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Harta from behavioural finance, market psychology, and narrative economics perspective.
1. Markets Are Not Fully Rational and Not Fully Efficient
Traditional finance assumes:
a. Investors are rational
b. Markets are efficient (prices reflect all information)
But decades of evidence show the opposite:
a. Investors exhibit biases
b. Prices often deviate from fundamental value
c. Overreaction, underreaction, bubbles, and crashes occur regularly
This supports the idea that markets are not purely logical.
2. Markets Are Psychology-Driven
Behavioral finance identifies many psychological forces that move prices:
Common investor biases
a. Fear & Greed : emotional trading drives excess volatility
b. Herding : investors follow crowds rather than information
c. Overconfidence : investors overestimate their knowledge
d. Loss aversion : fear of loss leads to irrational selling
e. Confirmation bias : investors seek information that fits their narrative
Because of these biases, price movements often diverge from fundamentals.
3. “Animal Spirits” (Keynes)
John Maynard Keynes coined this term to describe:
a. waves of collective optimism
b. waves of panic and pessimism
These emotional forces often overpower data.
4. Narrative Economics (Robert Shiller – Nobel Laureate)
Shiller’s core idea:
Popular stories, memes, and narratives spread socially and move markets more than fundamentals.
Examples:
“AI will change everything” : AI stocks surge
“Recession is coming” : markets sell off, even without evidence
“Glove stocks to the moon” : 2020 glove mania
“Crypto revolution” → Bitcoin booms and busts
Narratives act like viruses, they spread and move prices.
5. Analysts, Buyers, Sellers Often Create or Amplify Narratives
This is real and well documented.
Analysts, funds, and even retail influencers sometimes:
a. emphasise certain data
b. downplay negative info
c. craft compelling stories to justify a stock move
Not always malicious, often subconscious.
But narratives do influence:
a. market sentiment
b. valuation multiples
c. trading volume
d. short-term price direction
e. Markets react to stories just as much as numbers.
Markets are not purely rational, not perfectly efficient, and heavily driven by psychology, narratives, and collective emotion.
In summary, fundamentals matter in the long run,but in the short-to-medium term, stories, sentiment, and “animal spirits” dominate like what we see in the chat forum now. Cheers happy investing.