Question

Review the discussion and discuss whether you agree or disagree with the content and how can efficient market hypothesis be strong or weak.

The efficient market hypothesis (EMH), developed by Eugene Fama, explains that public trading markets provide efficiency demonstrated by market security prices. The EMH theory contends that since markets are efficient and current prices reflect all information, attempts to outperform the market are essentially a game of chance rather than one of skill.

The EMH is proposed in varying degrees from strong to weak. Weak belief or adherence to the EMH theory assumes that past security market price and volume data are not relevant to the current security market price, arguing that excess returns cannot be obtained by using technical analysis. Semi-strong belief or adherence to the EMH theory assumes that current security market pricing already factors available market and public information, arguing that excess returns cannot be obtained by using fundamental analysis. Strong belief or adherence to the EMH theory by a company manager or investor creates a perfect market assumption which contends that all market, non-market, public and private inside information is contained within the market security pricing. The strong form of EMH argues that consistent excess returns are not possible. Although it is a cornerstone of modern financial theory, the EMH is highly controversial and often disputed (Investopedia, 2018). Skeptics of the EMH theory point to consistently successful investors like Warren Buffet in argument of how invalid the theory is.

Regardless of an investors belief in the EMH, performing a financial statement analysis on a company can provide a significant advantage to an investor. A financial statement analysis provides an investor with understanding of a company’s past, current and future, and performance. Utilizing ratios provided within a company financial statement analysis, an investor can measure the company’s ability to pay current liabilities, turnover and cash conversion cycle, ability to pay debts and profitability.

Answer 1

I agree with the context .
Example
Prashant is a dealer working at the Punjab Stock Exchange. He has built up a current enthusiasm for speculations and has no related knowledge. He watched that the cost of Mohali Sports Equipment drops on Monday and ascends on Friday. On 7 January 2013, he obtained 100 offers of MSE's stock for 11 INR for each offer. He was very disheartened to see that the cost was 10.5 INR for each offer on Friday, 11 January 2013.
The market is by all accounts frail frame proficient, in light of the fact that it isn't giving Prashant a chance to gain abundance return by simply picking stocks in view of some past value design.
Efficient Market Hypothesis: Strong, Semi-Strong, and Weak
If I were to choose one thing from the academic world of finance that I think more individual investors need to know about, it would be the efficient market hypothesis.
The name “efficient market hypothesis” sounds terribly arcane. But its significance is huge for investors, and (at a basic level) it’s not very hard to understand.
So what is the efficient market hypothesis (EMH)?
As professor Eugene Fama (the man most often credited as the father of EMH) explains*, in an efficient market, “the current price [of an investment] should reflect all available information…so prices should change only based on unexpected new information.”
It’s important to note that, as Fama himself has said, the efficient market hypothesis is a model, not a rule. It describes how markets tend to work. It does not dictate how they must work.
EMH is typically broken down into three forms (weak, semi-strong, and strong) each with their own implications and varying levels of data to back them up.
Weak Efficient Market Hypothesis
The weak form of EMH says that you cannot predict future stock prices on the basis of past stock prices. Weak-form EMH is a shot aimed directly at technical analysis. If past stock prices don’t help to predict future prices, there’s no point in looking at them — no point in trying to discern patterns in stock charts.
From what I’ve seen, most academic studies seem to show that weak-form EMH holds up pretty well. (Take, for example, the recent study which tested over 5,000 technical analysis rules and showed them to be unsuccessful at generating abnormally high returns.)
Semi-Strong Efficient Market Hypothesis
The semi-strong form of EMH says that you cannot use any published information to predict future prices. Semi-strong EMH is a shot aimed at fundamental analysis. If all published information is already reflected in a stock’s price, then there’s nothing to be gained from looking at financial statements or from paying somebody (i.e., a fund manager) to do that for you.
Semi-strong EMH has also held up reasonably well. For example, the number of active fund managers who outperform the market has historically been no more than can be easily attributed to pure randomness.
Semi-strong EMH does not appear to be ironclad, however, as there have been a small handful of investors (e.g., Peter Lynch, Warren Buffet) whose outperformance is of a sufficient degree that it’s extremely difficult to explain as just luck.
The trick, of course, is that it’s nearly impossible to identify such an investor in time to profit from it. You must either:
Invest with a fund manager after only a few years of outperformance (at which point his/her performance could easily be due to luck), or
Wait until the manager has provided enough data so that you can be sure that his performance is due to skill (at which point his fund will be sufficiently large that he’ll have trouble outperforming in the future).
Strong Efficient Market Hypothesis
The strong form of EMH says that everything that is knowable — even unpublished information — has already been reflected in present prices. The implication here would be that even if you have some inside information and could legally trade based upon it, you would gain nothing by doing so.
The way I see it, strong-form EMH isn’t terribly relevant to most individual investors, as it’s not too often that we have information not available to the institutional investors.
Why You Should Care About EMH
Given the degree to which they’ve held up, the implications of weak and semi-strong EMH cannot be overstated. In short, the takeaway is that there’s very little evidence indicating that individual investors can do anything better than simply buy & hold a low-cost, diversified portfolio.