We propose a model-selection method to systematically evaluate the contribution to asset pricing of any new factor, above and beyond what a high-dimensional set of existing factors explains. Our methodology explicitly accounts for potential model-selection mistakes, unlike the standard...

We perform a comparative analysis of machine learning methods for the canonical problem of empirical asset pricing: measuring asset risk premia. We demonstrate large economic gains to investors using machine learning forecasts, in some cases doubling the performance of leading regression-based...

We propose an approach to measuring the state of the economy via textual analysis of business news. From the full text content of 800,000 Wall Street Journal articles for 1984{2017, we estimate a topic model that summarizes business news as easily interpretable topical themes and quantifies the...

We survey recent methodological contributions in asset pricing using factor models and machine learning. We organize these results based on their primary objectives: estimating expected returns, factors, risk exposures, risk premia, and the stochastic discount factor as well as model comparison...

We reconsider the idea of trend-based predictability using methods that flexibly learn price patterns that are most predictive of future returns, rather than testing hypothesized or pre-specified patterns (e.g., momentum and reversal). Our raw predictor data are images—stock-level price...