Financial Memory Syndrome

False Memory Syndrome

There continues to be serious debate over the concept of false memory syndrome, where allegedly innocent people have been accused of serious crimes on the basis of memories which may have little basis in reality. Whatever really lies behind these cases it seems that planting fake memories in people’s brains is rather too easy to make the truth easy to ascertain.

The problem is that our memories are rather more malleable than we’re brought up to believe and it’s easy to create imaginary ones if you know what you’re doing – and often if you don't. Even worse, we can plant fake memories in our own minds and these are implicated in many of the behavioural issues that dog investors. Financial memory syndrome is at the heart of many a financial crisis.

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Forensic Finance, Benford’s Way

Misnamed and Mad

One of the more curious statistical anomalies of the universe has turned out to have a range of practical applications in the world of finance. It also turns out to be one of the stranger laws underpinning the stockmarket, although figuring out why is a painful process.

Above all, Benford’s Law can be used to spot financial fraudsters because of a psychological quirk that means we humans are dead useless at pretending to be random. All of this comes from a law that was discovered by one man, explained by another and named after a third. Now that’s random.

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Quantum Consciousness is Market Uncertainty

Reality's an Illusion

However odd or downright contradictory we may find financial markets they’re absolutely nothing compared to the bizarre nature of nature itself, which at the sub-microscopic level doesn’t so much defy the application of logic as positively thumb its nose at it. The world of quantum physics is, it seems, quite literally unimaginable.

Yet there’s an implication in the physics of the infinitesimal that has profound implications for everything, not the least of which are the random meanderings of investment securities. The science suggests that there is no objective state of reality outside the confines of our own heads. We are, it seems, the ghosts in our own machines.

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Book Value

Dark Age Done

The printed book has a strong claim to be the most important invention humanity has ever made. To be able to clearly record information for posterity, to hand it down from generation to generation, and to disseminate that information widely and quickly provides the modern world with advantages that are hard to understate: a replay of the Dark Ages is unimaginable.

The economic importance of the book is also hard to understate, as the evidence of economic growth in the pre-industrialised world demonstrates. Yet we're now in the midst of a revolution in the printed world which is changing our society, our behaviours, our economy and our future. Book value is changing, by the day.

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