Aegeus comments on Buy Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace - Less Wrong

21 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 February 2008 09:42PM

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Comment author: HalFinney 06 February 2008 03:42:12AM 2 points [-]

Right, he stayed at 60% or so for about an hour, then around 8:20 PM EST he fell back to 54%, held that for another hour, then suddenly plummeted to 35% with a quick rebound to the 40%-45% range, where he is as of 10:30 PM EST. Obviously these numbers track the swings of fortune as the various polling numbers come in.

It may seem wrong for a market to fluctuate so wildly, but I am beginning to suspect that many markets would show large fluctuations if participants were fully rational. Uncertainties dominate the future, and so valuations of securities might legitimately show tremendous variation with even slight changes in current information. Only the stabilizing influence of market makers, along with traders' irrational reluctance to venture outside the current trading range, would be responsible for the degree of stability we see in our financial markets.