Rethinking calculation: the popularization of financial trading outside the global centres of finance

The paper looks at the popularization of financial trading in Israel. It presents a qualitative analysis of the calculative models and techniques that are promoted by financial trading schools, service firms and books. Broadly, the popularization of trading in this field involves a focus on ‘technical analysis’ (TA) and relies upon a socio-psychological reading of financial charts. Incorporating explicitly non-economic ideas into traders’ calculative logic – including an emic notion of ‘performativity’ – popular TA constitutes an attempt to ‘reverse’ the making of markets: to calculatively trace price formations back to the minds, hearts and arrangement from which they had allegedly sprung as a means of foreseeing their future shape before it fully materializes. Tying the psyche and the market in a calculative loop, popular TA transcends existing social theories of financial calculation. The paper discusses this challenge and its implications for our understanding of the expansion of finance.