一项帮助个人投资者降低税单的策略因大受欢迎，正推动一场史无前例的借贷狂潮。
The rip-roaring popularity of a strategy that helps individual investors lower their tax bills is powering an unprecedented borrowing binge.
查尔斯·施瓦布周四表示，该公司账面上的保证金贷款余额在第三季度已膨胀至约1880亿美元，同比近乎翻倍。一个重要驱动因素是：长短期税务敏感策略，承诺在不为所有资本利得缴税的情况下跑赢大市。
Charles Schwab said Thursday that margin loan balances on its books had swelled to roughly $188 billion in the third quarter, nearly doubling year over year. A significant driver: Long-short tax-aware strategies that promise to beat the market without paying taxes on all of the capital gains.
据该公司报告，施瓦布的保证金余额中约有610亿美元与长短期策略相关。在与分析师的电话会议上，首席执行官里克·伍斯特表示，该策略的采用今年增长“异常迅速”。
Schwab’s margin balance included roughly $61 billion related to long-short strategies, according to the company’s report. On a call with analysts, Chief Executive Rick Wurster said adoption of the strategy had grown “exceptionally quickly” this year.
“节省税款是我们的客户喜欢做的事情，”伍斯特说。“这种需求可能会持续。”保证金债务，即投资者向券商借款购买证券，一直徘徊在历史高位附近。摩根士丹利、美国银行和高盛本周各自报告称，截至9月的12个月内，其保证金账簿实现了两位数增长。税务敏感的长短期策略是一个关键原因。
“Saving money on taxes is something our clients love to do,” Wurster said. “That demand is likely to continue.”Margin debt, or investor borrowing from brokerages to buy securities, has hovered near record highs. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs each reported this week that their margin books have seen double-digit growth in the 12 months through September. The tax-aware long-short strategy has been a key reason.
由AQR和Quantinno等对冲基金公司管理的长短期策略，据Tax Alpha Insider（一家专注于税务敏感投资的在线出版物）的布伦特·沙利文估计，已吸引近1900亿美元资产，而五年前仅略超过10亿美元。
Long-short strategies managed by hedge-fund firms such as AQR and Quantinno have raked in nearly $190 billion in assets, up from just over $1 billion five years ago, according to estimates by Brent Sullivan of Tax Alpha Insider, an online publication devoted to tax-aware investing.
这些策略旨在跟踪——并最终跑赢——一个指数，同时也涉及对投资组合进行借贷，以创建两个“延伸”，一个做多股票，另一个做空股票。目标是在放大回报的同时，也创造更多收割税务亏损的机会。
The strategies seek to track—and ultimately outperform—an index, but also involve borrowing against the portfolio to create two “extensions,” one that goes long on stocks and the other that bets against them. The goal is to amplify returns while also creating more opportunities for tax losses to harvest.
富达投资公司与施瓦伯一样，是主要的财富资产托管机构，它通过允许账户余额较小的人参与，助推了多空税收敏感策略的兴起。该策略变得如此受欢迎，以至于富达公司在2月表示，将无限期暂停新账户的开设。这些限制导致大量新资金涌入施瓦伯的账户，促使施瓦伯也实施了自身的限制。
Fidelity Investments, which like Schwab is a major custodian of wealth assets, aided the rise of the long-short tax-aware strategy by allowing people with smaller account balances to jump in. The strategy became so popular that Fidelity in February said it was indefinitely pausing the opening of new accounts. The restrictions caused a flood of new assets into accounts at Schwab, leading it to impose its own limits.
施瓦伯上个月推出的最新一轮限制中，将部分新设多空税收敏感账户的最低投资额从100万美元提高至1000万美元，并表示不会招募新客户，也不接受保证金组合账户的新资金。
In its latest set of restrictions, rolled out last month, Schwab raised the minimum investment for some new long-short tax-aware accounts to $10 million from $1 million, and said it wouldn’t enroll new clients or accept new funds in portfolio margin accounts.
知情人士表示，该策略的杠杆部分涉及承担大量资产负债表风险。两家最大托管机构的限制威胁要抑制该策略的整体增长，尽管其他托管机构已开始接纳希望这样做的投资者。
The leverage component of the strategy involves taking a significant amount of balance-sheet risk, according to people familiar with the matter. The limits by the two biggest custodians have threatened to curb the growth of the strategy overall, although other custodians have begun accommodating investors who want to do it.
“我们认为，在一段时间内放缓增长非常重要，以确保我们能从运营角度支持这一业务，”伍斯特在对分析师表示。施瓦伯还在开发其自身版本的多空税收敏感产品，他说，这将使公司能够以一种“在更长期内从运营和财务角度都可管理”的方式提供策略。这将使施瓦伯与AQR和Quantinno展开直接竞争。
“It was important to us to throttle growth for a period of time to make sure that we can support this from an operational standpoint,” Wurster told analysts. Schwab is also working on its own version of a long-short tax-aware product, he said, that will allow the company to offer strategies in a way that is “in a way that is operationally and financially manageable over the longer term.”That would put Schwab in direct competition with AQR and Quantinno.
据金融业监管局（Finra）的数据，8月美国保证金债务总额达到1.45万亿美元，接近今年夏天早些时候创下的1.5万亿美元的纪录。部分增长是由不断上涨的牛市机制推动的：随着股价上涨，卖空者需要向贷款人存入更多抵押品。这笔现金可以自动从保证金贷款中提取。
U.S. margin debt totaled $1.45 trillion in August, according to Finra data, near the record of $1.5 trillion earlier this summer. The growth is driven in part by the mechanics of an ever-rising bull market: As stocks climb, short sellers need to post more collateral to their lenders. That cash can be automatically drawn from a margin loan.
近年来，个人投资者也表现出更高的风险承受意愿，纷纷投资于那些能够放大收益或损失的投资产品（如交易所交易基金，ETF）。截至第二季度，杠杆基金的总资产规模已突破1800亿美元。请将此信息发送至以下邮箱：Hannah Erin Lang：hannaherin.lang@wsj.com Miriam Gottfried：Miriam.Gottfried@wsj.com
Individual investors have also shown a greater appetite for risk in recent years, piling into products such as exchange-traded funds that can amplify gains and losses. In the second quarter, total assets in leveraged funds blew past $180 billion. Write to Hannah Erin Lang at hannaherin.lang@wsj.com and Miriam Gottfried at Miriam. Gottfried@wsj.com