve investors.

The broader range of investment offerings, including low-cost, passive index exposure, economic access to alpha and innovative Alternatives solutions across asset classes, allow us craft diverse, resilient, and efficient portfolios that can weather extreme market conditions.

As the choices and complexity of offerings for wealth clients increase and we help support the financial well-being of individuals throughout their retirement, we have a duty to provide investor education and ensure alignment of risk tolerance as well as liquidity needs. We do this across a global audience with global solutions.

What a privilege it is to be in our industry.