While there is a large literature documenting the profitability of momentum strategies, their implementation is afflicted with many difficulties. Most importantly, high turnover and costs to hold short positions, especially in small-cap stocks, result in high transaction costs. We restrict our...

We analyze whether newspaper content can predict aggregate future stock returns. Our study is based on articles published in the Handelsblatt, a leading German financial newspaper, from July 1989 to March 2011. We summarize newspaper content in a systematic way by constructing word-count indices...

Based on the theory of static replication of variance swaps we assess the sign and magnitude of variance risk premiums in foreign exchange markets. We find significantly negative risk premiums when realized variance is computed from intraday data with low frequency. As a likely consequence of...

Using a complete sample of US equity options, we find a positive, highly significant relation between stock returns and lagged implied volatilities. The results are robust after controlling for a number of factors such as firm size, market value, analyst recommendations and different levels of...