What Is The Calendar Effect? Developing The Efficient Market Hypothesis Introduced By Fama Essay

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.

The basis of Efficient Market theory is considered to have a gap in theory and practice that

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

Stock markets generally reflect the economic conditions of an economy, Alfaro, Chanda, Kalemli-Ozcan, & Sayek (2004). If an economy is growing then output will be increasing and most firms should be experiencing increased profitability. This higher profit makes the company shares more attractive – because they can give bigger dividends to shareholders. If the economy is forecast to enter into a recession, then stock markets will generally fall. This is because a recession means lower profits, less dividends and even the prospect of firms going bankrupt, which would be bad news for shareholders.

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

The premise of an efficient market is that stock prices adjust accordingly as information is received. The speed and accuracy of the pricing changes are a reflection of the strength of the market efficiency, where in theory a perfectly efficient market will re-adjust prices immediately and precisely with new information. The efficient market hypothesis aligns with beliefs about whether technical and fundamental analyses are useful in making investment decisions or whether a passive approach is appropriate. In a perfectly efficient market, these types of analyses are not able to predict stock price trends (based on market inefficiencies or price abnormalities) which could assist in portfolio positioning or investment management. However, some investors belive that the market pricing is not precise and that there are timing windows and pricing trends that can be identified through analysis of past performance and finding price abnormalities where all information is not correctly reflected in the stock price (Hirt, Block and Basu, 2006).

sider BACKGROUND Efficient market theory examines how accurately stock prices signal resource allocation alloc and fully reflect all available information. Fama (1970) introduced the efficient market hypothesis stating there are three forms of efficiency: weak, semi strong, and strong. A market semi-strong, that incorporates all historical information is said to be weak form efficient, while one that responds to all publicly available informatio is semi-strong efficient. In a semiinformation -strong efficient market, prices instantly change to reflect publicly available information. A strong form market, strong responds to all information, both public and private. The hypothesis claims that achieving above average returns on a risk adjusted basis is impossible (Fama 1970). (Fama, The lowest level of market efficiency, weak form, states that the market only reacts to historical information. This means that no one can earn above normal returns based on published historical information; however, the market does not quickly react to new public or private information. It may be possible then, in a weak form efficient market, to obtain abnormal returns form using either new publicly available or private insider information (Fama 1970). (Fama, A semi-strong form market is more efficient that a weak form, as it reacts to publicly strong available new information quickly and share prices adjust to reflect the market’s reaction. share Obtaining

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

Another concern relates of insider trading of market efficiency of stock market. In his classical study Fama (1970) proposes efficient market Hypothesis, which suggests that stock price reflects all available information (historical price, public and private) in

The efficient market hypothesis states that financial markets are profitable and that the prices in the stock market already embed all familiar information regarding a stock or other security and that the prices adjust quickly to new information which includes current and future expectations about a stock. It further explains that if all needed information concerning the investment is known, it will be difficult for any investor to outperform the market since he/she will be working with the same information as everyone else. Also, that it is impossible to consistently beat the market by stock-picking.

information in the previous prices. In short, they simply imply that in the long run, no one

There are two main reasons for this. One, any market that yields a high rate of return but

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.

Many researchers have tested the validity of the semi-strong form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis through testing major announcement event such as dividend announcements and bonus issue announcements. (Khan and Ikram, 2010), This is because the announcements may offer desirable factors to the market which will influence stock prices. Observing the performance of mutual funds and brokerage companies is the second aspect for evaluating the semi-strong form of market efficiency (Khan and Ikram,2010). This is because brokers and fund managers are believed to have access to non public information that gives them an advantage when trading on the stock market.

The efficient market, as one of the pillars of neoclassical finance, asserts that financial markets are efficient on information. The efficient market hypothesis suggests that there is no trading system based on currently available information that could be expected to generate excess risk-adjusted returns consistently as this information is already reflected in current prices. However, EMH has been the most controversial subject of research in the fields of financial economics during the last 40 years. “Behavioural finance, however, is now seriously challenging this premise by arguing that people are clearly not rational” (Ross, (2002)). Behavioral finance uses facts from psychology and other human sciences in order to