Oil Price Volatility and the Role of Speculation


Book Description

How much does speculation contribute to oil price volatility? We revisit this contentious question by estimating a sign-restricted structural vector autoregression (SVAR). First, using a simple storage model, we show that revisions to expectations regarding oil market fundamentals and the effect of mispricing in oil derivative markets can be observationally equivalent in a SVAR model of the world oil market à la Kilian and Murphy (2013), since both imply a positive co-movement of oil prices and inventories. Second, we impose additional restrictions on the set of admissible models embodying the assumption that the impact from noise trading shocks in oil derivative markets is temporary. Our additional restrictions effectively put a bound on the contribution of speculation to short-term oil price volatility (lying between 3 and 22 percent). This estimated short-run impact is smaller than that of flow demand shocks but possibly larger than that of flow supply shocks.




Reflexivity and Economics


Book Description

The form of ‘reflexivity’ – defined by the dictionary as that which is ‘directed back upon itself’ – that is most relevant to economic methodology is that where observation of the economy leads to ideas that change behavior, which in turn changes (is directed back upon) the economy itself. As George Soros explains: "if investors believe that markets are efficient then that belief will change the way they invest, and that in turn will change the nature of the markets they are observing ... That is the principle of reflexivity". Although various versions of reflexivity have long been discussed, in recent years George Soros has been particularly effective in bringing ideas about reflexivity to the attention of the economic and financial communities. In a series of writings he has systematically argued that reflexivity is not only an important aspect of economic life, it is an aspect that is neglected in most mainstream theorizing; and in addition, that the neglect of reflexivity has been responsible for the failure of economists to predict, explain, or offer a solution for events such as the recent financial crisis. Soros’ ideas about reflexivity have important methodological significance, and his chapter in this book summarizes and clarifies his arguments. His contribution is joined by those of thirteen scholars from a wide range of relevant fields, who provide a commentary on the idea of reflexivity in economics. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Economic Methodology.




Tail Risk Killers: How Math, Indeterminacy, and Hubris Distort Markets


Book Description

Reshape your investing strategy for an increasingly uncertain world “An engrossing, fast-paced, terrific read for anyone interested in the financial imbalances due to too much reliance on math and too little respect for indeterminacy.” —Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge.com The world does not unfold according to a fixed set of rules. It is a dynamical system whose evolution looks like a bell curve with fat “tails.” The same is true of financial markets. However, every day we rely on the certainty and precision of mathematical strategies that assume the contrary to control and grow wealth in markets. Tail Risk Killers shows you how the rigidity of model-based thinking has led to the fragility of today’s global financial marketplace, and it explains how to use adaptive trading strategies to mitigate risk in impending market conditions. Risk management veteran Jeff McGinn pokes holes in prevalent assumptions about how financial markets act that tend to underestimate the likelihood of occurrence of extreme events. Through clear, conversational writing, real-world anecdotes, and easy-tofollow formulas, he provides a glimpse into the way tomorrow’s successful traders are viewing financial markets—with an eye for probability distributions. While illustrating how to protect your assets from tail risk, he shows you how to: Implement the six axioms for risk management Prepare for the unintended consequences of central banks suppressing tail risk Identify and avoid the dark risks hidden in today’s derivative-laden financial system Anticipate the fate of credit default swaps that may not face extinction McGinn argues that the intervention of central banks has robbed global markets of their opportunities to adapt, but this highly relevant book shows you that it is not too late to adapt your portfolio to survive the extreme events that happen more often than popular financial models suggest. Tail Risk Killers helps you discover useful information and processes beyond the focus of industry standards, helps you connect the dots of evolving trading strategies and time your next trade for maximum profitability.




Behavioral Game Theory


Book Description

Game theory, the formalized study of strategy, began in the 1940s by asking how emotionless geniuses should play games, but ignored until recently how average people with emotions and limited foresight actually play games. This book marks the first substantial and authoritative effort to close this gap. Colin Camerer, one of the field's leading figures, uses psychological principles and hundreds of experiments to develop mathematical theories of reciprocity, limited strategizing, and learning, which help predict what real people and companies do in strategic situations. Unifying a wealth of information from ongoing studies in strategic behavior, he takes the experimental science of behavioral economics a major step forward. He does so in lucid, friendly prose. Behavioral game theory has three ingredients that come clearly into focus in this book: mathematical theories of how moral obligation and vengeance affect the way people bargain and trust each other; a theory of how limits in the brain constrain the number of steps of "I think he thinks . . ." reasoning people naturally do; and a theory of how people learn from experience to make better strategic decisions. Strategic interactions that can be explained by behavioral game theory include bargaining, games of bluffing as in sports and poker, strikes, how conventions help coordinate a joint activity, price competition and patent races, and building up reputations for trustworthiness or ruthlessness in business or life. While there are many books on standard game theory that address the way ideally rational actors operate, Behavioral Game Theory stands alone in blending experimental evidence and psychology in a mathematical theory of normal strategic behavior. It is must reading for anyone who seeks a more complete understanding of strategic thinking, from professional economists to scholars and students of economics, management studies, psychology, political science, anthropology, and biology.




Spectacular Speculation


Book Description

Spectacular Speculation is a history and sociological analysis of the semantics of speculation from 1870 to 1930, when speculation began to assume enormous importance in popular culture. Informed by the work of Luhmann, Foucault, Simmel and Deleuze, it looks at how speculation was translated into popular knowledge and charts the discursive struggles of making speculation a legitimate economic practice. Noting that the vocabulary available to discuss the concept was not properly economic, the book reveals the underside of putting it into words. Speculation's success depended upon non-economic language and morally questionable thrills: a proximity to the wasteful practice of gambling or other "degenerate" behaviors, the experience of financial markets as seductive, or out of control. American discourses of speculation take center stage, and the book covers an unusual range of material, including stock exchange guidebooks, ticker tape, moral treatises, plays, advertisements, and newspapers.




Rumors in Financial Markets


Book Description

On the trading floor, all action is based on news, therefore rumors in financial markets are an everyday phenomenon. Rumors are the oldest mass medium in the world and their nature is still difficult to grasp. Scientifically, not much is known about rumors, especially in the financial markets, where their consequences can have real money consequences. Rumors in Financial Markets provides a fresh insight to the topic, combining the theory of Behavioral Finance with that of Experimental Finance--a new and innovative scientific method which observes real decision makers in a controlled, clearly structured environment. Using the results from surveys and experiments, the author argues that rumors in the context of financial markets are built on three cornerstones: Finance, Psychology and Sociology. The book provides insights into how rumors evolve, spread and are traded on and provides explanations as to why volatility rockets, strong price movements, herding behavior for example, occur for apparently no good reason.




How Novelty and Narratives Drive the Stock Market


Book Description

'Animal spirits' is a term that describes the instincts and emotions driving human behaviour in economic settings. In recent years, this concept has been discussed in relation to the emerging field of narrative economics. When unscheduled events hit the stock market, from corporate scandals and technological breakthroughs to recessions and pandemics, relationships driving returns change in unforeseeable ways. To deal with uncertainty, investors engage in narratives which simplify the complexity of real-time, non-routine change. This book assesses the novelty-narrative hypothesis for the U.S. stock market by conducting a comprehensive investigation of unscheduled events using big data textual analysis of financial news. This important contribution to the field of narrative economics finds that major macro events and associated narratives spill over into the churning stream of corporate novelty and sub-narratives, spawning different forms of unforeseeable stock market instability.







Market Liquidity


Book Description

"The process by which securities are traded is very different from the idealized picture of a frictionless and self-equilibrating market offered by the typical finance textbook. This book offers a more accurate and authoritative take on this process. The book starts from the assumption that not everyone is present at all times simultaneously on the market, and that participants have quite diverse information about the security's fundamentals. As a result, the order flow is a complex mix of information and noise, and a consensus price only emerges gradually over time as the trading process evolves and the participants interpret the actions of other traders. Thus, a security's actual transaction price may deviate from its fundamental value, as it would be assessed by a fully informed set of investors. The book takes these deviations seriously, and explains why and how they emerge in the trading process and are eventually eliminated. The authors draw on a vast body of theoretical insights and empirical findings on security price formation that have come to form a well-defined field within financial economics known as "market microstructure." Focusing on liquidity and price discovery, the book analyzes the tension between the two, pointing out that when price-relevant information reaches the market through trading pressure rather than through a public announcement, liquidity may suffer. It also confronts many striking phenomena in securities markets and uses the analytical tools and empirical methods of market microstructure to understand them. These include issues such as why liquidity changes over time and differs across securities, why large trades move prices up or down, and why these price changes are subsequently reversed, and why we observe temporary deviations from asset fair values"--




The Social Life of Financial Derivatives


Book Description

In The Social Life of Financial Derivatives Edward LiPuma theorizes the profound social dimensions of derivatives markets and the processes, rituals, and belief systems that drive them. In response to the 2008 financial crisis and drawing on his experience trading derivatives, LiPuma outlines how they function as complex devices that organize speculative capital as well as the ways derivative-driven capitalism not only produces the conditions for its own existence, but also penetrates the fabric of everyday life. Framing finance as a form of social life and highlighting the intrinsically social character of financial derivatives, LiPuma deepens our understanding of derivatives so that we may someday use them to serve the public well-being.