| Fractals and Scaling In Finance | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 3 reviews)
Sales Rank: 183056
Category: Book
Author: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Publisher: Springer
Studio: Springer
Manufacturer: Springer
Label: Springer
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 551
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0387983635
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.01514742
EAN: 9780387983639
ASIN: 0387983635
Publication Date: September 18, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
BLECK: PHYSICS TODAY "At once a compendium of Mandelbrot's pioneering work and a sampling of new results, the presentation seems modeled on the brilliant avant-garde film 'Last Year in Marienbad', in which the usual flow of time is suspended, and the plot is gradually revealed by numerous but slightly different repetitions of a few repetitions of a few underlying events...Mandelbrot writes with economy and felicity, and he intersperses the more mathematical sections with frank historical anecdotes, such as the events that led up to his work on cotton pricing and the embarrassment caused by interpreting US Department of Agriculture data for weekly averages as 'Sunday closing prices.' There are many fascinating asides on a variety of topics, ranging from the importance of computer graphics in science to the distribution of insurance claims resulting from fire damage...The reader who is open-minded and prepared to indulge one of our more influential and original thinkers will be amply awarded. All in all, this is a strange but wonderful book. It will not suit everyone's taste but will almost surely teach every reader something new. What more can one ask?"
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| Customer Reviews:
A clear warning to all those financial analysts using N(0,1) October 14, 2004
42 out of 45 found this review helpful
This book deserves to receive 6 stars.Mandelbrot serves up overwhelming empirical,statistical,and historical evidence that financial decision makers are dead wrong in assuming,contrary to the available evidence, that a normal probability distribution describes the outcomes accurately in financial markets .In fact,the Cauchy distribution is substantially more relevant than the normal distribution.Mandelbrot's work simply means that the standard theoretical models taught in all colleges and universities,the CAPITAL ASSET PRICING MODEL(CAPM) and the BLACK-SCHOLES equation, give correct answers if and only if the relevant probability distributions about the movement of prices in financial markets over time are all normal.However, the evidence shows that they are NOT normal.Mandelbrot confirms ,by massive data analysis, Keynes's original 1921 objections to the misuse in application of (by merely assuming the applicability of such a distribution without examining the actual data)the normal probability distribution made in chapters 29 and 30 of the A Treatise on Probability(1921).Unfortunately,it appears that little,if any ,of Mandelbrot's scientific approach and analysis is being integrated into economics and finance.
scientific way of evaluating price movement August 30, 2001
57 out of 72 found this review helpful
in this book, Mandelbrot is trying to prove that first, the price movement's distribution is scaling invariant, meaning a security's log price-change's distribution is same as with its 5-min's or with its daily's(or even monthly); second, price movement is not purely random/normaldistribution/brownian/random walk on street(they are all same description), meaning if u use normal distribution as one of ur bases for ur model, u will not only be theoretically wrong, but also be punished in real-life trading, such as the case of long-term capital. third, price movement does have cycle, but it length can not be determined in trading time, meaning u will not be able to decide when those cycles are going to start or end; fourth, changes of price movements do concentrate, meaning big moves will happen continouesly, or very closely to each other. the major implication to me is that many current financial theories are wrong, specially, those using normal distribution(such as option model) as basic assumption for security price movement. it also may prove that some of current price-based models(such as some trend following system) have some merit. but manay systems based on channel(such as bollinger bands)will not work in long-run. with those in mind and many available mathematical tools, one should be able to build a good financial model.
A book to make you think differently about the markets May 7, 2000
34 out of 47 found this review helpful
To read this book you need truly to understand math and the markets. There is no questions that Mandelbrot is one of the greatest figures of our time. What he claimed based on his studies on cotton trading in the early 60s might not be close to the reality of today, but the way he approached it makes you think twice about the markets. Cotton trading is so different from stock market trading because it is either spoting trading or futures trading, and it is based on margins. The market usually has poor liquidity and with few players in it. The conclusions the book made could poorly extend to the general markets. The hard-to-follow math notations kept distracting me from following the main subjects. Anyway, this book will teach you something new, but you have to understand math and the markets, deeply.
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