Price movements in industrial metals such as copper and aluminum predict stock returns. Increasing industrial metal prices are good news for equity markets in recessions and bad news in expansions. A one standard deviation increase in industrial metal returns predicts a price drop of one and a...

We show that the previously documented predictability of macroeconomic and technical variables for market returns is also evident in individual stock returns. Technical variables generate better predictability on firms with higher limits to arbitrage (smaller, illiquid, volatile firms), while...

We consider how a firm's information environment impacts an index of three proxies for the costs firms incur when adjusting their workforce. We show companies with less information asymmetry have lower labor adjustment costs (LACs). Moreover, this relation is stronger for firms with lower...

Transaction costs in many international equity markets are reported as being much larger than those in the U.S. This raises questions such as what trade size these reported trading costs relate to and whether investors can reduce trading costs by timing their trades. We show, using data from the...

We examine the interaction between market volatility, liquidity shocks, and stock returns in 41 countries over the period 1990–2015. We find liquidity is an important channel through which market volatility affects stock returns in international markets and we show this is distinct from the...

We consider the frequency and correlation of extreme return observations or “jumps” across equities, Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, currencies, commodities, and real estate. Understanding more about jumps is important to investors as diversification across asset classes is diminished if...

Over 5,000 popular technical trading rules are not consistently profitable in the 49 country indices that comprise the Morgan Stanley Capital Index once data snooping bias is accounted for. Each market has some rules that are profitable when considered in isolation but these profits are not...