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Efficient markets? No way!

David Crawford - 03 June 2010

There are various schools of thought about how financial markets operate. Some subscribe to the efficient market hypothesis. This states that all publicly available information is used by market participants to form prices and in the absence of insider information there is no advantage that one participant can gain against another. The idea is that in this way the market is operating efficiently. However, ultimately this means that arriving at the future price is simply a random process based on information as and when it becomes known. Obviously proponents of this theory would suggest low cost passive funds as the best way to participate in markets. They would also suggest that a monkey can deliver as good a performance as a professional fund manager...

The argument against this theory is that markets are inefficient due to the way that market participants process information: on any given day people may respond to the same information in a different way. For example, the release of a GDP number that is above consensus could be a positive sign for the bulls that economic growth is coming through, or a negative sign for bears that interest rates will need to go up in order to reign in growth and avoid inflation. Thus, sentiment and emotion are the most powerful market drivers.

I am strongly in the inefficient market camp. Over the last ten years market prices have halved then doubled then halved and then nearly doubled again. Can anybody seriously suggest that the market was fairly and efficiently valued at all times? No. To me, fear and greed underpin most actions in the market. Human nature means that most people prefer to buy a rising share price than a falling one. Hence there are lots of people that will buy into the market once it has had a good move up but these same people will sell if the market starts to fall.

This is capitulation both ways. They buy when they have been missing out on the rally - here greed becomes the prevailing emotion. They sell when they cannot take any more pain -this is when fear has taken over. But herein lies the opportunity for the patient and brave investor. I am actually not sure brave is the right word as you are being paid to take the risk but you certainly have to be prepared to act alone as most people will be very quiet when markets are on their knees.

Just over a month ago the FTSE was pushing above 5800, everybody was bullish, and the economic recovery was coming through. Yet we all knew China was applying the brakes, we knew Greece was in trouble and we knew that many stocks had done very, very well over the previous twelve months. A month later, with the market down more than 15%, the same people who were saying ‘buy' are now saying ‘sell' or are trotting out all the negatives.

For me, the last few weeks completely confirm that markets are inefficient and that my job is to work to profit from other people's foolishness. Sounds easy? Well it should be....

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