Market of Stocks during Crisis Looks Like a Flock of Birds

Abstract

A crisis in financial markets can be considered as a collective behaviour phenomenon. The collective behaviour is a complex behaviour which exists among a group of animals. The Vicsek model has been adapted to represent this complexity. A unique phase space has been introduced to represent all possible results of the model. The return of the transaction volumes versus the return of the closed price of each share has been used within the defined phase space. The findings show that the direction of the resultant velocity vectors of all share in this phase space act in the same direction when the financial crisis happens. By monitoring the market’s collective behaviour, it will be possible to gain more knowledge about the condition of the market days in crisis. This research aims to investigate the collective behaviour of stocks using the Vicsek model to study the condition of the market during the days in crisis.

Keywords

• collective behavior
• Vicsek model
• financial crisis