IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mit/sloanp/1805.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Predicting Returns With Financial Ratios

Author

Listed:
  • Lewellen, Jonathan

Abstract

This article provides a new test of the predictive ability of aggregate financial ratios. Predictive regressions are subject to small-sample biases, but the correction in previous studies can substantially understate forecasting power. Dividend yield predicts aggregate market returns from 1946 Â€Ó 2000, as well as in various subperiods. Book-to-market and the earnings-price ratio predict returns during the shorter 1963 Â€Ó 2000 sample. The evidence remains strong despite the unusual price run-up in recent years

Suggested Citation

  • Lewellen, Jonathan, 2003. "Predicting Returns With Financial Ratios," Working papers 4374-02, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:mit:sloanp:1805
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/1805
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:5:p:1563-1587 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Flood, Robert P & Hodrick, Robert J, 1986. "Asset Price Volatility, Bubbles, and Process Switching," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(4), pages 831-842, September.
    3. Goetzmann, William Nelson & Jorion, Philippe, 1993. "Testing the Predictive Power of Dividend Yields," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(2), pages 663-679, June.
    4. Andrew Ang & Geert Bekaert, 2007. "Stock Return Predictability: Is it There?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(3), pages 651-707.
    5. Kothari, S. P. & Shanken, Jay, 1997. "Book-to-market, dividend yield, and expected market returns: A time-series analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 169-203, May.
    6. Diba, Behzad T & Grossman, Herschel I, 1988. "Explosive Rational Bubbles in Stock Prices?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(3), pages 520-530, June.
    7. DeJong, David N & Whiteman, Charles H, 1991. "The Temporal Stability of Dividends and Stock Prices: Evidence from the Likelihood Function," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(3), pages 600-617, June.
    8. Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2002. "The Equity Premium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(2), pages 637-659, April.
    9. Gregory Mankiw, N. & Shapiro, Matthew D., 1986. "Do we reject too often? : Small sample properties of tests of rational expectations models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 139-145.
    10. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1988. "Dividend yields and expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-25, October.
    11. Stambaugh, Robert F., 1999. "Predictive regressions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 375-421, December.
    12. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    13. Kothari, S P & Shanken, Jay & Sloan, Richard G, 1995. "Another Look at the Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(1), pages 185-224, March.
    14. Hodrick, Robert J, 1992. "Dividend Yields and Expected Stock Returns: Alternative Procedures for Inference and Measurement," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(3), pages 357-386.
    15. Nelson, Charles R & Kim, Myung J, 1993. "Predictable Stock Returns: The Role of Small Sample Bias," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(2), pages 641-661, June.
    16. Flood, Robert P & Hodrick, Robert J, 1990. "On Testing for Speculative Bubbles," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 85-101, Spring.
    17. Pontiff, Jeffrey & Schall, Lawrence D., 1998. "Book-to-market ratios as predictors of market returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 141-160, August.
    18. Hamilton, James D. & Whiteman, Charles H., 1985. "The observable implications of self-fulfilling expectations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 353-373, November.
    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. Amihud, Yakov & Hurvich, Clifford M., 2004. "Predictive Regressions: A Reduced-Bias Estimation Method," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 813-841, December.
    2. Lettau, Martin & Ludvigson, Sydney C., 2005. "Expected returns and expected dividend growth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 583-626, June.
    3. John Y. Campbell & Tuomo Vuolteenaho, 2004. "Bad Beta, Good Beta," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1249-1275, December.
    4. Hjalmarsson, Erik, 2005. "Predictive regressions with panel data," Working Papers in Economics 160, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    5. Ang, Andrew & Liu, Jun, 2007. "Risk, return, and dividends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 1-38, July.
    6. Ivo Welch & Amit Goyal, 2004. "A Note On 'Predicting Returns With Financial Ratios'," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2465, Yale School of Management.
    7. Campbell, John Y. & Yogo, Motohiro, 2006. "Efficient tests of stock return predictability," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 27-60, July.
    8. Campbell, John Y., 2003. "Consumption-based asset pricing," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 803-887, Elsevier.
    9. Park, Cheolbeom, 2010. "When does the dividend-price ratio predict stock returns?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 81-101, January.
    10. Hjalmarsson, Erik, 2005. "On the Predictability of Global Stock Returns," Working Papers in Economics 161, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    11. Ivo Welch & Amit Goyal, 2004. "A Note On 'Predicting Returns With Financial Ratios'," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2465, Yale School of Management.
    12. Yakov Amihud & Clifford Hurvich & Yi Wang, 2004. "Hypothesis Testing in Predictive Regressions," Finance 0412022, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. John Y. Campbell, 2003. "Two Puzzles of Asset Pricing and Their Implications for Investors," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 47(1), pages 48-74, March.

    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. Lewellen, Jonathan, 2004. "Predicting returns with financial ratios," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 209-235, November.
    2. John H. Cochrane, 2008. "The Dog That Did Not Bark: A Defense of Return Predictability," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1533-1575, July.
    3. Rapach, David E. & Wohar, Mark E., 2006. "In-sample vs. out-of-sample tests of stock return predictability in the context of data mining," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 231-247, March.
    4. Jiang, Xiaoquan & Lee, Bong-Soo, 2007. "Stock returns, dividend yield, and book-to-market ratio," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 455-475, February.
    5. 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.
    6. Erik Hjalmarsson, 2006. "Inference in Long-Horizon Regressions," International Finance Discussion Papers 853, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Amihud, Yakov & Hurvich, Clifford M., 2004. "Predictive Regressions: A Reduced-Bias Estimation Method," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 813-841, December.
    8. Wachter, Jessica A. & Warusawitharana, Missaka, 2009. "Predictable returns and asset allocation: Should a skeptical investor time the market?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 162-178, February.
    9. Jiang, Fuwei & Lee, Joshua & Martin, Xiumin & Zhou, Guofu, 2019. "Manager sentiment and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 126-149.
    10. Campbell, John Y. & Yogo, Motohiro, 2006. "Efficient tests of stock return predictability," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 27-60, July.
    11. Chen, Long, 2009. "On the reversal of return and dividend growth predictability: A tale of two periods," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 128-151, April.
    12. Kostakis, Alexandros & Magdalinos, Tassos & Stamatogiannis, Michalis P., 2023. "Taking stock of long-horizon predictability tests: Are factor returns predictable?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 237(2).
    13. Neil Kellard & John Nankervis & Fotis Papadimitriou, 2007. "Predicting the UK Equity Premium with Dividend Ratios: An Out-Of-Sample Recursive Residuals Graphical Approach," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2006 129, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    14. Hjalmarsson, Erik, 2005. "On the Predictability of Global Stock Returns," Working Papers in Economics 161, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    15. Rapach, David E. & Wohar, Mark E. & Rangvid, Jesper, 2005. "Macro variables and international stock return predictability," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 137-166.
    16. 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.
    17. GIOT, Pierre & PETITJEAN, Mikael, 2006. "International stock return predictability: statistical evidence and economic significance," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2006088, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    18. Campbell, John Y., 2001. "Why long horizons? A study of power against persistent alternatives," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(5), pages 459-491, December.
    19. repec:grz:wpaper:2012-02 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. repec:wyi:journl:002108 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Nelson C. Mark & Donggyu Sul, 2004. "The Use of Predictive Regressions at Alternative Horizons in Finance and Economics," Finance 0409032, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    22. Wayne E. Ferson & Sergei Sarkissian & Timothy T. Simin, 2003. "Spurious Regressions in Financial Economics?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1393-1413, August.

    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:mit:sloanp:1805. 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: None (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ssmitus.html .

    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.