Recent research shows that the implied cost of capital (ICC), measured from analyst forecasts and current stock prices, positively predicts returns at the aggregate level. In contrast, there is a strong negative relation between ICC and future returns in the cross-section. We hypothesize that...

This paper hypothesizes that market liquidity constrains mutual fund managers' ability to outperform, which introduces a higher liquidity risk exposure (beta) for skilled managers. Consistently, we document an annual liquidity beta performance spread of 4% in the cross-section of mutual funds...

This paper studies the effects of predictability on the earnings-returns relation for individual firms and for the aggregate. We demonstrate that prices better anticipate earnings growth at the aggregate level than at the firm level, which implies that random-walk models are inappropriate for...