The safety of speculation ...
通过凯恩斯视角审视投资组合实践，指出从凯恩斯时代至今，人们一直将不确定性当作风险来处理，当前依赖基准和风险控制的实践虽技术复杂，却掩盖了凯恩斯间接、含蓄方法中的独特洞见。
Abstract Doubtless writing tongue-in-cheek to the Estates Committee of King’s College in 1938, Keynes remarked that it was safer to be a speculator than an investor. In the 1920s when first assuming responsibility for the College endowment, he had been a speculator, experiencing a remarkable conversion in the early 1930s to become a genuine long-term investor. Viewing the development of portfolio practice through Keynesian lenses, we demonstrate the essential continuity in conventional practice from Keynes’ time to the present day, the enduring characteristic being the treatment of uncertainty as if it were risk. Current practice is technically sophisticated, manifested in the reliance on benchmarks and risk controls to such an extent that we can refer to the fetish of benchmarking. In contrast, Keynes’ indirect, allusive, indeed elusive, approach embodies a unique insight—one that has been totally obscured by the conventional emphasis on ‘capital appreciation and depreciation generally’.