In Section 4, I will describe how my conceptual framework applies to the financial markets with special mention of financial bubbles and the ongoing euro crisis. I will then conclude with some thoughts on the need for a new paradigm in social science. His theory of reflexivity suggests that, sometimes, markets are inherently unstable. etoro broker review The underlying forces create negative feedback loops that cause prices to diverge wildly from equilibrium. Reflexivity helps explain why this happens and is the philosophy that he uses to identify these unstable environments. As evidenced by his investment track record, Mr. Soros has applied his theories with great success.
This provision of new securities created another reflexive response in the creation of leveraged pools of these “safe” securities (or so the models said they were safe) and that allowed the banks to further expand their lending activities. Then the second part of the George Soros discovery came into play as the Regulators reflexively relaxed the rules for the creation, distribution and valuation of these securities, leading to increased demand and the virtuous cycle was set into overdrive. George Soros has a comment that applies here as well, “when interest rates are low we have conditions for asset bubbles to develop. Then, yet again, what were Mr. Kindleberger’s “Masses” doing at the peak? Why, of course, they were loading up on index funds, that were loading up on what had run the most (in classic reflexive fashion), the banks and financials, so when Citi and BofA fell (95%) and Phony and Fraudie fell (99%), investors learned, yet again, that price is a liar.
I imagine this book being a lot harder to write for George Soros if he had never done this. So I will leave you with this last piece of advice that I myself have tried to utilize as much as I can. And George relied not only on cognitive factors when investing but on body signals as well. Body signals as well as cognition can be a great predictor that something isn’t right based on how we are feeling during a given moment. Sometimes I’ve found from my own personal experience that my body is signaling some discomfort before my mind even realizes it.
- The downside of betting big and winning big is betting big and losing big.
- If the cognitive function operated in isolation, without any interference from the manipulative function, it could produce knowledge.
- The structure of natural events can be described as a chain of cause and effect generating a steam of objective facts, without any interference from the subjective aspects of reality (see Figure 2).
- A period of testing may intervene when either earnings or expectations waiver (CD).
People can gain knowledge of individual facts, but when it comes to formulating theories or forming an overall view, their perspective is bound to be either biased or inconsistent or both. The framework deals with the relationship between thinking and reality, but the participants’ thinking is part of the reality that they have to think about, which makes the relationship circular. Circles have no beginning or end, so I have to plunge in at an arbitrary point. That makes my ideas less clear when I put them into words than they are in my own mind. I am not the only one affected by this difficulty but I feel obliged to warn the reader that this section will be more convoluted and less elegant than it ought to be; the rest of the paper is not affected.
The tactic matters because it assigns to legitimately concerned people positions that they have not taken and would never take—like the idea that Soros is not to be criticized—misrepresenting what the debate is really about. It matters, too, because there is only so much time or attention anyone is going to spend on any given subject, and the people changing the terms of debate are wasting it. If nothing else, it is important to stop giving oxygen to a made-up controversy, as if anyone believes that all criticism of individual Jewish people is inherently antisemitic. No one believes this, it’s an intentional distraction, and no one should have to waste their time negating an argument that nobody is actually making. George Soros’ Theory of Reflexivity is a fascinating economic maxim derived from investor’s perceptions of the economic market place and market values and our forgetting to include what our own impact on the market is.
In the current economic environment, a good example of reflexivity has occurred in the housing market. As lenders made more cash accessible to home buyers, more people bought more expensive housing, which increased the prices of housing. fxcm broker review Because the housing prices increased, investments in housing looked sound, and more money was lent. George concludes that his theory of reflexivity is best to be used along with fundamental analysis, rather than on its own.
George Soros is a philanthropist, author, investor, and hedge fund manager of the very widely known Quantum Fund. He is arguably the best speculator of all time and is very well known for his bets against currencies. The Quantum Fund had an incredible return of 31% on average for more than 30 years.
Applying Soros’ Reflexivity Theory
And that is why some proponents of the efficient market hypothesis still defend it in the face of all the evidence. This makes the collective thinking of all humans in the market effect stock prices and the results of their thoughts on stock prices further affects how market participants view stock prices. Their perceptions of reality, not reality itself, affect stock prices and then this perception gets priced into markets and these perceptions end up affecting the fundamentals of the underlying companies. A simple and timely example is seen from the effect of credit ratings. When Moody’s or S&P downgrades the credit ratings of a given financial institution (think AIG), it can have an impact on the amount of collateral the company must pledge to back its obligations. A downgrade also increases the cost of capital for new debt issuances.
It would be impossible to summarize all my arguments for this essay; therefore, I shall focus only on the reflexive interaction between markets and authorities. We must also remember that not all forms of fallibility create Knightian uncertainty. Some forms are subject to statistical analysis – human errors leading to road accidents for example, or the many biases and errors discovered by behavioral economists.
- Thus they lent out more money because their balance sheets looked good, and prices rose higher still.
- Other destabilizing factors during recessions and bear markets include the activities of trend following investors; reduced capital spending; and the inability to use stock as currency for mergers & acquisitions.
- But hailing reflexivity as his “life’s work,” Soros now says the current financial crisis offers an opportunity for him to garner wider acceptance.
- Changes in economic fundamentals, such as consumer preferences and real resource scarcity, will induce market participants to bid prices up or down based on their more or less rational expectations of what economic fundamentals imply about future prices.
- The achievements of natural science stand as convincing testimony to man’s ability to use reason.
Subjective realities on the other hand are affected by what participants think about them. Since perfect information does not exist (ie, we can’t predict the future and it’s impossible to know all the variables moving markets at any given time) we make our best judgements as to what assets (stocks, futures, options etc) should be valued at. Our collective thinking is what moves markets and produces winners and losers. This means that what we think about reality affects reality itself.
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The weaker countries enjoyed real estate and consumption booms, while Germany, which was dealing with the burden of reunification, had to adopt fiscal austerity and structural reforms. There are myriad feedback loops at work in financial markets at any point of time. As long as they are more or less in balance they cancel out each other and market fluctuations do not have a definite direction. I compare these swings to the waves sloshing around in a swimming pool as opposed to the tides and currents that may prevail when positive feedbacks preponderate. Since positive feedbacks are self-reinforcing occasionally they may become so big that they overshadow all other happenings in the market.
By the time all the participants have adjusted, the rules of the game will change again.” Volatility is generated when investors without conviction cannot hold their position as the trend begins to change. The early adopters of a trend are the most knowledgeable and have the greatest time horizon, so they are able to hold through the normal ups and downs that occur in the markets. As the trend matures, the latecomers, who are simply chasing the past performance, have little conviction in the trend and can be easily shaken out when the original investors begin to take profits and move on.
Books authored or co-authored
Knight (1921) explored the difference between risk and uncertainty. Keynes (1936, Chapter 12) compared financial markets to a beauty contest where the participants had to guess who would be the most popular choice. game development software engineer careers The sociologist Merton (1949) wrote about self-fulfilling prophecies, unintended consequences, and the bandwagon effect. Popper spoke of the ‘Oedipus effect’ in the Poverty of Historicism (1957, Chapter 5).
Can Investors Learn the “Soros Way”?
A positive feedback process that runs its full course is initially self-reinforcing in one direction, but eventually it is liable to reach a climax or reversal point, after which it becomes self-reinforcing in the opposite direction. But positive feedback processes do not necessarily run their full course; they may be aborted at any time by negative feedback. The distinction I have drawn between natural and social science consists of the presence or absence of thinking participants’ who have a will of their own. That begs the question of what constitutes a ‘thinking participant.’ One might reasonably ask whether a chimpanzee, a dolphin, or a computerized stock-trading program is a thinking participant. In some fields, superior data crunching capacity may trump the human imagination, as the chess contest between Big Blue and Gary Kasparov has shown.
Could Gold Prices Hit New Highs This Year?
Just for some perspective on why price is clearly a liar, it would take George Soros nearly 25 years to compound $1 into $286, Buffet would need 29 years and if we had to wait for the average return in the S&P 500, it would take almost 60 years. George Soros was right (as usual) and the CSCO market price was wrong, the tech bubble crashed, investors like Quantum cleaned up being short those companies and today, 15 years later, CSCO stock is still down (65%) from that peak valuation. Cisco’s market cap is only $139 billion (down from the peak of $555 billion) and it is highly unlikely that will ever hit $1 trillion, as Hauwei in China has a different plan on which global company will dominate the network equipment space in the future. Bringing the conversation back to Reflexivity, it is interesting to listen to George Soros talk about some of the philosophy and strategy they utilized at Quantum and how they would exploit their understanding of the reflexive process in markets to capture investment opportunities.
They are more likely planted seeds of financial and emotional failure in your life. Of course, real life never matches up exactly with the theory’s assumptions. But they represent, economists say, a useful way of making sense of a complex world.
