Reconsidering Returns

Investors’ perception of performance is biased because the relevant measure, returns, is rarely displayed. Major indices ignore dividends, thereby underreporting market performance. Newspapers are more pessimistic on ex-dividend days, consistent with mistaking the index for returns. Market betas should track returns, but track prices more than dividends, creating predictable returns. Mutual funds receive inflows for “beating the S&P 500” price index based on net asset value (also not a return). Investors extrapolate market indices, not returns, when forming annual performance expectations. Displaying returns by default would ameliorate these issues, which arise despite high attention and agreement on the appropriate measure.

Recurring Firm Events and Predictable Returns: The Within-Firm Time Series

We review the literature on recurring firm events and predictable returns. Many common firm events recur on a predictable basis, such as earnings and dividends, among others. These events tend to be associated with large positive returns in the period when the events are predicted to occur (without conditioning on the outcome or existence of the event itself). These returns occur mainly on the long side of the portfolio, are statistically and economically large when value weighted, and replicate internationally. It is difficult to explain the observed patterns with a unified risk theory. Some of the underlying causes seem to be related to idiosyncratic risk, predictable attention, probability mistakes, and demand for corporate distributions.

Do Analysts Say Anything About Earnings Without Revising Their Earnings Forecasts?

ABSTRACT Analysts are selective about which forecasts they update and, thus, convey information about current quarter earnings even when not revising the current quarter earnings (CQE) forecast. We find that (1) textual statements, (2) share price target revisions, and (3) future quarter earnings forecast revisions all predict error in the CQE forecast. We document several reasons analysts sometimes omit information from the CQE forecast: to facilitate beatable forecasts by suppressing positive news from the CQE forecast, to herd toward the consensus, and to avoid small forecast revisions. We also show that omitting information from CQE forecasts leads to lower forecast dispersion and predictable returns at the earnings announcement.