Motivated by the nature of asset pricing models, we investigate the cross-sectional relation between the market's ex-ante view of a stock's risk and the stock's ex-ante expected return. We demonstrate that an ex-ante measure of expected returns based on analyst price targets is highly related to...

We test the efficient market hypothesis by using machine learning to forecast future stock returns from historical performance. These forecasts strongly predict the cross section of future stock returns. The predictive power holds in most subperiods, is strong among the largest 500 stocks, and...