This paper evaluates the predictive performance of machine learning methods in forecasting European stock returns. Compared to a linear benchmark model, interactions and nonlinear effects help improve the predictive performance. But machine learning models must be adequately trained and tuned to...

Given the tremendous growth of factor allocation strategies in active and passive fund management, we investigate whether factor or sector asset allocation strategies provide investors with a superior performance. Our focus is on comparing factor versus sector allocations as some recent...

Despite extensive research support, the role of diversification in current factor investing strategies remains neglected. This paper investigates whether well-designed multifactor portfolios should not only be based on firm characteristics, but should also include portfolio diversification...

This paper examines which valuation approaches financial analysts use to value a company and whether the chosen valuation approach affects the target price accuracy. To address these questions, we conduct content analyses of 867 hand-collected analyst reports on German publicly listed companies...

In a recent discussion about efficient ways to combine multiple firm characteristics into a multifactor portfolio, a distinction was made between the bottom-up and top-down approach. Both approaches integrate characteristics with equal weights and ignore interaction effects from differences in...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of corporate investments in corporate social responsibility (CSR), measured by the environmental, social and government (ESG) rating, on the market valuation of a firm's stocks and to explain the regional differences in the degree of...

This study examines the most optimal hedging portfolio for some selected emerging and developed markets by employing dynamic conditional variances and dynamic conditional covariances. Throughout the study, we used the daily index values of some selected investment instruments. The data contains...

Predictability is time and frequency dependent. We propose a new forecasting method - forecast combination in the frequency domain - that takes this fact into account. With this method we forecast the equity premium and real GDP growth rate. Combining forecasts in the frequency domain produces...

Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) is rooted in behavioural psychology and has demonstrated to possess sufficient explanatory power for use in actual deci­ sion-making problems. In this study, two distinct asset classes (i.e. assets with extremely lower or higher CPT values) are classified and...

In this paper, we investigate the day of the week and the month of the year effects in African stock markets, both in the Gregorian and the Hijri calendars. Specifically, we investigate Monday effect, Friday effect, January effect and Ramadan effect, from January 2009 to December 2019, using OLS...