A Conversation With Didier Sornette

Didier Sornette is not your average stock market forecaster. As a professor of geophysics at UCLA, Sornette spends a lot of his time analyzing natural occurrences, such as earthquakes. The author of "Why Stock Markets Crash" believes there are similarities between "complex systems" such as the structure of the earth's crust and financial markets.

The following is an excerpt from a conversation last week in which the professor seeks to explain those commonalities and why he believes they're applicable in forecasting both earthquakes and the financial markets.

Q: What does geophysics have to do with financial markets?

A: At UCLA we're doing earthquake modeling, studying them as complex systems. We're studying and predicting the stock market from the same point view. There are universals in complex systems. ...