Future Excess Returns Research Articles

The Predictive Ability of U.S. Stock Market Skewness on Indonesian Stock Market Returns

The three-moment capital asset pricing model (three-moment CAPM) suggests that the expected excess return on stocks should include compensation for skewness risk. This study aims to investigate the ability of U.S. stock market skewness to predict Indonesian stock market returns. The data used in this research includes the S&P500 Index, JCI, JII, and LQ45 from January 2001 to December 2022. The results of this study indicate that U.S. stock market skewness can predict future excess returns of the Indonesian stock market. Additionally, when the estimation model incorporates alternative variables from both the U.S. and Indonesian stock markets, the predictive ability of U.S. stock market skewness remains significant and outperforms these alternative variables. The findings of this research can be used as a strategy for investors when trading in the Indonesian stock market. When the skewness of the U.S. stock market increases, the return of the Indonesian stock market is expected to decrease in the following month.

An Index of Skilled Analysts and Stock Market Returns

ABSTRACT This study constructs a monthly index of skilled analysts (ISA) regarding the coverage by such analysts and explores their predictive ability on the future excess returns of Chinese A-share market. The empirical results reveal that ISA significantly and positively predicts excess stock market returns, with R 2 s of 4.39% and 4.13% in- and out-of-sample respectively, which surpasses the predictive ability of most commonly used economic variables. High ISA precedes a higher investor sentiment index (ISI) and lower idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) at firm level. The conclusion remains valid after controlling for a series of other predictor variables and performing robustness tests.

Current Account Uncertainty and Currency Premia

We empirically study the relationship between currency excess returns and current account uncertainty, measured as forecast dispersion. We find that investment currencies deliver low returns, whereas funding currencies offer a hedge when current account uncertainty is unexpectedly high. Moreover, an increase in current account uncertainty is associated with higher expected future excess returns on investment currencies. This mechanism is consistent with the recent advances in exchange rate theory based on capital flows in imperfect financial markets. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance. Funding: A. Krecetovs thanks the Brevan Howard Centre at Imperial College London for financial support. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4949 .

Risk‐neutral moments and return predictability: International evidence

AbstractThis paper documents risk‐neutral moments of returns on 29 country‐/region‐specific ETFs to provide international uncertainty proxies for as many locations as possible. Our evidence shows these ETFs can generally reflect idiosyncratic information from international markets, but the predictive abilities of risk‐neutral moments are heterogeneous among them. The evidence from panel prediction shows that the risk‐neutral standard deviation ( ) can positively predict, but skewness ( ) and excess kurtosis ( ) negatively predict, the future excess returns in time‐series analysis. Moreover, results from the post‐ranking performance show that the ETFs with low on average earn an extra 4.55% annualized monthly excess return, compared with those with high .

Investor sentiment, credit rating, and stock returns

We confront the distress risk puzzle. Conventionally, stocks with high distress risk should yield higher returns. However, this notion is found to be empirically inaccurate. We develop a stock-level investor sentiment measure and find that behaviors of individual investors affect the future excess returns of stocks despite the presence of distress risk. Our findings suggest that net buying by individual investors enhances our understanding of the negative relationship between credit ratings and future stock returns. To do so, we develop a cross-sectional measure of the investor sentiment for each individual stock at each month.

Mood Beta, Sentiment and Stock Returns in China

We examine the cross-sectional seasonality of stock excess returns in China. We find that stocks’ historical excess returns are positively related to their future excess returns under a congruent-mood period and negatively associated with their future excess returns under a noncongruent-mood period. Besides, stocks with larger mood beta tend to outperform during mood periods, and this impact is still significant after differentiating companies. Moreover, consistent with our hypotheses, mood beta has stronger explanatory power after China’s unique Split-Share Structure Reform and RMB Exchange Rate Reform. Finally, mood beta has stronger explanatory power compared to sentiment beta during ascending and descending mood months.

Monetary Policy, Redistribution, and Risk Premia

We study the transmission of monetary policy through risk premia in a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian environment. Heterogeneity in households' marginal propensity to take risk (MPR) summarizes differences in portfolio choice on the margin. An unexpected reduction in the nominal interest rate redistributes to households with high MPRs, lowering risk premia and amplifying the stimulus to the real economy. Quantitatively, this mechanism rationalizes the role of news about future excess returns in driving the stock market response to monetary policy shocks and amplifies their real effects by 1.3–1.4 times.

Volatility Risk Premium, Return Predictability, and ESG Sentiment: Evidence from China’s Spots and Options’ Markets

This study investigates the volatility risk premium on the emerging financial market. We also consider the expected return and ESG sentiment. Based on the SSE 50 ETF 5‐minute high‐frequency spots and daily options data from 2016 to 2021, we adopt nonparametric model‐free approaches to calculate realized and implied volatilities. And the volatility risk premium is constructed by subtracting these volatility series. We examine the relations between the volatility risk premium and future excess returns as well as ESG sentiment through multifactor specifications. We find that the volatility risk premium also exists in the Chinese market and is significantly negative. In addition, the statistically positive correlation between the volatility risk premium and aggregate returns is an outlier compared to the empirically negative pattern in developed markets. At last, ESG sentiment is positively associated with the volatility risk premium, especially the impact of environmental and social. This evidence supports the agency theory, which indicates that investors perceive ESG investments as waste resources in a short term and become potentially risky.

The effects of economic policy uncertainty on stock market returns: Evidence from Brazil

This article investigates the effects of economic policy uncertainty on the Brazilian stock market. We link excess returns and dividend growth rates to the economic policy uncertainty index of Baker et al. (2016) and other control variables. In recent years, Brazil has experienced political tensions, which affected its economic policy. Therefore, this country is the most suitable environment to test the hypothesis that this measure of economic policy uncertainty has an informational content not wholly reflected in the usual constructs of economic uncertainty and economic distress. Our results show that economic policy uncertainty (i) correlates negatively with current excess stock returns; (ii) correlates positively with future excess stock returns, showing itself to be a good predictor of future performance of the stock market; (iii) is not significantly related to future dividend growth rates; and (iv) anticipates changes in discount rates.

Do green policies catalyze green investment? Evidence from ESG investing developments in China

This study examines the heterogeneous performance of ESG investing in China before and after 2016, when the “Guidelines for Establishing a Green Financial System” was announced. In the portfolio analysis, high ESG portfolios earn significantly higher abnormal returns compared to low ESG portfolios in the post-2016 context, but this is not the case pre-2016. This outperformance is not closely related to common firm characteristics. Next, the stock analysis also shows that good ESG profiles predict higher future excess returns on average post-2016. The rising performance of good ESG stocks largely depends on equity cost advantage other than profitability improvement.

Factor Investing in Emerging Market Credits

We examine factors in a novel dataset on the cross-section of emerging market hard currency corporate bonds. We find that the size, low-risk, value, and momentum factors predict future excess returns. Single-factor and multi-factor portfolios obtain economically and statistically significant premiums. Further, alphas remain significant after controlling for exposures to developed market credit factors. The factor portfolios benefit from bottom-up allocations to countries, sectors, ratings, and maturity segments, as well as from bond selection within these segments. Higher risk-adjusted returns of factor portfolios also can be found within liquid subsamples of the market. <b>TOPICS:</b>Fixed income and structured finance, emerging markets, analysis of individual factors/risk premia, portfolio construction <b>Key Findings</b> ▪ We examine factors in the cross-section of emerging market hard currency corporate bonds and find that the size, value, momentum, and low-risk factors predict future excess returns. ▪ Factor portfolios yield significant alphas in the Capital Asset Pricing Model, and a multi-factor portfolio that allocates equally to the four factors shows even stronger results, due to the low pairwise correlations among the individual factors. ▪ Alphas remain significant versus developed market credit factors, and the results hold within countries, sectors, ratings, maturities, and liquid subsamples.

Heterogeneous intermediary asset pricing

I show that the composition of the financial sector has important asset pricing implications beyond the health of the aggregate financial sector. To assess the impact of massive balance sheet adjustments within the intermediary sector during the Great Recession and resolve conflicting asset pricing evidence, I propose a dynamic asset pricing model with heterogeneous intermediaries facing financial frictions. Asset flows between intermediaries are quantitatively important for both the level of and variation in the risk premium. An empirical measure of the composition of the intermediary sector negatively forecasts future excess returns and is priced in the cross-section with a positive price of risk.

How Does Google Search Affect the Stock Market? Evidence from Indian Companies

Google search data has received considerable attention for its predictive ability in various social and economic outcomes. In the arena of investments, a surge in online searches indicates an enhanced interest of investors, particularly retail, in that company. In this article, we have examined the association between Google search and stock prices in a sample of Indian companies. The results suggest that an increase in Google search is positively related to future excess stock returns, liquidity and volatility. The positive influence of Google search on stock prices, however, is temporary and reverses in the next week. We further show that the market sentiment moderates the interconnection between Google searches and future excess stock returns. The findings are in consonance with the ‘price pressure hypothesis’ of Barber and Odean (2008, Review of Financial Studies, 21(2), 785–818).

Strategic Position and Value Implication of Cloud Computing

In this paper, we examine the determinants and consequences of adopting cloud computing technologies. Using text-based measures of cloud computing and business strategies obtained from 10-K filings, we show that firms focusing on a product differentiation strategy are more likely to adopt cloud computing technologies. We also document that the contemporaneous stock market values the adoption of cloud computing positively. This positive valuation is higher for firms adopting a product differentiation strategy than for those adopting a cost leadership strategy. We further show that cloud-computing-adopters focusing on a product differentiation strategy earn higher future excess returns than those focusing a cost leadership strategy, suggesting that investors fail to fully recognize the value created by cloud computing technology adopted by differentiators. Additional analyses suggest that cloud-computing-adopters with a differentiation strategy exhibit an increase in return on asset and profit margin, while those adopters with a cost leadership strategy do not experience such an improvement. Overall, our study suggests that a company’s strategic positioning affects the adoption decision and the value implication of cloud computing technologies.

Good Volatility, Bad Volatility, and the Cross Section of Cryptocurrency Returns

This paper examines the distributional properties of cryptocurrency realized variation measures (RVM) and the predictability of RVM on future returns. We show the cryptocurrency volatility persistence and the importance of the asymmetry on volatility forecasting. Signed jumps variations contribute around 18% of the cryptocurrency return quadratic variations. The realized signed jump (RSJ) strongly predicts the cross-sectional future excess returns. Sorting the cryptocurrencies into portfolios sorted by RSJ yields statistically and economically significant differences in future excess returns. This jump risk premium remains significant after controlling for cryptocurrency market characteristics and existing risk factors. The standard cross-sectional regression convinces the cryptocurrency return predictability from RSJ by controlling multiple cryptocurrency characteristics. The investor attention explains the predictability of realized jump risk in future cryptocurrency returns.

Monetary Policy, Redistribution, and Risk Premia

We study the transmission of monetary policy through risk premia in a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian environment. Heterogeneity in households' marginal propensity to take risk (MPR) summarizes differences in portfolio choice on the margin. An unexpected reduction in the nominal interest rate redistributes to households with high MPRs, lowering risk premia and amplifying the stimulus to the real economy. Quantitatively, this mechanism rationalizes the role of news about future excess returns in driving the stock market response to monetary policy shocks and amplifies their real effects by 1.3-1.5 times.

Individual Investors, Average Skewness, and Market Returns

Understanding individual investors’ short-term behavior toward skewness is essential for the management and investment of corporate social responsibility because the skewness-seeking behavior of individual investors, which causes a bubble in the market, makes the market as a whole more vulnerable, and it is difficult for the market to be sustainable. In the Korean stock market, we investigated whether average skewness can predict future market returns at the market level and whether the mispricing is associated with demand for the skewness of individual noise traders. Measuring the demand for skewness by the proportion of trading money of individual investors, we found that average skewness negatively predicts future market excess return when the demand for skewness is strong. The result is robust to controlling for market variance as well as other predictors. Our finding indicates that the overall market is overpriced when individual investors excessively trade to seek huge returns in spite of a small probability.

Administrative Expenses and Firm Value: Evidence from Chinese Stock Market

Analyze the components of administrative expenses and find that some expenditure in administrative expenses, such as employee training expenses, employee education expenses, technology development expenses, etc., which have a long-term positive effect on improving the relationship between enterprises and the government or banks, enhancing employee satisfaction, improving corporate technology, and enhancing corporate competitiveness, so as to create future bene ts for the enterprise. Based on the empirical analysis, we prove that the previous administrative expenses are positively related to the current operating profit. Through data analysis and empirical research, it shows that: (1) administrative expenses are positively associated with future operating performance; (2) the capital market can partially recognize the future value creation ability of administrative expenditure so that the administrative expense future value has significantly positive pricing coefficient; (3) the capital market fails to fully recognize the future value created by administrative expenditure so that the highest portfolio can experience significantly positive future excess return.

International Portfolio Choice with Frictions: Evidence from Mutual Funds

Using data on international equity portfolio allocations of US mutual funds, we estimate a simple portfolio expression derived from a standard Markowitz mean-variance portfolio model extended with portfolio frictions. The optimal portfolio depends on two benchmark portfolios, the previous month and the buy-and-hold portfolio shares, and a present discounted value of expected future excess returns. We show that equity return differentials are predictable and use the expected return differentials in the mutual fund portfolio regressions. The estimated reduced form parameters are related to the structural model parameters. The estimates imply significant portfolio frictions and a modest rate of risk-aversion. While mutual fund portfolios respond significantly to expected returns, portfolio frictions lead to a weaker and more gradual portfolio response to changes in expected returns. We also document heterogeneity across funds. Global and larger funds face bigger portfolio frictions, while more active funds give relatively less weight to the buy-and- hold portfolio (rebalance more aggressively).

Monetary Policy, Redistribution, and Risk Premia

We study the transmission of monetary policy through risk premia in a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian environment. Heterogeneity in households’ marginal propensity to take risk (MPR) summarizes differences in portfolio choice on the margin. An unexpected reduction in the nominal interest rate redistributes to households with high MPRs, lowering risk premia and amplifying the stimulus to the real economy. Quantitatively, this mechanism rationalizes the role of news about future excess returns in driving the stock market response to monetary policy shocks and amplifies their real effects by 1.3-1.5 times.