Efficient Market Theory vs Behavioural Finance

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Efficient market theory vs behavioural finance The efficient market hypothesis was first introduced by Eugene F. Fama through his thesis in the 1960’s he defined an efficient market 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 important current information is almost freely available to all participants.’ This is one of the agreements in favour of the hypothesis that in the stock market the value of shares can be efficiently or accurately priced and that if new information regarding a business it will be rationally transferred into the businesses share value. Whereas behavioural finance theorists argue that people who have an interest in securities do not behave rationally and take emotion for example in consideration before making a decision Chuvakhin, Nikolai states that ‘investors have Cognitive biases’ he defines cognitive bias as ‘an imperfection in human perception of reality´. Burton Malkiels book A Random Walk down Wall Street (1973) made the assumption of irrational markets accepted by stating that the decisions made on market information as realistic as a fictional model. To back up his theory he used sound historical data to support his theory such as the great depression and mainly the Dutch tulip craze where certain types of tulip became popular but expensive, tulipmania developed where they became more expensive and people viewed them as a ‘smart’ investment. Enormous profits were made and people traded jewellery and land to obtain the prized possession, the price eventually got so high that everyone decided to sell, soon everyone followed and the value of the tulip decreased dramatically therefore creating a snowball effect and panic set in. This argument has taken shape in the last decade by economists and financial

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