Question
A generation ago, financial economists in academia widely embraced the efficient market hypothesis. An influential survey article by Eugene Fama (1970) titled Efficient Capital Markets
A generation ago, financial economists in academia widely embraced the efficient market hypothesis. An influential survey article by Eugene Fama (1970) titled "Efficient Capital Markets" exemplified this acceptance. The prevailing belief was that securities markets were highly efficient in incorporating information about individual stocks and the overall stock market. It was commonly held that when new information emerged, it spread rapidly and was immediately reflected in security prices. Consequently, neither technical analysis (which examines past stock prices to predict future prices) nor fundamental analysis (which analyzes financial information like company earnings and asset values to identify undervalued stocks) could enable investors to outperform a randomly selected portfolio of stocks with comparable risk.
The efficient market hypothesis is linked to the notion of a "random walk," a term used in finance literature to describe a price series where subsequent price changes deviate randomly from previous prices. The underlying logic of the random walk concept is that if information flows freely and is instantaneously incorporated into stock prices, tomorrow's price change will only depend on tomorrow's news and will be independent of today's price changes. However, news is inherently unpredictable, resulting in unpredictable and random price changes. Consequently, prices fully reflect all known information, and even uninformed investors who purchase a diversified portfolio at the prevailing market prices will achieve returns as favorable as those obtained by experts.
Required:
Write a Term Paper detailing whether the Efficient Market Hypothesis will hold for emerging markets such as the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
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