Optimal investment of firms implies that expected stock returns are tied with the expected marginal benefit of investment divided by the marginal cost of investment. Winners have higher expected growth and expected marginal productivity (two major components of the marginal benefit of...

This paper presents predictability evidence of the implied-expected variance difference, or variance risk premium, for financial market risk premia: (1) the variance difference measure predicts a positive risk premium across equity, bond, currency, and credit markets; (2) such a short-run...

For a comprehensive set of 21 equity premium predictors we find dramatic disagreement between out-of-sample predictability results depending on the choice of the sample split date. To resolve this issue we propose reporting in graphical form the out-of-sample predictability criteria for every...

The existence of reversals and momentum in equity returns has challenged proponents of efficient markets for over 30 years. Although explanations for momentum profits based on cross-sectional mean return dispersion have been proposed, evidence of time-series autocorrelation from Fama-MacBeth...

We analyze the performance of a comprehensive set of equity premium forecasting strategies. All strategies were found to outperform the mean in previous academic publications. However, using a multiple testing framework to account for data snooping, our findings support Welch and Goyal (2008) in...

This paper reviews the predictability evidence of the variance risk premium: (1) it predicts significant positive risk premiums across equity, bond, currency, and credit markets; (2) the predictability peaks at a few month horizons and dies out afterwards; (3) such a short-run predictability is...

We find a negative relationship between the individual stocks' semivariance premia, defined as the difference between the risk-neutral and physical expected downside semivariances, and future stock returns. The high-minus-low hedge portfolio earns the excess return of -64 (-46) basis points per...

The emergence of algorithmic high-frequency trading in the market for credit risk affords accurate inference of new risk measures. When combined with machine learning predictive methods, these measures forecast substantial future changes in firms' credit and equity risk premiums in...

I derive two valid forecasting models of the equity premium in monthly frequency, based on little more than no-arbitrage: A “predictability timing” version of partial least squares, given that predictability is theoretically time varying; and a least squares model with realized market...