Now, I am no economist. Nor do I profess to understand financial markets. But I am interested in the stock market. As someone who studies how and where power is gained and exercised, watching the stock market today is like peering through the window of an exclusive gentleman’s club of old. Pushing your ear up to the glass you get to understand the goings on of the middling classes.

Such voyeurism brought me into contact with the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) or efficient market theory. The idea behind EMH is (briefly) that no one person can possess more knowledge than an entire market. The information a market possesses equals the sum total of all information on which market transactions are based. The more sources from which a market (or any entity) gathers its knowledge the more it will know and the more efficiently it will be able to set the price of commodities. As such, because the market is the sum total of all transaction it will have better knowledge of what prices should be than any government, financial analyst or group of analysts.

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