Mark to market rules and efficiency of financial markets

1. Mark to market rules and efficiency of financial markets Paul De Grauwe University of Leuven and CEPS

2. Mark to market rules are based on the view that market prices provide the best available information about the correct value of underlying assets • This is the same as saying that mark to market rules assume markets are efficient • i.e. market prices reflect all relevant information • Usefulness of mark to market rules depends on market efficiency

3. Are financial markets efficient? • Let’s look at the stock markets first; • Take US stock market (DJI, S&P500) • (same story can be told in other stock markets) • And exchange markets

4. Dow Jones and S&P500

5. US stock market 2006-08 • What happened between July 2006 and July 2007 to warrant an increase of 30%? • Put differently: • In July 2006 US stock market capitalization was $11.5 trillion • One year later it was $15 trillion • What happened to US economy so that $3.5 trillion was added to the value of US corporations in just one year? • While GDP increased by only 5% ($650 billion)

6. The answer is: almost nothing • Fundamentals like productivity growth increased at their normal rate • The only reasonable answer is: excessive optimism • Investors were caught by a wave of collective madness • that made them believe that the US was on a new and permanent growth path for the indefinite future

7. Then came the downturn with the credit crisis • In one year time stock prices drop 30% • destroying $35 trillion of value • What happened? • Investors finally realized that there had been excessive optimism • The wave turned into one of excessive pessimism • We still do not know where this will end.

8. Nasdaq :similar story 200% 100% 0%

9. Similar story in foreign exchange market Since 1980 dollar has been involved in bubble and crash scenarios more than half of the time While very little happened with underlying fundamentals Market was driven by periods of excessive optimism and then pessimism about the dollar

10. Mark to market in a world of market inefficiency • We are told that mark to market is the right way to value assets • Thus from July 2006 to July 2007 this rule told accountants that the massive asset price increases corresponded to real profits that should be recorded in the books. • These profits, however, did not correspond to something that had happened in the real economy • They were the result of “animal spirits”

11. As a result mark to market rules exacerbated the sense of euphoria • and intensified the bubble • Now the reverse is happening • Mark to market rules force massive write downs correcting for the massive overvaluations introduced just a year earlier • intensifying the sense of gloom • and the economic downturn

12. A note • Bankers now complain about mark to market rules • now that the market goes down • They did not complain during the upturn • As a result, their credibility is weak

13. Conclusion • Mark to market rules show excessive confidence in the efficiency of financial markets • There is now substantial evidence that financial markets are not efficient • Inefficiency does not lead to just a few percentage points of over- or undervaluation of assets • but of massive and systematic misalignment of market prices

14. Yet many people continue to believe in the market’s infallibility • and impose rules based on an idea that comes closer to religion than to science • As a result, these rules exacerbate financial and macroeconomic instability

15. New rules should be designed • They should not eliminate market prices altogether • But they should bring some inertia in these prices • Throw some sand in the wheels of financial markets.