This paper reexamines the explanatory power of beta, firm size, book-to-market equity, and the earnings-price ratio for average stock returns, correcting two currently controversial biases: selection bias in COMPUSTAT and the errors-in-variables (EIV) bias. After filling in the missing data on...

By using an extensive dataset of more than 32 million messages on 91 firms posted on the Yahoo! Finance message board over the period January 2005 to December 2010, we examine whether investor sentiment as expressed in posted messages has predictive power for stock returns, volatility, and...

This paper examines the time variations of expected momentum profits using a two-state Markov switching model with time-varying transition probabilities to evaluate the empirical relevance of recent rational theories of momentum profits. We find that in the expansion state the expected returns...

type="main" xml:id="acfi12009-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>This paper examines the sources of momentum profits of countries exhibiting and not exhibiting momentum and compares the differences in the underlying factors determining momentum profits between these two groups of countries. We find remarkable...</p>

Futures exchanges raise margins in environments characterized by recent substantial increases in futures price volatility, and they raise margins in contracts that have recently shown the largest volatility increase. Volatility then tends to fall. This reduction is smaller - especially the...

This article compares econometric model specifications that have been proposed to explain the commonly observed characteristics of the unconditional distribution of daily stock returns. The empirical results indicate that the most likely ranking is (1) intertemporal dependence models, (2)...

Margin requirements in metal futures contracts have a negative impact on market participation that seems causal because it is absent from a benchmark group of metals that do not undergo similar margin changes. It is less clear whether margins restrict primarily rational or irrational investors....

To explain post-earnings announcement drift, we construct a risk factor related to unexpected earnings surprise, and propose a four-factor model by adding this risk factor to Fama and French's (1993), (1995) three-factor model. This earnings surprise risk factor provides a remarkable improvement...