We investigate whether the distributional characteristics of corporate bonds predict the cross-sectional differences in future bond returns. The results indicate a significantly positive (negative) link between volatility (skewness) and expected returns, whereas kurtosis does not make a robust...

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...

Investor's psychological and emotional factors lead to irrationality in financial decision making and anomalies in prices. Investor sentiment and psychology help to elucidate phenomena in financial markets that cannot be explained by traditional theory. The aim of this study is two-fold: it...

Beating the SP500 Index benchmark is a do-or-die among active portfolio managers. We propose a new method to add a 2-layer augmentation to relative strength and momentum based active portfolio management methods; first layer is to add a filtering mechanism to add a momentum filter in the...

Hedge fund managers are largely free to pursue dynamic trading strategies and standard linear regression is no longer accurate for measuring hedge fund abnormal return (alpha) and risk exposure (beta). Accordingly, this paper presents a dynamic linear model to capture hedge fund dynamics. By...

Regulators are not always able to anticipate how mandates will translate to financial reporting practice, particularly when managers are able to exercise reporting discretion. When XBRL, the eXtensible Business Reporting Language, was mandated by the SEC, financial analysts were among the...

Accurately forecasting volatility is key in many financial applications. In this study, I suggest that individuals gather information online before implementing their trading decisions. In periods of higher investor concern, online information seeking intensifies. By analysing Google search data...

We create a market-wide measure of dispersion in options investors' expectations by aggregating across all stocks the dispersion in trading volume across moneynesses (DISP). DISP exhibits strong negative predictive power for future market returns and its information content is not subsumed by...

This paper demonstrates the importance of inter-firm political links, measured by common campaign contributions made by firm executives. Price movements of a firm's stock are predictable based on stock price movements of connected firms. Cross-predictability is strongest among politically...

One of the main challenges facing researchers and industry professionals for decades is the successful prediction of asset returns. This paper enriches this endeavor by an in-depth analysis of topological metrics of correlation networks applied to financial forecasting. While academic research...