投资是指投入当前资金或其他资源以期待在未来获得收益的行为。
An inverstment is the current commitent of money or other resources in the expectation of reaping future benefits.
例如，人们购买股票并期望这些股票给他们带来的未来收益可以补偿与这项投资相对应的货币时间价值和风险。
For example, an individual might purchase shares of stock anticipating that the future proceeds from the shares will justify both the time what her money is tied up as well as the risk of the investment.
你用来学习这本书的时间也是一项投资。
The time you will spend studying this text (not to mention its cost) also is an investment.
你放弃了当天的休闲时间或是通过投资在很多方面都不相同，但它们具有一个重要的共同点，这也是所以投资的共性，那就是：投资者牺牲投资在很多方面以期待未来的收益。
You are forgoing either current leisure or the income you could be earning at a job in the expectation that your future career will be sufficiently enhanced to justify this commitment of time and effort. While these two investments differ in many ways, they share one key attribute that is central to all investments: You sacrifice something of value now, expecting to benefit from that sacrifice latter.
本书会让你成为一个见多识广的投资实干家。
This text can help you become an informed practitioner of investments.
尽管本书将重点放在证券投资（如股票、债券、期权和期货等）上，但我们讨论的大部分内容适用于各种类型的投资分析。
We will focus on investments in securities such as stocks, bones, or options and futures contacts, but much of what we discuss will be useful in the analysis of any type of investment.
本书将介绍各种证券市场组织的背景；
This text will provide you with background in the organization of various securities markets;
适用于特定市场的估值技术和风险管理原理，如债券市场和股票市场；
will survey the valuation and securities markets, such as those for bonds or stocks;
本书还将介绍构建投资组合的原理。
and will introduce you to the principles of portfolio construction.
总的来说，本章将主要介绍三个方面的内容，这些内容将为你接下来的学习奠定良好的基础。
Broadly speaking, this chapter addresses three topics that will provide a useful perspective for the material that is to come later.
在进入“投资”这一主题之前，将首先介绍金融资产在经济中的作用。
First, before deliving into the topic of "investments", we consider the role of financial assets in the economy.
这部分内容主要包括金融资产和那些实实在在为消费者提供产品和服务的使用资产之间的关系，以及为什么金融资产在发达经济中起到至关重要的作用。
We discuss the relationship between securities and the "real" assets that actually produce goods and services for consumers, and we consider why financial assets are important to the functioning of a developed economy.
在介绍了这些背景知识之后，我们将讨论投资者在构建投资组合时所面临决策的类型。
Given this background, we then take a first look at the types of decisions that confront iinvestors as they assemble a portfolio of assets.
这些决策都是都是在高收益伴随高风险的环境下做出的，因此很少会有因定价失误而导致价格明显低估的情况。
These investment decisions are made in an environment where higher returns usually can be obtained only at the price of greater risk and in which it is rare to find assets that are so mispriced as to be obvious bargains.
风险和收益的权衡以及金融资产的有效定价是投资过程中的中心主题，本章将简要介绍一下它们的含义，这些内容在以后的章节中将有更详尽的阐述。
These themes--the risk-return trade-off and the efficient pricing of financial assets--are central to the investment process, so it is worth pausing for a brief discussion of their implications as we begin the text.These implications will be flesher out in much greater detail in later chapters.
最后，本章将介绍证券市场组织和各种类型的市场参与者。
We provide an overview of the organization of security markets as well as the various(concluded) players that participate in those markets.
这部分内容将使你对证券市场的参与者和它们所处的环境有一个直观的了解。
Together, these introductions should give you a feel for who the major participants are in the securities markets as well as the setting in which they act.
2007年爆发并于2008年达到高潮的金融危机形象地描绘了金融系统和实体经济的联系。
The financial crisis that began playing out in 2007 and peaked in 2008 dramatically illustrates the connections between the financial system and the "real" side of the economy.
本章简要地介绍了这次金融危机的起源以及它带给我们的关于系统性风险的教训。
We look at the origins of the crisis and the lessons that my be drawn about systemic risk.
最后一节概述本章的所有内容。
We close the chapter with an overview of the remainder of the text.
SUMMARY
1. 实物资产创造财富，金融资产对标对财富的索取权，金融资产决定如何在投资者之间分配实物资产的所有权。
1. Real assets create wealth. Financial assets represent claims to parts or all of that wealth. Financial assets determine how the ownership of real assets is distributed among investors.
2. 金融资产分为固定收益型、权益型和衍生工具。自上而下的投资组合构建方法的起点是资产配置决策，即将资金在大类资产之间进行分配，然后在大类资产中选择具体证券。
2. Financial assets can be categorized as fixed income, equity, or derivative instruments. Top-down portfilio construction techniques start with the asset allocation decision--the allocation of funds across broad asset classes--and then progress to more specific security-selection decisions.
3. 金融市场中的竞争使得风险和收益相互权衡，期望收益率更高的证券意味着投资者将承担更大的风险。然而，风险的存在意味着投资期初实际收益率与期望收益率可能会相差甚远。证券分析师之间的竞争会促进金融市场向信息有效的方向发展，即价格反映了所有关于证券价值的可获得信息。消极性投资策略在近似有效市场上是有效的。
3. Competition in financial markets leads to a risk-return trade-off, in which securities that offer higher expected rates of return also impose greater risks on investors. The presence of risk, however, implies that actual returns can differ considerably from expected return at the beginning of the investment period. Competition among security analysts also promotes financial markets that are nearly informationally efficient, meaning that prices reflect all available information concerning the value of the security. Passive investments strategies may make sense in nearly efficient markets.
4. 金融中介汇集投资者的资金并进行投资。这种中介服务是存在需求的，因为小型投资者不能有效地收集信息、多样化并监控投资组合。金融中介把自有的证券出售给小型投资者，然后用募集到的额资金再进行投资，最后把获得的收益偿还给小型投资者，并从中赚取价差。
4. Financial intermediaries pool investor funds and invest them. Their service are in demand because small investors cannot effciently gather information, diversify, and monitor portfolios. The financial intermediary sells its own securities to the small investors. The intermediary invests the funds thus raised, uses the proceeds to pay back the small inverstors, and profits from the difference (the spread).
5. 投资银行提高了公司融资的效率，投资银行家在新发行的证券定价和推销方面具有专业优势。截止到2008年年末，美国所有主要的独立的投资银行都并入了商业银行，或是重组为商业银行股份公司。在欧洲，全能型银行从来未被禁止，大型银行通常既包括商业银行部门又包括投资银行部门。
5. Investments banking brings effciency to corporate fund-raising. Investments bankers develop expertise in pricing new issues and in marketing them to investors. By the end of 2008, all the major stand-alone U.S. investments banks had been absortbed into commercial banks or had reorganized themselves into bank holding companies. In Europe, where universal banking had never been prohibited, large banks had long maintained both commercial and investment banking divisions.
6. 2008年的金融危机说明了系统性风险的重要性。控制系统性风险的措施包括：提高透明度以使交易商和投资者可以评估对手的风险；提高资本充足率以避免交易参与者由于潜在损失破产；频繁结算收益或损失以避免某机构的累计损失超出其承受能力；制定有助于阻止承担过度风险的激励措施；由评估证券风险的机构进行更准确的风险评估。
6. The financial crisis of 2008 showed the importance of systemic risk. Policies that limit this risk include transparency to allow traders and investors to aeecess the risk of their counterparties, capital adequacy to prevent trading participans from being brought down by potential losses, frequent settlement of gains or losses to prevent losses from accumulating beyond an institution's ability to bear them, incentives to discourage excessive risk taking, and accurate and unbiased risk assessment by those charged with evaluating security risk.