"There is a rich vein of jokes about economists and their assumptions. Take the old one about the engineer, the physicist, and the economist. They fi… - Benoit Mandelbrot

Be that as it may, for our present purposes, a bottom line emerges: Stock prices are not independent. Today's action can, at least slightly, affect tomorrow's action. The standard model is, again, wrong.

When the weather changes and hurricanes hit, nobody believes that the laws of physics have changed. Similarly, I don't believe that when the stock market goes into terrible gyrations its rules have changed. It's the same stock market with the same mechanisms and the same people.

The most important thing I have done is to combine something esoteric with a practical issue that affects many people. In this spirit, the stock market is one of the most attractive things imaginable. Stock-market data is abundant so I can check everything. Financial markets are very influential and I want to be part of this field now that it is maturing.