The “New” View of Finance

Abstract

In this chapter we discuss the “new” view challenges to the traditionalist finance thought paradigm. Thankfully, there have been a variety of alternatives put forward to supercede the stringent set of assumptions imposed under the “old” view/traditionalist finance interpretation of the way markets operate. Even better, many of these “new” view challenges — as we label them — are starting to enter the mainstream of “received wisdom” in finance. Still, regrettably for us many of these “new” view challenges continue to regard information as a uniform intangible concept. There is no information spectrum, no texture as to how information is actually manufactured and disseminated, no extensive microfoundation structure of how the actual components of what investors come to regard as “information” actually bolt together. This is where our Evolutionary Finance perspective comes in — we aim to identify what actually constitutes a certain stream of financial information’s “DNA.”