“I’m not an economist, but I believe that stocks (and commodity prices in general) go up when people are optimistic about their future value and pessimistic about their future value. There is no real value of stocks or derivatives that is independent of investors’ opinions and expectations.“
This is from a book by Professor Seligman, President of the American Psychological Association (and in my opinion an extremely interesting thinker, albeit with a somewhat problematic moral profile). And, he goes on to say, the main cause of the crisis was that people were too pessimistic. They didn’t believe that even if they had uncovered junk-type paper, it would still go up. If they had believed better, there would have been no crisis.
What is that but esotericism?
Martin Seligman is right. There is no real value of securities independent of our opinions and feelings. But how can an economic system where the only thing that determines getting rich and getting poor is the audience’s feeling of the moment.