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The Music of the Market

Lately, I have been noticing that many economists, analysts and strategists have been having some sly fun by naming their research after songs.

My own contributions to the space have been the past two commentaries: Bad Moon Arising, and Been Down So Long (It looks like up to me).

But I also noticed that John Roque's past two comment's were titled BRIC House, and R-E-S-P-E-C-T. AndMorgan Stanley asked: Will the Real Slim Saving Rate Please Stand Up?

Most of these players came of age during the Golden Age of Rock-N-Roll (Disco era aside) in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I'm bettting that most of this crew (present company included) are in their 30s or 40s.

But the relationship between markets and music goes both ways -- not only do analysts name their market reports after songs, but some musicians are using the market as an inspiration  for their  music: Emerald Suspension's Playing the Market is Music based on stock-market activity.

Check out the names of their songs:

1. Fibonocci's Random Walk (part 1)
2. Long Bond
3. Irrational Exuberance / Great Depression
4. Bulls and Bears of the World
5. Industrial Century
6. Fibonacci's Random Walk (part 2)
7. The Misery Index
8. National Debt
9. Stock Options
10. Fibonacci's Random Walk (part 3)
11. IPO

Here's the "liner notes" from their website:

The stock market has long driven investors into a mild form of schizophrenia, in which they're obsessed with uncovering the mystical patterns that supposedly underpin the chaos. UI architects develop massive displays to visualize market activity, in hopes of spying hidden rulesets; fresh-outta-college 20somethings hunch over 12-foot-square Excel spreadsheets, attempting to predict lucrative spread inflection-points.

Now a group of artists have made music out of it. Emerald Suspension is a musical unit that -- as it proclaims on its web site -- records music "based on patterns created by the stock market, economic indicators, algorithms, and other data sources." Their album Playing the Market includes songs derived from the Consumer Confidence Index, the efficient market hypothesis, and measures of the national debt.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006 | 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments

Barry-

All that is fine and dandy. I appreciate the fact that you are well-rounded, gentile, yadda, yadda. But it has been nearly 24 hours since you gave us that call on the Naz. WHERE IS TODAY'S CALL DAMMIT? :)

Posted by: Mark | Mar 22, 2006 12:35:41 PM