Can Return Forecasts Enhance International Asset Allocation? Evidence from the Sum-of-Parts Approach

We examine whether real-time return forecasts are valuable to an investor looking to allocate their portfolio across a wide selection of countries. We expand the Sum-of-Parts (SoP) method for forecasting stock returns to an international setup by adding FX returns as an additional component. We use two different methods to calculate the forecasts. The first method (Empirical Mode Decomposition) uses wavelets to frequency decompose each part into locally independent sub-signals, while the second method combines historical averages and predictive regressions. We then compare the performance of various types of portfolia under the SoP and historical average forecasts, with rebalancing taking place every period. We find that SoP forecasts deliver economic gains over the historical average, especially when the EMD method is implemented. We further demonstrate that economic gains can be generated for investors based in various different countries