Las Vegas Shooting Analysis

Ans 1. In the given case of Las Vegas incident, the market turbulence can be defined as the rate of change in public mindset towards existing guns laws in the country. The incident was turbulent not just in terms of intensity but also from a public safety point of view. It showed looping gaps in the system and the level of exposure the public is facing from the ‘lone wolf shooting incidents’. The immediate consequence of this incident was to enforce a more stringent policing and to determine what provoked the shooter but that was a very narrow way of looking at it. The bigger issue was the fear that can cause alienation of people from the things they trust and that can be biggest source of market turbulence. If the fear is not resolved, it can have a cascading effect on the market and that can have a multiplier effect causing more turbulence. For instance, 9/11 attacks instilled fear in the masses that not only hit the airline industry but also spending habits of the public who suddenly didn’t trust the security system of the state. In this case, the market is public, for whose this security and safety laws are made and because of this incident, there was a widespread debate on whether the current system is actually a failed system.

The turbulence caused by the questions raised by the public/media/politicians was reactionary as it followed immediately after the incident that slowly faded as the time passed. The evidence lies in the historical context of the debate that started after the incident, during which there was hardly any reaction from the government as they have conceived this as post tragedy noise that media makes after every such incident. It is clear that this type of market turbulence is avoidable through government intervention and better screening procedures. Whether it can be termed as evolutionary can only be seen if we see this as a major issue the next time public vote for their representatives next time.

One effective way of characterizing market turbulence caused by Las Vegas incident is by looking at it as legislature public information asymmetry. The public chooses its representatives based on macro issues like employment, growth and security but the same issues gets diluted or rarely gets implemented because of intra-party politics, this causes an asymmetry between what people actually want and what gets conveyed/implemented by its representatives. This turbulence can also be measured on a likert scale from multiple perspectives or sources, taking in views from various stakeholders who directly or indirectly got affected from this incident such as Hotels, music concert organizers, firearms sellers, government and young people who go out for concerts. The change in the behavior of each of these stakeholders will define the magnitude of the turbulence and whether it has sustained after months of inaction from the government. Morally, it has less effect on people who were affected directly but those who were directly affected will not be able to let it pass so quickly. This should be taken into consideration while measuring the turbulence.

Another way of characterizing any market turbulence in current context is to measure sentiments on social media like twitter and Facebook. In today’s context public sentiments are better measured on Internet, which also gets reflected in their behavior outside the realm of fiber optics. It would be prudent to say that in the aftermath of Las Vegas shooting, there was uproar on Internet on the said incident. Many people tried to determine the reason of the occurrence of an event of such magnitude. Some blamed it on hotel security whereas some blamed it in the gun laws. Some looked at it as organized crime, some chose to look at it as a lone wolf attack. To be able to get a perspective of these ‘netizens’, we can group these points of views and see which sector will face larger turbulence not just in this case but in the possibility of a similar event in future. It’s really important to study emotions of the people as the outcome of this incident as that what will define their actions and this can be best captured on a platform, which is frequently used to express opinions.

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