Global Financial Market Cycles

Nature has been proved to be patterned in a cyclical manner. Even the ancient civilizations discovered certain regularities in the life cycle of the human being. Hence, it is no surprise that there are regularities and cycles in business and financial markets. Although events such as the Dutch "Tulipmania", the South Sea and Mississippi bubble of 1719/20, the stock market crashes of 1929, 1987, 2001 or the Japanese boom and bust of the late 1980s just to name a few, had different reasons and causes, they also had common grounds. The main object of this book is to qualitatively describe how the global financial markets are linked together and what led to such extreme events. Therefore, this book focuses on the comparison of two market cycles. The goal is to show similarities and differences and to explain them fundamentally with particular regard to financial crashes and crises that occurred. The cycles of the 1990s and 2000s will be analyzed with respect to the general economic situation, interest rate environment, stock market as well as the movements in the currency and commodities markets.