Random Walk Hypothesis: A Historical Perspective with Select Review of Empirical Work

Abstract

Random Walk Model is applied for testing the Price efficiency of well informed markets. Successive price changes happen after the arrival of new information, which is a result of random shocks  and the given price of commodities or shares reflects all the past information related to the commodities or shares. While normal walk has a sequence, random walk has no sequence or patterns. There has been questions from long back whether share price changes are random walk. If, share prices are proved to be random walks, then the stock market is said to be efficient in its easiest form called weak form.