China’s stock market freefall may have sparked fear across the world’s trading floors, but for a small group of contrarian hedge funds the recent turmoil has been met by a quiet sense of vindication.

中国股市自由落体式下跌或许在世界各地的交易场所都引起了担忧，但对一小部分采取反向投资策略的对冲基金来说，最近的动荡让他们悄然而生“自己判断对了”的感觉。

For several years a group of hedge fund managers have wearily penned quarterly jeremiads to their investors warning of a growing bubble in emerging markets and the risks that China posed to the world economy. For some, the eventual payback has been worth it.

多年来，一些对冲基金经理费尽力气在每个季度的投资者报告中发表长篇大论的悲观预测，警告新兴市场的泡沫日益吹大，以及中国将会给全球经济带来风险。对某些对冲基金经理来说，最终的回报令他们的这种努力物有所值。

“The last two months have been really just like shooting fish in a barrel,” one Hong Kong-based hedge fund manager exults. “It doesn’t happen that often but if you have been short China you have just made some seriously easy money.”

香港的一位对冲基金经理兴冲冲地说道：“过去两个月真的就像是瓮中捉鳖。这种情况并不常发生，但如果你之前做空中国，钱就来得非常容易。”

Amiya Capital, an emerging markets-dedicated hedge fund that first started fretting over China’s debt build-up in 2008, is one such fund.

Amiya Capital就是这样一家基金。这家对冲基金专注于新兴市场，在2008年开始对中国债务增加的现象产生担忧。

“Our thesis is finally playing out, but it’s taken a while,” says Michael Wang, an analyst at Amiya. “We’ve been aware of the situation in China for a while, but it seems the rest of the world is only now getting to grips with how dire things are getting there.”

Amiya分析师Michael Wang表示：“我们的观点终于得到印证，但这花了些时间。我们对中国的情况已掌握了一段时间，但全世界其他人似乎到现在才开始明白那里的情况有多么可怕。”

Amiya Capital expects China’s economy and markets to continue to sag as it undergoes a necessary but bumpy rebalancing, and is betting primarily against currencies and companies that are hurt by this process — a lucrative trade in recent months.

Amiya Capital预计，在中国推进必要但不平稳的再平衡进程之际，中国的经济和市场将继续下行。该公司正大力做空在这个进程中遭受冲击的货币和公司——这类交易在最近几个月获利颇丰。

Yet while the collapse in the Chinese stock market and mounting concerns over its economic health has given sceptics a reason to feel cheerful, correct predictions about large macroeconomic trends are no help unless trades to profit from them are timed perfectly.

然而，尽管中国股市暴跌，中国经济健康状况也日益令人担忧，这让怀疑论者有理由高兴，但除非你能够完美把握交易时机并从中获利，否则正确预测宏观经济大势其实并没有什么用。

Anyone who has put on trades expecting a market crash in recent years has been made to suffer, given that being early is often the same as being wrong in the money management industry.

在资金管理行业中，“早”往往等同于“错”，在最近几年抱着中国市场将崩盘的预期进行交易的人遭受了损失。

“The last five years has been stock prices up, bond markets up. It has been frustrating,” says one hedge fund manager who manages billions of dollars in assets. “This is the end of that story. Markets adjust very quickly on the way down.”

一位管理着数十亿美元资产的对冲基金经理表示：“过去5年一直是股市上涨，债市上涨。这令人沮丧。这个故事到了尾声。市场迅速向下调整。”

Over a year ago one London-based investor, the bespectacled and braces-wearing Crispin Odey, reversed a previously bullish view on global markets to predict an oncoming economic crisis led by a pronounced slowdown in China’s economy.

一年多前，一位戴着眼镜和牙套的伦敦投资者克里斯平攠迪(Crispin Odey)转变了以前看好全球市场的观点，预计全球即将爆发由中国经济显著放缓引发的经济危机。

Declaring in January how “this down cycle is likely to be remembered in a hundred years” Mr Odey began to take out large bets against companies he believed were exposed to China and other emerging markets.

奥迪在今年1月宣称，“这个下行周期很可能一百年后也不会被遗忘”，他开始大举做空被其认为在中国和其他新兴市场有风险敞口的公司。

In April he was forced into a painful U-turn after a big bet against the value of currencies exposed to China went wrong and cost the hedge fund manager almost 20 per cent of the value of his fund.

今年4月，在大举做空对中国有风险敞口的货币出错、使得这位对冲基金经理管理的基金价值缩水近20%之后，奥迪被迫进行了痛苦的一百八十度大转弯。

Other hedge funds that specialise in short selling, or taking bets that share prices of certain companies will fall, have similarly struggled to turn their bearish analysis into trading profits.

其他专门做空或者押注某些公司股价下跌的对冲基金同样很难凭借他们的悲观分析从交易中获利。

Jim Chanos, the American short seller famed for helping detect accounting fraud at Enron, has for several years predicted that China was in the midst of a huge, debt-fuelled bubble that would result in brutal consequences.

以帮助发现安然(Enron)会计欺诈而闻名的美国做空者吉姆夏诺斯(Jim Chanos)多年来一直预测，中国正陷入债务引发的巨大泡沫当中，这将导致可怕的后果。

But years of central bank-led stimulus have challenged Mr Chanos and other short sellers. With so much money sloshing around markets bad companies have tended to rise alongside good ones, meaning both pessimists and stock pickers have lost much of their edge. A spokeswoman for Mr Chanos declined to comment on whether Kynikos Associates, his hedge fund, had profited from the recent China sell-off.

但这些年来，中国由央行主导推出的刺激政策让夏诺斯和其他做空者的预测落了空。由于大量资金游荡在市场，坏公司的股价往往与好公司一起上涨，这意味着无论是悲观者还是选股者都失去了许多优势。夏诺斯的一位发言人拒绝就其对冲基金Kynikos Associates是否从最近中国市场的暴跌中获利置评。

“When everything goes up at the same time it can be very frustrating for managers who are skilled at betting against bad companies and picking out good ones,” says Alper Ince, a managing director at Paamco, an investor in hedge funds.

对冲基金投资机构Paamco董事总经理阿尔珀因斯(Alper Ince)表示：“当所有公司的股价同时上涨时，那些擅长做空坏公司并挑选好公司的经理会觉得非常沮丧。”

Another London-based hedge fund manager, Hugh Hendry, had began warning about the likelihood of a Chinese slowdown since 2009, setting up a specific fund to profit from this and making strong returns from the trade in 2011.

另一位伦敦对冲基金经理休亨德利(Hugh Hendry)自2009年就开始对中国经济放缓的可能性提出警告，并专门设立了一个基金希望从中获利，结果在2011年的交易中获得不菲回报。

Yet Mr Hendry, who was one of the earliest hedge fund managers to make a large, concentrated bet against China, also reversed his stance, buying up large positions in Chinese stock futures and declaring earlier last month: “The tail risk of China blowing up, in our view, has gone because of the power of central banking”.

然而，亨德利后来也转变了立场，大举买入中国股指期货，他在7月表示：“在我们看来，由于中央银行实力强大，中国市场崩盘的尾部风险已不复存在。”亨德利是最早大规模集中做空中国的对冲基金经理之一。

Even with the Chinese market’s plunge earlier this week, there are still fund managers who suggest it may be premature for the bears to celebrate.

即便上周中国市场暴跌，也仍有基金经理表示，现在还不是空头庆祝的时候。

Stephen Jen, the head of currency hedge fund SLJ Capital, frets that the “situation is getting a little bit out of control” in China. However, he argues that the country’s economic deceleration is healthy, and will not impact locals as much as some observers fear.

对冲基金SLJ Macro的货币主管任永力(Stephen Jen)担心，中国的“情况有点失控”。不过他认为，中国的经济减速是健康的，其对国内居民的影响不会像某些观察人士担心的那样大。

“There are going to be some hedge funds who are very pleased about what has happened [and] there will be others who have lost money,” says one US-based hedge fund investor. “But the most pain will probably be for people who called it too soon and changed their minds.”

美国一位对冲基金投资者表示：“有一些对冲基金会对近期的情况感到非常开心，也会有一些基金亏了钱。但那些太早看空后来却改变想法的人可能是最痛苦的。”