Recent studies have proposed a large set of powerful characteristics-based factors in the stock market. This study examines the pricing of these factors using portfolios that are formed by directly sorting stocks based on their exposure to these factors. These beta-sorted portfolios have very...

Using portfolios that are formed by directly sorting stocks based on their exposure to characteristics-based factors, earlier studies find that these beta-sorted portfolios have very large ex post factor beta spreads. However, the return spreads between high- and low-beta firms are typically...

We propose a novel measure of investment plans, namely, expected investment growth (EIG) and find stocks with high EIG outperform stocks with low EIG by 17% per annum. This premium can be generated in a neoclassical model with the investment plan friction, in which a firm's expected returns...

Recent models of the value premium typically endogenously link B/M to firm-specific attributes. The value firms earn higher subsequent returns because these firms command a higher risk premium due to a higher default probability, lower profitability, higher operating leverage, shorter cash flow...

Motivated by psychological evidence on limited investor attention and anchoring, we propose two proxies for the degree to which traders under- and over-react to news, namely, the nearness to the Dow 52-week high and the nearness to the Dow historical high, respectively. We find that nearness to...