Daily Speculations

Ecology and Markets: Pressure Vents

Does the ecology of hydrothermal vents have predictive parallels in the market? The Natural History Museum in New York City includes many exhibits about the strange communities of marine life around hydrothermal vents, among the most spectacular scientific discoveries of the past century. First discovered in 1977 in the Galapagos Rift, vents are cracks in the ocean floor that emit jets of water superheated by the earth's magma and laden with dissolved minerals and metals. Several dozen have been found, mostly in ocean ridges.

The extreme temperatures, pressure, acidity and chemicals of a vent environment are highly toxic to most living things. But certain animals thrive there. A new vent attracts chemosynthetic bacteria that feed on the sulfur compounds in the water. Limpets, clams and mussels come to feed on the bacteria. Crabs hunt and scavenge. Giant tube worms that can grow two meters a year absorb bacteria directly into their tissues.

The ability to produce energy from chemicals rather than light -- chemosynthesis vs. photosynthesis -- has interesting implications.

Are there any groups of companies that correspond to the vent community? Do their moves signal the beginning or the end of major market moves?

The museum also had a display suggesting that the density of organisms changes abruptly at the various levels of a forest. One wonders if the distribution of closing prices for a cross-section of individual stocks shows clustering at certain levels. Is the distribution in some way non-random, and could this mean that when a stock goes from one price to another that certain transitions have forecasting value? -- Vic (10/6/3)