Capital Markets : Capital Market

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.

Efficient Market- Advertises in which security prices return all available information and adjust right away to any fresh information. If the safekeeping markets are truly well

There are several capital market instruments used by investors to make a profit. These capital market instruments include: debentures, bonds, stocks, fixed deposits, T-bills, foreign exchange and many others. The aforementioned capital market instruments are responsible for producing funds for firms and sometimes national governments. Two basic capital market instruments are stocks and bonds. Stocks are used in three different markets as the capital market instrument: the virtual, the physical, and auction markets. Bonds are traded in a separate bond market, also known as a credit, debt or fixed income market (Mapsofworld.com, 2009). In this market is also trade in debt securities, T-bills and debentures, which are more secured than others, however, they provide less return also.

Some of these securities include debt securities, equity securities, common stock, and preferred stock. Lastly, financial markets provide the money needed by individuals and companies and establish the link between corporations and investors according to (Titman, Keown, & Martin, 2011).

Financial markets can have several different meaning to many people. They are found all over the world. Some are small and some are large. For example, the New York Stock Exchange, which trade trillions of dollars daily. A financial market is a place where buyers and sellers trade financial securities and other assets.Here, the groups of agents meet to exchange their goods or services. The first group is referred to as lenders, while the second group is referred to as the borrowers of funds. Financial markets typically have “transparent pricing, basic regulations and governing bodies, costs and fee and prices determine by supply and demand.” If the demand remains steady, the supply increases as the prices decline and vice versa. If the supply remains steady, the demand rises as the prices rises and vice versa (Ireland, 2013).

* Secondary market- Investors buy and sell existing securities. Nothing new is created. No payment is made to the corporation.

Efficient capital market “It was generally believed that securities markets were extremely efficient in reflecting information about the stock market as a whole” (Fama 1970). To extent that when there is new information about stock rise, the news was dispersed immediately and it affects the security 's price at that time.

Last but not least important, an efficient capital market is one in which stock prices fully reflect all available information. However, the paradox is that since information is reflected in security prices quickly, knowing information when it is released does an investor little good. Furthermore, it is impossible to create a portfolio which would earn extraordinary risk adjusted return. As a consequence, all the technical and fundamental analysis are useless, no one can consistently outperform the market, and new

The efficient market hypothesis is constantly being analyzed for its validity in the current market. There are a multitude of external factors contributing to the reluctance of relying on the EMH. Specifically, the rise of high frequency trading has significantly called into question the legitimacy of the efficient market. High

A, brief overview of the different vehicles available to utilize when investing. The financial market is where investors trade commodities, stocks, mutual funds, stocks, bonds, and traditional bank accounts which all can accrue interest. The different options provide very different options and different levels of risk. One can invest in something on the conservative side, moderate or be aggressive. Depending on the type of investor you

There is a fierce debate on whether stock market is efficient all these years. Some people advocated Fama’s research in 1960s, and they believe that the Efficient Markets Hypothesis has been well established. However, others do not agree with. They found some evidence to prove market inefficient by empirical researches. This essay mainly focuses on the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, and there are six parts to discuss. Firstly, it will compare the random walk theory and the weak-form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis; Secondly, it will choose two empirical studies against the weak-form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis; Thirdly, it will assess the semi-strong form with the weak-form the Efficient Markets Hypothesis; Fourthly, it will evaluate the semi-strong form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis by two of empirical studies; Fifthly, it will identify the contrast between the strong form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis with both weak form and semi-strong form; Last but not least, it will use one empirical study to judge the strong form.

“An ‘efficient’ market is defined as a market where there are large numbers of rational, profit ‘maximizes’ actively competing, with each trying to predict future market values of individual securities, and where important current information is almost freely available to all participants. In an efficient market, competition among the many intelligent participants leads to a situation where, at any point in time, actual prices of individual securities already reflect the effects of information based both on events that have already occurred and on events which, as of now, the market expects to take place in the future. In other words, in an efficient market at any point in time the actual price of a security will be a good estimate of its intrinsic value.”

The weak-form EMH implies that the market is efficient, reflecting all market information. This hypothesis assumes that the rates of return on the market should be independent; past rates of return and information have no effect on future rates.

The efficient market hypothesis (EMH) suggests that all stocks are traded at their fair value and it is impossible for investors to reap abnormal return and beat the market. The theory holds that, when markets are perfectly competitive and prices of stocks are based on their inherent investment properties and the knowledge of which all market participants possess are equally, securities will have equilibrium prices that entirely reflect all publicly announced information. (Van Bergen, 2011) (Fabozzi, Neave and Zhou, 2012)

To make good decisions, financial managers must understand the environment and markets within which businesses operate. Therefore, in this chapter we describe the markets where capital is raised, securities are traded, and stock prices are established, as well as the institutions that operate in these markets. Because the overall objective of financial managers is to maximize shareholder value, we also take a closer look at how the stock market operates, and we discuss the concept of market efficiency.