Book Description

The Efficient Market Hypothesis is an elegant edifice that provides a basis on which the efficiency tests of a stock market are performed at three distinct levels: weak - form, semi-strong form and strong - form. This magnificent edifice of EMH rests on the Random Walk Theory which contends that all price changes reflect a random departure from previous prices. The weak form of the hypothesis states that prices efficiently reflect all information contained in the past series of stock prices whereas the semi-strong form efficiency contends that security prices factor in publicly available information in the market and that the price changes to new equilibrium levels are reflections of that information. The book checks the weak-form and semi-strong form efficiency of the Indian stock market by examining the behaviour of the stock prices in the Indian stock market after the introduction of the various financial sector reforms using different methodologies. By using NSE data over the period 1998-2005 - the period which witnessed some major crises, scams, intense capital market activities and introduction of many new financial instruments - the study examines the information contents of historical stock price data, quarterly earnings announcements, and stock splits. The book also checks for the presence of the Day-of- the- Week Effect in the Indian stock market and enquires whether the introduction of the various instruments and policy changes have made the Indian stock market weak-form and semi-strong form efficient i.e., whether the efficiency of the stock market has been restored in the post-reforms period compared to the situation in the pre-reform period.