To more fully understand how expectations affect securities prices, we need to lookat how information in the market affects these prices. To do this we examine theefficient market hypothesis (also referred to as the theory of efficient capitalmarkets), which states that prices of securities in financial markets fully reflect allavailable information. But what does this mean?You may recall from Chapter 3 that the rate of return from holding a securityequals the sum of the capital gain on the security (the change in the price) plusany cash payments, divided by the initial purchase price of the security:(1)where R = rate of return on the security held from time t to time t + 1 (say, theend of 2011 to the end of 2012)Pt + 1 = price of the security at time t + 1, the end of the holding periodPt = the price of the security at time t, the beginning of the holding periodC = cash payment (coupon or dividend payments) made in the period tto t + 1Let’s look at the expectation of this return at time t, the beginning of the holding period. Because the current price and the cash payment C are known at the beginning, the only variable in the definition of the return that is uncertain is the price nextperiod, Pt+ 1.1 Denoting the expectation of the security’s price at the end of the holding period as , the expected return Re isThe efficient market hypothesis views expectations as equal to optimal forecastsusing all available information. What exactly does this mean? An optimal forecast isthe best guess of the future using all available information. This does not mean thatthe forecast is perfectly accurate, but only that it is the best possible given the available information. This can be written more formally aswhich in turn implies that the expected return on the security will equal the optimal forecast of the return:Re = Rof (2)Unfortunately, we cannot observe either Re or , so the equations above bythemselves do not tell us much about how the financial market behaves. However,if we can devise some way to measure the value of Re, these equations will haveimportant implications for how prices of securities change in financial markets
To more fully understand how expectations affect securities prices, we need to lookat how information in the market affects these prices. To do this we examine theefficient market hypothesis (also referred to as the theory of efficient capitalmarkets), which states that prices of securities in financial markets fully reflect allavailable information. But what does this mean?You may recall from Chapter 3 that the rate of return from holding a securityequals the sum of the capital gain on the security (the change in the price) plusany cash payments, divided by the initial purchase price of the security:(1)where R = rate of return on the security held from time t to time t + 1 (say, theend of 2011 to the end of 2012)Pt + 1 = price of the security at time t + 1, the end of the holding periodPt = the price of the security at time t, the beginning of the holding periodC = cash payment (coupon or dividend payments) made in the period tto t + 1Let’s look at the expectation of this return at time t, the beginning of the holding period. Because the current price and the cash payment C are known at the beginning, the only variable in the definition of the return that is uncertain is the price nextperiod, Pt+ 1.1 Denoting the expectation of the security’s price at the end of the holding period as , the expected return Re isThe efficient market hypothesis views expectations as equal to optimal forecastsusing all available information. What exactly does this mean? An optimal forecast isthe best guess of the future using all available information. This does not mean thatthe forecast is perfectly accurate, but only that it is the best possible given the available information. This can be written more formally aswhich in turn implies that the expected return on the security will equal the optimal forecast of the return:Re = Rof (2)Unfortunately, we cannot observe either Re or , so the equations above bythemselves do not tell us much about how the financial market behaves. However,if we can devise some way to measure the value of Re, these equations will haveimportant implications for how prices of securities change in financial markets<br>
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