Noisetrader - Dancers

This semester, I took a class in investments. I did not care much for the examinations of the material, which were 20 multiple choice questions, leaving little margin of error. Formulas were limited to one sheet, one side. The formulas were mainly plug and chug numbers - given the data of the estimates, what should be your decision?

It is a reasonable guess in the end. There are two main schools regarding the investments market. The first believes that the free hand of self-interest and flow of information regarding prospects is reflected in the price. It is efficient markets hypothesis and is quite sound in the long run.  The other school is behavioral and adds the disclaimer: "Not everyone is rational or well-informed as to what investments are really worth."  If it was an ideal world with free flow of information available, people would all agree on what the price should be.

The issue with efficient market and behavioral is that information itself is valuable. If an investor has advance information on the profitability of an investor, he or she could make a corner on the market OR tell everyone about it.  The self-interest is to keep it under wraps and act upon it. There is not an incentive to reveal it, only for quickest respondent to capitalize and adjust the valuation of the investment accordingly.

This withholding of information allows for the noisetraders to upset the market pricing. These are the people who buy Apple, Inc. stock even though it is overpriced in relation to the actual earnings. Their belief in its value generates an extravagant premium, adding a variable to the carefully laid order books of fundamentalist traders.

In short, just because an investor knows something in advance, a confederacy of dunces can swoop in with different or non-existent perceptions and muddle up the price. This is a concept echoed by two humorists, with observations on fools and experts winning out over people who know what they should be doing.

Douglas Adams, English absurdist writer, coined the term Aboyne - "To beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly bad that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him."

Mark Twain, American classical author, wrote:
"There are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot."

This element is vexing, predictably unpredictable in that it requires an additional assessment regarding behavioral tendencies and reactions to information. How an unlearned investor might interpret the quarterly results of a business, if they bothered to look at anything outside the current pricing.

The farther I advance in education and years, the greater I perceive that the real world is constructed of clever fakery in which people believe. The structure of society rotates on an axis of simple ideas which people choose not to question. When the curtain is pulled back, the scenery's glitter and lighting is seen from a different, not-so-glamorous angle.  It is not an expose as much as an endearment and affection that so many people walk steadily on the tightrope of reality, but refuse to look down. There are those who look down and question why we have chosen this lifestyle. Some are shaken to the core and try to awaken others to the absurdity of their situations. I want to be one who smiles down and dances, playing with the medium, all the while wondering if it plays right back with me.