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• Duration: 23'
• in 3 movements: the stock market phenomenon/ the stock market/ finale
• Composed in 2011
• Commissioned by CIC- Crédit Industriel et Commercial- Singapore Branch
• First performance: 05.10.11 Seah Huan Yuh, Chew Lu-min, Yeo Jan Wea and Tang I-Shyan Singapore Conference Hall (Singapore)
• ISMN 979-0-9016512-0-3
• Parts: ISMN: 979-09016512-6-5, please email <rcasteels@robertcasteels.com>
• Downloadable scores for inspection:
  11G_F-new_full_score.pdf

Greed&Fear consists of three movements entitled the Stock Market Phenomenon, the Trading Floor and All Desire. The electro-acoustic sounds were created by Seah Huan Yuh, who was also the first violin for the first performance. 

The first movement (the Stock Market Phenomenon) is a musical expression of the ritualised language used in the world of finance. The French philosopher René Girard described the financial markets as "a quintessential mimetic phenomenon”. The spoken quotes in the first movement relate to mimetism as the central explanation of the stock market phenomenon. The successive quotes have been extracted from writings by physicists (the physics of financial markets and the rationality of mimetism or herd behaviour) and economist Andre Orléan (a taxonomy of mimetism in financial markets) or come from Wikipedia (the definition of the Minsky moment, the very moment of a market collapse which correlates to a mimetic crisis) and internet financial blogs. Investors imitate other investors whom they regard as better informed. While this mimetism remains rational when few people imitate each other and validate their investment choice a posteriori, it becomes irrational and catastrophic when a large group of people imitate in panic. There is quadruple shift simultaneously at work: a shift between the world of finance that is utterly disjointed from the world of childhood, a shift between form and content as the speaker can pronounce a text but cannot understand that text, a shift between the literality of the straight close-up of the speaker and her voice that was deliberately filtered and distorted, and a shift between the non-emotion of the speaker and the emotionality of market speculators.

The feeling of greed is musically expressed by a theme consisting of a long held note followed by three short notes. This greed theme occurs 23 times.

The second movement (the Trading Floor) is a musical expression of the fluctuating values of stocks in the stock market, a world of high energy, hopes, achievements and bursting financial bubbles. The 23 strokes of a bell sound is reminiscent of the NYSE bell which heralds the start of a trading day. The notes played by the 4 string players go up and down, each curve increasing in compass, dynamic and interval. This mirrors the euphoria (or the maximum degree of greed at the end of 2006 and begin of 2007) against panic (or the maximum of fear in September 2008). After the stocks crash to market bottom comes a moment of suspension with the surreal droning of the temple bowl. The temple bowl refers to the temple of finances with their rites, language, high priests and their followers. The high priests are the economists and central bankers, their followers the bankers and brokers. A new ringing of the market bell marks the opening of another trading day. Life goes on. We are back to square one as the memory of the homo speculator’s pain of losses and regret of mistakes is as short as his last bad dream. The sound transformation in real time of previous compositional material expresses musically the speculator’s readiness to repeat the same mistakes in the stock market context. 

The third movement (All Desire) is a short ABA + coda expressing high energy and optimism. The melodic and harmonic material is derived from the acronym CIC(S) of the commissioning party: pitch c for letter C, pitch e or pitch mi from letter m(I), pitch c for letter C and pitch b or pitch si from letter (S)i. Towards the end of the third movement, the players murmur two quotes from French philosopher René Girard that refer to this mimetism that seem to drive human behaviour in the Bull as well as Bear stock market: “Man desires always according to the desire of the Other” and “All Desire is Desire to Be”. After the initial substratum of chaos from which micro bubbles develop and after macro bubbles fly out of control and burst, this musical reflection ends with the last ringing of the temple bowl in a sense of serenity, the calm stemming from knowledge and wisdom. 

Greed&Fear is commissioned by Crédit Industriel et Commercial - Singapore Branch. The first performance by Seah Huan Yuh, Chew Lu-Min, Yeo Jan Wea and Tang I Shyan took place in the Singapore Conference Hall on 5-10-2011. The string players were reading their parts from an iPad.

for string quartet, temple bell, Wall Street market bell, video & electro-acoustic music

(1)

 “Evidently, processes in finance market are on one hand chaotic and unpredictable, like chaotic collisions of atoms in classical gases. On the other hand, the events in financial markets are somehow motivated. The motivation in general brings order and coherence into a system.”(1)

 “Evidently, processes in finance market are on one hand chaotic and unpredictable, like chaotic collisions of atoms in classical gases. On the other hand, the events in financial markets are somehow motivated. The motivation in general brings order and coherence into a system.”

 “On the theoretical side, several studies have shown that, in a market with noise traders, herd behavior is not necessarily “irrational” in the sense that it may be compatible with optimizing the behavior of the agents.”

(2)

Le « mimétisme informationnel » est cette imitation particulière qui consiste pour un individu à en copier un autre parce qu’il lui prête une meilleure connaissance de la situation.

Il est rationnel d’imiter tant que le marché est efficient, mais en se généralisant, l’imitation détruit l’efficience et cesse, par là même, d’être rationnelle.

Le fait que l’intensité mimétique ait dépassé la valeur critique n’a rien d’apparent.

La transition se fait à l’insu des investisseurs.

L’action de chaque agent est rationnelle – ou l’aurait été si les autres ne s’étaient pas comportés de la même manière.

Dans le mimétisme autoréférentiel, le mot d’ordre n’est plus de copier ceux qui ont une expertise solide, mais de copier l’opinion majoritaire. La rationalité du mimétisme découle directement de cette conception qui donne pour unique règle à l’investisseur de mimer le marché.

C’est le mimétisme de la prophétie autoréalisatrice.

Quand le reste du monde est fou, dans une certaine mesure nous devons l’imiter.

Keynes soulignait déjà la similitude existant entre la logique financière et les parties de « chaises musicales, où le gagnant est celui qui se procure une chaise lorsque la musique s’arrête »

Le « mimétisme normatif » est ce mimétisme particulier qui a pour finalité l’approbation du groupe.

Une des caractéristiques de l'influence normative est qu'elle se présente masquée aux yeux de l'observateur et des acteurs financiers.

Pour justifier les cours délirants qui sont observés, on invoque un changement radical de paradigme, a « new era paradigm », qui viendrait rendre obsolètes les contraintes passées.

(3)

A Minsky moment us when over-indebted investors are forced to sell good assets to pay back their loans, causing sharp declines in financial markets and jumps in demand for cash.

(4)

Now, at this point of maximum dislocation and mental discomfort, all those inconvenient developments which should have long since called the movement into question are suddenly rediscovered and crystallize instantly into the foundational themes of a countertrend of equal and opposite conviction.

(1)

HERD BEHAVIOR AND AGGREGATE FLUCTUATIONS IN FINANCIAL MARKETS

RAMA CONT

Centre de Mathematiques Appliquees, ` Ecole Polytechnique

JEAN-PHILIPE BOUCHAUD

SPEC, Centre d’ Etudes de Saclay

(2)

Comprendre les foules spéculatives :

Mimétismes informationnel, autoréférentiel et normatif

André Orléan

(3)

Wikipedia : Minsky Moment

(4)

Text fund in the blog ZeroHedge