Predicted stock issuers (PSIs) are firms with expected “high-investment and low-profit” (HILP) profiles that earn unusually low returns. We carefully document important features of PSI firms to provide insights on the economic mechanism behind the HILP phenomenon. Top-PSI firms are...

An accounting-based model has strong out-of-sample power not only to detect fraud, but also to predict cross-sectional returns. Firms with a higher probability of manipulation (MSCORE) earn lower returns in every decile portfolio sorted by: Size, Book-to-Market, Momentum, Accruals, and...

An earnings manipulation detection model based on forensic accounting principles (Beneish 1999) has substantial out-of-sample ability to predict cross-sectional returns. We show that the model correctly identified, ahead of time, 12 of the 17 highest profile fraud cases in the period 1998-2002....