Financial market is the place where buying and selling of shares and securities happen. This acts as a mean for the buyers to sell their products. We will look at the financial markets of two countries namely United States and India.

United States financial market is considered to be the oldest financial markets. Trading was happening in their history since 13th century. The financial market condition in a country directly affects the economy of the country. The currency value of the country also has a direct relationship with the financial market situation. For this same reason, the currency value of dollar is always high compared to other countries.

Till 1987, nobody had a fear of the risk involved in financial market investment. But, the ‘Black Monday’ – October 19, 1987 showed the other side of risks involved in financial market. Many people brought shares and securities using margin values where the brokerage firms contribute a percentage of the amount for the investor to buy shares.

If the share or the security price goes down then the investor should pay back the amount contributed by the brokerage firms. So, when the prices of the shares had a temporary drop, every brokerage firms started margin call to the investors asking for the payment. Scares arouse among people and every investor started selling shares and there was no one to buy shares. Shares and securities were stagnated in the exchanges.

Financial market efficiency is one of the main terms used in financial markets. Financial market efficiency can neither be 100% efficient nor 100% inefficient. But, there are many theories and research done on market efficiency.

There is an old saying that a financial market is said to be efficient if the prices fully reflects the available information. In financial markets, efficiency refers to the efficiency of resource allocation. This is also called as allocation efficiency. An efficient financial market should produce right goods at the right place for the right people.