The Nasdaq crash of April 2000: Yet another example of log-periodicity in a speculative bubble ending in a crash

We apply two non-parametric methods to test further the hypothesis that log-periodicity characterizes the detrended price trajectory of large financial indices prior to financial crashes or strong corrections. The analysis using the so-called (H,q)-derivative is applied to seven time series ending with the October 1987 crash, the October 1997 correction and the April 2000 crash of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), the Standard & Poor 500 and Nasdaq indices. The Hilbert...

We present a synthesis of all the available empirical evidence in the light of recent theoretical developments for the existence of characteristic log-periodic signatures of growing bubbles in a variety of markets including 8 unrelated crashes from 1929 to 1998 on stock markets as diverse as the US, Hong-Kong or the Russian market and on currencies. To our knowledge, no major financial crash preceded by an extended bubble has occurred in the past 2 decades without exhibiting ...

A hypothesis that the financial log-periodicity, cascading self-similarity through various time scales, carries signatures of a law is pursued. It is shown that the most significant historical financial events can be classified amazingly well using a single and unique value of the preferred scaling factor lambda=2, which indicates that its real value should be close to this number. This applies even to a declining decelerating log-periodic phase. Crucial in this connection is...

Detailed analysis of the log-periodic structures as precursors of the financial crashes is presented. The study is mainly based on the German Stock Index (DAX) variation over the 1998 period which includes both, a spectacular boom and a large decline, in magnitude only comparable to the so-called Black Monday of October 1987. The present example provides further arguments in favour of a discrete scale-invariance governing the dynamics of the stock market. A related clear log-...

A remarkable similarity in the behavior of the US S&P500 index from 1996 to August 2002 and of the Japanese Nikkei index from 1985 to 1992 (11 years shift) is presented, with particular emphasis on the structure of the bearish phases. Extending a previous analysis of Johansen and Sornette [1999, 2000] on the Nikkei index ``anti-bubble'' based on a theory of cooperative herding and imitation working both in bullish as well as in bearish regimes, we demonstrate the existence of...

Following our previous investigation of the USA Standard and Poor index anti-bubble that started in August 2000, we analyze thirty eight world stock market indices and identify 21 anti-bubble. An ``anti-bubble'' is defined as a self-fulfilling decreasing price created by positive price-to-price feedbacks feeding overall pessimism and negative market sentiment further strengthened by inter-personal interactions. We mathematically characterize anti-bubbles by a power law decrea...

Log-periodic oscillations have been used to predict price trends and crashes on financial markets. So far two types of log-periodic oscillations have been associated with the real markets. The first type are oscillations which accompany a rising market and which ends in a crash. The second type oscillations, called "anti-bubbles" appear after a crash, when the prices decreases. Here, we propose the third type of log-periodic oscillations, where a exogenous crash initializes a...

This review is a partial synthesis of the book ``Why stock market crash'' (Princeton University Press, January 2003), which presents a general theory of financial crashes and of stock market instabilities that his co-workers and the author have developed over the past seven years. The study of the frequency distribution of drawdowns, or runs of successive losses shows that large financial crashes are ``outliers'': they form a class of their own as can be seen from their stati...

We propose that imitation between traders and their herding behaviour not only lead to speculative bubbles with accelerating over-valuations of financial markets possibly followed by crashes, but also to ``anti-bubbles'' with decelerating market devaluations following all-time highs. For this, we propose a simple market dynamics model in which the demand decreases slowly with barriers that progressively quench in, leading to a power law decay of the market price decorated by ...

We present an analysis of the time behavior of the $S\&P500$ (Standard and Poors) New York stock exchange index before and after the October 1987 market crash and identify precursory patterns as well as aftershock signatures and characteristic oscillations of relaxation. Combined, they all suggest a picture of a kind of dynamical critical point, with characteristic log-periodic signatures, similar to what has been found recently for earthquakes. These observations are confirm...