Stock markets proved to be statistically predictable on an economically interesting scale over the past decade by fully data driven automatically constructed maps that associate to a set of new factor values a return prediction that is the average of historically observed returns for an area in...

The accuracy of variance prediction depends on both the specification and the accuracy of parameter estimation. To predict stock return variance in a large and ever-changing universe, this paper proposes to replace the classic time-series dynamics specification per each name with a...

For stock market predictions, the essence of the problem is usually predicting the magnitude and direction of the stock price movement as accurately as possible. There are different approaches (e.g., econometrics and machine learning) for predicting stock returns. However, it is non-trivial to...

The use of mixture distributions for modeling asset returns has a long history in finance. New methods of demonstrating support for the presence of mixtures in the multivariate case are provided. The use of a two-component multivariate normal mixture distribution, coupled with shrinkage via a...

I propose a class of hybrid models to describe and predict the dynamics of a multivariate stationary random vector, e.g. a vector of stock returns. These models combine essential features of the multivariate mixture normal distribution and the conditional correlation models. I describe in detail...

We use machine learning methods to predict stock return volatility. Our out-of-sample prediction of realised volatility for a large cross-section of US stocks over the sample period from 1992 to 2016 is on average 44.1% against the actual realised volatility of 43.8% with an R2 being as high as...

We develop a penalized two-pass regression with time-varying factor loadings. The penalization in the first pass enforces sparsity for the time-variation drivers while also maintaining compatibility with the no arbitrage restrictions by regularizing appropriate groups of coefficients. The second...

We introduce a flexible utility-based empirical approach to directly determine asset allocation decisions between risky and risk-free assets. This is in contrast to the commonly used two-step approach where least squares optimal statistical equity premium predictions are first constructed to...

We propose an employee sentiment index, which complements investor sentiment and manager sentiment indices, and find that high employee sentiment predicts a subsequent low market return, significant both in- and out-of-sample. The predictability of the employee sentiment index can also deliver...

A risk management strategy is proposed as being robust to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) by selecting a Value-at-Risk (VaR) forecast that combines the forecasts of different VaR models. The robust forecast is based on the median of the point VaR forecasts of a set of conditional volatility...