Measures of a firm's financial strength forecast stock returns. The relation between financial condition and future returns, however, is consistent with two explanations: (1) changes in investors' expectations are impounded gradually over time and, (2) riskier firms - with higher discount rates...

Aggregate demand by insiders predicts time-series variation in the value premium. Insider trading forecasts the value premium because insiders sell (buy) when markets - especially growth stocks - are overvalued (undervalued). This article suggests that investors can use signals from aggregate...

Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is no evidence investors can, or have ever been able to, easily form portfolios containing negligible exposure to unsystematic returns. Because well-diversified portfolios are the bedrock upon which so much financial theory is built, investors' inability to...

Aggregate demand by insiders predicts time-series variation in the value premium — between 1978 and 2004, a one standard deviation increase in aggregate insider demand in the previous six months forecasts a 53 basis point decline (6.54% annualized) in the expected value premium in the month...

We examine whether institutional investors follow each other into and out of the same industries. Our empirical results reveal strong evidence of institutional industry herding. The cross-sectional correlation between the fraction of institutional traders buying an industry this quarter and the...

There is a strong inverse relation between insider trading and institutional demand the same quarter and over the previous year. Our analysis suggests a combination of factors contribute to this relation. First, institutional investors are more likely to provide the liquidity necessary for...

Firm-specific risk climbed steadily between 1962 and 1999, but fell sharply between 2000 and 2003. We hypothesize that changes in the composition of the market, rather than fundamental changes in the economy or return-generating process, drive these changes in aggregate firm-specific risk over...

The success of momentum strategies over the past 20 years is predominately driven by the last month in each quarter. Excluding Januaries (a month in which lag losers typically outperform lag winners), the average monthly return to a momentum strategy in non-quarter-ending months is 59 basis...

A number of recent studies test whether institutional investors, as a group, engage in momentum trading. Given directly observable returns and changes in institutional ownership, it is surprising that these studies reach vastly different conclusions. I re-examine the relation between changes in...

With Januaries (a month in which lagged quot;losersquot; typically outperform lagged quot;winnersquot;) excluded, the average monthly return to a momentum strategy for U.S. stocks was found to be 59 bps for non-quarter-ending months but 310 bps for quarter-ending months. The pattern was stronger...