We show that the equal-weighted average stock volatility analyzed by Goyal and Santa-Clara (GS, 2003) forecasts stock returns because of its co-movements with stock market volatility. Moreover, contrary to the positive relation hypothesized by GS and many others, we find that the value-weighted...

The paper analyzes average idiosyncratic volatility in G7 countries. We find that idiosyncratic volatility is highly correlated across countries and there is a significant Granger causality from the U.S. to the other countries and vice versa. Consistent with U.S. data, when combined with stock...

We find that the value-weighted idiosyncratic stock volatility and aggregate stock market volatility jointly exhibit strong predictive power for excess stock market returns. The stock market risk-return relation is found to be positive, as stipulated by the CAPM; however, idiosyncratic...

This paper suggests that CAPM-based idiosyncratic variance (IV) correlates negatively with future stock returns because it is a proxy for loadings on discount-rate shocks in Campbell*s (1993) ICAPM. The ICAPM also implies that there are important links between the time-series and cross-sectional...

We uncover a positive, empirical risk-return tradeoff in the stock market after controlling for the covariance of stock market returns with the value premium. The underlying premise is that, as conjectured by Fama and French (1996), the value premium is a proxy for time-varying investment...

This paper shows that a relatively high level of average U.S. industry- or firm-level idiosyncratic stock volatility is usually associated with a future appreciation in the U.S. dollar. For most foreign currencies, the relation is statistically significant in both in sample and out-of-sample...

In this paper, we use macrovariables advocated by recent authors to make out-of-sample forecast for returns on individual stocks and then sort stocks equally into ten portfolios on this proxy of conditionally expected returns. The average returns increase monotonically from the first decile...

We uncover a positive stock market risk-return tradeoff after controlling for the covariance of market returns with the value premium. Fama and French (1996) conjecture that the value premium proxies for investment opportunities; therefore, by ignoring it, early specifications suffer from an...

Average idiosyncratic stock volatility forecasts the bilateral exchange rates of the US dollar against major foreign currencies in and out of sample. The US dollar tends to appreciate after an increase in US idiosyncratic volatility. Similarly, ceteris paribus, German and Japanese idiosyncratic...

Consistent with the post-1962 US evidence by Ang et al. [Ang, A., Hodrick, R., Xing Y., Zhang, X., 2006. The cross-section of volatility and expected returns. Journal of Finance 51, 259-299], we find that stocks with high idiosyncratic variance (IV) have low CAPM-adjusted expected returns in...