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In the spirit of punctuated equilibrium, complexity is quantified relatively in terms of the spacing between equally important evolutionary turning points (milestones). Thirteen data sets of such milestones, obtained from a variety of scientific sources, provide data on the most important complexity jumps between the big bang and today. Forecasts for future complexity jumps are obtained via exponential and logistic fits on the data. The quality of the fits and common sense dictate that the forecast by the logistic function should be retained. This forecast stipulates that we have already reached the maximum rate of growth for complexity, and that in the future, complexity's rate of change (and the rate of change in our lives) will be declining. One corollary is that we are roughly halfway through the lifetime of the universe. Another result is that complexity's rate of growth has built up to its present high level via seven evolutionary subprocesses, themselves amenable to logistic description.

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Under the assumption that competition (Darwinian in nature) reigns in the stock market, we analyze the behavior of company stocks as if they were species competing for investors' resources. The approach requires the study of dollar values and share volumes, daily exchanged in the stock market, via logistic growth functions. These two variables, in contrast to prices, obey the law of natural growth in competition, which like every natural law, is endowed with predictability. A number of unexpected insights about the stock market emerge. The forecasts indicate that whereas there is no looming crash in the near future, no significant growth should be expected either. The DJIA is to hover around 9500 depicting large erratic excursions above and below this level for a few years. The use of Volterra-Lotka equations demonstrates that the 1987 crash altered the stock-bond interaction from a symbiotic to a predator-prey relationship with stocks acting as predators. This research work has lead to the publication of the book An S-Shaped Trail to Wall Street by T. Modis, (Growth Dynamics, Geneva, 1999).