This paper studies the relative importance of discount rates and cash flows with a focus on the differences between time-series and cross-sectional variance tests. I show that the following holds for the market, different types of portfolios, and individual stocks: (a) changes in expected...

Value stocks outperform growth stocks. The academic literature provides two competing interpretations on what drives the value premium: exposure to risk factors or mispricing of securities. Existing empirical studies, which are largely based on U.S. data, have not conclusively rejected one...

Value stocks outperform growth stocks. The academic literature provides two competing interpretations on what drives the value premium: exposure to risk factors or mispricing of securities. Existing empirical studies, which are largely based on U.S. data, have not conclusively rejected one...

We challenge the common view that smart beta strategies and factor tilts are equivalent. Initially, the term “smart beta” referred to strategies that broke the link between the price of a stock and its weight in the portfolio or index. Capitalization weighting does not do that — neither...

In our paper — “How Can ‘Smart Beta' Go Horribly Wrong?” — we show, using U.S. data, that the relative valuation of a strategy (in comparison with its own historical norms) is correlated with the strategy's subsequent return at a five-year horizon. The high past performance of many of...

In a series of papers we published in 2016, we show that relative valuations predict subsequent returns for both factors and smart beta strategies in exactly the same way price matters in stock selection and asset allocation. To many, one surprising revelation in that series is that a number of...

The recent collapse of the stock market has refocused attention on the question of the equity risk premium. One of the most comprehensive studies of the equity premium, completed by Fama and French in 2000, is now significantly out of date and requires refreshing. This article provides that...