To be or not: feeding information in standard minority games

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse a standard grand canonical minority game (MG). Design/methodology/approach – Agents are divided into two groups: speculators, who trade adaptively, and producers who trade deterministically. Information acts on the amount of the two types in the system, modifying the share. Findings – When the system is out of equilibrium, stylized facts arise, such as fat tailed distribution of returns and volatility clustering. If speculators abandon price taking behavior, stylized facts disappear. Originality/value – The modified MG presented here is able to reproduce qualitatively a whole range of stylized facts. Most importantly, its quite rich behavior can be studied analytically.