Hachette India

The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets

Benoit Mandelbrot

This international bestseller, which foreshadowed a market crash, explains why it could happen again if we don't act now. Fractal geometry is the mathematics of roughness: how to reduce the outline of a jagged leaf or static in a computer connection to a few simple mathematical properties. With his fractal tools, Mandelbrot has got to the bottom of how financial markets really work. He finds they have a shifting sense of time and wild behaviour that makes them volatile, dangerous - and beautiful. In his models, the complex gyrations of the FTSE 100 and exchange rates can be reduced to straightforward formulae that yield a much more accurate description of the risks involved.

Benoit Mandelbrot

Benoit B. Mandelbrot is Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University and a Fellow Emeritus at IBM's Thomas J. Watson labouratory. He is the inventor of fractal geometry whose most famous example the Mandelbrot Set has been replicated on millions of posters T-shirts and record albums. He was a leading figure in James Gleick's Chaos and has received the Wolf Prize in Physics the Japan Prize in science and technology and awards from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences the IEEE and numerous universities in the U.S. and abroad. His books include Fractals: Form Chance and Dimension which was later expanded into the classic The Fractal Geometry of Nature which has sold more than 200000 copies. This is his first book for lay readers on finance a subject he has studied since the 1960s. He lives in Scarsdale New York. Richard L. Hudson was the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal's European edition for six years and a Journal reporter and editor for twenty-five years. He is a 1978 graduate of Harvard University and a 1991 Knight Fellow of MIT. He lives in Brussels Belgium.