Seeking New Belief: Yijing Divination for Predicting Stock Market Movement in the Black Swan Event of COVID-19 Öffentlichkeit
Shao, Shixue (Spring 2025)
Abstract
In the world of finance, statistical analysis and mathematical reasoning have always been the engines for making investment decisions, but their authority was challenged at the end of 2021. During this time, three Chinese investment banks released research reports that directly cited the ideas in the Yijing and Yijing divination as evidence for predicting the stock market performance in 2022. This unusual engagement with the Yijing divination became so prevalent that the China Securities Regulatory Commission had to publish an announcement to halt this practice. Notably, this interesting phenomenon emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, which qualifies as a “black swan event” according to Nassim Nicholas Taleb's definition. When uncertainties spread across the world, market anomalies also caused conventional mathematical and statistical tools to lose their predictive power. Therefore, this phenomenon reveals an important turning point, at which people’s belief in “universal rationality” shaped by quantitative theories and methods observes a transformation. People began to reconsider and rediscover the validity, usefulness, and rationality of the seemingly “irrational” predictive method of divination.
Thus, by analyzing this unusual phenomenon, engaging with previous scholarships, and reflecting on a Yijing divination initiated by myself, this paper discusses the topic of belief in the context of black swan events. It also explores the motivation and the reasoning behind people’s choice of using Yijing divination to predict the stock market movement. I argue that when a black swan event similar to COVID-19 happens, and when the old belief is no longer effective or provides indicative guidance to the situation, people will seek a new belief. The definition of belief discussed here mainly refers to the public recognition of a thinking principle that forms the base for people’s actions. In our context, the belief is bestowed on what can produce plausible predictions from a pragmatic sense during times of great uncertainty, but it can also be on what can be considered rational in the new reality. Therefore, I also argue that it is because of the modern, and rather capitalist, way of consideration, the practicality of any method constructs and materializes the abstract idea of reason and rationality.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction………………………………………………………….............................………1
II. Analysis and Discussion of Applying the Yijing Text and Yijing Divination to Predict the Stock Market Movement……….……………………………………………………….............................…….12
III. Literature Review and Further Analysis…………………………………………….………..46
IV. Yijing Divination Initiation: Will the CSI 300 Index Increase in a Month?…………..78
V. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….........…86
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Seeking New Belief: Yijing Divination for Predicting Stock Market Movement in the Black Swan Event of COVID-19 () | 2025-04-09 01:20:25 -0400 |
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