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...

This is the first study on the risk-neutral distribution of option returns. We derive solutions for the risk-neutral variance, skewness, and kurtosis of call and put option returns and document several properties of these ex-ante moments. We find that the volatility, skewness, and kurtosis of...

Motivated by the nature of asset pricing models, we investigate the cross-sectional relation between the market's ex-ante view of a stock's risk and the stock's ex-ante expected return. We demonstrate that an ex-ante measure of expected returns based on analyst price targets is highly related to...

We document that stocks that experience sudden increases in idiosyncratic volatility underperform otherwise similar stocks in the future, and we propose that this phenomenon can be explained by the Miller (1977) conjecture. We show that volatility shocks can be traced to the unusual firm-level...

We develop an ex-ante measure of expected stock returns based on analyst price targets. We then show that ex-ante measures of volatility, skewness, and kurtosis implied from stock option prices are positively related to the cross section of ex-ante expected stock returns. While expected returns...