-Jane Foley is research director at Forex.com. The opinions expressed are her own.-

The discrediting of the efficient markets theory in the aftermath of the financial crisis appears to have been accompanied with growing support for the view that rather than efficient in nature, financial markets are predisposed towards the formation of bubbles.

A bubble can simply be defined as an occurrence that begins when the price of an asset has been driven significantly above it "fair" value. According to the efficient markets theory this would not happen.

If bubbles are a natural outcome of financial market activity it is relevant to ask whether the very loose fiscal and monetary policies of many central banks and governments are presently sowing the seeds of the next bubble.

Even though the real economies of the U.S., UK, Eurozone and Japan continue to be defined by expectations of rising unemployment and falling real wages, access to cheap money has already helped restore the profitability of many investment banks.

In turn, this has fed risk appetite which is evident in the rally in stocks since the spring, increased demand for "risky" currencies and a recovery in commodities prices. Brent oil has rallied by 128 percent from its 2009 low. The ability of oil to rally despite the existence of oil supplies well above the seasonal average suggests there is already speculative element in this market which could be in danger of driving prices above their fair value.

This week’s meetings of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank have focussed attention not so much on rates, but on the extraordinary policy decisions taken by these central banks in the wake of the financial crisis and whether conditions are ripening in favour of a gradual withdrawal of some of these policies.

The Fed last week ended its $300 billion treasury bond purchasing plan, though it will carry on buying mortgage backed securities. The Bank of Japan last week announced that it will stop buying corporate bonds at year end. The Reserve Bank of India also removed emergency support measures last week.

This week there is speculation that the ECB could announce that it will hold no more 12-month cash tenders next year. By contrast the Bank of England is expected to increase quantitative easing at the November 5, Monetary Policy Committee meeting. Supporters of quantitative easing continue to stress that the lack of clear inflation pressures suggests there is room for these plans to be extended.

However, the lack of response in either money supply or inflation indices could equally be illustrating that these plans are not having a significant impact on the real economy and are therefore no longer appropriate. The paring back of these plans are likely to have an impact on the ability of some banks to turn an easy profit and thus should rein in risk appetite and limit speculative and "bubble" forming activity.

Unfortunately, a bubble can only be truly confirmed after it has burst; a characteristic with clear destabilising consequences. If bubbles are natural phenomena within financial markets, the need for tighter regulation and ongoing reviews of processes that oversee the financial system are absolutely necessary.

This conclusion, while in complete contrast to the implications of the efficient markets theory, ties in very well with the political desire to reform the banking regulatory framework in order to protect the tax payer from future hefty bank bail-out costs. The banking landscape, while already vastly different from just two years ago could continue its transformation for years.

researchEMEA@forrex.com

If you had bought emerging market stocks exactly at the top of the bubble and sold them exactly at the bottom of the crash, you would have suffered a lot of pain (and probably shouldn’t be in the investment business in the first place).  The loss would have been 67 percent of your principal.

Most people won’t have lost that much, of course, depending on when they bought and sold. But even if an investor did buy exactly at the top, as long as they held on their losses by now would have been pared back considerably. 

The graphic above, created by Scott Barber, shows how much of the crash has been clawed back. The full column represents the maximum loss; the green shows the amount recovered. In points terms, 50 percent of the emerging markets crash losses have been recouped.

 Other markets have not fared as well. How did you do? 

Ministers and bankers meeting at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s annual gathering in London tomorrow and Saturday have a sorry mess to scrutinise.

By the bank’s own (revised) forecasts, its region of central and eastern Europe will contract by over 5 percent this year. Many countries in eastern Europe took too much advantage of western banks’ lending spree, and businesses and households are struggling to pay back foreign currency loans.

Falling commodity prices have hit countries like Russia and Kazakhstan, and a burst consumer credit bubble is risking double-digit contraction in the Baltic states and Ukraine.

The bank’s 61 country members together with the European Union and its development bank the European Investment Bank will be discussing how to cope with the crisis and manage any recovery.

They will be looking at whether to continue giving help to several EU member countries which were due to stop receiving EBRD funds next year. Some countries may also be asking for an increase in the EBRD’s capital from its current 20 billion euros, to cope with the crisis.

The EBRD operates in 30 countries, mainly in the former communist bloc, and most recently Turkey. Those countries may be wondering if the bank could have done more to help them through the crisis, and seek more help now.

The world has experienced many crises in the past.

In 1636, during the Dutch Tulip Bulb Bubble, the quest for a perfect black bulb had inflated the price of a black bulb by many hundreds. In a different crisis in 1866, a London wholesale bank Overend, Gurney & Co collapsed with a massive debt, after expanding its investment portfolio beyond its means.

What is common in these events and the present crisis is that investors borrowed and levered themselves, and the eventual bubble burst prompted massive deleveraging and contagion, according to Julian Chillingworth, chief investment officer at London-based asset management firm Rathbones (established in 1742 – 22 years after the South Sea Bubble).

“It’s greed, it’s fear and it’s leverage,” Chillingworth told a group of journalists at a breakfast briefing. He says all the risky and highly leveraged assets were dressed up with “pseudo finance” and the likelihood of contagion and volatility was characterised as a “black swan” event – originally a metaphor for something that could not exist.

But black swans do exist. Just as people in the 17th century reached Australia and found black swans, investors have learned the hard lesson this time.

Investors learned the wrong lesson from the dotcom bubble, and ended up blowing another. 

That’s the view put forward at the CFA Institute’s conference in Amsterdam by Ben Inker, head of asset allocation at GMO. He believes investors became so enamoured of diversification – which seemed to work like a charm for the large US university endowment schemes – that they ran headlong into risk asset classes and blew a giant risk bubble. 

Inker argues that because investors rushed into risk asset classes indiscriminately, they ended up paying for the privilege of taking risk.

“What you cannot do is say: ‘Because I’m diversified, I can take more risk.’ But after the internet bubble, diversification became the mantra,” he said. “Investors looked uncritically at the idea of having a diversified portfolio. That made the risk/return curve negatively sloping.” In effect, investors were paying more to take on risk. 

A small crumb of comfort for those diversified investors surveying the remnants of their portfolios, is that markets have fallen so far you are now once again being paid to take on risk. But is there anything they could have done to avoid this unpleasant sequence of events in the first place? 

Inker suggested they should have gone short risk. Unfortunately, as he conceded, it is not possible for the whole market to do this. 

Lesson learned?

Financial markets might be in distress and stocks are falling through the floor, but according to James Montier, global strategist at Societe Generale, we are not in the final stage of bubble burst yet. For one thing, the Financial Times is still too big.

At a fund managers conference in London today, Montier — a renowned bear — noted a thesis by economists Hyman Minsky and Charles Kindleberger that bubbles go through five stages — displacement, credit creation, euphoria, critical stage/financial distress and revulsion.

Currently, he says, financial markets are going through the critical/distress stage but we are not in revulsion yet.

“In revulsion, the Financial Times will be three pages long and we will all be ashamed to be working in finance. Stocks will be unambiguously cheap,” he told a group of financial professionals.