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The Journal of Socio-Economics 37 (2008) 1076–1089 The financial simulacrum: The consequences of the symbolization and the computerization of the financial market Christophe Schinckus a,b,∗ a Department of Economics (CEREC), Facult´es Universitaires St. Louis, Brussels, Belgium b Department of Economics (GRESE), University of Paris I Panth´eon, Sorbonne, Paris, France Accepted 1 December 2006 Abstract In a first step, we present the symbolic evolution of financial market that illustrates the growing “consumer- oriented” dimension of finance. We introduce then the technological evolution of finance, that derives from the growing computerization of finance. The third part of the paper shows that this double evolution in finance allows us to consider the financial market as a “hyper-market”. The financial market is then presented as a result of what Baudrillard calls a “hyper-reality”. In the last section, we show that this hyper-reality allows a plurality of theoretical interpretations of the financial reality. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. JEL classification: G190; Z100; B410 Keywords: Symbolization; Computerization; Epistemology; Hyper-reality; Financial markets 1. Introduction The last three decades have been marked by a sharp and astonishing increase in the complexity of the financial reality. There seem to be two main causes to this evolution: the growing sophistica- tion of financial products and the effects of the technological progress on the financial interaction. In this paper, we propose to analyze the increase in immateriality of the financial reality due to the sophistication of the products and to the deep change in the organization of the financial marketplaces. ∗ Correspondence address: No. 43, Boulevard du Botanique