精选考研英语同源外刊文章阅读（二）

From The New York Times

By David Leonhardt

May 23,2007 Wed.

Worth a Lot, but Are They Worth It?

When Institutional Investor's Alpha magazine released its annual list of the highest paid hedge fund managers last month, it allowed the rest of us to play an entertaining little parlor game: what could you buy if you made as much money as those guys?

James Simons, a 69-year-old mathematician who was at the top of the list, earned $1.7 billion, which equaled the amount of money that the federal government spent last year running its vast network of national parks. Down at No. 3 on the list, Edward S. Lampert of Greenwich, Conn.; the investor who owns a large chunk of Sears, made $1.3 billion, which, if you forget about taxes, would have allowed him to buy the entire economic output of Sierra Leone. We're talking about real money here.

Today, Alpha magazine will release another big list; and this one offers a chance to answer another, arguably more important, question: Are these billionaire hedge fund managers really worth it?

The reason hedge funds are a license to print money is their fee structure. A typical fund charges a 2 percent management fee, which means that it keeps 2 cents of every dollar that it manages, regardless of performance. Mutual funds, on average, charge about 1 percent.

On top of the management fee, hedge funds also take a big cut-usually at least 20 percent-of any profits that exceed a predetermined benchmark.

So in a good year, a fund's managers bring in stunning amounts of money, and in a bad year, they still do very well. Some quick math shows why: 2 percent of a $5 billion portfolio, which was roughly the cutoff for making Alpha's list of the 100 largest funds, equals $100 million. A fund's managers get to take that fee every single year.

Last year was actually a pretty tough year for the industry. Because hedge funds tend to make a lot of countercyclical bets-thus the name-they can often turn a profit even when The stock market falls. When it's rising broadly, though, many struggle to keep up. Last year, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index jumped 14 percent, while the average hedge fund returned less than 13 percent, after investment fees, according to Hedge Fund Research in Chicago.

But the men-and they are all men-who appear on Alpha's list of top earners don't manage average hedge funds. They manage the biggest funds in the world, the ones that are winning the Darwinian competition for capital, and many of them aren't having any trouble beating the market. One of the funds at Mr. Simons's firm, Renaissance Technologies, delivered a net return of 21 percent last year. The other returned 44 percent after fees. And Mr. Simons, who relies on a fantastically complex set of algorithms, doesn't charge " 2 and 20"-as the typical industry fees are called. He charges “5 and 44”—a 5 percent management fee and 44 percent of profits-yet he has still been doing very well by his investors for almost two decades.

I realize that a lot of people find 9-and 10-figure incomes to be inherently excessive. Or even immoral. From a strictly economic point of view, however, they are also perfectly rational. You cannot-find anyone else who is providing the same returns as the best hedge fund managers at a lower price. If you don't like it, you don't have to give them your money.

(Even if you do like it, they probably won't take your money: In exchange for being lightly regulated, hedge funds are open only to wealthy investors and big institutions.)

Thanks to their incredible performance, the biggest funds have grown far bigger in recent years. The 100 largest firms in the world managed $I trillion at the end of last year, or 69 percent of all the assets in hedge funds, according to Alpha. At the end of 2003, the top 100 had less than $500 billion, or only 54 percent of total hedge fund investments.

"The best performance is coming from the largest funds," said Christy Wood, who oversees equities investments for the California Public Employees' Retirement System, which, like a lot of pension funds, is moving more money into hedge funds.

But there is an irony to this influx of money. It all but guarantees that hedge fund pay over the next few years won't be as closely tied to performance as it has been. The hundreds of millions of dollars that have flowed into hedge funds have made it all the harder for fund managers to find truly undervalued investments. The world is awash in capital.

All that capital, of course, also translates into ever-greater management fees, regardless of a fund's performance. The flagship hedge fund at Goldman Sachs lost 6 percent last year, but it still brought in a nice stream of fees. Bridgewater Associates, which is based in Greenwich, has earned a net return of less than 4 percent in each of the last two years. Yet its founder, Raymond T. Dalio , made $350 million in 2006.

“when we have a bad year, we're essentially flat," Parag Shah, a Bridgewater executive, told me."And when we have a good year, we have a great year."

Goldman and Bridgewater may well bounce back, but the combination of extraordinary pay and ordinary performance is going to occur more and more in the coming years.

Outside of the highfliers on the Alpha list, it's already the norm. Since 2000, the average hedge fund hasn't done any better, after fees, than the market as a whole, according to research by David A. Hsieh, a finance professor at Duke. Still, even mediocre managers, after a lucky year or two, are able to attract gobs of capital and charge " 2 and 20."

So are today's hedge fund managers really worth it? Sure, but only if they deliver the sort of performance that Mr. Simons has, and very few will in the years ahead. More to the point, it's extremely difficult to know who the stars will be.

In all sorts of walks of life, people tend to think that the past is a better predictor of the future than it really is. That's why journeyman baseball player—a Yankees pitcher named Carl Pavano comes to mind-are able to sign huge contracts based on a single good season it's also why so many investors chase returns.

The genius of the world's hedge fund managers isn't only in how they invest their money. It also lies in having set up an industry that takes advantage of a timeless human trait.

重点段落译文

随着黄禹锡的科学信用的动摇，这个世界上最著名的狗的身份也悬而未定。这位陷人重围的科学家坚持称斯纳皮是世界上首只克隆犬，而且他甚至还租用了韩国一个独立的实验室—Humen子Pas，生物实验室来证实这个断言。判决是:上个星期，HwnanPass的总裁李顺杰告诉《时代周刊》:“这些结果是不具争谓的，我百分之百她肯宗斯纳方的真实性。”但是HnmanPaca实质上也是为黄禹锡工作的.这不管是对于进行独立测试的首尔大学的希赛网调查小组还是命令进行调查的《自然》的编辑来说都是远远不够的。

如果斯纳皮真的是从一个名叫泰的3岁的阿富汗公狗的耳朵细胞克隆出来的，这应该不难证明，即使是对那些外行的调查者来说。只要他们在克隆体和母体的组织中提取样本就能判断这两个动物细胞核里的DNA是否相同，而这是一个真正的克隆物的首要标志。在1996年创造出了克隆羊多莉的苏格兰科学家伊恩·威尔姆特就不得不提供了这样的样本来向怀疑者证明他创造了历史上首个克隆哺乳动物。

即使争议牵涉到了他的干细胞论文，如果他在《科学》里的原始论文中提供了额外的确凿证据，黄禹锡就能在斯纳皮的某些问题中抢占先机。那份决定性的证据来自于每个细胞里微小的能量制造结构—动物的线粒体。大多数哺乳动物的DNA都存储于细胞核中，也有一些在线粒体中。(细胞核中的DNA构成了动物基本的基因蓝图，线粒体中的DNA包含了制造蛋白质的指令，这些蛋白质参与细胞的各种新陈代谢功能。)

线粒体中的DNA是作为卵子遗传物的一部分从母体传递下来的。例如，孪生双胞胎有相同的细胞核DNA和线粒体DNA，因为他们的诞生是由于一个卵子受精而由此产生的胚胎分裂成两个。对克隆物来说情况就截然不同了。因为黄禹锡说他创造斯纳皮的克隆过程涉及两条狗—取一条狗的细胞核，取另一条狗的卵子—斯纳皮的线粒体DNA是不可能与泰的线粒体DNA一致的。那就是李顺杰的科学家们所说的他们已经发现的东西，无疑也是黄禹锡希望首尔大学和《自然》发现的。最终，关于斯纳皮来源的可靠证据将会显示该条狗的线粒体DNA与它的卵子捐赠者的线粒体DNA是一致的，然而，是否进行了这项测试还不是很清楚。

词汇注解

重点单词

Output /'autput/

【中文释义】n.产量

【大纲全义】n.产量，输出(量)，输出功率

Arguably /'a:gjuabli/

【中文释义】adv.相对地

【大纲全义】adv.可论证地(可辩论地);相对地

Predetermine /'pri:di'tə:min/

【中文释义】v.预定，预先

【大纲全义】v.预定，注定; 预先决定…….的方向

cutoff /'kʌtɔ:f/

【中文释义】n.分界线

【大纲全义】n.近路，捷径; 切开; 停止; 分界线

Broadly /'brɔ:dli/

【中文释义】adv.广泛地

【大纲全义】adv.宽广地，广泛地

renaissance /rə'neisəns/

【中文释义】n.复兴，重生

【大纲全义】n. [the Renaissance]文艺复兴(时期);新生，复兴

Fantastically /fæn'tæstikəlli/

【文中释义】adv.非常地

【大纲全义】adv.非常地; 空想(非常)

inherently /in'hiərəntli/

【文中释义】adv.天性地，天生地

【大纲全义】adv.天性地，固有地

immoral / i'mɔrəl/

【文中释义】adv.不道德的

【大纲全义】adv.不道德的; 邪恶的

超纲词汇

parlor n.客厅 benchmark n.基准点

countercyclical adj.反周期的 algorithm n.算法

awash adj.被浪冲打的，被海水淹没的 gob n.大量，很多