We find that financial analysts provide more thorough forecasts when firms’ institutional investors are distracted (i.e., when firms are neglected). We establish the causality of the effect by identifying exogenous shocks leading to institutional investor distraction following Kempf, Manconi,...

We analyze the out-of-sample performance of variables shown to forecast future mutual fund alphas. The degree of predictability, as measured by alpha spreads from quintile sorts or by cross-sectional regression slopes, falls by at least half post-sample. These declines appear to be primarily the...

You're probably familiar, at least in passing, with the 'convexity' of long-term bonds - i.e. that yields dropping 1% produce a bigger price move than yields rising 1%. A significant amount of brainpower has gone into understanding all the ramifications of this convexity in the fixed income...

This paper proposes and tests an investment-flow based explanation for three empirical findings about return predictability -- the persistence of mutual fund performance, the "smart money" effect, and stock price momentum. Motivated by prior studies, I construct a measure of demand shocks to...

Identifying firms linked economically through the comovement of the credit rating of their corporate bonds, we find that a long-short strategy for stocks based on the link generates a risk-adjusted alpha of 0.62 percent per month, which cannot be explained by industry, customer-supplier, single-...

We present a model to explain puzzling patterns surrounding cross-sectional night-minus-day return predictabilities. Heterogeneous (“fast” and “slow”) arbitrageurs with offsetting advantages endogenously become the marginal investor at different times of day. Consistent with our model,...

We suggest that the term structure of volatility futures (e.g. VIX futures) shows a clear pattern of dependence on the current level of VIX index. At the low level of VIX (below 20) the term structure is highly upward sloping; at the high VIX level (over 30) it is strongly downward sloping. We...

We document that analysts cater to short-term investors by issuing optimistic target prices. Catering dominates among analysts at brokers without an investment banking arm as they face lower reputational cost. The market does not see through the analyst catering activity and their forecasts lead...

The answer to the title question is "Yes." Examining stocks traded on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ for the period of 1964 to 2009, this study discovers that, while momentum prevails among small stocks, momentum and reversals coexist among large stocks for a holding period of up to six months. The...

We compare the stock return forecasting performance of alternative payout yields. The net payout yield produces more accurate forecasts relative to alternatives, including the traditional dividend yield. This remains true even after excluding several years during the Great Depression when...