“Across the late 18th and 19th centuries, the public embraced the magic of the panorama – a clamor which owed a lot to the popularity of hot air ballooning.”
“Popular art, fashion and more are a reflection of the dominant public mood. Because the stock market changes in direction with these expressions of mood, it is probably another coincident register of the dominant public mood and changes in it.”
“Financial market prices, prices of stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, and other investment assets, have shown striking changes in volatility through time. For each of these kinds of assets there are years when prices show enormous unpredictable movements from day to day or month to month, and there are years of stable, uneventful markets. Why does volatility change from year to year, and what (if anything) should be done about it by government regulators and self-regulatory organizations?”
