We compare the performance of popular covariance forecasting models in the context of a portfolio of major European equity indices. We find that models based on high-frequency data offer a clear advantage in terms of statistical accuracy. They also yield more theoretically consistent predictions...

Stock return predictability by investor sentiment has been subject to constant updating, but reaching a decisive conclusion seems rather challenging as academic research relies heavily on US data. We provide fresh evidence on stock return predictability in an international setting and show that...

We propose several multivariate variance ratio statistics. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the statistics and scalar functions thereof under the null hypothesis that returns are unpredictable after a constant mean adjustment (i.e., under the weak form Efficient Market Hypothesis). We do...

Using a novel and direct measure of investor sentiment, I find that Facebook's Gross National Happiness (GNH) has the ability to predict changes in both daily returns and trading volume in the US stock market. For instance, an increase of one standard deviation in GNH is associated with an...

This paper investigates the role of volatility risk on stock return predictability. Using 596 stock options traded at the American Stock Exchange and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) for the period from January 2001 to December 2010 we examine the relation between different...

Changes in stock returns arise from changes in expected future cash flow growth and expected future discount rates. However, which variables proxy for those changes remains unknown. This paper considers twenty-five variables that are arranged into five groups and examines both in-sample...

We investigate the relative ability of two measures of the market implied cost of capital to predict aggregate equity market returns. One is Aggregate ICC, which is a weighted average of individual firms' ICC's. The other is ICC calculated using index information (Index ICC). Index ICC predicts...

Using a unique survey dataset, the author studies how financial market experts form their stock market expectations. He documents a strong disagreement among experts about how important macroeconomic and financial variables are related to stock returns. The results of an analysis of the...

Purpose: The aim of our paper is twofold. First, we examine the predictive ability of log bookmarket, dividend-price, earnings-price and dividend-earnings ratios on the most recent data set of the strongest securities in the UK economy; unlike the majority of the studies in this data set, our...

Stock and options markets can disagree about a stock's value because of informed trading in options and/or price pressure in the stock. The predictability of stock returns based on this cross- market discrepancy in values is especially strong when accompanied by stock price pressure, and it does...