Forecasting stock market dynamics using market cap time series of firms and fuctuating selection

Abstract

Evolutionary economics has been instrumental in explaining the nature of innovation processes and providing valuable heuristics for applied research. However, quantitative tests in this field remain scarce. A significant challenge is accurately estimating the fitness of companies. We propose the estimation of the financial fitness of a company by its market capitalization (MC) time series using Malthusian fitness and the selection equation of evolutionary biology. This definition of fitness implies that all companies, regardless of their industry, compete for investors’ money through their stocks. The resulting fluctuating selection from market capitalization (FSMC) formula allows forecasting companies’ shares of total MC through this selection equation. We validate the method using the daily MC of public-owned Fortune 100 companies over the period 2000–2021.