Bursting the Bubble: Rationality in a Seemingly Irrational Market

Bursting the Bubble: Rationality in a Seemingly Irrational Market
Author: David F. DeRosa
Publisher: CFA Institute Research Foundation
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2021-04-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1952927110

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The presence of speculative bubbles in capital markets (an important area of interest in financial history) is widely accepted across many circles. Talk of them is pervasive in the media and especially in the popular financial press. Bubbles are thought to be found primarily in the stock market, which is our main interest, although bubbles are said to occur in other markets. Bubbles go hand in hand with the notion that markets can be irrational. The academic community has a great interest in bubbles, and it has produced scholarly literature that is voluminous. For some economists, doing bubble research is like joining the vanguard of a Kuhnian paradigm shift in economic thinking. Not so fast. If bubbles did exist, they would pose a serious challenge to neoclassical finance. Bubbles would contradict the ideas that markets are rational or work in an informationally efficient manner. That’s what makes the topic of bubbles interesting. This book reviews and evaluates the academic literature as well as some popular investment books on the possible existence of speculative bubbles in the stock market. The main question is whether there is convincing empirical evidence that bubbles exist. A second question is whether the theoretical concepts that have been advanced for bubbles make them plausible. The reader will discover that I am skeptical that bubbles actually exist. But I do not think I or anyone else will ever be able to conclusively prove that there has never been a bubble. From studying the literature and from reading history, I find that many famous purported bubbles reflect inaccurate history or mistakes in analysis or simply cannot be shown to have existed. In other instances, bubbles might have existed. But in each of those cases, there are credible rational explanations. And good evidence exists for the idea that even if bubbles do exist, they are not of great importance to understanding the stock market.

Speculative Bubbles, Speculative Attacks, and Policy Switching

Speculative Bubbles, Speculative Attacks, and Policy Switching
Author: Robert P. Flood
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 528
Release: 1994
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262061698

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The papers in this book are grouped into three sections: the first on price bubbles is primarily financial; the second on speculative attacks (on exchange rate regimes) is international in scope; and the third, on policy switching, is concerned with monetary policy.

Essays on Speculative Bubbles in Financial Markets

Essays on Speculative Bubbles in Financial Markets
Author: Oswald Mungule
Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2012-08
Genre:
ISBN: 9783659197666

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Financial markets have been experiencing episodes of financial crises since the great depression of 1929. The busting of speculative bubbles is one of the causes of most financial crises. Financial crises cause welfare loses. Therefore, Mungule and Malikane's Essays on Speculative Bubbles in Financial Markets presents a thoroughly up-to-date and pedagogically rich advanced knowledge that fits perfectly into the newest segments of both financial and monetary economics course areas. Beginning with Chapter 1 on formation of speculative bubbles, central banks are encouraged to understand speculative bubbles dynamics, measurement issues and the implications of either responding or no response to the bubbles on macroeconomic variables. This edition provides international application of speculative bubbles, helping make issues of monetary policy implications of responding to asset price bubbles easy for policy makers and postgraduate students to understand.

Bubbleology

Bubbleology
Author: Kevin A. Hassett
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2002
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780609609293

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There are only two types of stocks: those safe from bubbles and those that are not. This is a fact of investing many discovered as they saw their fabulous gains whittled away by the extreme calamity of the Internet sector. But what about the future? Is there a way for investors to capture the enormous potential for profit that exists at the frontier of the economy, the place where innovation and genius operate, without placing their fortunes in jeopardy? Is there a way to evaluate price increases--and declines--and identify whether they are happening for good or bad reasons? Bubbleology makes it possible to separate the winners from the losers. It is a brilliant, practical, and original analysis of the stock market that bashes the conventional wisdom about bubbles, showing that such famous examples as Tulipomania were not, in fact, bubbles at all. Bubbleology shows that the traditional way of evaluating risk--equating it with volatility--is inherently flawed and incomplete. If a stock fluctuates a lot in price it is regarded as risky. If the price is stable, then it is not. What this simplistic way of thinking leaves out is the simple fact that companies trying something completely new that may fundamentally alter the economic landscape are operating at the frontier. The stock of such a company swims in a sea of ambiguity, its circumstances uncertain, since there is little to provide guidance about the future. But when nobody knows for sure what will happen, pundits tell us again about Tulipomania, the South Seas Bubble, and now the debacle of the Internet to scare investors away from potentially enormous profits. To realize those profits, however, investors have tounderstand the role that uncertainty and ambiguity--the absence of reliable information about future events--play in the modern stock market. Those who equate ambiguity with bubbles will miss the great opportunities of the future. Bubbleology provides a new way to observe what is really going on in the market, enabling you to understand whether a stock or a sector is suspicious--whether it is in a bubble and therefore something to be avoided. Finding bubbles requires knowing where to look and what to look for. Bubbleology will help you avoid both streaming into speculative manias and shying away from perfectly good business opportunities. It tells you why you need to avoid both pontificating pundits and overconfident stock analysts. With this unique and forward-thinking book, you can inspect suspicious stocks, accurately discern risk, and diagnose a blossoming bubble before it vanishes along with your money.