In the context of Australian stockmarkets, we examine the relationship between a stock's return performance, the stock idiosyncratic volatility, and the firm's market capitalization. The paper's main conclusions may be summarized as follows. The stocks of the smallest firms markedly outperform...

This study examines the importance of idiosyncratic volatility in asset pricing for Australian stock returns from January 2002 to December 2010. Inspired by work from the early 1990s which found that portfolios constructed to mimic common risk factors explained significant variations in US stock...