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Market Timing Ability and Volatility Implied in Investment Newletters' Asset Allocation Recommendations

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Author Info
John R. Graham
Campbell R. Harvey

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Abstract

We analyze the advice contained in a sample of 237 investment letters over the 1980-1992 period. Each newsletter recommends a mix of equity and cash. We construct portfolios based on these recommendations and find that only a small number of the newsletters appear to have higher average returns than a buy-and-hold portfolio constructed to have the same variance. Knowledge of the asset allocation weights also implies knowledge of the exact conditional betas. As a result, we present direct tests of market timing ability that bypass beta estimation problems. Assuming that different letters cater to investors with different risk aversions, we are able to imply the newsletters' forecasted market returns. The dispersion of the newsletters' forecasts provides a natural measure of disagreement in the market. We find that the degree of disagreement contains information about both market volatility and trading activity.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 4890.

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Date of creation: Jun 1997
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4890

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G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services

References listed on IDEAS
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    Other versions:
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  23. Pearce, Douglas K, 1984. "An Empirical Analysis of Expected Stock Price Movements," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 16(3), pages 317-27, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Connie Becker & Wayne Ferson & David Myers & Michael Schill, 1998. "Conditional Market Timing with Benchmark Investors," NBER Working Papers 6434, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Charles P. Thomas & Francis E. Warnock & Jon Wongswan, 2006. "The Performance of International Equity Portfolios," NBER Working Papers 12346, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Marquering, W. & Verbeek, M., 2000. "The economic value of predicting stock index returns and volatility," Discussion Paper 78, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
  4. Changyun Wang, 2003. "Investor sentiment, market timing, and futures returns," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 13(12), pages 871-878, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. John R. Graham & Campbell R. Harvey, 2001. "Expectations of Equity Risk Premia, Volatility and Asymmetry from a Corporate Finance Perspective," NBER Working Papers 8678, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Jennifer Juergens & Evan Anderson & Eric Ghysels, 2004. "Do Heterogeneous Beliefs Matter for Asset Pricing?," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 477, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
  7. William N. Goetzmann & Massimo Massa, 1999. "Index Funds and Stock Market Growth," NBER Working Papers 7033, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  8. J. C. Matallín & A. Fernández-Izquierdo, 2003. "Passive timing effect in portfolio management," Applied Economics, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 35(17), pages 1829-1837, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Gene Amromin & Steven A. Sharpe, 2005. "From the horse's mouth: gauging conditional expected stock returns from investor surveys," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-26, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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  10. Martin Hess, 2006. "Timing and diversification: A state-dependent asset allocation approach," European Journal of Finance, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 189-204, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Wayne Ferson & Kenneth Khang, 2002. "Conditional Performance Measurement Using Portfolio Weights: Evidence for Pension Funds," NBER Working Papers 8790, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Gene Amromin & Steven A. Sharpe, 2008. "Expectations of risk and return among household investors: Are their Sharpe ratios countercyclical?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2008-17, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  13. Robert J. Shiller, 1999. "Measuring Bubble Expectations and Investor Confidence," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1212, Cowles Foundation, Yale University. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  14. Sergey Iskoz & Jiang Wang, 2003. "How to Tell if a Money Manager Knows More?," NBER Working Papers 9791, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Gina Nicolosi & Liang Peng, 2004. "Do individual investors learn from their trading experience," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 532, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
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