Joseph de la Vega

José or Joseph Penso de la Vega, best known as Joseph de la Vega (ca. 1650 — Amsterdam, 13 November, 1692), was a Sephardic Jewish merchant in diamonds, financial expert, moral philosopher and poet, residing in Amsterdam.^[1] He became famous for his masterpiece Confusion of Confusions. Vega's work is the first study written about the Amsterdam Stock Exchange and its participants, the shareholders.^[2] In a stilted style he describes the whole gamut, running from options (puts and calls), futures contracts, margin buying, to bull and bear conspiracies, even some form of stock-index trading.^[3] The publication of Confusión de Confusiones helped lay the foundations for modern fields of technical analysis and behavioral finance.