A great number of academic papers evaluate the potential for incentive-driven bias in sell-side analysts' earnings forecasts. Yet bias does not necessarily invalidate a forecast, nor does it impinge on its relative quality. We find that analysts' forecasts are optimistic relative to recently...

We show that understanding the role of analysts' forecast bias is central to discovering the behavior that causes some stocks to have high analyst forecast dispersion. This finding is important because stocks with high analyst forecast dispersion contribute significantly to many important...

We study the out-of-sample and post-publication return-predictability of 97 variables that academic studies show to predict cross-sectional stock returns. Portfolio returns are 26% lower out-of-sample and 58% lower post-publication. The out-of-sample decline is an upper bound estimate of data...

Firm-level variables that predict cross-sectional stock returns, such as price-to-earnings and short interest, are often averaged and used to predict the time series of market returns. We extend this literature and limit the data-snooping bias by using a large population of the literature's...

We study how 9 different market participants trade with respect to 130 different stock return anomalies and how each participant's trades predict returns. Retail investors trade against anomalies, while firms' and short sellers' trades agree with anomalies. Institutional portfolios are weighted...