The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) is a hypothesis in financial economics that states that asset prices reflect all available information. A direct implication is that it is impossible to "beat the market" consistently on a risk-adjusted basis since market prices should only react to new information.

Because the EMH is formulated in terms of risk adjustment, it only makes testable predictions when coupled with a particular model of risk. As a result, research in financial economics since at least the 1990s has focused on market anomalies, that is, deviations from specific models of risk.

The idea that financial market returns are difficult to predict goes back to Bachelier, Mandelbrot, and Samuelson, but is closely associated with Eugene Fama, in part due to his influential 1970 review of the theoretical and empirical research. The EMH provides the basic logic for modern risk-based theories of asset prices, and frameworks such as consumption-based asset pricing and intermediary asset pricing can be thought of as the combination of a model of risk with the EMH.

Suppose that a piece of information about the value of a stock (say, about a future merger) is widely available to investors. If the price of the stock does not already reflect that information, then investors can trade on it, thereby moving the price until the information is no longer useful for trading.

Note that this thought experiment does not necessarily imply that stock prices are unpredictable. For example, suppose that the piece of information in question says that a financial crisis is likely to come soon. Investors typically do not like to hold stocks during a financial crisis, and thus investors may sell stocks until the price drops enough so that the expected return compensates for this risk.

How efficient markets are (and are not) linked to the random walk theory can be described through the fundamental theorem of asset pricing. This theorem provides mathematical predictions regarding the price of a stock, assuming that there is no arbitrage, that is, assuming that there is no risk-free way to trade profitably. Formally, if arbitrage is impossible, then the theorem predicts that the price of a stock is the discounted value of its future price and dividend:

where ${\displaystyle E_{t}}$ is the expected value given information at time ${\displaystyle t}$, ${\displaystyle M_{t+1}}$ is the stochastic discount factor, and ${\displaystyle D_{t+1}}$ is the dividend the stock pays next period.

Note that this equation does not generally imply a random walk. However, if we assume the stochastic discount factor is constant and the time interval is short enough so that no dividend is being paid, we have