Debate about market efficiency is forever. That includes the ocassional commentary from the man who started it all, or at least played a pivotal role in bringing the idea to the financial fore, starting in the 1960s. What’s it all about? You could spend the better part of a year reviewing the academic literature, and the remainder of the decade catching up on the various threads of discussion–pro, con and everything in between. For the short, short, short recap, a line from Peter Bernstein’s classic Capital Ideas sums up Eugene Fama’s research as well as anyone, particularly the early work: “Fama’s point is that, on the average, information moves so fast that the market as a whole knows more than any individual investor can know.”

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It’s the weather, they say. The loss of 36,000 jobs in last month’s nonfarm payroll count may have been a victim of the snow, the Labor Department advises with this morning’s release of the February employment report. The unemployment rate, at least, was unchanged last month, albeit at a high 9.7%.

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