Efficient Market Hypothesis

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The paradox of efficient market hypothesis is that some investors have to believe that market for the market to continue to be efficient. Explain your understanding of the above paradox. Include in your discussion the forms of market hypothesis. The paradox of efficient market is that if every investor believed a market was efficient, then the market would not be efficient because no one would analyze securities. In effect, efficient markets depend on market participants who believe the market is inefficient and trade securities in an attempt to outperform the market. The main premise of efficient market hypothesis is that prices of securities always reflect all available information about them. The consequence of the market efficiency is that prices of the assets are rational and that they are unpredictable. If the assets are mispriced, rational traders will arbitrage away any deviation from its fundamental value. According to Eugene F.Fama, Random Walks in stock. Market prices financial analysts Journal, Sep/Oct 1965; an efficient market is defined as “a market where there are large numbers of rational, profit-maximisers 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.” In an efficient market, competition among the many intelligent participants leads to a situation where, at any point in time, actual prices of individual securities already reflect the effects of information based on events that have already occurred and on events which, as of now, the market expects to take place in the future. That is, in an efficient market at any point in time, the actual price of a security will be a good estimate of its intrinsic value. Any available information which could influence a company’s stock performance should already be reflected in

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