Market Efficiency: An Empirical Analysis of KSE 100 Index

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.

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.

At the end of the stock market game the stocks that I own was Amazon, Wal-Mart, AutoZone, Ford, Kohls, Toyota, Coca-Cola, and O'Reilly. These stocks have done good since I have bought them. These stocks had their ups and down throughout the whole game, but although they didn’t have it that bad . They may have gained money, but, they also, losted money at the same time. Also, there were days where the stock price went up and down since there were people out there that was willing to pay for the stock at a higher price, but there were others that didn’t think it was worth it at a higher price.

The strong form claims that asset prices fully reflect all of the public and inside information available, therefore no one can have advantage on the market in predicting prices. The introduction of the efficient market hypothesis marked a turning point in scholarly researches on security prices and many studies have been made since to test market efficiency. Many studies of the weak form of market efficiency have been made on technical analyses and how investors use them to predict about future security prices by looking at past prices. In 1969 Fama, Fisher, Jensen and Roll were the first to test the semi-strong form of market efficiency by using event studies. Their conclusion was that stock prices adjust very rapidly to new information. Many scholars since then have studied how new information affect the market by using event studies. Many articles about the strong form have also been published and most of them study professional investor performances in the stock market (Malkiel, 2003). Many of the studies on technical analyses, event studies and the performance of professional investors in the stock market have reached the conclusion that markets are efficient and therefore that stock prices are right (Malkiel, 2003). Before studies of behavioral finance became popular, evidences began to appear that were inconsistent with the hypothesis of market efficiency.

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.

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

In an efficient market at any point in time the actual price of a security will be a good estimate of its intrinsic value. An efficient-market is defined as a market where there are large numbers of rational, profit-maximizers actively competing, with each trying to predict future market values of individual securities, and where

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

In 1960s, Efficient Markets Hypothesis was further developed by Paul A. Samuelson (1965) and Eugene F. Fama(1970). In an efficient stock market, the price for any given stock effectively represents the expected net present value of all future profits. Which means, according to the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH), market prices can reflect all available information. After that, the EMH theory becomes one of the pillars of modern financial economics theory.

According the definition of EMH, the price which shown on the stock market already were the best results that shows the company’s operating ability. Therefore, it does not matter how much effort made by the stock firm and investor, and how cautious they are. Information already reacted in the stock prices, whether it is an expensive stock or a cheaper one. It seems that how much information could be reflected in price might the distinction of different form of market efficiency. Roberts (1967) had clearly defined the difference between the weak form, semi-strong form, and strong, and it further summarised by Fama (1970) to define the information efficiency, which is: “A market in which prices always ‘fully reflect’ available information is called ‘efficient’”. In the fact that several form market efficiency act in EMH indicates that does those forms real acts in the capital market should be analysed and proved.

Efficient market hypothesis (EMH) has been developed by a renowned economist, Eugene Fama. According to EMH, the market is considered as efficient if

In March 2015, Japan’s Financial Markets Agency for the first time in its history set out Corporate Governance Code and a year earlier Stewardship Code. Even though some efforts towards corporate governance and transparency have been made in Japan previously, specifically introduction of dual system in 2003, they did not gain popularity. Only 40 out of 3,000 firms adopted this system immediately rising to 112 five years later. However, these codes were necessary due to the pressure from foreigners investing and doing business in Japan, several scandals such as Olympus 2011-2012 accounting scandal and ineffective, high cash holdings of Japanese companies (Eberhart, 2012).

The phenomena behind equity risk premium discussion for 35 years, was first took place in Robert J. Schiller’s work done on volatility of equity prices. The research conduct by Schiller (1982), highlighted the difficulty of explaining the historical volatility of stock prices. The results of Shiller’s paper stunned the profession at first as most of economists felt discount rates were close to constant over time. The intuition behind the unpredictability of volatility, later named volatility puzzle by scholars who have studied this paradox as well. Just after 3 years from Schiller work on historical volatility, Mehra and Prescott (1985) introduced the equity premium puzzle. It is mainly based on the lack of evidence for a high risk premium in terms of consumption growth. In other words, investors require and have high returns which have low covariance with consumption growth. Using Schiller’s data collected on the volatility puzzle, they have found out that between 1889 and 1978, the consumption growth rate, the indicator for opportunity cost of investors is insufficient to explain 6% risk premium. Moreover, it was so high that the findings suggested only a risk premium of 0.35% on top of the risk-free rate. Behavioural finance approached this puzzle based on preference of investors. The decision making process of investors on investing on equities and why do they require high risk premium and fear equities this much. One of the leading papers on the

A STUDY ON STOCK MARKET RETURN, VOLATILITY AND CORRELATION ANALYSIS AMONG INDIAN & ASIAN STOCK MARKETS

The stock market is witnessing keen activities and is gradually more gaining Importance. Post the1997 East Asian disaster which had caused significant reduction in asset prices and stock markets in quite a a small number of Asian countries, these economies bang back. These economies maintained high interest rates thereby creation them attractive to foreign investors. As a result these economies customary a large inflow of funds and experienced a theatrical run-up in asset prices. As a part of market amalgamation, the capital market of India is no longer cut off from international economic measures and their stock index travels. This paper finds the correlation of Indian Stock market with five other major Asian economies: Japan,