Forecasting Stock Market Returns: The Sum of the Parts is More than the Whole

Miguel Ferreira () and Pedro Santa-Clara

No 14571, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We propose forecasting separately the three components of stock market returns: dividend yield, earnings growth, and price-earnings ratio growth. We obtain out-of-sample R-square coefficients (relative to the historical mean) of nearly 1.6% with monthly data and 16.7% with yearly data using the most common predictors suggested in the literature. This compares with typically negative R-squares obtained in a similar experiment by Goyal and Welch (2008). An investor who timed the market with our approach would have had a certainty equivalent gain of as much as 2.3% per year and a Sharpe ratio 77% higher relative to the historical mean. We conclude that there is substantial predictability in equity returns and that it would have been possible to time the market in real time.

JEL-codes: G1 G17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-12
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Note: AP
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Published as Journal of Financial Economics Volume 100, Issue 3, June 2011, Pages 514–537 Cover image Forecasting stock market returns: The sum of the parts is more than the whole ☆ Miguel A. Ferreiraa, b, Pedro Santa-Claraa, c, Corresponding author contact information, E-mail the corresponding author

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