Forecasting throuth the rear-view mirror: Data revisions and bond return predictability

Real-time macroeconomic data refl ect the information available to market participants, whereas fi nal data-containing revisions and released with a delay-overstate the information set available to them. We document that the in-sample and out-of-sample Treasury return predictability is signifi cantly diminished when real-time as opposed to revised macroeconomic data are used. In fact, much of the predictive information in macroeconomic time series is due to the data revision and publication lag components.