This study aimed to examine the weak form efficiency of the
Damascus Securities Exchange (DSE). The study used the monthly
returns, adjusted for thin trading, of firms listed in the Damascus
Securities Exchange from 2009 until 2014 and applied var
ious tests
to examine the random walk behavior in returns: the unit root test,
the autocorrelation test, the runs test and the GARCH model. To
take the impact of the Syrian crisis into account when judging the
efficiency of the market, the study period was divided into three
periods, the pre-crisis period, the crisis period and the whole period.
The results revealed inability to reject the weak form efficient
market hypothesis for more than half of the studied firms. Also it
showed that the Syrian crisis, in general, has negatively affected the
efficiency of most of the studied firms.
