Innovation has been on my mind a lot lately. Unfortunately, not the kind that results in iPhones and the like.
We normally think of innovation as a good thing. But not all innovations are good ones. As counterexamples, let's consider recent political innovations in the US that allow indefinite detention without trial of anyone accused of terror-related activities; or the use of Predator drones to target American citizens.
My interest has been innovation in the Earth system--particularly in the behaviour of the climate system over the past two million years. The problem with recognizing innovation is that we tend to interpret any activities in light of what we already know--consequently it is difficult to discover anything new. Our first tendency would be to explain our new observations as a special case of what we already know. We resist the idea that something new is occurring.
The Earth system is driven by a few global parameters which interact with myriads of local agents; yet contrary to expectations instead of dissolving into noise, highly ordered global-scale structure arises. We may call such structures emergent properties, and the means by which they arise is termed emergence.
The problem of how these global structures arise from multitudes of interacting local agents is, shall we say, a non-trivial problem. They are in no way predictable from our knowledge of the local interactions; nevertheless we agree that emergence is in accordance with physical laws.
In earth systems, such emergent properties include plate tectonics, glaciations, superplume events, and some mass extinction events.
The emergent properties of a system may change. These changes may or may not be related to specific change(s) on the local level. For the purpose of this essay, I am referring to such changes as innovation.
Possible examples of innovation in Earth systems include the (somewhat controversial) proposed change in mode of tectonics in Archaean time; (very controversial) Neoproterozoic glaciation (i.e., "snowball Earth"); and magnetic pole reversals.
I have been considering change in operation of the climate system during the Mid-Pleistocene (from about 1 million years ago to about 500 thousand years ago).
I present the following probability density plots of the 2-d phase space reconstructions of the ice volume proxy, produced using the time delay method with a delay of 6 thousand years. Each of the figures below is calculated from 150 thousand years of data.
Starting from the Early Pleistocene . . .
Limit cycles (green dashed ellipses) are common in the Early Pleistocene, less so later.
Areas of Lyapunov stability, labelled A1 and A2, represent relatively ice-free conditions. Current global ice volume is comparable to A2, and A1 represents even less ice than at present. Limit cycles in the Early Pleistocene (representing slow, steady growth and decay of ice sheets) start from either the A1 or A2 condition.
The Late Pleistocene is characterized by discrete areas of high probability, suggesting rapid transitions between longer periods of stability. A2 represents an interglacial condition, and A3 to A6 represent separate metastable ice configurations of greater volume respectively. A6 represents a glacial maximum condition, as we experienced about 18,000 years ago.
Climate dynamics as inferred from global ice volume seems to have changed during the Pleistocene epoch. Was it innovation?
Opinions about what happened during the Mid-Pleistocene include changes in atmospheric CO2 leading to greater glaciations, cumulative cooling in the deep ocean changing the nature of the glacial-interglacial transition, erosive uncovering of crystalline bedrock leading to greater thickness of ice sheets, and spontaneous (chaotic) change. There is general agreement that there is no obvious external forcing or any fundamental change in the low-level dynamics leading to the change in climate behaviour, so it is at least possible to argue that the climate system began to act in an "innovative" fashion (provided we state that we do not view this innovation as having been directed in any way).
Let's look at another system instead--one represented by the share price of Century Casinos.
The chart of the daily closing price looks a little like my portfolio--up to a high in April, and all downhill from there.
The two-dimensional reconstructed phase space doesn't look much different from those of other stocks I've looked at in the past.
Actually, this has been smoothed a little, using a 3-point moving average.
There appears to be nothing interesting in the share price activity over the past year--unless we look at daily high prices instead of closing prices.
And here we see something unexpected--a singular spike in share price on June 21, where the share price bounced between about $3 and $8 several times over the day, on first a one-minute timescale, and around mid-day at a one-second timescale.
To investigate dynamics on this timescale, we have to construct our time-delay phase space with a small lag.
In two seconds of trading we have numerous fluctuations between $3 and $7. Lots of money to be made here! (or there would have been had the exchanges not cancelled all the trades).
A few minutes later we get this over one second.
We normally think of innovation as a good thing. But not all innovations are good ones. As counterexamples, let's consider recent political innovations in the US that allow indefinite detention without trial of anyone accused of terror-related activities; or the use of Predator drones to target American citizens.
My interest has been innovation in the Earth system--particularly in the behaviour of the climate system over the past two million years. The problem with recognizing innovation is that we tend to interpret any activities in light of what we already know--consequently it is difficult to discover anything new. Our first tendency would be to explain our new observations as a special case of what we already know. We resist the idea that something new is occurring.
The Earth system is driven by a few global parameters which interact with myriads of local agents; yet contrary to expectations instead of dissolving into noise, highly ordered global-scale structure arises. We may call such structures emergent properties, and the means by which they arise is termed emergence.
The problem of how these global structures arise from multitudes of interacting local agents is, shall we say, a non-trivial problem. They are in no way predictable from our knowledge of the local interactions; nevertheless we agree that emergence is in accordance with physical laws.
In earth systems, such emergent properties include plate tectonics, glaciations, superplume events, and some mass extinction events.
The emergent properties of a system may change. These changes may or may not be related to specific change(s) on the local level. For the purpose of this essay, I am referring to such changes as innovation.
Possible examples of innovation in Earth systems include the (somewhat controversial) proposed change in mode of tectonics in Archaean time; (very controversial) Neoproterozoic glaciation (i.e., "snowball Earth"); and magnetic pole reversals.
I have been considering change in operation of the climate system during the Mid-Pleistocene (from about 1 million years ago to about 500 thousand years ago).
I present the following probability density plots of the 2-d phase space reconstructions of the ice volume proxy, produced using the time delay method with a delay of 6 thousand years. Each of the figures below is calculated from 150 thousand years of data.
Starting from the Early Pleistocene . . .
Limit cycles (green dashed ellipses) are common in the Early Pleistocene, less so later.
Areas of Lyapunov stability, labelled A1 and A2, represent relatively ice-free conditions. Current global ice volume is comparable to A2, and A1 represents even less ice than at present. Limit cycles in the Early Pleistocene (representing slow, steady growth and decay of ice sheets) start from either the A1 or A2 condition.
The Late Pleistocene is characterized by discrete areas of high probability, suggesting rapid transitions between longer periods of stability. A2 represents an interglacial condition, and A3 to A6 represent separate metastable ice configurations of greater volume respectively. A6 represents a glacial maximum condition, as we experienced about 18,000 years ago.
Climate dynamics as inferred from global ice volume seems to have changed during the Pleistocene epoch. Was it innovation?
Opinions about what happened during the Mid-Pleistocene include changes in atmospheric CO2 leading to greater glaciations, cumulative cooling in the deep ocean changing the nature of the glacial-interglacial transition, erosive uncovering of crystalline bedrock leading to greater thickness of ice sheets, and spontaneous (chaotic) change. There is general agreement that there is no obvious external forcing or any fundamental change in the low-level dynamics leading to the change in climate behaviour, so it is at least possible to argue that the climate system began to act in an "innovative" fashion (provided we state that we do not view this innovation as having been directed in any way).
Let's look at another system instead--one represented by the share price of Century Casinos.
The chart of the daily closing price looks a little like my portfolio--up to a high in April, and all downhill from there.
The two-dimensional reconstructed phase space doesn't look much different from those of other stocks I've looked at in the past.
Actually, this has been smoothed a little, using a 3-point moving average.
There appears to be nothing interesting in the share price activity over the past year--unless we look at daily high prices instead of closing prices.
And here we see something unexpected--a singular spike in share price on June 21, where the share price bounced between about $3 and $8 several times over the day, on first a one-minute timescale, and around mid-day at a one-second timescale.
To investigate dynamics on this timescale, we have to construct our time-delay phase space with a small lag.
In two seconds of trading we have numerous fluctuations between $3 and $7. Lots of money to be made here! (or there would have been had the exchanges not cancelled all the trades).
A few minutes later we get this over one second.
This is orders of magnitude different from what we see in the annual behaviour of the stock, and even considerably different from the bowl of spaghetti above. This figure actually represents a phase space portrait of a random walk. Yes, you can trade randomly if you are quick enough.
So what is the difference between the trading in CNTY on June 21 and every other day this year? Another innovation--high-frequency trading, but in a form which creates the illusion of liquidity by placing lots of orders and then cancelling them as they begin to be filled. The resulting moves in a stock can be dramatic.
Suppose an institutional investor needs to buy a million shares of CNTY (perhaps part of some proprietary arbitrage position). The buyer looks at the depth chart and sees that there are a million shares being offered at $3, so the buyer attempts to fill the order--only to discover that he gets perhaps a thousand shares, the rest of the offer is cancelled, and there are now a million shares offered at $3.05. The tug-of-war may continue, but if the buyer is motivated, the share price may rise considerably in a remarkably short period of time.
Remember that the original intent of having a bid and ask price is that the various offerings were intended to be sold. The idea that these offerings would be used only as bait and not represent real liquidity is indeed innovative, but unhelpful.
Unlike the change in climate dynamics in the mid-Pleistocene, the change in dynamics in share price of CNTY is symptomatic of a fundamental change in the operation of the market, and this change is detrimental to the majority of its participants.
No comments:
Post a Comment