读Geopolitical Alpha（一）——前言

兰晓欢老师推荐的一本书，地缘政治阿尔法，讲的是什么呢？基于地缘政治分析：
This framework – which focuses on the material constraints policy makers face – is what this book is about.

寻找投资的超额收益（阿尔法）：

Alpha, in the context of this book, refers to a return on an investment against a benchmark, in finance-speak, rather than the leader of a pack or someone spending too much time in a gym.

为什么需要关注地缘政治？有什么发生了变化呢？作者提到了2010，那么就是民粹的兴起了：

And human. And over-professionalized. To become an investment professional in 2010, one had to be confident in a lot of subjects, but a basic grounding in political science was not among them. This failing is not because investors suddenly became ignorant of global affairs and history but because those skill sets had not mattered for most investors since at least 1985.

作者举例，为什么德国总理2010年的辞职，不值得关注：

There were two reasons I felt confident to declare that the resignation of the German president was irrelevant, both rooted in material constraints. First, the president was constrained by Germany’s constitutional irrelevance. Second, I already had a framework for what German policymakers and voters would be forced to accept in the Euro Area crisis.Even if I had been wrong about this particular news item, I had a structural, macro view of what would happen next in the Euro Area crisis, one that was unlikely to unravel due to a single resignation.

题眼在于“约束”，各方的约束：

- 总统受限于宪政的约束 —— 换谁差别都不会大

- 政策制定者和选民也有自己的约束，他们将不得不接受Euro Area crisis

- 约束不变，推断的行为方向就不会改变

接下来，作者将：

I take one chapter to describe this framework. The punchline: investors (and anyone interested in forecasting politics) should focus on material constraints, not policymaker preferences.

Preferences are optional and subject to constraints, whereas constraintsare neither optional nor subject to preferences.

The era of geopolitical ignorance is over.

世界变了，地缘政治中的约束条件必须被关注，个别人的偏好，并不重要。

这本书不讲什么？

There are three things this book does not aim to do.

First, it cannot teach you about the world. To wield the constraint based framework competently, you must know a lot. For instance, that the German president = Queen Elizabeth. If you don’t know, speak to experts. That potential absence of a knowledge base is why I include a chapter on how to use expert judgment.

不是讲给小白的101，嗯，或者说，必要的知识要自己补充。

Second, this book will not tell you the future. This is a methods book. I offer up my framework because many investment professionals have found it useful. But I am not a prophet, nor will focusing on constraints make anyone else a prophet. This book is simply my attempt to share what has worked for me. There are other frameworks out there that work for other investment strategists.

这是方法论的书籍，讲述框架，但是不进行预测。

Third, this book will not tell you what I think should happen. I don’t care. Not in this book, not in my field. I am a professional nihilist. And if you analyze politics for a living – especially if you have a fiduciary duty to your investors – you should be the same! To competently use my framework, meditate on your biases and bathe yourself in indifference.

最后，不讲“应该怎样”，而是“什么情况下，会怎样” —— 和张五常说的一样，不做价值观判断，作者的最后一句话值得翻译：

为了有效地使用我的框架，冥思你的偏见，让自己沉浸在冷漠中。

不然的话：

If you are not up to it, you should not be in the forecasting business, let alone finance.