CHAPTER 12
SOME LESSONS FROM CAPITAL
MARKET HISTORY
Answers to Concepts Review and Critical Thinking Questions
1. They all wish they had! Since they didn’t, it must have been the case that the stellar performance was
not foreseeable, at least not by most.
2. As in the previous question, it’s easy to see after the fact that the investment was terrible, but it probably
wasn’t so easy ahead of time.
3. No, stocks are riskier. Some investors are highly risk averse, and the extra possible return doesn’t attract
them relative to the extra risk.
4. On average, the only return that is earned is the required return—investors buy assets with returns in
excess of the required return (positive NPV), bidding up the price and thus causing the return to fall to
5. The market is not weak form efficient.
6. Yes, historical information is also public information; weak form efficiency is a subset of semi-strong
form efficiency.
7. Ignoring trading costs, on average, such investors merely earn what the market offers; stock investments
all have a zero NPV. If trading costs exist, then these investors lose by the amount of the costs.
8. Unlike gambling, the stock market is a positive sum game; everybody can win. Also, speculators
provide liquidity to markets and thus help to promote efficiency.
9. The EMH only says, within the bounds of increasingly strong assumptions about the information
processing of investors, that assets are fairly priced. An implication of this is that, on average, the
typical market participant cannot earn excessive profits from a particular trading strategy. However, that
10. a. If the market is not weak form efficient, then this information could be acted on and a profit earned
from following the price trend. Under (2), (3), and (4), this information is fully impounded in the
