Capital markets efficiency

Question

What is capital markets efficiency?

Answer 1

In an efficient capital market, security prices adjust rapidly to the infusion of new information and therefore, the current security prices reflect all available information. There are a set of assumptions which make us familiar with the efficient capital market which are as follows:

a) A large number of profit maximising participants analyse and value securities, each independently of each other.

b) New information regarding securities comes to the market in a random fashion and the timing of one announcement is generally independent of each other.

c) Profit maximising investors adjust security prices rapidly to reflect the effect of new information.

In an efficient market, the expected returns implicit in the current price of the security should reflect its risk which means that investors who buy at these informationally efficient prices should receive a rate of return that is consistent with the perceived risk of stock.