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# The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence

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## Description

A groundbreaking mathematician presents a new model for understanding financial markets Benoit B. Mandelbrot is world-famous for inventing fractal geometry, making mathematical sense of a fact everybody knows but that geometers from Euclid on down had never assimilated: Clouds are not round, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not smooth. To these insights we can now add another example: Markets are not the safe bet your broker may claim. Mandelbrot, with co-author Richard L. Hudson, shows how the dominant way of thinking about the behavior of markets--a set of mathematical assumptions a century old and still learned by every MBA and financier in the world--simply does not work. He uses fractal geometry to propose a new, more accurate way of describing market behavior. From the gyrations of the Dow to the dollar-euro exchange rate, Mandlebrot shows how to understand the volatility of markets in far more accurate terms than the failed theories that have repeatedly brought the financial system to the brink of disaster. The result is no less than the foundation for a new science of finance.

Review: everything you were ever taught about finance is a lie! - everything you were ever taught about finance is a lie! (or maybe not.) "the (mis)behavior of markets" is an excellent introduction to mandelbrot's unorthodox ideas on the house of modern finance. this book was written for a general audience and was written late in mandelbrot's life, after he's had decades to polish his thoughts. if you want an introductory book to read about how the stock market is possibly related to fractals, then this is the book to pick up. fractals are the by now familiar mathematical objects that display self-similarity when scaled larger or smaller. their progenitors are those weird constructs, such as peano's space-filling curve and the cantor set, that were introduced in the late nineteenth century and subsequently sparked a revolution in logic. all of these animals of pure mathematical fancy were designed to challenge the conventional notions of the time and forced mathematicians to revisit the foundations of their craft. indeed, this line of thought led to the strange notion of non-integer fractional dimensions. so what does all of this have to do with finance? the dimension of a fractal is given by a power law. a lot of economic and financial data seem to fit power laws as well. fractals are characteristically self-similar. charts of stock prices exhibit self-similarity. yada yada yada and thus, markets are governed by fractals. wait a minute. that's actually not quite logical! ok, so there are some speculative aspects fueling this enterprise. this is the source of most of the negative criticism mandelbrot receives for this book. in my opinion, laying out some speculative avenues of thought is not a crime. scientists should dare to dream! mandelbrot himself acknowledges that this circle of ideas is merely in its infancy. he hopes others will pursue this path of inquiry and continue his life's work. and just why would anybody pick up that banner? well, because our current understanding of finance is deeply flawed while mandelbrot offers a (very rough) potential alternative. in the first part of the book, mandelbrot does an outstanding job presenting data contradicting conventional financial theories. the punchline: markets are much riskier than people think. in particular, he attacks the use of the so-called "normal" probability distributions in finance. this foundational attack threatens modern portfolio theory, the capital asset pricing model, the black-scholes formula for pricing options, etc. essentially, all the major developments in finance in the second half of the twentieth century are in jeopardy. some of the creators of these theories have won nobel prizes in economics, so a lot is at stake here. (an understatement!) note that mandelbrot's arguments in part one are valid even if the fractal speculations presented afterward turn out to be unfounded. mandelbrot uses plain language and analogies in his exposition throughout the book. he purposefully avoided equations, but he partially makes up for it through the use of pictures. mandelbrot was a very visual thinker and it shows in this book. for example, on p.179 mandelbrot offers a diagram of what "removing the trend" means in hurst's research. stare at the picture for a little while and the meaning should become clear to anyone with an interest in math and science. similarly, mandelbrot doesn't really explain how multifractal time works since the given father-mother-child analogy is fuzzy at best. however, the "fractal market cube" diagram on p.214 explains the concept of multifractal time in one picture. anyone familiar with projections should be able to understand this diagram without any problems. this compromise approach of offering analogies for a general audience while providing supplementary mathematical content in the pictures is suitable for an introductory book aimed at a wide audience, in my opinion. the best feature of this book for me was the autobiographical chronicling of a sharp mathematical mind at work. mandelbrot was able to see patterns and connections between seemingly unrelated fields and then he pursued these links relentlessly over decades of time. his individuality and perseverance allowed him to carry on even when the rest of the establishment were pursuing contrary ideas. mandelbrot also doesn't hide the moments when he was in the dark or when he saw connections that turned out to be trickier than his first instinct suggested. after all, this train of thought spanned a lifetime. and amazingly, some of his greatest insights came from pure serendipity. mandelbrot received a major breakthrough from reading a paper that was pulled out of a garbage can! in the interest of fairness, there are some relatively minor oversights in this book. this was the only real negative i could think of and it's easily forgivable. for example, mandelbrot incorrectly states that peter lynch's stellar performance as manager of fidelity's magellan fund was most significant when the fund was small. it's actually the opposite: market impact costs become a burden when a mutual fund grows too large, making it much easier to outperform the market when a fund's assets are small, especially with lynch's trading style. in spite of this minor criticism, i found this book to be a page turner written by an obviously extraordinary thinker. it's always a good idea to read the masters. if you want to understand the spirit of passive investing, read jack bogle. if you want to partake in value investing, read ben graham. and if you want to know why the house of modern finance might stand on shaky foundations, read mandelbrot. read, think, then judge for yourself. lastly, if you were hoping to make a fortune from fractals, read the following quote from p.6 of the book: "i see a pattern in these price movements -- not a pattern, to be sure, that will make anybody rich; i agree with the orthodox economists that stock prices are probably not predictable in any useful sense of the term."
Review: ...with tangerine trees and marmalade skies... - Orthodox economics is very formal using complex models to predict future behaviour. Most economists, like meteorologists, are not held accountable for their predictions. Within the very wide field of economics there are many conflicting views about the nature of economics and there is much in the way of interesting work going on out there and I would cite the contributions of the Austrian school and the evolutionary school and especially point to the very accessible work of Paul Ormerod who give somewhat different views to those of the standard model. This book is not aimed at those practitioners of economics or indeed the professionals of the City of London or Wall Street. To my mind, as an interested observer, Mandelbrot and Hudson are doing all of us a service in illuminating the gaps in economic theory that underpins the financial industry. John Maynard Keynes, who's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)can be said to lie at the heart of much of contemporary economic theory, once famously compared the financial services industry to gambling, also made his fortune on the stock market. The book methodically disects each of the pillars of contemporary financial theory and exposes it's weakness then introduces some basic fractal geometry ideas to exhibit their apparent ly better predictive use. As someone who favours the approach of ideas of chaos theory into the economics brew I tend to be more open to the approach that Mandelbrot uses but the proof of the pudding, as we say in England, lies in the eating and this populist text is certainly not the place for complex technical proofs or highly mathematical analysis. It is a difficult path to take but for the purposes for which this book is intended, which I believe is aimed at the educated investor or someone without an economics or financial background, it is about right. I found the book both accessible and lucid. There are areas with which I would have wished for a more techical exposition but this is something that I will take up when I delve further into this subject matter. There are many interesting ideas here and I suspect that there are many in the financial services community who are looking into these in greater detail or even have already absorbed them into their toolkit. Given the competitive nature of the financial markets I suspect that this knowledge will quickly be dispesed throughout the community. All in all this is a nice easy read which will prompt further thought and study upon it's contents. My only, minor reservation, which prevents me awarding five stars is that I think a non-technical appendix, in keeping with the rest of the book, about the basic precepts of fractal geometry would have been helpful for the lay reader. Well worth a look.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #334,912 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #7 in Fractal Mathematics #26 in Business Statistics #54 in Statistics (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,487 Reviews |

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![The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71exwNOpE0L.jpg)

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ everything you were ever taught about finance is a lie!
*by M***S on August 21, 2011*

everything you were ever taught about finance is a lie! (or maybe not.) "the (mis)behavior of markets" is an excellent introduction to mandelbrot's unorthodox ideas on the house of modern finance. this book was written for a general audience and was written late in mandelbrot's life, after he's had decades to polish his thoughts. if you want an introductory book to read about how the stock market is possibly related to fractals, then this is the book to pick up. fractals are the by now familiar mathematical objects that display self-similarity when scaled larger or smaller. their progenitors are those weird constructs, such as peano's space-filling curve and the cantor set, that were introduced in the late nineteenth century and subsequently sparked a revolution in logic. all of these animals of pure mathematical fancy were designed to challenge the conventional notions of the time and forced mathematicians to revisit the foundations of their craft. indeed, this line of thought led to the strange notion of non-integer fractional dimensions. so what does all of this have to do with finance? the dimension of a fractal is given by a power law. a lot of economic and financial data seem to fit power laws as well. fractals are characteristically self-similar. charts of stock prices exhibit self-similarity. yada yada yada and thus, markets are governed by fractals. wait a minute. that's actually not quite logical! ok, so there are some speculative aspects fueling this enterprise. this is the source of most of the negative criticism mandelbrot receives for this book. in my opinion, laying out some speculative avenues of thought is not a crime. scientists should dare to dream! mandelbrot himself acknowledges that this circle of ideas is merely in its infancy. he hopes others will pursue this path of inquiry and continue his life's work. and just why would anybody pick up that banner? well, because our current understanding of finance is deeply flawed while mandelbrot offers a (very rough) potential alternative. in the first part of the book, mandelbrot does an outstanding job presenting data contradicting conventional financial theories. the punchline: markets are much riskier than people think. in particular, he attacks the use of the so-called "normal" probability distributions in finance. this foundational attack threatens modern portfolio theory, the capital asset pricing model, the black-scholes formula for pricing options, etc. essentially, all the major developments in finance in the second half of the twentieth century are in jeopardy. some of the creators of these theories have won nobel prizes in economics, so a lot is at stake here. (an understatement!) note that mandelbrot's arguments in part one are valid even if the fractal speculations presented afterward turn out to be unfounded. mandelbrot uses plain language and analogies in his exposition throughout the book. he purposefully avoided equations, but he partially makes up for it through the use of pictures. mandelbrot was a very visual thinker and it shows in this book. for example, on p.179 mandelbrot offers a diagram of what "removing the trend" means in hurst's research. stare at the picture for a little while and the meaning should become clear to anyone with an interest in math and science. similarly, mandelbrot doesn't really explain how multifractal time works since the given father-mother-child analogy is fuzzy at best. however, the "fractal market cube" diagram on p.214 explains the concept of multifractal time in one picture. anyone familiar with projections should be able to understand this diagram without any problems. this compromise approach of offering analogies for a general audience while providing supplementary mathematical content in the pictures is suitable for an introductory book aimed at a wide audience, in my opinion. the best feature of this book for me was the autobiographical chronicling of a sharp mathematical mind at work. mandelbrot was able to see patterns and connections between seemingly unrelated fields and then he pursued these links relentlessly over decades of time. his individuality and perseverance allowed him to carry on even when the rest of the establishment were pursuing contrary ideas. mandelbrot also doesn't hide the moments when he was in the dark or when he saw connections that turned out to be trickier than his first instinct suggested. after all, this train of thought spanned a lifetime. and amazingly, some of his greatest insights came from pure serendipity. mandelbrot received a major breakthrough from reading a paper that was pulled out of a garbage can! in the interest of fairness, there are some relatively minor oversights in this book. this was the only real negative i could think of and it's easily forgivable. for example, mandelbrot incorrectly states that peter lynch's stellar performance as manager of fidelity's magellan fund was most significant when the fund was small. it's actually the opposite: market impact costs become a burden when a mutual fund grows too large, making it much easier to outperform the market when a fund's assets are small, especially with lynch's trading style. in spite of this minor criticism, i found this book to be a page turner written by an obviously extraordinary thinker. it's always a good idea to read the masters. if you want to understand the spirit of passive investing, read jack bogle. if you want to partake in value investing, read ben graham. and if you want to know why the house of modern finance might stand on shaky foundations, read mandelbrot. read, think, then judge for yourself. lastly, if you were hoping to make a fortune from fractals, read the following quote from p.6 of the book: "i see a pattern in these price movements -- not a pattern, to be sure, that will make anybody rich; i agree with the orthodox economists that stock prices are probably not predictable in any useful sense of the term."

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ...with tangerine trees and marmalade skies...
*by J***S on July 8, 2006*

Orthodox economics is very formal using complex models to predict future behaviour. Most economists, like meteorologists, are not held accountable for their predictions. Within the very wide field of economics there are many conflicting views about the nature of economics and there is much in the way of interesting work going on out there and I would cite the contributions of the Austrian school and the evolutionary school and especially point to the very accessible work of Paul Ormerod who give somewhat different views to those of the standard model. This book is not aimed at those practitioners of economics or indeed the professionals of the City of London or Wall Street. To my mind, as an interested observer, Mandelbrot and Hudson are doing all of us a service in illuminating the gaps in economic theory that underpins the financial industry. John Maynard Keynes, who's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)can be said to lie at the heart of much of contemporary economic theory, once famously compared the financial services industry to gambling, also made his fortune on the stock market. The book methodically disects each of the pillars of contemporary financial theory and exposes it's weakness then introduces some basic fractal geometry ideas to exhibit their apparent ly better predictive use. As someone who favours the approach of ideas of chaos theory into the economics brew I tend to be more open to the approach that Mandelbrot uses but the proof of the pudding, as we say in England, lies in the eating and this populist text is certainly not the place for complex technical proofs or highly mathematical analysis. It is a difficult path to take but for the purposes for which this book is intended, which I believe is aimed at the educated investor or someone without an economics or financial background, it is about right. I found the book both accessible and lucid. There are areas with which I would have wished for a more techical exposition but this is something that I will take up when I delve further into this subject matter. There are many interesting ideas here and I suspect that there are many in the financial services community who are looking into these in greater detail or even have already absorbed them into their toolkit. Given the competitive nature of the financial markets I suspect that this knowledge will quickly be dispesed throughout the community. All in all this is a nice easy read which will prompt further thought and study upon it's contents. My only, minor reservation, which prevents me awarding five stars is that I think a non-technical appendix, in keeping with the rest of the book, about the basic precepts of fractal geometry would have been helpful for the lay reader. Well worth a look.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The First Book for Any Investor or Trader
*by A***. on September 2, 2018*

The author shows how modern financial theory underestimates risk in financial markets. Famous as "the father of fractal geometry," Mandelbrot is less well-known for his contributions to financial market theory. He is the tour de force behind Taleb's "Black Swan" writings. "Misbehavior" is more of an introduction to fractal finance than a textbook about how to implement Mandelbrot's ideas into trading systems. Nevertheless, it provides a foundation and introduction to new methods that many may find useful, with enough detail to begin incorporating same into quantitative models. Other works by Mandelbrot go much deeper into the "how to" side of fractal finance. Benoît (pronounced "ben-wah") Mandelbrot writes in a clear, conversational style. The text avoids mathematical formulas, using instead a combination of written descriptions and entertaining analogies to explain. Chapter notes in an appendix present the mathematical formulas behind his descriptions, along with further (clear, simple) explanations. The book divides into three parts: The Old Way, The New Way, and The Way Ahead. The first part describes the history leading up to modern finance as still taught in most business schools. It describes contributions by key figures such as Louis Bachelier, Paul Samuelson, William Sharpe, Harry Markowitz, Myron Scholes, and Fischer Black. I found this summary quite interesting, a valuable lesson history. Although we learned MPT (modern portfolio theory) in my MBA finance classes, it's background and potential shortfalls were not addressed. The second part steps back to examine the nature of markets (turbulent, not Gaussian), identify contradictions between observation and modern theory (extreme events way more common than predicted), and then develop a better, multi-fractal (i.e. scalable) view of finance. Here Mandelbrot excels. Illustrations ("cartoons") help get points across while entertaining analogies (e.g. "Noah, Joseph, and Market Bubbles") and a true story of engineering genius (H.E. Hurst's analysis of Nile River floods) lead to insight into market trends useful to trend-followers. The third part looks to the future. It summarizes the previous material in "Ten Heresies of Finance" and points the way for future research. Overall, I loved this book. Obviously, Nassim Nicholas Taleb did too ("...the first book in economics that spoke directly to me.") It contains valuable information for every investor, professional or amateur, experienced or novice. Rather than something for advanced-level traders, I think it is the first book for anyone interested in investing or trading. It will open your eyes like no other, and inject a dose of realism and humility about money and markets that otherwise might cost a lot more than this book's price.

## Frequently Bought Together

- The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence
- The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility" (Incerto)
- Thinking, Fast and Slow

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