Efficient Market Hypothesis

The concepts

Topics
What if you figure a stock price moving
pattern?
Some formal definitions
Implications of Efficient Market Hypothesis
Price modeling
Empirical studies

What if?

Definitions

Implications

Price

Empirics

What if
What if you have figured out the following:
Buy if out of the 20 trading days for the past
month, stock XYZ has been rising for more
than 10%.
Sell if out of the 20 trading days for the past
month, stock XYZ has been falling for more
than 10%.
Follow this rule strictly, return is abnormally
high.
What if?

Definitions

Implications

Price

Empirics

Stock price reflects information

If you have spotted such price pattern that seems to
guarantee you a sure profit, what should you do?
You should definitely exploit it. (How? Borrow as much as you
can to invest according to your strategy.)

The process of exploiting the pattern actually ironically destroy

the pattern because:
You would bid up XYZ share price when you think it is hot.
Price => Expected[Return]
You would bid down XYZ share price when you think it is cold.
Price => Expected[Return]

The fact that you have figured out a stock price movement is
very likely to be reflected by the stock price.
The more greedy (which is rational. More precisely, is the
higher the ability for you to raise fund) you are, the faster your
pattern will be eliminated by your own hands.
Bottom line: info, private or public, is reflected in stock prices.
What if?

Definitions

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Price

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Stock Price

Price movement pattern

Investors behaviors tend to eliminate any profit
opportunity associated with stock price patterns.
If it were possible to make
big money simply by
finding the pattern in the
stock price movements,
everyone would have done
it and the profits would be
competed away.

Sell
Sell
Buy
Buy

Time
What if?

Definitions

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The army
If you are one of the stock hunters, actively
looking for price patterns, who are you
competing with?

What if?

Definitions

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Price

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The army
If you are one of the stock hunters, actively
looking for price patterns, who are you
competing with?

What if?

Definitions

Implications

Price

Empirics

The army
If you are one of the stock hunters, actively
looking for price patterns, who are you
competing with?

What if?

Definitions

Implications

Price

Empirics

The army
Imagine not only you, there is essentially an army of
intelligent, well-informed security analysts, traders, who
literally spend their lives hunting for mis-priced securities or
securities that follow a pattern based on currently available
information.
They have high-tech computers, subscription to professional
database, up-to-date information on thousands of firms, stateof-the-art analytical technique, etc.
These people can assess, assimilate and act on information,
very quickly.
In their intense search for mis-priced securities, professional
investors may police the market so efficiently that they drive
the prices of all assets to fully reflect all available information.

What if?

Definitions

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Implications
Competition for finding mis-priced securities is fierce.
Such competition always kills the sure-profit pattern. Were
there one, it would have been exploited by someone who first
spotted it. Thus, roughly speaking, no arbitrage should hold.
The first one does make abnormal profit, but
Economic profit gross profit
The very first one is not likely to be you.
Even if you are the very first one, you are likely to pay higher
brokerage and commission fees than institutional investors.
The implications:
stock prices should have reflected all available information.
stock prices should be unpredictable.

What if?

Definitions

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Unpredictability
Prices are unpredictable in
the sense that stock prices
should have reflected all
available information.
Thus if stock prices change, it
should be reacting only to
new information.
The fact that information is
new means stock prices are
unpredictable.

What if?

Definitions

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Price

Empirics

Market efficiency
If all past information is incorporated in the price
then it should be impossible to consistently beat
the market using technical analysis and the like.
Definition 1:
Eugene Fama defined Market Efficiency as the state
where "security prices reflect all available
information.

Definition 2:
Financial markets are efficient if current asset prices
fully reflect all currently available relevant information.
What if?

Definitions

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The right question to ask

If new information becomes known about a
particular company, how quickly do market
participants find out about the information and buy
or sell the securities of the company based on the
information?
How quickly do the prices of the securities adjust to
reflect the new information?
The issue is not merely black or white. We know that
the market should neither be strictly efficient nor
strictly inefficient. The question is one of degree.
We should ask how efficient the market really is?
What if?

Definitions

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Subsets of available information

For a given stock
All Available Information
including inside or private
information

All Public Information

Information
in past stock
prices

What if?

Definitions

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3 forms of market efficiency

hypothesis
Since we are more interested in how
efficient is the capital market, we define
the following 3 forms of market
efficiency hypothesis:

All Available Information

including inside or private
information

A market is efficient if it reflects ALL

available information

All Public Information

[1] Strong-form

Information
in past stock
prices

- ALL available info

[2] Semi-strong form
- ALL available info
[3] Weak-form
- ALL available info

What if?

Definitions

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3 forms of market efficiency hypothesis

Weak-form
Stock prices are assumed to reflect any information that
may be contained in the past stock prices.
For example, suppose there exists a seasonal pattern in stock
prices such that stock prices fall on the last trading day of the
year and then rise on the first trading day of the following year.
Under the weak-form of the hypothesis, the market will come to
recognize this and price the phenomenon away.
Anticipating the rise in price on the first day of the year, traders
will attempt to get in at the very start of trading on the first day.
Their attempts to get in will cause the increase in price to occur
in the first few minutes of the first day. Intelligent traders will then
recognize that to beat the rest of the market, they will have to get
in late on the last day. The consequences, therefore, is the
elimination of the pattern as price in the last trading day should
be bid up.
What if?

Definitions

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3 forms of market efficiency hypothesis

Semi-strong-form
Stock prices are assumed to reflect any information that is
publicly available.
These include information on the stock price series, as well as
information in the firms accounting reports, the past prices and
reports of competing firms, announced information relating to the
state of the economy, and any other publicly available
information relevant to the valuation of the firm.

What if?

Definitions

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Price

Empirics

3 forms of market efficiency hypothesis

Strong-form
Stock prices are assumed to reflect ALL information,
regardless of them being public or private.
Under this form, those who acquire insider information act on it,
buying or selling the stock. Their actions affect the price of the
stock, and the price quickly adjusts to reflect the insider
information.

What if?

Definitions

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Price

Empirics

3 forms of market efficiency hypothesis

If Weak-form of the hypothesis is valid:
Technical analysis or charting becomes ineffective. You
wont be able to gain abnormal returns based on it.

If Semi-strong form of the hypothesis is valid:

No analysis will help you attain abnormal returns as long
as the analysis is based on publicly available information.

If Strong-form of the hypothesis is valid:

Any effort to seek out insider information to beat the
market are ineffective because the price has already
reflected the insider information. Under this form of the
hypothesis, the professional investor truly has a zero
market value because no form of search or processing of
information will consistently produce abnormal returns.
(Even if Steve Jobs is your uncle, you cant profit from
listening to his phone calls and trading APPLE stocks.)
What if?

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Why do we care about capital

market efficiency?

As an analyst
As an investment manager
As a corporate financial manager
As a marketing manager
As an accounting manager

What if?

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Why do we care about capital

market efficiency?
As an analyst
If market is efficient, what is your marginal
contribution for your securities firm? It should be zero,
because you will not be able to spot mis-priced
securities to produce additional returns on the
portfolios that you are managing. Heat Debate.
Analysts total contribution to the society should be
big. Because in scouting the capital market, they
essentially make sure asset prices are effective as
signals to others.

If the market is truly efficient

=> 0<Total contribution marginal contribution=0
What if?

Definitions

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Why do we care about capital

market efficiency?
As an investment manager
Investment decisions of the managers of any firms
are based to a large extent on signals they get from
the capital market.
If the market is efficient, the cost of acquiring capital
will accurately reflect the prospects for each project.
This means the firms with the most attractive
investment opportunities will be able to obtain capital
at a fair price which reflects their true potentials.
The right investment will be made, and the society is
said to be allocationally-efficient. Everyones better
off.
What if?

Definitions

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Why do we care about capital

market efficiency?
As a corporate financial manager
To raise capital, you consider getting debt- or equityfinancing. (Corporate Finance)
If the market is efficient, you know that equity-financing
requires a rate of return which is fair because the price
has already reflected all available information.
If the market is efficient, you would never feel your firms
stock being under- or over-valued at any point in time. In
essence, there is no timing decision to issuing equity.
More profoundly, if market is efficient, every alternative
way of raising capital would require the same rate of return
for the same project. And no one capital-raising method is
superior than the other.
What if?

Definitions

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Why do we care about capital

market efficiency?
As a marketing manager
You may consider advertising at the Wall Street
Journal about how impressive your company has be
doing in the past few years.
If the market is efficient, there is no need to do that.
Because your stock price has already reflected those.
There is absolutely no impact for the ad on the stock
price. And placing an ad is like burning money.
A more sensible interpretation is that, ads dont easily
fool investors.

What if?

Definitions

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Why do we care about capital

market efficiency?
As an accounting manager
Will change in accounting practices (e.g., different
depreciation methods: straight-line vs accelerated)
impact the companys stock price?
No if the market is semi-strong efficient. Because
informed, rational analysts will adjust the different
accounting procedures used by different firms and
assess prospects based on standardized numbers.
Thus, the adjustment in accounting technique will
have no effect on the opinions of those analysts or on
the stock price of the firm.
What if?

Definitions

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Expected return-risk
The Efficient Market Hypothesis imposes no structure on stock
prices. However, what is abnormal return?
Abnormal return = Actual return Expected return
This means we have to know what exactly is expected return.
Thats why we may rely on an asset pricing model.
e.g.,CAPM, to find a risk-adjusted return that the market will be
rewarding.)

Defining abnormal return inherently involves assuming a pricing

model. If we find abnormal returns, we conclude that the
market is inefficient. But then, we can also say that the pricing
model we used is invalid.
The challenge here is: testing market efficiency inevitably
involves testing a joint hypothesis:
H0 : both market is efficient and the pricing model is valid.
H1 : EITHER market is inefficient OR the pricing model is
invalid.
What if?

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4 basic traits of efficiency

An efficient market exhibits certain behavioral

traits. We can examine the real market to see if
it conforms to these traits. If it doesnt, we can
conclude that the market is inefficient.
1.
2.
3.
4.

What if?

Act to new information quickly and accurately

Price movement is unpredictable (memory-less)
No trading strategy consistently beat the market
Investment professionals not that professional

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Stock price ($)

1) Act to news quickly & accurately

Days relative to announcement day

-t

+t

The timing for a positive news

What if?

Definitions

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Stock price ($)

1) Act to news quickly & accurately

Days relative to announcement day

-t

+t

If the market is efficient,

1) at time 0, the positive news come, there is an immediate jump of the
share price to the RIGHT level. (i.e., the PINK path)
2) There is no delays in analyzing news and slowly reflecting in the share
price like the ORANGE path does.
3) There is also no over-reaction like the BLUE path does, and then
subsequently adjustment back to the correct level.
What if?

Definitions

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2) Memory-less price movement

If the market is efficient (WEAK-FORM),
1) The so-called momentum is nothing. (Google Stock momentum)

momentum is like, if once started on a downward slide, stock

prices develop a propensity to continue sliding. The expected
change in todays price would, in fact, be related (correlated
positively) with the price changes in the past.

2) If the market is efficient, prices only move in response to news. More

precisely, news is any discrepancy between the publics expectation
and the actual realized event.
E.g, Suppose everyone expects RIMs sales should have gone up by
30%. If RIM does announce that its sales has gone up by 30%, it is
not a news. If it has gone up by 29% instead, it is a news, a negative
one though.
3) To detect memory or momentum, we try to see if
Cov(Pt, Pt-i) is significantly different from zero or not, for i 0
What if?

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3) No superior trading strategies

One way to test for market efficiency is to test whether a specific

trading rule or investment strategy, would have CONSISTENTLY
produced abnormally high return.

Problem about such test is:

1. What is abnormal return again? We run into the problem of joint
hypothesis testing again in order to find an expected return as
benchmark.
2. What kind of information you use to construct an investment
strategy? Can you be sure the information you are based on
really reflect what WAS available when the decision to invest
was made.

E.g., Last quarters earning is out around February of next

year. If a WINNING investment strategy says invest in the
top 10 companies last year by Jan, it is not an employable
strategy.

3. What is the cost of implementing a strategy?

What if?

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4) Professionals arent that professional

If professional investors consistently beat the market, we conclude

that the market is not that efficient.

If the market is really efficient, we should not see professionals

making abnormally high returns.

The puzzle is: we do see professionals, like Peter Lynch and Warren
Buffet, having amazing records.

A defense, a weak one though, is:

What if?

Suppose we take a thousand people in a gigantic stadium. Have

them flip coins. Suppose head is winning and tail is losing.
There is no surprise to find a few individual flippers with
unbelievable records of success and failure. Those having 20
heads in a row goes on TV and showcase their exceptional
flipping skills. But we know theyre just plain lucky.

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So whats the value for portfolio management

If capital markets are efficient, should we just throw darts at the

financial page to pick stocks instead of spending time carefully
construct a stock portfolio?

The answer is 3 NO NO NO.

What if?

As you have learnt, you need to have a well-diversified portfolio

that is tailored towards your risk-preference.

Depending on your age, your risk-preference, your current

situation, your tax bracket, and all other relevant factors, your
portfolio should be carefully constructed.

Dont forget that there is value for diversification. There is value

for you to learn options. There is value for you to tailor a future
payoff profile specific to your own needs. Throwing darts to pick
stocks does not guarantee your specific needs are met.

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So whats the value for portfolio management

What if?

The conclusion is:

capital market is neither purely efficient nor purely inefficient.

The right question to ask is the degree of efficiency of capital

market.

The more efficient capital market is, the better off the society.

But even if it is efficient, it doesnt imply knowledge of finance is

useless. Because you have learnt diversification and portfolio
theory that is based on maximizing happiness.

Price movements are random. But it in NO way implies prices

are random. Prices reflect/incorporate available information. The
driving force to their random movements is that news comes
randomly.

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