Stock market bubble

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A stock market bubble is a type of economic bubble taking place in stock markets when market participants drive stock prices above their value in relation to some system of stock valuation.

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Behavioral finance theory attributes stock market bubbles to cognitive biases that lead to groupthink and herd behavior. Bubbles occur not only in real-world markets, with their inherent uncertainty and noise, but also in highly predictable experimental markets. [1] Other theoretical explanations of stock market bubbles have suggested that they are rational, [2] intrinsic, [3] and contagious. [4]

History

Courtyard of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (Beurs van Hendrick de Keyser) by Emanuel de Witte, 1653. Emanuel de Witte - De binnenplaats van de beurs te Amsterdam.jpg
Courtyard of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (Beurs van Hendrick de Keyser) by Emanuel de Witte, 1653.

Historically, early stock market bubbles and crashes have their roots in financial activities of the 17th-century Dutch Republic, the birthplace of the first formal (official) stock exchange and market in history. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] The Dutch tulip mania, of the 1630s, is generally considered the world's first recorded speculative bubble (or economic bubble).[ citation needed ]

Examples

Two famous early stock market bubbles were the Mississippi Scheme in France and the South Sea bubble in England. Both bubbles came to an abrupt end in 1720, bankrupting thousands of unfortunate investors. Those stories, and many others, are recounted in Charles Mackay's 1841 popular account, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds".

The NASDAQ Composite index spiked in the late 90s and then fell sharply as a result of the dot-com bubble. Nasdaq Composite dot-com bubble.svg
The NASDAQ Composite index spiked in the late 90s and then fell sharply as a result of the dot-com bubble.
The Nikkei 225. Nikkei 225(1970-).svg
The Nikkei 225.

The two most famous bubbles of the twentieth century, the bubble in American stocks in the 1920s just before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the following Great Depression, and the Dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, were based on speculative activity surrounding the development of new technologies. The 1920s saw the widespread introduction of a range of technological innovations including radio, automobiles, aviation and the deployment of electrical power grids. The 1990s was the decade when Internet and e-commerce technologies emerged.

Other stock market bubbles of note include the Encilhamento occurred in Brazil during the late 1880s and early 1890s, the Nifty Fifty stocks in the early 1970s, Taiwanese stocks in 1987–89 and Japanese stocks in the late 1980s.

Stock market bubbles frequently produce hot markets in initial public offerings, since investment bankers and their clients see opportunities to float new stock issues at inflated prices. These hot IPO markets misallocate investment funds to areas dictated by speculative trends, rather than to enterprises generating longstanding economic value. Typically when there is an over abundance of IPOs in a bubble market, a large portion of the IPO companies fail completely, never achieve what is promised to the investors, or can even be vehicles for fraud.

Whether rational or irrational

Emotional and cognitive biases (see behavioral finance) seem to be the causes of bubbles, but often, when the phenomenon appears, pundits try to find a rationale, so as not to be against the crowd. Thus, sometimes, people will dismiss concerns about overpriced markets by citing a new economy where the old stock valuation rules may no longer apply. This type of thinking helps to further propagate the bubble whereby everyone is investing with the intent of finding a greater fool. Still, some analysts cite the wisdom of crowds and say that price movements really do reflect rational expectations of fundamental returns. Large traders become powerful enough to rock the boat, generating stock market bubbles. [10]

To sort out the competing claims between behavioral finance and efficient markets theorists, observers need to find bubbles that occur when a readily available measure of fundamental value is also observable. The bubble in closed-end country funds in the late 1980s is instructive here, as are the bubbles that occur in experimental asset markets. According to the efficient-market hypothesis, this doesn't happen, and so any data is wrong. [11] For closed-end country funds, observers can compare the stock prices to the net asset value per share (the net value of the fund's total holdings divided by the number of shares outstanding). For experimental asset markets, observers can compare the stock prices to the expected returns from holding the stock (which the experimenter determines and communicates to the traders).

In both instances, closed-end country funds and experimental markets, stock prices clearly diverge from fundamental values. Nobel laureate Dr. Vernon Smith has illustrated the closed-end country fund phenomenon with a chart showing prices and net asset values of the Spain Fund  [ zh ] in 1989 and 1990 in his work on price bubbles. [12] At its peak, the Spain Fund traded near $35, nearly triple its Net Asset Value of about $12 per share. At the same time the Spain Fund and other closed-end country funds were trading at very substantial premiums, the number of closed-end country funds available exploded thanks to many issuers creating new country funds and selling the IPOs at high premiums.

It only took a few months for the premiums in closed-end country funds to fade back to the more typical discounts at which closed-end funds trade. Those who had bought them at premiums had run out of "greater fools". For a while, though, the supply of "greater fools" had been outstanding.

Positive feedback

A rising price on any share will attract the attention of investors. Not all of those investors are willing or interested in studying the intrinsics of the share and for such people the rising price itself is reason enough to invest. In turn, the additional investment will provide buoyancy to the price, thus completing a positive feedback loop.

Like all dynamic systems, financial markets operate in an ever-changing equilibrium, which translates into price volatility. However, a self-adjustment (negative feedback) takes place normally: when prices rise more people are encouraged to sell, while fewer are encouraged to buy. This puts a limit on volatility. However, once positive feedback takes over, the market, like all systems with positive feedback, enters a state of increasing disequilibrium. This can be seen in financial bubbles where asset prices rapidly spike upwards far beyond what could be considered the rational "economic value", only to fall rapidly afterwards.

Effect of incentives

Investment managers, such as stock mutual fund managers, are compensated and retained in part due to their performance relative to peers. Taking a conservative or contrarian position as a bubble builds results in performance unfavorable to peers. This may cause customers to go elsewhere and can affect the investment manager's own employment or compensation. The typical short-term focus of U.S. equity markets exacerbates the risk for investment managers that do not participate during the building phase of a bubble, particularly one that builds over a longer period of time. In attempting to maximize returns for clients and maintain their employment, they may rationally participate in a bubble they believe to be forming, as the benefits outweigh the risks of not doing so. [13]

See also

Related Research Articles

Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to and distinct from Economics which is the study of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Based on the scope of financial activities in financial systems, the discipline can be divided into personal, corporate, and public finance.

Passive management is an investing strategy that tracks a market-weighted index or portfolio. Passive management is most common on the equity market, where index funds track a stock market index, but it is becoming more common in other investment types, including bonds, commodities and hedge funds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stock market</span> Place where stocks are traded

A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks, which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include securities listed on a public stock exchange as well as stock that is only traded privately, such as shares of private companies that are sold to investors through equity crowdfunding platforms. Investments are usually made with an investment strategy in mind.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stock market crash</span> Sudden widespread decline of stock prices

A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a major cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic selling and underlying economic factors. They often follow speculation and economic bubbles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Speculation</span> Engaging in risky financial transactions

In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.

Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources to achieve later benefits". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later". From a broader viewpoint, an investment can be defined as "to tailor the pattern of expenditure and receipt of resources to optimise the desirable patterns of these flows". When expenditures and receipts are defined in terms of money, then the net monetary receipt in a time period is termed cash flow, while money received in a series of several time periods is termed cash flow stream.

An economic bubble is a period when current asset prices greatly exceed their intrinsic valuation, being the valuation that the underlying long-term fundamentals justify. Bubbles can be caused by overly optimistic projections about the scale and sustainability of growth, and/or by the belief that intrinsic valuation is no longer relevant when making an investment. They have appeared in most asset classes, including equities, commodities, real estate, and even esoteric assets. Bubbles usually form as a result of either excess liquidity in markets, and/or changed investor psychology. Large multi-asset bubbles, are attributed to central banking liquidity.

A closed-end fund, also known as a closed-end mutual fund, is an investment vehicle fund that raises capital by issuing a fixed number of shares at its inception, and then invests that capital in financial assets such as stocks and bonds. After inception it is closed to new capital, although fund managers sometimes employ leverage. Investors can buy and sell the existing shares in secondary markets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Efficient-market hypothesis</span> Economic theory that asset prices fully reflect all available information

The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) is a hypothesis in financial economics that states that asset prices reflect all available information. A direct implication is that it is impossible to "beat the market" consistently on a risk-adjusted basis since market prices should only react to new information.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stock trader</span> Person or company involved in trading equity securities

A stock trader or equity trader or share trader, also called a stock investor, is a person or company involved in trading equity securities and attempting to profit from the purchase and sale of those securities. Stock traders may be an investor, agent, hedger, arbitrageur, speculator, or stockbroker. Such equity trading in large publicly traded companies may be through a stock exchange. Stock shares in smaller public companies may be bought and sold in over-the-counter (OTC) markets or in some instances in equity crowdfunding platforms.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Investment fund</span> Way of investing money alongside other investors

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Jeremy James Siegel is the Russell E. Palmer Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Siegel comments extensively on the economy and financial markets. He appears regularly on networks including CNN, CNBC and NPR, and writes regular columns for Kiplinger's Personal Finance and Yahoo! Finance. Siegel's paradox is named after him.

References

  1. ↑ Smith, Vernon L.; Suchanek, Gerry L.; Williams, Arlington W. (1988). "Bubbles, Crashes, and Endogenous Expectations in Experimental Spot Asset Markets". Econometrica. 56 (5): 1119–1151. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.360.174 . doi:10.2307/1911361. JSTOR   1911361.
  2. ↑ De Long, J. Bradford; Shleifer, Andrei; Summers, Lawrence H.; Waldmann, Robert J. (1990). "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets" (PDF). Journal of Political Economy. 98 (4): 703–738. doi:10.1086/261703. S2CID   12112860.
  3. ↑ Froot, Kenneth A.; Obstfeld, Maurice (1991). "Intrinsic Bubbles: The Case of Stock Prices". American Economic Review. 81 (5): 1189–1214. doi: 10.3386/w3091 . JSTOR   2006913.
  4. ↑ Topol, Richard (1991). "Bubbles and Volatility of Stock Prices: Effect of Mimetic Contagion". The Economic Journal. 101 (407): 786–800. doi:10.2307/2233855. JSTOR   2233855.
  5. ↑ Brooks, John: The Fluctuation: The Little Crash in '62, in Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street. (New York: Weybright & Talley, 1968)
  6. ↑ Neal, Larry (2005). “Venture Shares of the Dutch East India Company,” in Origins of Value, in The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations that Created Modern Capital Markets, Goetzmann & Rouwenhorst (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 165–175
  7. ↑ Shiller, Robert (2011). Economics 252, Financial Markets: Lecture 4 – Portfolio Diversification and Supporting Financial Institutions (Open Yale Courses). [Transcript]
  8. ↑ Petram, Lodewijk: The World's First Stock Exchange: How the Amsterdam Market for Dutch East India Company Shares Became a Modern Securities Market, 1602–1700. Translated from the Dutch by Lynne Richards. (Columbia University Press, 2014, 304pp)
  9. ↑ Macaulay, Catherine R. (2015). “Capitalism's renaissance? The potential of repositioning the financial 'meta-economy'”. (Futures, Volume 68, April 2015, p. 5–18)
  10. ↑ Sergey Perminov, Trendocracy and Stock Market Manipulations (2008, ISBN   978-1-4357-5244-3).
  11. ↑ Krugman, Paul (2009-09-02). "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?". The New York Times .
  12. ↑ Porter, David P.; Smith, Vernon L. (2003). "Stock Market Bubbles in the Laboratory". The Journal of Behavioral Finance. 4 (1): 7–20. doi:10.1207/S15427579JPFM0401_03. S2CID   8561988.
  13. ↑ Blodget-The Atlantic-Why Wall St. Always Blows It
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