“Confronted by a reality of extreme complexity, we are obliged to resort to various methods of simplification: generalizations, dichotomies, metaphors, decision rules, and moral precepts.” – George Soros Finance is teeming with beliefs about how the economy works and why
Imagine a frozen lake and a thousand people on the banks. Let assume that they all know that seasonality is not great, but some of them are still willing to give a try. As nothing wrong happens to the first
We live in fascinating times. Today, we have a unique opportunity to observe one of the biggest speculative bubbles ever, and to understand how financial markets evolve towards critical points. While Western central banks have lost control in March 2020,
In geology, Richter’s magnitude scale is a measure of the strength of earthquakes. Magnitudes are interesting metrics, as they exhibit nonlinear scale behavior. While magnitude 3 quakes would rarely cause damage, magnitude 9 events would lead to severe destruction around
Since the 1970’s, international trade has continuously been promoted by leaders of developed countries and economic agents. Several theoretical frameworks have been put forward to explain the benefits of a free trade environment, from Adam Smith’s concept of absolute advantages
It has been a long time since I wrote my last piece about the market. And as I am not a specialist of the bond market, I will stick to the equities and the “stocks only go up” narrative. One
“Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the
I have received interesting questions about concepts like econophysics and self-organized criticality. As I plan to dedicate a future article to that new discipline named “econophysics”, the focus of the present post will be set on complex systems, nonlinear dynamics
The past five days have been unique as we have seen something that no one would have imagined before. A mob of retail traders (aka “WallStreetBets”), interacting on social media platforms like Reddit, and willing to “exterminate” hedge funds by
“What more can I do?” In 1990, this mere question asked by to David Evans (aka “The Edge”) to Larry Mullen Jr almost led to the split of U2, one the most famous rock bands of the past forty years.