A remarkable similarity in the behaviour of the US S&P500 index from 1996 to August 2002 and of the Japanese Nikkei index from 1985 to 1992 (11 year shift) is presented, with particular emphasis on the structure of the bearish phases. Extending a previous analysis of Johansen and Sornette on the...

We introduce a novel non-parametric methodology to test for the dynamical time evolution of the lag-lead structure between two arbitrary time series. The method consists of constructing a distance matrix based on the matching of all sample data pairs between the two time series. Then, the...

We propose a new set of stylized facts quantifying the structure of financial markets. The key idea is to study the combined structure of both investment strategies and prices in order to open a qualitatively new level of understanding of financial and economic markets. We study the detailed...

We present the symmetric thermal optimal path (TOPS) method to determine the time-dependent lead-lag relationship between two stochastic time series. This novel version of the previously introduced TOP method alleviates some inconsistencies by imposing that the lead-lag relationship should be...

The Johansen–Ledoit–Sornette (JLS) model of rational expectation bubbles with finite-time singular crash hazard rates has been developed to describe the dynamics of financial bubbles and crashes. It has been applied successfully to a large variety of financial bubbles in many different...

We show that the Chinese stock markets are quite different and decoupled from Western markets (which include Tokyo). We document a well-developed log-periodic power-law antibubble in China's stock market, which started in August 2001. We argue that the current stock market antibubble is...

Following a long tradition of physicists who have noticed that the Ising model provides a general background to build realistic models of social interactions, we study a model of financial price dynamics resulting from the collective aggregate decisions of agents. This model incorporates...

Fractals and multifractals and their associated scaling laws provide a quantification of the complexity of a variety of scale invariant complex systems. Here, we focus on lattice multifractals which exhibit complex exponents associated with observable log-periodicity. We perform detailed...

We find that the seed of the 2002/03 crisis of the Dutch supermarket giant AHOLD was planted in 1996. We have adapted Weidlich's theory of opinion formation to describe the formation of buy or sell decisions among investors, based on a competition between the mechanisms of herding and of...