Research conducted in 2005, by Christopher Hull at Georgetown University, US, suggested that from 1980 to 2000, "Big Mo" (large scale momentum) had amplified key events in US presidential races.
"[6] In 2010, an analysis conducted by Mark Roeder, a former executive at the Swiss-based UBS Bank, suggested that Big Mo "played a pivotal role" in the 2007–2008 financial crisis.
Roeder suggested that, recent technological advances, such as computer-driven trading programs, together with the increasingly interconnected nature of markets, has magnified the momentum effect.
[7]In January 2011, a report in The Economist magazine, titled "The Big Mo", said, The momentum effect drives a juggernaut through one of the tenets of finance theory, the efficient-market hypothesis...
But you have to wonder why they bother devoting so much money and effort to researching the fortunes of individual companies when the momentum approach appears to be easy to exploit and has been around for a long time...
That would help explain why bubbles are created and why professional investors ended up allocating capital to dotcom companies with no earnings and business plans written on the back of a cigarette packet.
The work of Nevin, Mandel and Atak has been influential in the development of social and health-care policies, such as drug rehabilitation programs, where behavioural persistence (momentum) and relapse are critical issues.