We investigate stock returns, earnings growth, interest rates and the relative valuation of US equities following the 22 major bear market bottoms from 1881-2011. We find that large, sustainable bull market returns are associated with market bottoms where stocks' earnings yield expands...

Both the cross-sectional dispersion of U.S. stock returns and the VIX provide forecasts of alpha dispersion across high- and low-performing portfolios of stocks that are statistically and economically significant. These findings suggest that absolute return investors can use cross-sectional...