Three-Factor Model of Asset Pricing: Empirical Evidence from the Indian Stock Market

Prediction of price fluctuations has always been interesting for academicians, practitioners and investors. However, price fluctuations can never be exactly predicted, but some trends can be drawn in price fluctuations. The first landmark in stock pricing was Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) given by William Sharpe in 1964. After that a deluge of pragmatic evidence came up and challenged the CAPM. Despite being criticized by several researchers, CAPM became a basis for the development of other models. Fama and French gave a three-factor model and claimed that it better explains the price fluctuations of stocks than CAPM, and the anomalies of CAPM are captured by the three-factor model. The present study is an attempt to find the explanatory power of Fama and French three-factor model in the Indian stock market and covers the period from April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2016. The Fama and French three-factor model failed to capture the individual asset returns. On the other hand, it explains the portfolio asset returns sorted on the basis of size and value. A significant effect of market risk premium, size premium and value premium was detected on the returns of the assets.