In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive study of tests for mean-variance spanning. Under the regression framework of Huberman and Kandel (1987), we provide geometric interpretations not only for the popular likelihood ratio test, but also for two new spanning tests based on the Wald and...

While macroeconomic variables have been used extensively to forecast the U.S. equity risk premium and build models to explain it, relatively little attention has been paid to the technical stock market indicators widely employed by practitioners. Our paper fills this gap by studying the...

This paper reviews the literature on Bayesian portfolio analysis. Information about events, macro conditions, asset pricing theories, and security-driving forces can serve as useful priors in selecting optimal portfolios. Moreover, parameter uncertainty and model uncertainty are practical...

We provide the first comprehensive analysis of option information for pricing the cross-section of stock returns by jointly examining extensive sets of firm and option characteristics. Using portfolio sorts and high-dimensional methods, we show that certain option measures have significant...

For the popular mean-variance portfolio choice problem in the case without a risk-free asset, we develop a new portfolio strategy to mitigate estimation risk. We show that in both calibrations and real datasets, optimally combining the sample global minimum variance portfolio with a sample...

In this paper, we propose a cross-sectional option momentum strategy that is based on the risk component of delta-hedged option returns. We find strong evidence of risk continuation in option returns. Specifically, options with a high risk component significantly outperform those with a low risk...

We survey the literature on stock return forecasting, highlighting the challenges faced by forecasters as well as strategies for improving return forecasts. We focus on U.S. equity premium forecastability and illustrate key issues via an empirical application based on updated data. Some studies...

In this paper, we provide a novel performance analysis of three widely used survey forecasts, by investigating how well they predict the stock market. Judging by their out-of-sample R2s, a standard measure in the market predictability literature, we find that none of the survey forecasts...

We find that anomaly returns are generally unchanged during FOMC days, though a small group of anomalies may have substantial changes. But if they do, their changes exacerbate pricing errors. Hence, our evidence challenges existing studies that find that the CAPM performs better over the FOMC...

The unconditional mean-variance efficiency of the Morgan Stanley Capital International world equity index is investigated. Using data from 16 OECD countries and Hong Kong and maintaining the assumption of multivariate normality, we cannot reject the efficiency of the benchmark. However, residual...