1. Introduction A work of Doyle and Chen (2009) stated that stock returns are significantly and

Capital markets provide a function which facilitates the buying and selling of long-term financial securities to increase liquidity and their value, Watson & Head (2013). Hence, the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) explains the relationship that exists with the prices of the capital market securities, where no individual can beat the market by regularly buying securities at a lower price than it should be. This means that in order to be an efficient market prices of securities will have to fairly and fully reflect all available information, Fama (1970). Consequently, Watson & Head (2013) believe that market efficiency refers to the speed and quality of how share price adjusts to new information. Nevertheless, the testing of the efficient markets has led to the recognition of three different forms of efficiency in which explains how information available is used within the market. In this essay, the EMH will be analysed; testing of EMH will show that the model does provide strong evidence to explain share behaviour but also anomalies will be discussed that refutes the EMH. Therefore, a judgment will be made to see which structure explains the efficient market and whether there are some implications with the EMH, as a whole.

As Chapter 10 questions, if further evidence continues to surface that capital markets do not always behave in accordance with the efficient market hypothesis, then should we reject the research that has embraced the EMH as a fundamental assumption? In this regard we can return to earlier chapters of this book in which we emphasised that theories are abstractions of reality. Capital markets are made of individuals and as such it would not (or perhaps, should not) be surprising to find that the

In this literate review the most important papers about explaining stock returns from 1952, when Markowitz came up with Modern Portfolio Theory, till around 2011 will be discussed. As stated in Chapter 2, Jack Treynor was one of the first economists that started to work on the CAPM model. When he developed the CAPM in 1961, there was no way yet to fully test it. Because there were no samples large enough or of sufficient quality, the real testing of the CAPM started in 1970. In 1973, the world was shown the famous Black and Scholes options pricing model. One of the first studies that gave a different answer than the CAPM was the research by Basu (1977). While he agrees with the Efficient Market Hypothesis, Basu reaches another

In this article, “Is the efficient market hypothesis day-of-the-week dependent,”, Stephen Pop reveals significant evidence that the efficient market hypothesis is day-of-the-week-dependent. Overall, for only 62% of firms, the unit root null hypothesis is rejected on all the five trading days. He also discovers that when investors do not account for unit root properties in devising trading strategies, they obtain spurious

Though a study of cycles offers the trader a broader picture of the stock market’s performance during various periods, it is difficult to place trades based on these numbers alone.

The stock market as measured by the Dow 30 industrials bottomed in March at which time the Dollar index negatively correlated by peaking in price. In all the retracements and minor corrections that occurred, since then, in the Dow the dollar also experienced a similar but opposite reaction.

The existence of calendar or time anomalies is a contradiction to the weak form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). The weak form of the EMH states that the market is efficient in past price and volume information and stock movements cannot be predicted using this historic information. This form infers that stock returns are time invariant, that is, there is no identifiable short-term time based pattern. The existence of seasonality

When establishing financial prices, the market is usually deemed to be well-versed and clever. In a stock market, stocks are based on the information given and should be priced at the accurate level. In the past, this was supposed to be guaranteed by the accessibility of sufficient information from investors. However, as new information is given the prices would shift. “Free markets, so the hypothesis goes, could only be inefficient if investors ignored price sensitive data. Whoever used this data could make large profits and the market would readjust becoming efficient once again” (McMinn, 2007, ¶ 1). This paper will identify the different forms of EMH, sources supporting and refuting the EMH and finally

Dimensional Fund Advisors is an investment consulting firm, founded by David Booth in the year 1981. Mr. Booth was a Ph.D. student at the business school and one of Professor Eugene Fama’s students, a professor who came up with the efficient market hypothesis. Mr. Booth believes in the soundness of the hypothesis that he says the financial crunch supplied further proof and support of market efficiency as far as publicly traded stocks and bonds are involved, but he cautioned that the idea should not be extended to other areas of the financial market and its managers make money by applying this strong belief.

Efficient Market Hypothesis has been controversial issues among researcher for decades. Until now, there is no united conclusion whether capital markets are efficiency or not. In 1960s, Fama (1970) believed that market is very efficient despite there are some trivial contradicted tests. Until recently, both empirical and theatrical efficient market hypothesis was being disputed by behavior finance economist. They have found that investor have psychological biases and found evidences that some stocks outperform other stocks. Moreover, there are evidences prove that market are not efficient for instance financial crisis, stock market bubble, and some investor can earn abnormal return which happening regularly in stock markets all over the world. Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that Efficient Market Hypothesis in stock (capital) markets does not exist in the real world by proofing four outstanding unrealistic conditions that make market efficient: information is widely available and cost-free, investor are rational, independent and unbiased, There is no liquidity problem in stock market, and finally stock prices has no pattern.

The weak-form efficiency cannot explain January effect. In semi-strong-form efficient market, to test this hypothesis, researchers look at the adjustment of share prices to public announcements such as earnings and dividend announcements, splits, takeovers and repurchases. As time goes, later tests tend to be not supportive to EMH. For instance, semi-strong-form efficiency cannot explain the pricing/earning effect. In strong-form efficiency, the highest level of market efficiency, Fama (1991) pointed out the immeasurability of market efficiency and suggested that it must be tested jointly with an equilibrium model of expected. However, perfect efficiency is an unrealistic benchmark that is unlikely to hold in practice.

Fama and French employ the one month NYSE stocks between 1926 and 1885 from the CRSP database. They rebalance ten decile portfolios based on the market value, price per share times share outstanding. One-month equal weighted portfolio returns are calculated and compounded continuously. The nominal returns ae adjusted by the CPI, and then summed on long rum returns. The estimation method for the regressions of r(t, t+T) on r(t-T, t) is the OLS.

The Efficient Market Hypothesis, might be a debatable concept and some authors have particularly provided evidence in favour including the concepts of different tests to support their arguments. On the other hand, those who support ideas against the EMH sustain their arguments on topics like,

Developing the efficient market hypothesis introduced by Fama, some contradicting studies were evolved that are called market anomalies which proves some deficiencies within the mentioned hypothesis

Following Fama’s (1970) landmark research papers, which explained the principals of the efficient market hypothesis, capital market efficiency has been a pre-eminent and ongoing research topic. Capital market research ‘explores the role of accounting and other financial information in equity markets.’The assumptions of market efficiency are central to capital market research. Market efficiency is considered important because if information is not assimilated into stock market rapidly of if new information appears in an anticipated manner, individuals may exploit this information.‘A market in which prices always fully reflect all available information is called efficient’ (Fama,1970:383). Markets are not