This paper is an investigation into the determinants of asymmetries in stock returns. We develop a series of cross-sectional regression specifications which attempt to forecast skewness in the daily returns of individual stocks. Negative skewness is most pronounced in stocks that have...

We investigate the portfolio choices of mean-variance-optimizing investors who use sample evidence to update prior beliefs centered on either risk-based or characteristic-based pricing models. With dogmatic beliefs in such models and an unconstrained ratio of position size to capital, optimal...

The Critical Finance Review commissioned Li, Novy-Marx, and Velikov (2017) and Pontiff and Singla (2019) to replicate the results in Pástor and Stambaugh (2003). Both studies successfully replicate our market-wide liquidity measure and find similar estimates of the liquidity risk premium. In...

We argue that active management's popularity is not puzzling despite the industry's poor track record. Our explanation features decreasing returns to scale: As the industry's size increases, every manager's ability to outperform passive benchmarks declines. The poor track record occurred before...