Top sportsmen often refer to competition against other top sportsmen as a motivation to exert more effort. We examine whether a similar pattern exists among another group of top professionals – star analysts. Our evidence suggests that star analysts concentrate their efforts and generate...

We show that the average difference between the implied volatilities of call and put options on individual equities, which we term the implied volatility spread (IVS), has strong predictive power for stock market returns at horizons between one and six months, with monthly in-sample and...

We analyze the out-of-sample performance of variables shown to forecast future mutual fund alphas. The degree of predictability, as measured by alpha spreads from quintile sorts or by cross-sectional regression slopes, falls by at least half post-sample. These declines appear to be primarily the...