Measures of a firm's financial strength forecast stock returns. The relation between financial condition and future returns, however, is consistent with two explanations: (1) changes in investors' expectations are impounded gradually over time and, (2) riskier firms - with higher discount rates...

Aggregate demand by insiders predicts time-series variation in the value premium — between 1978 and 2004, a one standard deviation increase in aggregate insider demand in the previous six months forecasts a 53 basis point decline (6.54% annualized) in the expected value premium in the month...

We examine whether institutional investors follow each other into and out of the same industries. Our empirical results reveal strong evidence of institutional industry herding. The cross-sectional correlation between the fraction of institutional traders buying an industry this quarter and the...

There is a strong inverse relation between insider trading and institutional demand the same quarter and over the previous year. Our analysis suggests a combination of factors contribute to this relation. First, institutional investors are more likely to provide the liquidity necessary for...

Firm-specific risk climbed steadily between 1962 and 1999, but fell sharply between 2000 and 2003. We hypothesize that changes in the composition of the market, rather than fundamental changes in the economy or return-generating process, drive these changes in aggregate firm-specific risk over...

The success of momentum strategies over the past 20 years is predominately driven by the last month in each quarter. Excluding Januaries (a month in which lag losers typically outperform lag winners), the average monthly return to a momentum strategy in non-quarter-ending months is 59 basis...

A number of recent studies test whether institutional investors, as a group, engage in momentum trading. Given directly observable returns and changes in institutional ownership, it is surprising that these studies reach vastly different conclusions. I re-examine the relation between changes in...

Recent work suggests that sentiment traders shift from safer to more speculative stocks when sentiment increases. Exploiting these cross-sectional patterns and changes in share ownership, we find that sentiment metrics capture institutional rather than individual investors' demand shocks. We...

Consistent with the well-documented relation between political orientation and psychological traits, hedge funds' political orientations are related to their portfolio decisions. Relative to politically conservative hedge funds, politically liberal hedge funds exhibit a preference for smaller...

Molecular genetic endowments related to cognition, personality, health, and body shape, established at least half a century prior, predict an individual's risk aversion, beliefs regarding the distribution of expected equity returns, and equity market participation. We estimate that approximately...