A model of speculative behaviour with a strange attractor

Abstract

© 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd.An asset pricing model for a speculative financial market with fundamentalists and chartists is analysed. The model explains bursts of volatility in financial markets, which are not well explained by the traditional finance paradigms. Speculative bubbles arise as a complex non-linear dynamic phenomenon brought about naturally by the dynamic interaction of heterogeneous market participants. Depending on the time lag in the formation of chartists’ expectations, the system evolves through several dynamic regimes, finishing in a strange attractor. Chaos provides a self-sustained motion around the rationally expected equilibrium that corresponds to a speculative bubble. In order to explain the role of Chartism, chaotic motion is a very interesting theoretical feature for a speculative financial market model. It provides a complex non-linear dynamic behaviour around the Walrasian equilibrium price produced by deterministic interactions between fundamentalists and chartists. This model could be a link between two opposite views over the behaviour of financial markets: the theorist’s literature view that claims the random motion of asset prices, and the chartist’s position extensively adopted by market professionals.