Coupled effects of market impact and asymmetric sensitivity in financial markets

By incorporating market impact and asymmetric sensitivity into the evolutionary minority game, we study the coevolutionary dynamics of stock prices and investment strategies in financial markets. Both the stock price movement and the investors’ global behavior are found to be closely related to the phase region they fall into. Within the region where the market impact is small, investors’ asymmetric response to gains and losses leads to the occurrence of herd behavior, when all the investors are prone to behave similarly in an extreme way and large price fluctuations occur. A linear relation between the standard deviation of stock price changes and the mean value of strategies is found. With full market impact, the investors tend to self-segregate into opposing groups and the introduction of asymmetric sensitivity leads to the disappearance of dominant strategies. Compared with the situations in the stock market with little market impact, the stock price fluctuations are suppressed and an efficient market occurs. Theoretical analyses indicate that the mechanism of phase transition from clustering to self-segregation in the present model is similar to that in the majority–minority game and the occurrence and disappearance of efficient markets are related to the competition between the trend-following and the trend-aversion forces. The clustering of the strategies in the present model results from the majority-wins effect and the wealth-driven mechanism makes the market become predictable.     

Persistence and financial markets

The persistence phenomenon is studied in a financial context by using a novel mapping of the time evolution of the values of shares in a portfolio onto Ising spins. The method is applied to historical data from the London Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 index (FTSE 100) over an arbitrarily chosen period. By following the time dependence of the spins, we find evidence for a power law decay of the proportion of shares that remain either above or below their ‘starting’ values. As a result, we estimate a persistence exponent for the underlying financial market to be ≈0.5. Preliminary results from computer simulations on persistence in the economic dynamics of a toy model appear to reproduce the behaviour observed in real markets.     

An interacting-agent model of financial markets from the viewpoint of nonextensive statistical mechanics

In this paper we present an interacting-agent model of stock markets. We describe a stock market through an Ising-like model in order to formulate the tendency of traders to be influenced by the other traders’ investment attitudes [Kaizoji, Physica A 287 (2000) 493], and formulate the traders’ decision-making regarding investment as the maximum entropy principle for nonextensive entropy [C. Tsallis, J. Stat. Phys. 52 (1988) 479]. We demonstrate that the equilibrium probability distribution function of the traders’ investment attitude is the q-exponential distribution. We also show that the power-law distribution of the volatility of price fluctuations, which is often demonstrated in empirical studies can be explained naturally by our model which originates in the collective crowd behavior of many interacting-agents.     

Analysis of cross-correlations between financial markets after the 2008 crisis

We analyze the cross-correlation matrix C of the index returns of the main financial markets after the 2008 crisis using methods of random matrix theory. We test the eigenvalues of C for universal properties of random matrices and find that the majority of the cross-correlation coefficients arise from randomness. We show that the eigenvector of the largest deviating eigenvalue of C represents a global market itself. We reveal that high volatility of financial markets is observed at the same times with high correlations between them which lowers the risk diversification potential even if one constructs a widely internationally diversified portfolio of stocks. We identify and compare the connection and cluster structure of markets before and after the crisis using minimal spanning and ultrametric hierarchical trees. We find that after the crisis, the co-movement degree of the markets increases. We also highlight the key financial markets of pre and post crisis using main centrality measures and analyze the changes. We repeat the study using rank correlation and compare the differences. Further implications are discussed.     

An econophysics approach to analyse uncertainty in financial markets: an application to the Portuguese stock market

In recent years there has been a closer interrelationship between several scientific areas trying to obtain a more realistic and rich explanation of the natural and social phenomena. Among these it should be emphasized the increasing interrelationship between physics and financial theory. In this field the analysis of uncertainty, which is crucial in financial analysis, can be made using measures of physics statistics and information theory, namely the Shannon entropy. One advantage of this approach is that the entropy is a more general measure than the variance, since it accounts for higher order moments of a probability distribution function. An empirical application was made using data collected from the Portuguese Stock Market.     

Liquid markets and market liquids

We characterize the collective phenomena of a liquid market. By interpreting the behavior of a no-arbitrage N asset market in terms of a particle system scenario, (thermo)dynamical-like properties can be extracted from the asset kinetics. In this scheme the mechanisms of the particle interaction can be widely investigated. We test the verisimilitude of our construction on two-decade stock market daily data (DAX30) and show the result obtained for the interaction potential among asset pairs. Received 1st September 2000     

Statistical mechanics and population biology

This paper exploits the connection between statistical mechanics and stochastic processes in order to derive a class of macroscopic observables for populations. This review treats the dynamics of populations in both constant and variable environments and derives in each case the thermodynamic analogs of the population parameters.     

Cross-response in correlated financial markets: individual stocks

Previous studies of the stock price response to trades focused on the dynamics of singlestocks, i.e. they addressed the self-response. We empirically investigate the priceresponse of one stock to the trades of other stocks in a correlated market, i.e. thecross-responses. How large is the impact of one stock on others and vice versa? – Thisimpact of trades on the price change across stocks appears to be transient instead ofpermanent as we discuss from the viewpoint of market efficiency. Furthermore, we comparethe self-responses on different scales and the self- and cross-responses on the samescale. We also find that the cross-correlation of the trade signs turns out to be ashort-memory process.     

Statistical mechanics of networks: Estimation and uncertainty

Exponential random graph models (ERGMs) are powerful tools for formulating theoretical models of network generation or learning the properties of empirical networks. They can be used to construct models that exactly reproduce network properties of interest. However, tuning these models correctly requires computationally intractable maximization of the probability of a network of interest—maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). We discuss methods of approximate MLE and show that, though promising, simulation based methods pose difficulties in application because it is not known how much simulation is required. An alternative to simulation methods, maximum pseudolikelihood estimation (MPLE), is deterministic and has known asymptotic properties, but standard methods of assessing uncertainty with MPLE perform poorly. We introduce a resampling method that greatly outperforms the standard approach to characterizing uncertainty with MPLE. We also introduce ERGMs for dynamic networks—temporal ERGM (TERGM). In an application to modeling cosponsorship networks in the United States Senate, we show how recently proposed methods for dynamic network modeling can be integrated into the TERGM framework, and how our resampling method can be used to characterize uncertainty about network dynamics.     

Asymmetric and symmetric meta-correlations in financial markets

In financial markets, the relation between fluctuations of stock prices and trading behaviors is complex. It is intriguing to quantify this kind of meta-correlation between market fluctuations and the synchronous behaviors. We refine the theoretical index leverage model proposed by Reigneron et al., to exactly quantify the meta-correlation under various levels of price fluctuations [Reigneron P A, Allez R and Bouchaud J P 2011 Physica A 390 3026]. The characteristics of meta-correlations in times of market losses, are found to be significantly different in Chinese and American financial markets. In addition,unlike the asymmetric results at the daily scale, the correlation behaviors are found to be symmetric at the high-frequency scale.     

Statistical mechanics of two-dimensional shuffled foams: prediction of the correlation between geometry and topology

We propose an analytical model for the statistical mechanics of shuffled two-dimensional foams with moderate bubble size polydispersity. It predicts without any adjustable parameters the correlations between the number of sides n of the bubbles (topology) and their areas A (geometry) observed in experiments and numerical simulations of shuffled foams. Detailed statistics show that in shuffled cellular patterns n correlates better with √A (as claimed by Desch and Feltham) than with A (as claimed by Lewis and widely assumed in the literature). At the level of the whole foam, standard deviations Δn and ΔA are in proportion. Possible applications include correlations of the detailed distributions of n and A, three-dimensional foams, and biological tissues.     

Solitary wave solutions of nonlinear financial markets: data-modeling-concept-practicing

This paper seeks to solve the difficult nonlinear problem in financial markets on the complex system theory and the nonlinear dynamics principle, with the data-model-concept-practice issue-oriented reconstruction of the phase space by the high frequency trade data. In theory, we have achieved the differentiable manifold geometry configuration, discovered the Yang-Mills functional in financial markets, obtained a meaningful conserved quantity through corresponding space-time non-Abel localization gauge symmetry transformation, and derived the financial solitons, which shows that there is a strict symmetry between manifold fiber bundle and guage field in financial markets. In practical applications of financial markets, we have repeatedly carried out experimental tests in a fluctuant evolvement, directly simulating and validating the existence of solitons by researching the price fluctuations (society phenomena) using the same methods and criterion as in natural science and in actual trade to test the stock Guangzhou Proprietary and the futures Fuel Oil in China. The results demonstrate that the financial solitons discovered indicates that there is a kind of new substance and form of energy existing in financial trade markets, which likely indicates a new science paradigm in the economy and society domains beyond physics.