Predicted Uncertainty: Volatility Calculus and the Indeterminacy of the Future

Esposito E. Predicted Uncertainty: Volatility Calculus and the Indeterminacy of the Future. In: Beckert J, Bronk R, eds. Uncertain Futures. Imaginaries, Narratives, and Calculation in the Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2018: 219-235.The chapter analyses the way in which structured finance manages and controls the openness of the future as a source of profit. Financial modelling relies on a specific form of fiction, based on the careful construction of a present image of the future and its uncertainty—expressed by the evaluation of implied volatility. The problem with this approach is that it fails to take account of the reflexive way in which the fictitious future it constructs affects the (not-yet-existing) future reality. This chapter highlights the dual nature of the future as intersection and combination of both the present future and the future present. It concludes that structured-financed models—despite their attempt to control risk by making calculations in the present about the future and about current market expectations of the future—may, in times of turbulence, increase the indeterminacy and unpredictability of future reality