We show empirically that survey-based measures of expected inflation are significant and strong predictors of future aggregate stock returns in several industrialized countries both in-sample and out-of-sample. By empirically discriminatingbetween competing sources of this return predictability...

We examine whether consumer confidence – as a proxy for individual investor sentiment –affects expected stock returns internationally in 18 industrialized countries. In line with recentevidence for the U.S., we find that sentiment negatively forecasts aggregate stock marketreturns on average...

Using a new data set on investor sentiment we show that institutional and individualsentiment proxy for smart money and noise trader risk, respectively. First, usingbias-adjusted long-horizon regressions, we document that institutional sentiment forecastsstock market returns at intermediate...

The puzzling evidence of seemingly high momentum returns is related to an understanding ofrisk as a simple covariance. If we consider, however, risk in higher-order statistical moments,momentum returns appear less advantageous.