This paper derives a negative relationship between the dispersion of forecasts among investors and future stock returns based on Harrison and Kreps (1978). Using monthly data for earnings forecasts by market analysts, this paper presents empirically that the dispersion in forecasts has particularly strong predictive power for future stock returns at intermediate horizons (between 25 months and 44 months). The direction of predictive power from the dispersion for future stock returns is consistent with the derived negative relationship. Further, results suggest that the dispersion in forecasts contains information about future stock returns aside from the information contained in other variables.
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Paper provided by National University of Singapore, Department of Economics in its series Departmental Working Papers with number
wp0117.
References listed on IDEAS 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.:
David M. Cutler & James M. Poterba & Lawrence H. Summers, 1989.
"What Moves Stock Prices?,"
NBER Working Papers
2538, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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David H. Cutler & James M. Poterba & Lawrence H. Summers, 1988.
"What Moves Stock Prices?,"
Working papers
487, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
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.)