This study construct reflects an approach not previously entertained and constitutes a significant contribution to the body of extant knowledge, but more importantly to the body of emergent and critical new knowledge for the future consideration of postmodern portfolio theory. The premises inherent in this explanation of risky asset behavior have been developed through an extensive complex of simple and multiple linear regression analyses, nonlinear regression analyses, nonparametric analyses, and event studies with the development and application of nominal, market-adjusted, and risk-specified analysis techniques. Incrementally, through techniques indiscernible in extant literature, this thesis aggregates tests of return randomness, through multiple tests to ascertain the satisfaction of a random walk in security prices, and regression analyses. A major finding of this analysis presents evidence of apparent contragrade randomness, where the risky assets that satisfy the random walk criteria yield test statistics indicative of greater correlation between security price movements and earnings surprises and thus greater predictability, rather than vice versa. This apparent contradiction of state in which randomness and predictability simultaneously coexist is critically relevant to emergent knowledge. Additionally, significant misspecification of risk in the asset-pricing model is considered and corroborated when viewed on multiple granular levels, although when examined on average, the asset-pricing model accurately estimated systematic risk when subjected to a series of analyses premised on multiple temporal constructs and data scenarios. In aggregate, the results of the research and this thesis support the persistence of a significant, nonlinear and asymmetric relationship between earnings surprises and subsequent share price response in the U.S. banking industry, with the most relevant and accurate conclusions derived through the consideration of a risk-specified construct. The data strongly corroborates the existence of an evolutionary paradigmatic redefinition of efficiency predicated on the diffusion of efficiency around the event as evidenced by the realization of delayed return abnormalities. Risk-free assets respond to a singular, complex but generally finite set of price and return drivers. Risky assets, however, tend to consume and exhibit all of those risk-free asset drivers either directly or implicitly, plus an extended range of incremental and arguably more intricate and elegant valuation dynamics. The receipt and recognition of nouveau nouvelles, or new news, and ultimately the assimilation, absorption, diffusion, and reflection of relevant au courant information into the contemporary prices, and hence returns, of risky assets frames the complex dimensions that exert influences within the risk context of the stochastic price movements endemic to risky markets. The speed, degree, and accuracy of information assimilation and diffusion established the construct of the Efficient Market Hypothesis that has occupied l‘anneau central of modern finance and portfolio theory for the past half-century. Despite exhaustive efforts to establish technical and fundamental causal or correlated relationships between security prices and returns and either exogenous or endogenous factors, market evidence continues to be indicative of stochastic price movements, where randomness rules, and returns wander like a drunk walks through a garden.