Semiotics of Financial Marketplace

Abstract

While finance has been concerned by expanding new information technology and mass media’s interest, it has made stunning progress in the last decades, both in practice and in theory. Financial reality is become more and more complex and new theoretical approaches have emerged to explain this evolution. Inspired by post-structuralism, this paper proposes a semiotic perspective of financial marketplace to better grasp the reciprocal link between financial interactions and quotations. We show then that each marketplace can be considered as a specific way of organizing financial reality with its own “rules” (as a language with its own “grammar”). Finally, we will see that this semiotic approach provides an interpretative framework to all empirical studies about the reciprocal link between volumes and prices. JEL Classification: A12, B41, G10.

Causal Entropic Forces, Narratives and Self-organisation of Capital Markets

“…The importance of intersubjectivity in finance has been put forward by several authors, like Knorr Cetina and Bruegger (2002) to study social interactions between investors, or Beckert (2020) to explain the formation of economic value. Going further, Schinckus (2010) wrote that each marketplace can be seen as a language with its own ‘grammar’. That idea naturally leads to the concept of narratives , which can be defined as intersubjective stories affecting individual and collective economic behaviour (Shiller, 2019).…”

The logic of semiotics applied to mathematical and social interaction in operational research consulting practice: Towards a foundational view

“…The semiology of Peirce provides a logic of signs that sits beside classical logic and underlies the sociology of James, Dewey, Mead and other pragmatists and thus has an immediate resonance with the subjects addressed in the first two foundational papers. There is a further motivation provided by the linkage between semiology and the economic perspective (see for instance, Jessop, 2004; Kim, 1993; Schinkus, 2010). A study of semiotics thus holds out the prospect of integrating the three previous perspectives of classic (argumentative) logic, pragmatic logic and economic logic.…”

Against Financial Derivatives: Towards an Ethics of Representation

“…Philosophers like Martin, along with economists like Schinckus, have undertaken linguistically based analyses of the economic market. Since, however, these studies usually admit to having been influenced by linguistic determinism—‘inspired by post-structuralism’ (Schinckus, 2010) in Schinckus’s case and by J. L. Austin in Martin’s—they tend to take an ethically neutral view of representation’s performative power. McIntosh seems correct to note that traditional economic theory has yet to come to grips with the self-referentiality of financial derivative instruments: In this hyperreal capital market, there are no underlyings from which the market price of financial instruments, such as derivatives, are derived.…”