Crashes : symptoms, diagnoses and remedies

Abstract

A brief historical perspective is first given concerning financial crashes, - from the 17th till the 20th century. In modern times, it seems that log periodic oscillations are found before crashes in several financial indices. The same is found in sand pile avalanches on Sierpinski gaskets. A discussion pertains to the after shock period with illustrations from the DAX index. The factual financial observations and the laboratory ones allow us some conjecture on symptoms and remedies for discussing financial crashes along econophysics lines.