Emh

The market could be deceived, but if that was being done deliberately it would no longer be a semi-strong market.

John, can you please elaborate on that? And then can you please confirm if this is valid : the following is a answer to a question named "Phobis" in the kaplan kit : The significance to a listed company of its shares being traded on a stock market which is found to be semi?strong form efficient is that any information relating to the company is quickly and accurately reflected in its share price. Managers will not be able to deceive the market by the timing or presentation of new information, such as annual reports or analysts’ briefings, since the market processes the information quickly and accurately to produce fair prices. Managers should therefore simply concentrate on making financial decisions that increase the wealth of shareholders.

The quote is from the examiners own answer which is perfectly correct (although it depends how you interpret the word 'deceive'. All he is saying is that with a semi-strong market the share price will react quickly and accurately to knew information. So although delaying the timing of information etc. can delay the share price reacting, that will only be in the short term and when the the information is released the share price will react. Whether that can be called deceiving is a moot point, but obviously the question did not require the word deceive to be used :-)

So, in conclusion, the timing of the information being released does have an impact more or less but it cant be called deceiving since the processing of new information is very quick and the market will adjust the share price quite instantly making the so-called "deceiving" useless?

Agreed :-)