The paper shows that lottery-like stocks are hedges against unexpected increases in market volatility. The loading on the aggregate volatility risk factor explains low returns to stocks with high maximum returns in the past (Bali, Cakici, and Whitelaw, 2011) and high expected skewness (Boyer,...

We propose a risk-based firm-type explanation on why stocks of firms with high relative short interest (RSI) have lower future returns. We argue that these firms have negative alphas because they are a hedge against expected aggregate volatility risk. Consistent with this argument, we show that...

Previous research on insurer cost of equity (COE) focuses on single-period asset pricing models. In reality, however, investment and consumption decisions are made over multiple periods, exposing firms to time-varying risks related to economic cycles and market volatility. We extend the...

The paper shows that issuing activity does not result in superior liquidity. Even the kinds of new issues that are supposed to be more liquid than others (IPOs backed by venture capital, new issues with high-prestige underwriters, severely underpriced IPOs) are just as liquid as their peer...

Asymmetric timeliness (AT) measure from Basu (1997) regression is priced. Sorting firms on AT produces a 40 bp per month spread in six-factor alphas. The AT effect is driven almost exclusively by the bottom AT quintile, populated by aggressive firms that recognize gains more timely than losses....

The idiosyncratic volatility effect of Ang et al. (2006) is robust to restricting the sample to NYSE firms (once proper listing indicator is used) and to excluding from the sample small, illiquid, and low-price stocks. The idiosyncratic volatility effect is also unlikely to stem from the...

The paper discovers that firm complexity is negatively priced in cross-section. High/low-complexity conglomerates have 35-50/20-28 bp per month more negative five-factor Fama and French (2015) alphas than single-segment firms, and this effect is stronger in subsamples with low institutional...

Several important anomalies are stronger for more complex firms. Despite conglomerates being on average larger and more liquid than single-segment firms, anomalies are stronger for conglomerates. In the conglomerates-only sub-sample, anomalies are stronger for conglomerates with more...