The market has only a few jobs:
Be fair.
Be fully disclosative.
Be low on friction (like trading costs, commissions, etc.)
If a market does all of the above, it wins. If it doesn't, it fails.
So...what's a failure in modern era? Well, the mortgage crisis of 2008/9 was one failure. That mortgage/housing market wasn't fairly disclosative of risk, and a ton of people were given loans who shouldn't have gotten them. They were then evicted and misery followed. So whose fault was that market failure? Should the banks have "known better" and not loaned 500 grand to a gardener married to a substitute school teacher with three kids and no savings, even if they technically qualified? (And yes, the definition of "qualified" clearly had to change.)
Had the bank denied that enormous loan to people who couldn't afford it, wouldn't there then be an outcry from journalists wanting to get clicks to the blog about how unfair evil corporate America is, in not letting the little guy buy into the American Dream? There'd then be a picture of the bank CEO's corporate jet, and politicians would milk the story for votes.
So...yeah, markets fail in different ways. One thing we know for certain: whatever the market rules are today, they'll be different next year.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is Fair Market Value?3 Views
Finance a la shmoop what is fair market value? double bubble toil and trouble [Man casting a curse]
what is the fair price of this pile of rubble so this term revolves around the
notion of fair like what is fair and by the way who told you the world was fair
anyway all right but financially fair or at least fair market means what the
market will fairly and legally pay for an asset that's fair and so that means [Man discussing financial fair]
fair as in not cash from a Somalian warlords leather briefcase but rather
fair as in the legitimate selling price of this excellent two-bedroom three-bath
shoebox in Palo Alto selling for 3 million dollars today for something to
be "of fair market" the buyer has to be knowledgeable and
unpressured i.e the somalian warlord does not in fact have a gun aimed
at the buyers head or any other body part and generally speaking [Gun aims at buyers body parts]
the market itself has to be a legitimate market like real estate or jewelry or
stocks or bonds or whatever if it's an illegitimate market well it's a probably
wondering why it was born out of wedlock so you can't do that
when you assess fair market value things have to be legal and liquid and well
fair whatever the market will pay for it that's the fair value [Hand dealing out cash]
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