Expectation Bubbles in a Spin Model of Markets: Intermittency from Frustration across Scales

A simple spin model is studied, motivated by the dynamics of traders in a market, where expectation bubbles and crashes occur. The dynamics is governed by interactions, which are frustrated across different scales: while ferromagnetic couplings connect each spin to its local neighborhood, an additional coupling relates each spin to the global magnetization. This new coupling is allowed to be anti-ferromagnetic. The resulting frustration causes a metastable dynamics with intermittency and phases of chaotic dynamics. The model reproduces main observations of real economic markets as power-law distributed returns and clustered volatility.