The standard way to summarize the yield curve is to use the first three principal components of the yield curve, resulting in level, slope and curvature factors. Yields, however, are non-stationary. We analyze the first three principal components of yield changes, which correspond to changes in...

Identifying economic regimes is useful in a world of time-varying risk premia. We apply regime switching models to common factors proxying for the macroeconomic regime and show that the ensuing regime factor is relevant in forecasting the equity risk premium. Moreover, the relevance of this...

We investigate the benefits of forecast combination for timing equity factors based on predictive regressions using macro predictors. Relative to standard predictive regression models, forecast combination reduces the noise of forecasts and hence improves their out-of-sample predictive accuracy....

Recent research suggests that machine learning models dominate traditional linear models in predicting cross-sectional stock returns. We confirm this finding when predicting one-month forward-looking returns based on a set of common stock characteristics, including predictors such as short-term...