Anomaly Predictability with the Mean-Variance Portfolio

According to no-arbitrage, risk-adjusted returns should be unpredictable. Using several prominent factor models and a large cross-section of anomalies, we find that past pricing errors predict future risk-adjusted anomaly returns. We show that past pricing errors can be interpreted as deviations of an anomaly price from the mean-variance efficient portfolio. Price deviations constitute a novel anomaly-specific predictor, endogenous to the given heuristic mean-variance portfolio, thus providing direct evidence for conditional misspecification. A zero-cost investment strategy using price deviations generates positive alphas. Our findings suggest that cross-sectional models should incorporate the information in prices to capture the time-series dynamics of returns