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5 - Financial Markets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2020

Christian Borch
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
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Summary

This chapter focuses on financial markets and how these markets have enjoyed close ties to cities. It also demonstrates that social avalanches and tensional individuality have played a central role in how financial markets work and are conceived. I discuss this by examining the historical design of the trading floors of stock and commodity exchanges, introduced to avoid emergence within these exchanges of the avalanching of metropolitan life, as well as contrarian investment advice, which suggested techniques for how to avoid the avalanching properties of markets, techniques that ultimately subscribed to a tensional notion of individuality. The chapter also discusses more recent market developments such as the increasing computerisation of financial markets. I focus on the rise of algorithmic finance, in which fully automated computer algorithms are behind the majority of activity in financial markets. Through a discussion of the Flash Crash that took place in US markets in May 2010, I argue that fully automated algorithms may engage in social avalanching, meaning that sociality can indeed be ascribed to non-human algorithms.

Type
Chapter
Information
Social Avalanche
Crowds, Cities and Financial Markets
, pp. 188 - 243
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Financial Markets
  • Christian Borch, Copenhagen Business School
  • Book: Social Avalanche
  • Online publication: 18 January 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774239.006
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  • Financial Markets
  • Christian Borch, Copenhagen Business School
  • Book: Social Avalanche
  • Online publication: 18 January 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774239.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Financial Markets
  • Christian Borch, Copenhagen Business School
  • Book: Social Avalanche
  • Online publication: 18 January 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774239.006
Available formats
×