What Is Random Walk Hypothesis?

Random walk hypothesis

The random walk hypothesis may be derived from the weak-form efficient markets hypothesis, which is based on the assumption that market participants take full account of any information contained in past price movements (but not necessarily other public information). In his book A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Princeton economist Burton Malkiel said that technical forecasting tools such as pattern analysis must ultimately be self-defeating.

"The problem is that once such a regularity is known to market participants, people will act in such a way that prevents it from happening in the future."

In a 1999 response to Malkiel, Andrew Lo and Craig McKinlay collected empirical papers that questioned the hypothesis' applicability that suggested a non-random and possibly predictive component to stock price movement, though they were careful to point out that rejecting random walk does not necessarily invalidate EMH.

Technicians say the EMH and random walk theories both ignore the realities of markets, in that participants are not completely rational and that current price moves are not independent of previous moves.

Critics reply that one can find virtually any chart pattern after the fact, but that this does not prove that such patterns are predictable. Technicians maintain that both theories would also invalidate numerous other trading strategies such as index arbitrage, statistical arbitrage and many other trading systems.