IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/abacus/v58y2022i3p567-588.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beating the Average: Equity Premium Variations, Uncertainty, and Liquidity

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan A. Batten
  • Harald Kinateder
  • Niklas Wagner

Abstract

This paper contributes to the equity premium prediction literature by studying the performance of rarely or not researched predictors. To do so, we analyze the ability of state‐of‐the‐art liquidity and uncertainty predictors to beat the historical average when forecasting the monthly US equity premium. For this purpose, we apply an out‐of‐sample predictive regression approach to analyze statistical accuracy as well as economic gains of equity premium forecasts. Our findings show that the treasury‐eurodollar (TED) spread, as well as the macroeconomic uncertainty measure, is able to beat the historical average and provide robust predictions in various business cycles. Moreover, these two economic predictors also beat forecasts of a classical time series model.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan A. Batten & Harald Kinateder & Niklas Wagner, 2022. "Beating the Average: Equity Premium Variations, Uncertainty, and Liquidity," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 58(3), pages 567-588, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:abacus:v:58:y:2022:i:3:p:567-588
    DOI: 10.1111/abac.12250
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/abac.12250
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/abac.12250?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. N. Bloom, 2016. "Fluctuations in uncertainty," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 4.
    2. Ivo Welch & Amit Goyal, 2008. "A Comprehensive Look at The Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1455-1508, July.
    3. Merton, Robert C, 1973. "An Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(5), pages 867-887, September.
    4. Bekaert, Geert & Hoerova, Marie & Lo Duca, Marco, 2013. "Risk, uncertainty and monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(7), pages 771-788.
    5. Stivers, Adam, 2018. "Equity premium predictions with many predictors: A risk-based explanation of the size and value factors," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 126-140.
    6. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2009. "Market Liquidity and Funding Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(6), pages 2201-2238, June.
    7. Ferreira, Miguel A. & Santa-Clara, Pedro, 2011. "Forecasting stock market returns: The sum of the parts is more than the whole," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 514-537, June.
    8. Stephan Jank, 2015. "Changes in the Composition of Publicly Traded Firms: Implications for the Dividend-Price Ratio and Return Predictability," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(6), pages 1362-1377, June.
    9. Baetje, Fabian & Menkhoff, Lukas, 2016. "Equity premium prediction: Are economic and technical indicators unstable?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1193-1207.
    10. Marquering, Wessel & Verbeek, Marno, 2004. "The Economic Value of Predicting Stock Index Returns and Volatility," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(2), pages 407-429, June.
    11. John Y. Campbell & Samuel B. Thompson, 2008. "Predicting Excess Stock Returns Out of Sample: Can Anything Beat the Historical Average?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1509-1531, July.
    12. Tim Bollerslev & George Tauchen & Hao Zhou, 2009. "Expected Stock Returns and Variance Risk Premia," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(11), pages 4463-4492, November.
    13. Amit Goyal & Pedro Santa‐Clara, 2003. "Idiosyncratic Risk Matters!," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(3), pages 975-1007, June.
    14. Shane A. Corwin & Paul Schultz, 2012. "A Simple Way to Estimate Bid‐Ask Spreads from Daily High and Low Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(2), pages 719-760, April.
    15. Christopher J. Neely & David E. Rapach & Jun Tu & Guofu Zhou, 2014. "Forecasting the Equity Risk Premium: The Role of Technical Indicators," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(7), pages 1772-1791, July.
    16. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    17. Zhu, Xiaoneng & Zhu, Jie, 2013. "Predicting stock returns: A regime-switching combination approach and economic links," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4120-4133.
    18. Bekaert, Geert & Engstrom, Eric & Xing, Yuhang, 2009. "Risk, uncertainty, and asset prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 59-82, January.
    19. Pan, Zhiyuan & Pettenuzzo, Davide & Wang, Yudong, 2020. "Forecasting stock returns: A predictor-constrained approach," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 200-217.
    20. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    21. Amit Goyal & Ivo Welch, 2003. "Predicting the Equity Premium with Dividend Ratios," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(5), pages 639-654, May.
    22. Gupta, Rangan & Mwamba, John W. Muteba & Wohar, Mark E., 2018. "The role of partisan conflict in forecasting the U.S. equity premium: A nonparametric approach," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 131-136.
    23. Kandel, Shmuel & Stambaugh, Robert F, 1996. "On the Predictability of Stock Returns: An Asset-Allocation Perspective," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(2), pages 385-424, June.
    24. Pástor, Ľuboš & Veronesi, Pietro, 2013. "Political uncertainty and risk premia," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 520-545.
    25. Bekaert, Geert & Hoerova, Marie, 2014. "The VIX, the variance premium and stock market volatility," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 183(2), pages 181-192.
    26. Chung, Kee H. & Chuwonganant, Chairat, 2014. "Uncertainty, market structure, and liquidity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(3), pages 476-499.
    27. Narayan, Paresh Kumar & Gupta, Rangan, 2015. "Has oil price predicted stock returns for over a century?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 18-23.
    28. McCracken, Michael W., 2007. "Asymptotics for out of sample tests of Granger causality," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 719-752, October.
    29. Algaba, Andres & Boudt, Kris, 2017. "Generalized financial ratios to predict the equity premium," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 244-257.
    30. French, Kenneth R. & Schwert, G. William & Stambaugh, Robert F., 1987. "Expected stock returns and volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 3-29, September.
    31. Nonejad, Nima, 2018. "Déjà vol oil? Predicting S&P 500 equity premium using crude oil price volatility: Evidence from old and recent time-series data," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 260-270.
    32. Liu, Weimin, 2006. "A liquidity-augmented capital asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 631-671, December.
    33. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June.
    34. Clark, Todd E. & West, Kenneth D., 2007. "Approximately normal tests for equal predictive accuracy in nested models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 291-311, May.
    35. Roll, Richard, 1984. "A Simple Implicit Measure of the Effective Bid-Ask Spread in an Efficient Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1127-1139, September.
    36. Bali, Turan G. & Demirtas, K. Ozgur & Levy, Haim, 2009. "Is There an Intertemporal Relation between Downside Risk and Expected Returns?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(4), pages 883-909, August.
    37. Markus K. Brunnermeier, 2009. "Deciphering the Liquidity and Credit Crunch 2007-2008," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 77-100, Winter.
    38. Cao, Charles & Simin, Timothy & Xiao, Han, 2020. "Predicting the equity premium with the implied volatility spread," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    39. Çakmaklı, Cem & van Dijk, Dick, 2016. "Getting the most out of macroeconomic information for predicting excess stock returns," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 650-668.
    40. Amit Goyal & Pedro Santa-Clara, 2003. "Idiosyncratic Risk Matters!," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(3), pages 975-1008, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Frömel, Pascal & Kolmeder, Severin & Wagner, Dominik, 2023. "Where prices are not lazy: Evidence from REITs and the financial sector," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    2. Chowdhury, Mohammad Ashraful Ferdous & Abdullah, Mohammad & Masih, Mansur, 2022. "COVID-19 government interventions and cryptocurrency market: Is there any optimum portfolio diversification?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    3. Florin Aliu & Simona Hašková & Petr Šuleř, 2022. "Sustainability of electricity prices and the consequences for the Prague Stock Exchange," Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, VsI Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, vol. 10(2), pages 473-494, December.
    4. Yu, Dan & Chen, Chuang & Wang, Yudong & Zhang, Yaojie, 2023. "Hedging pressure momentum and the predictability of oil futures returns," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    5. Treepongkaruna, Sirimon & Chan, Kam Fong & Malik, Ihtisham, 2023. "Climate policy uncertainty and the cross-section of stock returns," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(PA).
    6. Nonejad, Nima, 2022. "Equity premium prediction using the price of crude oil: Uncovering the nonlinear predictive impact," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Yunqi & Zhou, Ti, 2023. "Out-of-sample equity premium prediction: The role of option-implied constraints," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 199-226.
    2. Christopher J. Neely & David E. Rapach & Jun Tu & Guofu Zhou, 2014. "Forecasting the Equity Risk Premium: The Role of Technical Indicators," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(7), pages 1772-1791, July.
    3. Qingjing Zhang & Taufiq Choudhry & Jing-Ming Kuo & Xiaoquan Liu, 2021. "Does liquidity drive stock market returns? The role of investor risk aversion," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 929-958, October.
    4. Ma, Feng & Liu, Jing & Wahab, M.I.M. & Zhang, Yaojie, 2018. "Forecasting the aggregate oil price volatility in a data-rich environment," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 320-332.
    5. Giovannelli, Alessandro & Massacci, Daniele & Soccorsi, Stefano, 2021. "Forecasting stock returns with large dimensional factor models," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 252-269.
    6. Bai, Jennie & Bali, Turan G. & Wen, Quan, 2021. "Is there a risk-return tradeoff in the corporate bond market? Time-series and cross-sectional evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(3), pages 1017-1037.
    7. Wang, Yudong & Pan, Zhiyuan & Liu, Li & Wu, Chongfeng, 2019. "Oil price increases and the predictability of equity premium," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 43-58.
    8. Chen, Jian & Jiang, Fuwei & Liu, Yangshu & Tu, Jun, 2017. "International volatility risk and Chinese stock return predictability," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 183-203.
    9. Andreou, Panayiotis C. & Kagkadis, Anastasios & Philip, Dennis & Taamouti, Abderrahim, 2019. "The information content of forward moments," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 527-541.
    10. Phan, Dinh Hoang Bach & Sharma, Susan Sunila & Narayan, Paresh Kumar, 2015. "Stock return forecasting: Some new evidence," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 38-51.
    11. Dai, Zhifeng & Zhu, Huan, 2020. "Stock return predictability from a mixed model perspective," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    12. Haase, Felix & Neuenkirch, Matthias, 2023. "Predictability of bull and bear markets: A new look at forecasting stock market regimes (and returns) in the US," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 587-605.
    13. Baltas, Nick & Karyampas, Dimitrios, 2018. "Forecasting the equity risk premium: The importance of regime-dependent evaluation," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 83-102.
    14. Zhu, Xiaoneng & Zhu, Jie, 2013. "Predicting stock returns: A regime-switching combination approach and economic links," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4120-4133.
    15. Rapach, David & Zhou, Guofu, 2013. "Forecasting Stock Returns," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 328-383, Elsevier.
    16. Nonejad, Nima, 2023. "Conditional out-of-sample predictability of aggregate equity returns and aggregate equity return volatility using economic variables," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 91-122.
    17. Chen, Yong & Eaton, Gregory W. & Paye, Bradley S., 2018. "Micro(structure) before macro? The predictive power of aggregate illiquidity for stock returns and economic activity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 48-73.
    18. Fabian Hollstein & Marcel Prokopczuk, 2023. "Managing the Market Portfolio," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(6), pages 3675-3696, June.
    19. Geert Bekaert & Eric C. Engstrom & Nancy R. Xu, 2022. "The Time Variation in Risk Appetite and Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(6), pages 3975-4004, June.
    20. Nonejad, Nima, 2022. "Predicting equity premium out-of-sample by conditioning on newspaper-based uncertainty measures: A comparative study," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:abacus:v:58:y:2022:i:3:p:567-588. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0001-3072 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.