Share market disasters could be avoided by triggering off price dips

FUTURE share crashes could be prevented by “immunising” the stock market with an injection of minor downturns, it was claimed yesterday.

Just as a harmless dose of an infection like measles can prevent a major illness, so stock market disasters could be avoided by deliberately triggering mild share price dips, says a team of Oxford mathematicians.

Michael Hart and colleagues produced a computer simulation of the stock market mimicking a group of traders who buy and sell shares.