Samuelson’s Dictum and the Stock Market

ECON 2301 Principles of Macroeconomics Time: Th 7:05 pm – 9:45 pm Synonym: 40512 Section: 023 Room: NRG2 2120

It is believed that Efficient Market Theory is based upon some fallacies and it does not provide strong grounds of whatever that it proposes. More importantly the Efficient Market theory is perceived to be too subjective in its definition and details and because of this it is close to impossible to accommodate this theory into a meaningful and explicit financial model that can actually assist investors in making the investment decisions (Andresso-O’Callaghan, B., 2007).

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 the beginning, there was no real stock market. However stock exchanges did take place in smaller groups and corporations. This all took place during the 1700's where stocks were already around for a long time before that but it wasn't really popular in the United States. Stocks originally started as auctions where traders called out names of companies and the shares available. There was a auction that took place and the shares went to the highest bidders.

The extracted data used includes monthly returns from January 1972 to July 2011. The assets are selected so that the portfolio contains the largest, most liquid, and most tradable assets. The choice of such a variety of assets across several markets was used in order to generate a large cross sectional dispersion in average return. It helped to reveal new factor exposure and define a general framework of the correlated value and momentum effects in various asset classes.

Buffett challenges the conventional wisdom regarding diversification. He argues that holding a few good stocks is far more important than spreading funds across a broad number of stocks. It is a fact that investors have been so oversold on diversification that the fear of having too many eggs in one basket has caused them to invest very little into companies about which they thoroughly know and far too much into others about which they know nothing at all. It is a dangerous thing to do as buying a company without sufficient knowledge may turn out to be even more dangerous than having adequate diversification.

READ: Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, Charles Wheeland, W.W. Norton, 2003. Completely- cover to cover.

READ: Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, Charles Wheeland, W.W. Norton, 2003. Completely- cover to cover.

This research is being submitted on June 14, 2010, for Mr. Bergeen’s Microeconomics course at Rasmen College by John Divler.

TEXT: Economics, Principles, Problems and Policies, 15th Edition, McConnell and Brue Video: Econ U$A series with discussion Class Activities: APIP workbook activities, reinforcement and writing activities and other teacher-developed materials This semester-long course gives students a thorough understanding of the principles of economics that apply to the function of individual decision-makers, both consumers and producers, within larger economic systems. It places primary emphasis on the nature and

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.

As indicated by the case study S&P 500 index was use as a measure of the total return for the stock market. Our standard deviation of the total return was used as a one measure of the risk of an individual stock. Also betas for individual stocks are determined by simple linear regression. The variables were: total return for the stock as the dependent variable and independent variable is the total return for the stock. Since the descriptive statistics were a lot, only the necessary data was selected (below table.)

As a result, many different factors have been tested across different markets. Historically, most studies have relied on general economic theories or empirical observations in selecting Factors. Benaković and Posedel (2010) emphasize Interest rates, oil prices, and industrial production. Chen, Roll and Ross (1986) use industrial production growth, inflation, bonds spread, NYSE stock market returns, oil prices, interest term structure, and consumption to decompose returns of a portfolio with general securities. Bodurtha, Cho and Senbet (1989) even uses international factors. Most of literatures have focused on applying different factors with a portfolio of many securities, as it is widely known that idiosyncratic risks diversifies away as the number of

Richard Roll, and University and Auburn, University of Washington, and University of Chicago educated economist, began his career researching the effect of major events of stock prices. This experience likely helped him reach the two conclusions he makes in his 1977 “A Critique Of The Asset Pricing Theory’s Tests”, one of the earliest and most influential arguments against CAPM. In the paper, Roll makes two major claims: that CAPM is actually a redundant equation that just further proves the concept of mean-variance efficiency, and that it is impossible to conclusively prove CAPM. His first claim relates to mean-variance efficiency: the idea that mathematically one must be able to create a portfolio that offers the most return for a given amount of risk. Roll claims that all CAPM is doing is testing a portfolio’s mean variance efficiency, and not actually modeling out projected future returns. The second claim in the paper is that there is not enough data about market returns for CAPM to ever prove conclusive. Even if modern technologies could help alleviate some of the burden of testing market returns for publicly traded equities, there is still no way to account for the returns of less liquid markets, where there is less public information. This means it is impossible for