Why Stock Market Crashes?


 By Sornette.

 The author was the UCLA faculty. About one and half years ago, I read news about his successful estimate on stock market crashes; Hooked up by this news, I tried to contact him and studied his papers over 2006 winter break. Last fall quarter, I borrowed and read a book, "The Panic of 1907" ( my brief discussion on this book is available in Korean); this book was referred by "The Panic of 1907". Being pleasant to see familiar name again, I rushed to UCLA library website to check it out. And I finished this book within 9 days, which is amazingly pace since English is my first language. (According to my own measurement, I have read one page per three minutes, about half speed of reading Korean material.)

 When I borrowed it from Young Research Library and read this in John Wooded Center, some people asked me, "why stock market crashed?". As seen, the origin of stock market crashes is one of the most fascinating issue, which traps laypersons. Here, the author pretends to write this book for layperson; but it can be quite puzzling for those who are not major in math or hard science since it covers condensed matter physics, especially scale invariance.

 Because I studied more than 10 Sornette's papers, I know the outline and some mathematical structure. Thus, I could enjoy my reading and think about stories in English: not in Math. And a number of references provide me with papers that I can study for more comprehension; which, actually, I have sought in order to fill up gaps between his fabulous explanation about logarithmic periodicity and traditional Ising model since I read through Sornette's papers.