Market Efficiency and the Johannesburg Securities Exchange

Table of Contents 1. Abstract 3 2. Introduction 4 3. The Johannesburg Securities Exchange 4 3.1. History 4 3.2. Function 5 4. The Efficient Market Hypothesis 5 4.1. Strong From 6 4.2. Semi-strong form 6 4.3. Weak form 7 4.4. Random Walk Hypothesis 8 5. Empirical evidence 9 5.1. Joint Hypothesis Problem 10 5.2. Capital Asset Pricing Model 11 5.3. Empirical evidence on investor overreaction 12 6. Comparisons to international stock markets 13 7. Conclusion 15 9. Bibliography 16

1. Abstract
The JSE is a securities exchange based in South Africa and is considered to be the largest on the African continent. More than 400 stocks are traded on the JSE and as a result, it is important that investors are aware of the relevant information regarding stocks, which would enable investors to make sound investments. The Efficient Market Hypothesis is used to ascertain whether certain stocks and their respective prices in a particular market reflect all necessary information, which would illustrate an efficient market (Fama, 1970). Carrado and Jordan (2000) supports the aforementioned statement by affirming that markets are efficient in terms of sources of specific information, on condition that information is not exploited to earn above average returns. Furthermore, Fama (1965) explained the efficiency of markets and their stock prices by analyzing the three forms of market efficiency, namely; the weak, strong and semi-strong forms of efficiency. However, it must be mentioned that ascertaining the form of efficiency used by the JSE is no easy feat due to the fact that different researches produce different results. This will be explained further in the article upon presenting the empirical evidence. With that being said, the aim of this paper is to present