Short rebate fees are a strong predictor of the cross-section of stock returns, both gross and net of fees. We document a large "shorting premium": the cheap-minus-expensive-to-short (CME) portfolio of stocks has a monthly average gross return of 1.31%, a net-of-fees return of 0.78%, and a 1.44%...

Prior research finds expected returns decrease in firm-level total asset growth. This study shows that external growth, measured as asset growth raised from capital markets, has stronger power than total asset growth predicting the cross section of average returns. External growth subsumes the...

Inspired by Aumann and Serrano (2008) and Foster and Hart (2009), we propose risk-neutral options' implied measures of riskiness and investigate their significance in predicting the cross section of expected returns per unit of risk. The empirical analyses indicate a negative and significant...

This research presents evidence for the existence of differences in asset beta risk in the liquidity cross-section of assets due to correlated trading. It is argued that due to differences in liquidity or cost, most trading activity is concentrated on the subset of liquid assets. In the presence...

We explore the cross-section of factor returns using a sample of 150+ equity factors. Most factors exhibit a positive premium and a negative market beta in the long run. Factor themes with a clear positive beta, in particular low leverage and size, have no alpha after controlling for this beta...

We test whether asymmetric preferences for losses versus gains as in Ang, Chen, and Xing (2006) also affect the pricing of cash flow versus discount rate news as in Campbell and Vuolteenaho (2004). We construct a new four-fold beta decomposition, distinguishing cash flow and discount rate betas...

The low (high) abnormal returns of stocks with high (low) beta - the beta anomaly - is one of the most persistent anomalies in empirical asset pricing research. This paper demonstrates that investors' demand for lottery-like stocks is an important driver of the beta anomaly. The beta anomaly is...