A Fresh Perspective Of Behavioural Finance Finance Essay - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 10 Words: 3013 Downloads: 9 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Finance Essay Type Argumentative essay Did you like this example? In the present times, investment decision making process is a very complex phenomenon for individuals. Theoretically speaking, investment decisions are guided by various economic models which regard man as Homo economicus who is rational in his economic choices. In reality, the information required for the decision making process is limited and hence the rationality of man is also bounded. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "A Fresh Perspective Of Behavioural Finance Finance Essay" essay for you Create order Thus, in some part of investment decision making process, man may even be emotional or irrational. So in order to guide individuals to make correct choices, economic models should integrate and incorporate psychological theory as well. This is the basic premise of a new paradigm in the field of investment decision making called Behavioural Finance. This subject focuses on how investors interpret and act on information to take investment decision. It uses knowledge from both psychological field and financial theory. Behavioural finance asserts that behavioural biases and heuristics play an important part in influencing the investment decision making processes. A bias is a departure from normative, optimal or rational behaviour.In the investment decision making process, biases can either arise when the decision maker forms beliefs about probabilities of events and values of outcomes or when he sets preferences among the available options. Heuristics are rules of thumbs that help indivi duals to take the most optimum decisions in situations which are cognitively complex. In either case, heuristics and biases if consistently practiced lead to various abnormalities and anomalies. This is a conceptual paper which aims to study various psychological biases which arise from a variety of cognitive mechanisms. An attempt is made to extract from literature of various authors different frameworks in which most known heuristics and biases can be organized. An endeavour to understand their impact will be of great help to investors to acquire the best outcomes by suggesting remedial action. Introduction In the present world, investment decision makingis a complex process. It is dynamic activity which is influenced by many variables and subject to many constraints. These limitations arise due to various environmental and cognitive reasons. Investments are made for earning a return.Investors make investment decisions for maximising their returns but sometimes they are not aware which variables are effecting their decisions due to which they may not be able to maximise their returns. Many times investors want to know which these variables are and what are the implications on their decision making process especially when they are they spending time and money to learn about investment by reading books, attending lectures, listening to all the expert advice on the television and internet chat sites. If investors reflect back, they will realise that some of the common mistakes which they make are buying stocks which are highly priced, booking profits too soon and not liquidating share son which there could be losses if they hold them, and most commonly buying when others are buying and selling because others are selling. These are examples of investor behaviour.The term behaviour literally means the aggregate of all the responses made by an organism in any situation and a specific response of a certain organism to a specific stimulus or a group of stimuli (American Heritage Dictionary, 2003). There is a dire need to understand the behaviour of investors in order to assist them to develop their own trading strategy and investment philosophy. A solution and understanding of many of these issues are the main pedagogical goals of Behavioural finance. Behavioural finance closely combines individual behaviour and market phenomena and uses knowledge taken from both the psychological field and financial theory. In his inaugural address at Interdisciplinary Seminar on Psychonomics on February 6, 2012, Harun R. Khan, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India emphasises on the resurgence of psychology in economics for linking cognitive models of decision making with economic models of rational behaviour to understand and avoid recent market distortions driven by human traits.Behavioural Finance is a new paradigm of finance theory, which seeks to understand and predict systematic financial market implications of psychological decision-making. Background: During the classical period, economics had a recognized association with psychology. Adam Smith had described psychological principles of individual behaviour in his work, The theory of Moral Sentiments. Jeremy Bentham wrote on psychological aspects of utility while propounding his utilitarism ideas. However, overtime economists in the race of shaping the discipline as a natural science started to distance themselves from psychology. In economics, man or Homo economicus appears perfectly rational and has a complete knowledge and his economic choices are guided by rationality. This means that his choices are consistent, self-contained and he is perfectly rational without being affected by his emotions or his environment. Thus economic theory of Investment decision treats investment decision of an individual as a macroeconomic aggregate and the microeconomic foundations of it are drawn from intertemporal utility theory. This means that individuals maximise their utility based on clas sic wealth criteria making a choice between consumption and investment through time. However, as per studies conducted by Herbert Simon, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds and the finite amount of time they have to make decisions. He has coined the term bounded rationality in his book. He argues that most people are only partly rational while are emotional/irrational in the remaining part of their actions. He says that perfect or global rationality is practically and not logically impossible. He claims that classical theories of Rational Choice fail to include some of the central problem of conflict and dynamics which economics are more and more concerned with. Accordingly, concept of rationality has some limits such as risk and uncertainty, incomplete information about alternatives and complexity. (Models of Man, 1972).There was a resurgence of psychology in economics in the 1960s when Ward Edwards, Amos Tver sky and Daniel Kahnemann began to compare cognitive models decision making under risk and uncertainty to economic models of rational behaviour. Decision making is a process involving making an optimal choice between various alternatives. Since individuals lack the ability and resources to arrive at the optimal solution, they instead apply their rationality only after having greatly simplified the choices available. As a result, Simon claims that individuals have only bounded rationality and are forced to make decisions not by maximization but by satisficing. Satisficing is the hypothesis which allows to the conception of diverse decision procedures and which permits rationality to operate in an open not pre-determined space (Barros, 2010). This is where psychological theory comes into play.In the real world, individuals make decisions using heuristics or rules of thumb that satisfice rather than maximize utility over the long run. Thus individuals employ the use of heuristics to make decisions rather than a strict rule of optimization. These heuristics are useful as they make cognitively difficult tasks easier. However they can lead to systematic biases. When a behavioural bias is consistently practiced, it gives a foundation for prediction of behaviour. The study of this field will be particularly useful where it can influence returns from investment. There is little doubt that an understanding of how such biases and heuristics influence investment decision or impact investment returns will generate insights that greatly benefit the investors. Such behavioural biases and heuristics form the subject matter of Behavioural Finance. Behavioural Finance focuses on how investors interpret and act on information to make investment decisions. It also places an emphasis on investors behaviour leading to various market anomalies. Behavioural Finance closely combines individual behaviour and market phenomena and uses knowledge taken from both the psychological fie ld and financial theory. (Fromlet, 2001).Behavioural Finance seeks to understand and predict systematic financial market implications of psychological decision processes. In addition it focuses on the application of psychological and economic principles for improvement of financial decision making. (Olsen, 1998) Cornerstones of Behavioural Finance Behavioural Finance takes into account the effect of human psychology in investment decision making. It overcomes the shortcomings of traditional finance and finds better explanations of investor behaviour by disregarding the assumptions that investors are rational and markets are efficient. The first foundation stone of Behavioural finance is Mental Accounting. It is a process which helps the investors in using cognitive skills to organise, evaluate and keep track of their financial activities. Mental accounting has three components. First, the outcomes are perceived and experienced and then decisions are taken and evaluated. Second, investing activities are grouped into categories, including the sources and use of funds. Third, the activities are balanced either daily, monthly or yearly, depending on the preferences of a person. (Thaler,1999) Mental Accounting violates economics assumptions because money placed in one mental account is not a perfect substitute of money placed in another account. The second foundation stone of Behavioural finance is Loss Aversion. Since investors engage in mental accounting, investors group the financial transactions either one at a time or in portfolios and myopically evaluate the transactions i.e make short term rather than long term decisions and evaluate gains and losses frequently. According to Kahneman, Tversky and Schwarz and Thaler (1997), individual investors are more sensitive to decrease in their wealth rather than increases and value losses more heavily than gains. The third foundation stone of Behavioural finance is Framing. According to Kahneman and Tversky (1981), when investors face a decision problem, they try to associate each alternative choice with a decision frame. This frame depends on the personal characteristics of the investor and how the problem is formulated. They have found that choices that involve gains are risk averse and choices that involve losses are risk taking. The fourth found ation stone of Behavioural finance is Prospect Theory. This is the seminal work of Kahnemann and Tversky developed in 1979. Prospect Theory is an alternative theory to analyse decision making in situations that involve risk. In Prospect Theory, an outcome is called a prospect and involves a decision with some risk. Instead of wealth, focus is on gains and losses; decision weights replace probabilities and loss aversion is used in place of risk aversion. Decision making process is made up of two stages, the editing phase and the evaluation phase. In the first phase, possible outcomes are arranged on the basis of some heuristic. When investors look at outcomes, they make a mental note of an approximate and possible average outcome. This average is used as a reference point for ordering the lower outcomes as losses and higher ones as gains. Hence, according to Prospect theory, value is a function of the reference point and the distance of the value from the reference point. Many experi ments have been carried out to validate the theory in order to show that investors focus on gains and losses rather than final wealth. Thus from various studies it is clear that investors rely on heuristics which reduce the complex tasks of assessing probabilities and predicting values to simpler judgemental operations. Individual Investors who use heuristics are prone to biases which may lead to anomalies in the market. An empirical result qualifies as an anomaly if it is difficult to rationalize, or if implausible results are necessary to explain it within the paradigm. (Thaler, 1987). The understanding of heuristics and biases with the help of research in Behavioural finance will help to develop an awareness of what, why and how of investing and finance. Investors and advisors may be able to improve economic outcomes and attain stated financial objectives. This could save clients from financial misadventures. Categories and Causes of Biases Knowledge of biases and modification of or adaptation to irrational behaviour will lead to superior results. This paper also aims to develop an awareness of biases, their implications and ways of moderating their impact and adapting to them. This may even serve as a fundamental tenet of a successful investment strategy. Although it is very difficult task to present heuristics and biases because they arise from a variety of cognitive mechanisms, an attempt is made here to extract from the literature of various authors different frameworks in which most known heuristics and biases can be organized. After review of literature available on heuristics and behavioural biases, it is found that the common mistakes caused by cognitive limitations can be classified into two categories; how investors think and how investors feel. These two categories are used to classify various biases to which individual investors are susceptible to in the investment decision making process. Under the first category of how investors think, the most commonly existing bias is Representativeness. Investors tend to judge the probability of an event by finding a comparable known event and assuming that the probabilities are similar. As a part of drawing meaning from what we experience, we need to classify things. If something does not fit exactly into a known category, we will approximate with the nearest class available. For e.g., Ifstocks of Tata Steel perform extraordinarily, investors will rush to buy stocks of Essar Steel. This representative thinking makes them believe that Essar steel will perform similarly. (Parikh, 2009)Also because of Representativeness bias, investors may make mistakes while examining past stock returns. For example, stocks with strong performance during the past three to five years are considered as winners. As a result, considering past return to be representative of what to expect in future, investors chase the winners and buy such stocks. They tend to b e overly optimistic about past winners and overly pessimistic about losers. Secondly, investors tend to place more faith in familiar stocks leading to familiarity bias. For example, Investors buy stocks of companies which have local of regional business presence ( Huberman, 2011). Investors disproportionately include in their portfolio, stocks belonging to their country despite knowing the benefits of international diversification. This is known as home bias (French and Poterba, 1991) Third very commonly existing bias is over confidence. Belsky and Gilovich (1999) note that overconfidence is pervasive. It is like an ego trap under the influence of which the investor thinks while picking up winning stocks that their knowledge is more accurate than it really is. This bias may exist because of illusion of knowledge or illusion of control of uncontrollable events. According to Barber and Odean (2002), online investors routinely experience these attributes. Overconfidence causes in vestors to trade too much and take too much risk. Fourthly, investors experience anchoring bias. They become fixated with reference points. According to Benartzi and Thaler (1995), investors start comparing the stock price with the reference point. This reference point may be the purchase price. The brains choice of reference point is important because it will determine whether the investor will feel the pleasure of obtaining a profit or the pain of making a loss. As justified by Prospect Theory of Kahnemann and Tversky, investor will assign separate value premiums to the profits and losses. This bias also causes investors to periodically update the reference point to reflect unrealized profit. The next list of biases can be placed in the category of how investors feel. It is commonly said that stock markets are motivated by greed and fear. Other emotions which can hamper good investment decisions are hope, pride and regret. Firstly, due to emotions like pride and regret, i nvestors are predisposed to selling winners too early and holding losers too long. Shefrin and Statman (1985) have shown in their studies that investors tend to avoid regret and seek pride leading to disposition bias which may lead to poor results. Shefrin (2000) further attributes this bias to stem from conservatism. The second psychological bias which can be placed in this category is attachment bias which is the reason behind why investors become emotionally attached to a security. As a result, the investors fail to recognize bad news about the company and consequently hold the stock too long. Another bias which many investors fall prey to is Gamblers fallacy. After large gains and losses, emotions are particularly strong according to Thaler and Johnson (1990). Large gains cause the investors to become greedy and they feel that they are betting with someone elses money. This causes them to accept too much risk. On the other hand, large losses cause investors to either becom e loss averse completely to the investment activity as defined by Kahneman and Tversky (1979) as loss aversion or they may cause the investors to take more risk in an attempt to recoup their loss. This event is defined by Shefrin (2000) as get eventitis. In either case these biases clouds judgement and investment decision making process. Another bias which causes faulty decisions in invest decision process is herd behaviour. Investors show a tendency to mimic the actions of a larger group though individually, they would have not made the same choice. The cause behind this may be the social pressure of conformity and another may be a common rationale that a large group is unlikely to be wrong. Although it is very difficult task to present heuristics and biases because they arise from a variety of cognitive mechanisms, an attempt is made here to present those psychological biases which arise out of individual investors cognitive and emotional limitations. If the individual inves tors overcome these biases and take appropriate steps to check themselves at the right time, such mistakes will have less influence on investment decisions and potentially lead to improved investment results. Conclusion: Behavioural finance presents a paradigm shift in explaining investment decision making process of individual investors by throwing light on various psychological biases.No easy solutions exist for overcoming the affects of these biases according to Belsky and Gilovich (1999). Merely learning about them will also not eliminate them but at least it will be the first step towards appreciating the importance of this field of study and the limitation of traditional finance in explaining complex phenomena in the financial markets. Baker and Nofsinger (2002) suggest that investors should understand and recognize biases and develop quantitative investment criteria to achieve their investment goals. This paper is an attempt to understand individual investment decision making from a behavioural perspective. The awareness and knowledge of this field of study is at a very nascent stage in India. An emotionally restrained approach to investing based on behavioural finance will go a long way in helping them attain their desired objectives.

Video Games And Its Effects - 2558 Words

Introduction In early 1970s, the mass production of computer and video games became a common theme in most developed countries. However, their popularity was accompanied by as much contention. Fuelled by the ever increasing popularity of the industry and the economic significance of the information technology industry, negative findings such as gaming addiction, epilepsy, and violent crime, has been the subject of debate. On the other hand, many scholars, video game developers and other scholars have cited numerous studies to support possible benefits of video games. Video games have been hypothesized to promote ICT skills, to be critical motivational factors for sports training and formal education. In today’s IT age, video games and sophisticated computer simulations are being used in training to simulate real life situations such as in driving, combat and flight. In addition, it has been incorporated in formal education, and educators are using IT to promote learning. It is clear that it and video games forms an integral part of everyday activity of millions of kids in the United States and other countries. Understanding their impact on gamers, especially young gamers are critical in ensuring children are not victims of advancing technology. Although frequent video gaming is associated to some extent with improved learning and cognitive processes, the overall effects tend to be negative. First, video gaming impacts the academic performance of a learner negativelyShow MoreRelatedThe Effects Of Video Games On The Video Game Industry Essay1238 Words   |  5 Pagesthe network effects in the video game industry? The network effects in the video game industry are derived from the console system that is sold to consumers. If a company is able to increase penetration in this arena, though at-cost/ below-cost pricing or pull created through the development of desirable content, it can potentially lock in the added value of the video games sold for the system. 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Night World Spellbinder Chapter 1 Free Essays

Expelled. It was one of the scariest words a high school senior could think of, and it kept ringing in Thea Harman’s mind as her grandmother’s car approached the school building. â€Å"This,† Grandma Harman said from the front passenger seat, â€Å"is your last chance. We will write a custom essay sample on Night World : Spellbinder Chapter 1 or any similar topic only for you Order Now You do realize that, don’t you?† As the driver pulled the car to the curb, she went on. â€Å"I don’t know why you got thrown out of the last school, and I don’t want to know. But if there’s one whiff of trouble at this school, I’m going to give up and send both of you to your Aunt Ursula’s. And you don’t want that, now, do you?† Thea shook her head vigorously. Aunt Ursula’s house was nicknamed the Convent, a gray fortress on a deserted mountaintop. Stone walls everywhere, an atmosphere of gloom-and Aunt Ursula watching every move with thin lips. Thea would rather die than go there. In the backseat next to her, Thea’s cousin Blaise was shaking her head, too-but Thea knew better than to hope she was listening. Thea herself could hardly concentrate. She felt dizzy and very untogether, as if half of her were still back in New Hampshire, in the last principal’s office. She kept seeing the look on his face that meant she and Blaise were about to be expelled-again. But this time had been the worst. She’d never forget the way the police car outside kept flashing red and blue through the windows, or the way the smoke kept rising from the charred remains of the music wing, or the way Randy Marik cried as the police led him off to jail. Or the way Blaise kept smiling. Triumphantly, as if it had all been a game. Thea glanced sideways at her cousin. Blaise looked beautiful and deadly, which wasn’t her fault. She always looked that way; it was part of having smoldering gray eyes and hair like stopped smoke. She was as different from Thea’s soft blondness as night from day and it was her beauty which kept getting them in trouble, but Thea couldn’t help loving her. After all, they’d been raised as sisters. And the sister bond was the strongest bond there was†¦ to a witch. But we can’t get expelled again. We can’t. And I know you’re thinking right now that you can do it all over again and good old Thea will stick with you-but this time you ‘re wrong. This time I’ve got to stop you. â€Å"That’s all,† Gran said abruptly, finishing with her instructions. â€Å"Keep your noses clean until the end of October or you’ll be sorry. Now, get out.† She whacked the headrest of the driver’s seat with her stick. â€Å"Home, Tobias.† The driver, a college-age boy with curly hair who had the dazed and beaten expression all Grandma’s apprentices got after a few days, muttered, â€Å"Yes, High Lady,† and reached for the gearshift. Thea grabbed for the door handle and slid out of the car fast. Blaise was right behind her. The ancient Lincoln Continental sped off. Thea was left standing with Blaise under the warm Nevada sun, in front of the two-story adobe building complex. Lake Mead High School. Thea blinked once or twice, trying to kick-start her brain. Then she turned to her cousin. â€Å"Tell me,† she said grimly, â€Å"that you’re not going to do the same thing here.† Blaise laughed. â€Å"I never do the same thing twice.† â€Å"You know what I mean.† Blaise pursed her lips and reached down to adjust the top of her boot. â€Å"I think Gran overdid it a little with the lecture, don’t you? I think there’s something she’s not telling us about. I mean, what was that bit about the end of the month?† She straightened, tossed back her mane of dark hair and smiled sweetly. â€Å"And shouldn’t we be going to the office to get our schedules?† â€Å"Are you going to answer my question?† â€Å"Did you ask a question?† Thea shut her eyes. â€Å"Blaise, we are running out of relatives. If it happens again-well, do you want to go to the Convent?† For the first time, Blaise’s expression darkened. Then she shrugged, sending liquid ripples down her loose ruby-colored shirt. â€Å"Better hurry. We don’t want to be tardy.† â€Å"You go ahead,† Thea said tiredly. She watched as her cousin walked away, hips swaying in the trademark Blaise lilt. Thea took another breath, examining the buildings with their arched doorways and pink plaster walls. She knew the drill. Another year of living with them, of walking quietly through halls knowing that she was different from everybody around her, even while she was carefully, expertly pretending to be the same. It wasn’t hard. Humans weren’t very smart. But it took a certain amount of concentration. She had just started toward the office herself when she heard raised voices. A little knot of students had gathered at the edge of the parking lot. â€Å"Stay away from it.† â€Å"Kill it!† Thea joined the periphery of the group, being inconspicuous. But then she saw what was on the ground beyond the curb and she took three startled steps until she was looking right down at it. Oh†¦ how beautiful. Long, strong body†¦ broad head†¦ and a string of rapidly vibrating horny rings on the tail. They were making a noise like steam escaping, or melon seeds being shaken. The snake was olive green, with wide diamonds down its back. The scales on the face looked shiny, almost wet. And its black tongue flickered so fast†¦. A rock whizzed past her and hit the ground beside the snake. Dust puffed. Thea glanced up. A kid in cutoffs was backing away, looking scared and triumphant. â€Å"Don’t do that,† somebody said. â€Å"Get a stick,† somebody else said. â€Å"Keep away from it.† â€Å"Kill it.† Another rock flew. The faces around Thea weren’t vicious. Some were curious, some were alarmed, some were filled with a sort of fascinated disgust. But it was all going to end up the same for the snake. A boy with red hair came running up with a forked branch. People were reaching for rocks. I can’t let them, Thea thought. Rattlers were actually pretty fragile-their backbones were vulnerable. These kids might kill the snake without even meaning to. Not to mention that a couple of the kids might get bitten in the process. But she didn’t have anything†¦ no jasper against venom, no St. John root to soothe the mind. It didn’t matter. She had to do something. The redheaded boy was circling with the stick like a fighter looking for an opening. The kids around him were alternately warning him and cheering him on. The snake was swelling its body, tongue-tips flickering up and down faster than Thea’s eye could follow. It was mad. Dropping her backpack, she slipped in front of the red-haired boy. She could see his shock and she heard several people yell, but she tried to block it all out. She needed to focus. I hope I can do this†¦. She knelt a foot away from the rattler. The snake fell into a striking coil. Front body raised in an S-shaped spiral, head and neck held like a poised javelin. Nothing looked so ready to lunge as a snake in this position. Easy†¦ easy, Thea thought, staring into the narrow catlike pupils of the yellow eyes. She slowly lifted her hands, palms facing the snake. Worried noises from the crowd behind her. The snake was inhaling and exhaling with a violent hiss. Thea breathed carefully, trying to radiate peace. Now, who could help her? Of course, her own personal protector, the goddess closest to her heart. Eileithyia of ancient Crete, the mother of the animals. Eileithyia, Mistress of the Beasts, please tell this critter to calm down. Help me see into its little snaky heart so I’ll know what to do. And then it happened, the wonderful transformation that even Thea didn’t understand. Part of her became the snake. There was a strange blurring of Thea’s boundaries-she was herself, but she was also coiled on the warm ground, angry and excitable and desperate to get back to the safety of a creosote bush. She’d had eleven babies some time ago and had never quite recovered from the experience. Now she was surrounded by large, hot, fast-moving creatures. Big-living-things†¦ way too close. Not responding to my threat noises. Better bite them. The snake had only two rules for dealing with animals that weren’t food. 1) Shake your tail until they go away without stepping on you. 2) If they don’t go away, strike. Thea the person kept her hands steady and tried to pound a new thought into the small reptile brain. Smell me. Taste me. I don’t smell like a human. I’m a daughter of Hellewise. The snake’s tongue brushed her palm. Its tips were so thin and delicate that Thea could hardly feel them flicker against her skin. But she could feel the snake drop down from maximum alert. It was relaxing, ready to retreat. In another minute it would listen when she told it to slither away. Behind her, she heard a new disturbance in the crowd. ‘There’s Eric!† â€Å"Hey, Eric-rattlesnake!† Block it out, Thea thought. A new voice, distant but coming closer. â€Å"Leave it alone, guys. It’s probably just a bull snake.† There was a swell of excited denial. Thea could feel her connection slipping. Stay focused†¦. But nobody could have stayed focused during what happened next. She heard a quick footstep. A shadow fell from the east. Then she heard a gasp. â€Å"Mojave rattler!† And then something hit her, sending her flying sideways. It happened so fast that she didn’t have time to twist. She landed painfully on her arm. She lost control of the snake. All she could see as she looked east was a scaly olive-green head driving forward so fast it was a blur. Its jaws were wide open-amazingly wide-and its fangs sank into the blue-jeaned leg of the boy who had knocked Thea out of the way. How to cite Night World : Spellbinder Chapter 1, Essay examples

Chemistry Experiment free essay sample

In chemical kinetics, it is stated that a forward reaction’s rate is dependent on the given concentration of the reactants. In other words, the relationship of the rate of a reaction is directly proportional to the concentration. While the reaction is taking place, the concentration of the reactants are decreased, as these reactants are formed into products. During the decrease of the reactants’ concentration, the rate of the forward reaction also decreases. As more and more products are being formed, they start to reform to their constituent reactants again. This causes the reverse reaction rate to increase this time. This process continues to happen until the rate of the forward reaction and the backward reaction becomes equal. When this happens, chemical equilibrium is achieved by the reaction system. Whenever equilibrium is achieved, at any given time, both reactants and products will be present at any given point in time since their concentrations remain constant. We will write a custom essay sample on Chemistry Experiment or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Given a reaction, aA + bB ? cC + dD kf[A]a[B]b = kr[C]c[D]d kfkr = Keq = [C]c[D]d (1) [A]a[B]b A factor in determining whether to which direction a reaction will go to that has not yet reached equilibrium, is the reaction quotient Q. Q is just the same as the Keq expression, but the main difference is that the concentrations of the reactants and the products used in the equation are still not yet at equilibrium. Whenever Qlt;Keq, the reaction will favor the forward reaction, but when Qgt;Keq, the reaction will favor the reverse reaction. Go or Gibb’s Free Energy that indicates a spontaneity of a reaction, and Keq are related through the general thermodynamic equation where both gaseous and solution forms appear in the chemical equation: Go = -RTlnK (2) Whenever K is greater than 1, the forward reaction is spontaneous, meaning, the amount of products is greater than the amount of reactants at equilibrium. For this, Golt;0. On the other hand, whenever Keq is less than 1, the reverse reaction is spontaneous, and the amount of reactants is great than the products at equilibrium. For this, Gogt;0. While the relationship of Go and Keq tells us about the spontaneity of a system and to which direction it will go to, Le Chatelier’s Principle tells us what would happen to a system at equilibrium whenever a stress is applied onto it. The kinds of stresses that could be applied are: change in temperature, change in volume or pressure (applicable in gases only), and change in concentration of either the reactants or products. As said above, one of the stresses that could be applied to a system is changing the concentration of the reactants or the products. From the equilibrium expression, whenever concentration of the product is increased, it will favor the reverse reaction. The converse holds when the concentrations of the reactants are increased.