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This study explores how dissonance and disagreement among traders can lead to the discovery of new resources of value, and examines the reflexive use of models and devices in trading rooms to mitigate the fallibility of models. The study highlights the performative nature of financial models and the importance of reflexivity in arbitrage trading.
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Devices for Dissonance: Reflexive Modeling and Systemic Risk Daniel Beunza & David Stark
Dissonance Dissonance fosters discoveryby prompting reflexivity.
Dissonance Dissonance fosters discoveryby prompting reflexivity. Disagreement about what is valuablemakes it possible to discover new resourcesof value.
In the literature, disasters are traced to the behavior of traders, depicted as 1) reckless
In the literature, disasters are traced to the behavior of traders, depicted as • reckless • and as • 2) overly cautious (“herding”)
Processes that provoke doubt can lead to overconfidence
This is a pipe organ in largest hall of Moscow House of Music. Posted by Irina at 20:55 Labels: instuments, theatre
[a declarative speech act] This is a pipe organ in largest hall of Moscow House of Music. Posted by Irina at 20:55 Labels: instuments, theatre
Performativity in economic sociology: Financial models are not representations. They are interventions that format, shape, perform markets. Their use brings new economic objects (markets) into being. Models are market making.
A model is performative when its use increases its predictive capabilities.
A financial model is not a representation; it is an intervention.
The trading room is populated with devices for doubt.Traders do not simply use models and devices that perform the market. They also create and use devices for reflexivity. This reflexivity is not exterior to (or above) the structures of socially distributed calculation but is an integral part of it.
Arbitrage is a (reflexively) skilled performance. And this reflexivity is not of the individualbut is social and material.
Methodological constraint: a single morning at a single desk in an abritrage trading room.
Calculation in merger arbitrage involves • the dissonance between two sets of probability estimates: • probability estimates derived at the desk using proprietary models, databases, and instrumentation. • 2) “implied probablity” – the aggregate probability estimates of the trader’s rivals
a given trading desk makes probability estimates based on models, proprietary databases, and instrumentation
The trader’s models and instrumentation are powerful scopes for viewing the markets.
But scopes that reveal can also conceal. If you take your model for granted, you can lose your shirt.
To avoid cognitive lock-in, the traders turn to socio-technical networks outside the trading room.
The spread plot is a representation of an economic object that does not have a price and is otherwise not observable, co-produced by the positioning of actors who use it to confront their interpretations and re-evaluate their positions.
$ Acquirer Target time Decoding the spread plot “Backing out” implied probability