The ‘wiggly H’ that is our company symbol…
…is a stylised fragment from a Mandelbrot set. Benoit Mandelbrot was a pioneer in the study of interaction and feedback as mentioned in our video ‘A HED history of markets’ and this mathematical set was named in his honour. It is a complex shape of great beauty, most famous for being practically infinite. It can be explored by zooming in on the edge detail which is where repeated shapes recur, including our symbol. There are endless variations of this landscape, one of which can be seen by clicking here: Mandelbrot zoom movie
The self-similarity of these multiple shapes, no two of which are exactly alike, reflects the feedback loops that cause them. Tiny variations in the repetitive sequence where cause makes effect which then feeds back into the next cause and so on, means that each shape is similar but not the same. This is true of many aspects of the natural world and of human activity including the habits of markets. We took the interaction between the trading crowd and its own emotional surges as our starting point when trying to understand self-reinforcing and self-limiting behaviour. The study of the real cause of trends, ranges and cycles – Benoit Mandelbrot started it all.