The most relevant practical impediment to an application of the Markowitz portfolio selectionapproach is the problem of estimating return moments, in particular return expectations. We analyzethe consequences of using return estimates implied by analysts’ dividend forecasts under the...

Some exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are specifically designed for harvesting factor premiums, such as the size, value, momentum and low-volatility effects. Other ETFs, however, may implicitly go against these factors. This paper analyzes the factor exposures of US equity ETFs and finds that,...

We generalize the Ferreira and Santa-Clara (2011) sum-of-the-parts method for forecasting stock market returns. Rather than summing the parts of stock returns, we suggest summing some of the frequency-decomposed parts. The proposed method signi cantly improves upon the original sum-of-the-parts...

This paper presents the most comprehensive out-of-U.S.-sample examination of information variables and equity premium predictability by focusing on Canada to reassess the growing U.S.-based evidence casting doubt on predictability. Using monthly data for 36 variables from 1950 to 2013, we test...

We introduce the notion of a patience premium, which is based on the concept of ambiguity aversion and is an ambiguity premium. We identify three reasons for the existence of the patience premium: Certainty preferences: perceived confidence in the expected performance; Comparison with peers:...

We analyze the history of the equity risk premium from surveys of U.S. Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) conducted every quarter from June 2000 to March 2015. The risk premium is the expected 10-year S&P 500 return relative to a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield. We show that the equity risk...

We study how market sentiment is dynamically related to a range of risk premia in the short-run, using three measures of sentiment (the implied volatility index, investment advisor sentiment, and individual investor sentiment) and four factor premia (market, size, value, and momentum) for the...

In this paper, we revisit the question whether the Fama-French factors are manifestations of distress risk premiums. To this end, we develop new tests specifically aimed at dissecting the Fama-French factor returns from a distress risk premium. While we find that small-cap and value exposures...

We analyze the history of the equity risk premium from surveys of U.S. Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) conducted every quarter from June 2000 to June 2016. The risk premium is the expected 10-year S&P 500 return relative to a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield. The average risk premium in 2016,...

A large set of macroeconomic variables have been suggested as equity risk premium predictors in the literature. This paper proposes a forecasting approach for the equity risk premium with two novel features. First, individual month-ahead forecasts are obtained from parsimonious threshold...