The Semiotic Infrastructure of Financial Markets

Sommaire

Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... 5
General introduction................................................................................................................... 7
I. Towards a sociology of financial markets ................................................................................. 10
1. A theory of financial decision-making ...................................................................................11
2. A theory of financial markets ................................................................................................ 29
3. An inquiry into the semiotic infrastructure of financial markets........................................... 69
II. Methodological journey......................................................................................................... 77
1. In search of "financiers" ........................................................................................................ 79
2. Decoding valuation pratices .................................................................................................. 89
III. A sociology of valuation practices ...................................................................................... 105
1. The new rules of the game................................................................................................... 106
2. The players and their tools .................................................................................................. 109
3. The other masters of the game..............................................................................................116
Part I. Reconfiguration of the financial "milieu" ................................................................... 118
Chapter I: The new frontiers of the financial community ................................................................119
1. The reform of Belgian financial markets: an “imperative necessity”?................................ 121
2. Do modern stock exchanges emerge from competition? Evidence from the “Belgian Big Bang”........................................................................................................................................... 147
3. The fall of European stock exchanges as trading venues .................................................... 168
Chapter II: New market leaders.................................................................................................... 172
1. Investment funds in Belgium............................................................................................... 174
Perspectives ............................................................................................................................. 254
The new “milieu” of financial valuation ......................................................................................... 257
Part II. Financial valuation supports ...................................................................................... 259
Chapter III: The Bloomberg Terminal ............................................................................................. 261
1. Bloomberg and the GameStop saga: The fear of stock market democracy ......................... 262
2. The market according to Bloomberg: a wrong frame? ........................................................ 285
Chapter IV: Stock market indices in the making ............................................................................. 295
1. The engineering of stock market indices: winners and losers ............................................. 296
Chapter V: Stock market indices in the trading room...................................................................... 316
1. The Semiosis of Stock Market Indices: Taking Charles Sanders Peirce to a Trading Room 317
Chapter VI: The semiotic turn of central banks............................................................................... 335
1. Convincing the market. Belgian central bankers at the test of globalization ...................... 336
Chapter VII: The mystery of ambiguous central bank announcements........................................... 360
1. How central banks cope with price instabilities: Ambiguous inflation targets as
organizational compromise ......................................................................................................... 361
Chapter VIII: The financial price of oil ........................................................................................... 381
1. Sociology of the Price of Crude Oil .................................................................................... 383
General conclusion ................................................................................................................. 394
The sociological foundations of financial conventions ................................................................... 394
From financial conventions to market regulation............................................................................ 399
Appendix ................................................................................................................................ 415
I. Comics trip: “Le voyage du capital” ....................................................................................... 415
II. Methodological note on Belgian investment funds ............................................................. 427
References .............................................................................................................................. 429
Articles and communications making up this thesis ....................................................................... 429
References quoted in this thesis ................................................................................................... 430