Conditional dynamics driving financial markets

By combining (i) the economic theory of rational expectation bubbles, (ii) behavioral finance on imitation and herding of investors and traders and (iii) the mathematical and statistical physics of bifurcations and phase transitions, the log-periodic power law (LPPL) model has been developed as a flexible tool to detect bubbles. The LPPL model considers the faster-than-exponential (power law with finite-time singularity) increase in asset prices decorated by accelerating osci...

The existence of stylized facts in financial data has been documented in many studies. In the past decade the modeling of financial markets by agent-based computational economic market models has become a frequently used modeling approach. The main purpose of these models is to replicate stylized facts and to identify sufficient conditions for their creations. In this paper we introduce the most prominent examples of stylized facts and especially present stylized facts of fin...

The value of stocks, indices and other assets, are examples of stochastic processes with unpredictable dynamics. In this paper, we discuss asymmetries in short term price movements that can not be associated with a long term positive trend. These empirical asymmetries predict that stock index drops are more common on a relatively short time scale than the corresponding raises. We present several empirical examples of such asymmetries. Furthermore, a simple model featuring occ...

For the pedestrian observer, financial markets look completely random with erratic and uncontrollable behavior. To a large extend, this is correct. At first approximation the difference between real price changes and the random walk model is too small to be detected using traditional time series analysis. However, we show in the following that this difference between real financial time series and random walks, as small as it is, is detectable using modern statistical multiva...

This paper explores the possibility that asset prices, especially those traded in large volume on public exchanges, might comply with specific physical laws of motion and probability. The paper first examines the basic dynamics of asset price displacement and finds one can model this dynamic as a harmonic oscillator at local "slices" of elapsed time. Based on this finding, the paper theorizes that price displacements are constrained, meaning they have extreme values beyond wh...

We provide further evidence that markets trend on the medium term (months) and mean-revert on the long term (several years). Our results bolster Black's intuition that prices tend to be off roughly by a factor of 2, and take years to equilibrate. The story behind these results fits well with the existence of two types of behaviour in financial markets: "chartists", who act as trend followers, and "fundamentalists", who set in when the price is clearly out of line. Mean-revers...

We define a financial bubble as a period of unsustainable growth, when the price of an asset increases ever more quickly, in a series of accelerating phases of corrections and rebounds. More technically, during a bubble phase, the price follows a faster-than-exponential power law growth process, often accompanied by log-periodic oscillations. This dynamic ends abruptly in a change of regime that may be a crash or a substantial correction. Because they leave such specific trac...

We show, by studying in detail the market prices of options on liquid markets, that the market has empirically corrected the simple, but inadequate Black-Scholes formula to account for two important statistical features of asset fluctuations: `fat tails' and correlations in the scale of fluctuations. These aspects, although not included in the pricing models, are very precisely reflected in the price fixed by the market as a whole. Financial markets thus behave as rather effi...

Financial markets across all asset classes are known to exhibit trends. These trends have been exploited by traders for decades. Here, we empirically measure when trends revert, based on 30 years of daily futures prices for equity indices, interest rates, currencies and commodities. We find that trends tend to revert once they reach a critical level of statistical significance. Based on polynomial regression, we carefully measure this critical level. We find that it is univer...

This paper continues a series of studies devoted to analysis of the bivariate probability distribution P(x,y) of two consecutive price increments x (push) and y (response) at intraday timescales for a group of stocks. Besides the asymmetry properties of P(x,y) such as Market Mill dependence patterns described in preceding paper [1], there are quite a few other interesting geometrical properties of this distribution discussed in the present paper, e.g. transformation of the sh...