Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Business Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 247

Full-Text Articles in Business

Siphoned Apart: A Portfolio Perspective On Order Flow Segmentation, Markus Baldauf, Joshua Mollner, Bart Zhou Yueshen Apr 2024

Siphoned Apart: A Portfolio Perspective On Order Flow Segmentation, Markus Baldauf, Joshua Mollner, Bart Zhou Yueshen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study liquidity supply in fragmented markets. Market makers intermediate heterogeneous order flows, trading off spread revenue against inventory costs. Applying our model to payment for order flow (PFOF), we demonstrate that portfolio-based considerations of inventory management incentivize market makers to segment retail orders by siphoning them off-exchange. Banning order flow segmentation reduces total welfare, can make trading more costly for all investors, and can resolve a prisoner's dilemma among market makers. These results differentiate our inventory-based model from the existing information-based theories of PFOF.


Diverse Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo Feb 2024

Diverse Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Hedge fund teams with heterogeneous educational backgrounds, academic specializations, work experiences, genders, and races, outperform homogeneous teams after adjusting for risk and fund characteristics. An event study of manager team transitions, instrumental variable regressions, and an analysis of managers who simultaneously operate solo- and team-managed funds address endogeneity concerns. Diverse teams deliver superior returns by arbitraging more stock anomalies, avoiding behavioral biases, and minimizing downside risks. Moreover, diversity allows hedge funds to circumvent capacity constraints and generate persistent performance. Our results suggest that diversity adds value in asset management. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the …


What Difference Do The New Factor Models Make In Portfolio Allocation?, Frank J. Fabozzi, Dashan Huang, Fuwei Jiang, Jiexun Wang Feb 2024

What Difference Do The New Factor Models Make In Portfolio Allocation?, Frank J. Fabozzi, Dashan Huang, Fuwei Jiang, Jiexun Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper compares the Hou-Xue-Zhang four-factor model with the Fama-French five-factor model from an investing perspective both in- and out-of-sample. Without margin requirements and model uncertainty, the Hou-Xue-Zhang model outperforms the Fama-French model. However, the outperformance could become negligible if an investor is subject to margin requirements and model uncertainty. The Hou-Xue-Zhang model shows similar power as the Fama-French model in describing the covariance matrix of asset returns. Overall, the two models do not make a difference for investing in a realistic setting.


Derivatives And Market (Il)Liquidity, Shiyang Huang, Bart Zhou Yueshen, Cheng Zhang Jan 2024

Derivatives And Market (Il)Liquidity, Shiyang Huang, Bart Zhou Yueshen, Cheng Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study how derivatives (with nonlinear payoffs) affect the underlying assets liquidity. In a rational expectations equilibrium, informed investors expect low conditional volatility and sell derivatives to the others. These derivative trades affect different investors utility differently, possibly amplifying liquidity risk. As investors delta hedge their derivative positions, price impact in the underlying drops, suggesting improved liquidity, because informed trading is diluted. In contrast, effects on price reversal are ambiguous, depending on investors relative delta hedging sensitivity, i.e., the gamma of the derivatives. The model cautions of potential disconnections between illiquidity measures and liquidity risk premium due to derivatives trading.


Are Bond Returns Predictable With Real-Time Macro Data?, Dashan Huang, Fuwei Jiang, Kunpeng Li, Guoshi Tong, Guofu Zhou Dec 2023

Are Bond Returns Predictable With Real-Time Macro Data?, Dashan Huang, Fuwei Jiang, Kunpeng Li, Guoshi Tong, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the predictability of bond returns using real-time macro variables and consider the possibility of a nonlinear predictive relationship and the presence of weak factors. To address these issues, we propose a scaled sufficient forecasting (sSUFF) method and analyze its asymptotic properties. Using both the existing and the new method, we find empirically that real-time macro variables have significant forecasting power both in-sample and out-of-sample. Moreover, they generate sizable economic values, and their predictability is not spanned by the yield curve. We also observe that the forecasted bond returns are countercyclical, and the magnitude of predictability is stronger during …


Tail Risk Hedging: The Search For Cheap Options, Poh Ling Neo, Chyng Wen Tee Nov 2023

Tail Risk Hedging: The Search For Cheap Options, Poh Ling Neo, Chyng Wen Tee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The authors find that a simple heuristic of sorting liquid equity options by dollar price to construct a portfolio of cheap put options leads to a surprisingly robust hedge for tail risk – the superior performance holds even when compared against more advanced empirical strategies. Further investigation reveals the asymmetry in market correlation under different market conditions as the mechanism of this robust hedging performance. The cheap options selected by the heuristic comprises of stocks with diverse firm characteristics. The correlation spike accompanying tail risk events leads to the majority of these put options moving into-the-money (ITM), thus compensating the …


Do Underwriters Short-Change Corporations Issuing Bonds?, Jeremy C. Goh, Lisa (Zongfei) Yang Oct 2023

Do Underwriters Short-Change Corporations Issuing Bonds?, Jeremy C. Goh, Lisa (Zongfei) Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We confirm prior evidence that bonds on average are offered at prices below their immediate post-offer secondary market prices. However, in cases where banks lead–manage their own bond offerings the underpricing is significantly less as compared with other non-self-marketed offerings. These findings are robust across various matched samples and selection models. Our results suggest that the bond offering process is characterized by substantive agency conflicts between shareholders of corporations (issuers) and underwriters.


Who Profits From Trading Options?, Jianfeng Hu, Antonia Kirilova, Gilbert Seongkyu Park, Doojin. Ryu Sep 2023

Who Profits From Trading Options?, Jianfeng Hu, Antonia Kirilova, Gilbert Seongkyu Park, Doojin. Ryu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We use account-level transaction data to examine trading styles and profitability in a leading derivatives market. Approximately 66% of active retail investors predominantly hold simple, one-sided positions in only one class of options, whereas institutional investors are more likely to use complex strategies. Hypothesizing that the complexity of trading styles reflects investors' skills, we examine the effect of options trading styles on investment performance. We find that retail investors using simple strategies lose to the rest of the market. For both retail and institutional investors, selling volatility is the most successful strategy. We conclude that these style effects are persistent …


Would Order-By-Order Auctions Be Competitive?, Thomas Ernst, Chester Spatt, Jian Sun Jun 2023

Would Order-By-Order Auctions Be Competitive?, Thomas Ernst, Chester Spatt, Jian Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We model two different methods of executing segregated retail orders: broker's routing, whereby brokers allocate orders using market maker's overall performance, and order-by-order auctions, where market makers bid on individual orders, a recent SEC proposal. Order-by-order auctions improve market maker allocative efficiency, but face a winner's curse reducing retail investor welfare, particularly when liquidity is limited. Additional market participants competing for retail orders fail to improve total efficiency and investor welfare when entrants possess information superior to incumbent wholesalers. Existing Retail Liquidity Programs empirically suggest order-by-order auctions would attract few bidders in less liquid stocks and low-liquidity periods.


Is Carbon Risk Priced In The Cross Section Of Corporate Bond Returns?, Tinghua Duan, Frank Weikai Li, Quan Wen Jun 2023

Is Carbon Risk Priced In The Cross Section Of Corporate Bond Returns?, Tinghua Duan, Frank Weikai Li, Quan Wen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article examines the pricing of a firm’s carbon risk in the corporate bond market. Contrary to the “carbon risk premium” hypothesis, bonds of more carbon-intensive firms earn significantly lower returns. This effect cannot be explained by a comprehensive list of bond characteristics and exposure to known risk factors. Investigating sources of the low carbon alpha, we find the underperformance of bonds issued by carbon-intensive firms cannot be fully explained by divestment from institutional investors. Instead, our evidence is most consistent with investor underreaction to the predictability of carbon intensity for firm cash-flow news, creditworthiness, and environmental incidents.


A Review On Derivative Hedging Using Reinforcement Learning, Peng Liu Mar 2023

A Review On Derivative Hedging Using Reinforcement Learning, Peng Liu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Hedging is a common trading activity to manage the risk of engaging in transactions that involve derivatives such as options. Perfect and timely hedging, however, is an impossible task in the real market that characterizes discrete-time transactions with costs. Recent years have witnessed reinforcement learning (RL) in formulating optimal hedging strategies. Specifically, different RL algorithms have been applied to learn the optimal offsetting position based on market conditions, offering an automatic risk management solution that proposes optimal hedging strategies while catering to both market dynamics and restrictions. In this article, the author provides a comprehensive review of the use of …


Peer Effects In Equity Research, Kenny Phua, Mandy Tham, Chi Shen Wei Mar 2023

Peer Effects In Equity Research, Kenny Phua, Mandy Tham, Chi Shen Wei

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the importance of peer effects among sell-side analysts who work at the same brokerage house, but cover different firms. By mapping the information network within each brokerage, we identify analysts who occupy central positions in their network. Central analysts incorporate more information from their coworkers and produce better research. Using shocks to network structures around brokerage mergers, we identify the influence of peer effects and the importance of industry expertise on analysts’ performance. A portfolio strategy that exploits the forecast revisions of central analysts earns up to 24% per annum.


Simultaneous Multilateral Search, Sergei Glebkin, Bart Zhou Yueshen, Ji Shen Feb 2023

Simultaneous Multilateral Search, Sergei Glebkin, Bart Zhou Yueshen, Ji Shen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper studies simultaneous multilateral search (SMS) in over-the-counter markets: When searching, a customer simultaneously contacts several dealers and trades with the one offering the best quote. Higher search intensity (how often one can search) improves welfare, but higher search capacity (how many dealers one can contact) might be harmful. When the market is in distress, customers might inefficiently favor bilateral bargaining (BB) over SMS. Such a preference for BB speaks to the sluggish adoption of SMS trading, like request-for-quote protocols, in over-the-counter markets. Furthermore, a market-wide shift to SMS may not be socially optimal.


Presidential Economic Approval Rating And The Cross-Section Of Stock Returns, Zilin Chen, Zhi Da, Dashan Huang, Liyao Wang Jan 2023

Presidential Economic Approval Rating And The Cross-Section Of Stock Returns, Zilin Chen, Zhi Da, Dashan Huang, Liyao Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We construct a monthly presidential economic approval rating (PEAR) index from 1981 to 2019, by averaging ratings on the president’s handling of the economy across various national polls. In the cross-section, stocks with high betas to changes in the PEAR index significantly under-perform those with low betas by 1.00% per month in the future, on a risk-adjusted basis. The low PEAR beta premium persists up to one year, and is present in various sub-samples and even in other G7 countries. PEAR beta dynamically reveals a firm’s perceived alignment to the incumbent president’s economic policies and investors seem to misprice such …


Responsible Hedge Funds, Hao Liang, Lin Sun, Song Wee Melvyn Teo Nov 2022

Responsible Hedge Funds, Hao Liang, Lin Sun, Song Wee Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Hedge funds that endorse the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) underperform other hedge funds after adjusting for risk but attract greater investor flows, accumulate more assets, and harvest greater fee revenues. Consistent with an agency explanation, the underperformance is driven by PRI signatories with low environmental, social, and governance (ESG) exposures and is greater for hedge funds with poor incentive alignment. To address endogeneity, we exploit regulatory reforms that enhance stewardship and show that the ESG exposure and relative performance of signatory funds improve post reforms. Our findings suggest that some hedge funds endorse responsible investment to pander …


Information Acquisition And Expected Returns: Evidence From Edgar Search Traffic, Frank Weikai Li, Chengzhu Sun Aug 2022

Information Acquisition And Expected Returns: Evidence From Edgar Search Traffic, Frank Weikai Li, Chengzhu Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines expected return information embedded in investors' information acquisition activity. Using a novel dataset containing investors' access of company filings through SEC's EDGAR system, we reverse engineer their expectations over future payoffs and show that the abnormal number of IPs searching for firms' financial statements strongly predict future returns. The return predictability stems from investors allocating more effort to firms with improving fundamentals and following exogeneous shock to underpricing. A long-short portfolio based on our measure of information acquisition activity generate monthly abnormal return of 80 basis points and does not reverse over the long-run.. In addition, the …


Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Width-To-Height Ratio And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo Aug 2022

Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Width-To-Height Ratio And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

An abundance of evidence relates facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) to masculine behaviors in males. We show that hedge funds operated by high-fWHR managers underperform those operated by low-fWHR managers, bear greater downside risk, are more susceptible to fire sales, and fail more often. High-fWHR managers compensate for their underperformance by marketing their funds more aggressively, thereby garnering higher flows and fee revenues. By exploiting major personal events that shape testosterone, namely marriage and fatherhood, we trace the biological mechanism underlying the relation between fWHR and investment performance to circulating testosterone. Our findings are robust and extend to equity mutual funds.


Can Shorts Predict Returns? A Global Perspective, Ekkehart Boehmer, Zsuzsa R. Huszar, Yanchu Wang, Xiaoyan Zhang, Xinran Zhang May 2022

Can Shorts Predict Returns? A Global Perspective, Ekkehart Boehmer, Zsuzsa R. Huszar, Yanchu Wang, Xiaoyan Zhang, Xinran Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using multiple short-sale measures, we examine the predictive power of short sales for future stock returns in 38 countries from July 2006 to December 2014. We find that the days-to-cover ratio and the utilization ratio measures have the most robust predictive power for future stock returns in the global capital market. Our results display significant cross-country and cross-firm differences in the predictive power of alternative short-sale measures. The predictive power of shorts is stronger in countries with nonprohibitive short sale regulations and for stocks with relatively low liquidity, high shorting fees, and low price efficiency.


Market Manipulation Around Seasoned Equity Offerings: Evidence Prior To The Global Financial Crisis Of 2007-2009, Charlie Charoenwong, Kuan Yong David Ding, Ping Wang May 2022

Market Manipulation Around Seasoned Equity Offerings: Evidence Prior To The Global Financial Crisis Of 2007-2009, Charlie Charoenwong, Kuan Yong David Ding, Ping Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Since the adoption of the SEC’s Rule 10b-21 in 1988, many researchers have been concerned over the effectiveness of short sales constraints in preventing manipulative trading in the derivatives market. We analyze whether options can be used as synthetic short sale instruments to manipulate stock prices before a seasoned equity offer. Due to the existence of strict short sales constraints in the equity market and market makers’ anticipation of manipulative trading, it would be very costly for a manipulator to drive stock prices down artificially either by short selling in the equity market or by using synthetic short sales in …


Investor Sentiment And Paradigm Shifts In Equity Premium Forecasting, Liya Chu, Kai Li, Tony Xue-Zhong He, Jun Tu Apr 2022

Investor Sentiment And Paradigm Shifts In Equity Premium Forecasting, Liya Chu, Kai Li, Tony Xue-Zhong He, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study investigates the impact of investor sentiment on excess equity return forecasting. A high (low) investor sentiment may weaken the connection between fundamental economic (behavioral-based non-fundamental) predictors and market returns. We find that although fundamental variables can be strong predictors when sentiment is low, they tend to lose their predictive power when investor sentiment is high. Non-fundamental predictors perform well during high-sentiment periods while their predictive ability deteriorates when investor sentiment is low. These paradigm shifts in equity return forecasting provide a key to understanding and resolving the lack of predictive power for both fundamental and non-fundamental variables debated …


Impact Of Restrictive Red Blood Cell Transfusion Strategy On Thrombosis-Related Events: A Meta-Analysis And Systematic Review, Mairehaba Maimaitiming, Chenxiao Zhang, Jingui Xie, Zhichao Zheng, Haidong Luo, Oon Cheong Ooi Mar 2022

Impact Of Restrictive Red Blood Cell Transfusion Strategy On Thrombosis-Related Events: A Meta-Analysis And Systematic Review, Mairehaba Maimaitiming, Chenxiao Zhang, Jingui Xie, Zhichao Zheng, Haidong Luo, Oon Cheong Ooi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Background and Objectives There is an ongoing controversy regarding the risks of restrictive and liberal red blood cell (RBC) transfusion strategies. This meta-analysis assessed whether transfusion at a lower threshold was superior to transfusion at a higher threshold, with regard to thrombosis-related events, that is, whether these outcomes can benefit from a restrictive transfusion strategy is debated. Materials and Methods We searched PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and Scopus from inception up to 31 July 2021. We included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in any clinical setting that evaluated the effects of restrictive versus liberal RBC transfusion in adults. …


High Sex Ratios And Household Portfolio Choice In China, Wenchao Li, Changcheng Song, Shu Xu, Junjian Yi Mar 2022

High Sex Ratios And Household Portfolio Choice In China, Wenchao Li, Changcheng Song, Shu Xu, Junjian Yi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper studies how high sex ratios (more men than women) affect household portfolio choice. Using data from a nationally representative Chinese household finance survey, we find that a 1 standard deviation increase in the sex ratio would raise the stock market participation rate by 2.9 percentage points or 52.2 percent for families with a son relative to families with a daughter. Our estimates imply that rising sex ratios explain around 10 percent of the significant growth in China’s stock market size in recent decades.


Expected Return, Volume, And Mispricing, Yufeng Han, Dashan Huang, Dayong Huang, Guofu Zhou Mar 2022

Expected Return, Volume, And Mispricing, Yufeng Han, Dashan Huang, Dayong Huang, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We find that expected return is related to trading volume positively among underpriced stocks but negatively among overpriced stocks. As such, trading volume amplifies mispricing. Our results are robust to alternative mispricing and trading volume measures, alternative portfolio formation methods, and controlling for variables that are known to have amplification effects on mispricing. By attributing trading volume to investor disagreement, we show that our results are consistent with the recent theoretical model of Atmaz and Basak (2018) in that investor disagreement predicts stock returns conditional on expectation bias.


Race And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo Feb 2022

Race And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We find that minority operated funds deliver higher alphas, Sharpe ratios, and information ratios than do non-minority operated funds. Moreover, minority fund managers attended more selective schools, worked at higher status investment banks, and are more likely to hold post-graduate degrees. Yet, minority managers raise less start-up capital and attract lower investor flows. Racial homophily fuels investors' appetite for non-minority funds. To address endogeneity, we leverage on an event study of minority manager fund transitions and an instrumental variable analysis that exploits racial imprinting during childhood. The results suggest that minorities face significant barriers to entry in the hedge fund …


Conditional Relationship Between Distress Risk And Stock Returns, Su Hee Yun, Jung Min Kim Jan 2022

Conditional Relationship Between Distress Risk And Stock Returns, Su Hee Yun, Jung Min Kim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose: Previous research on the relationship between a firm’s distress risk and future stock returns produces inconsistent results. This study attempts to explain the conflicting results of earlier studies by showing that systematic distress risk leads to positive rewards, while unsystematic distress risk leads to low stock returns. In addition, this study intends to elucidate the factors of systematic distress risk and unsystematic distress risk, respectively. In this way, this study informs the rational investor what kind of distress risk they should take. Design/methodology/approach: This study considers two distress-predictor sets to show a possibility between distress risk and stock returns …


Concept Links And Return Momentum, Qianqian Du, Dawei Liang, Zilin Chen, Jun Tu Jan 2022

Concept Links And Return Momentum, Qianqian Du, Dawei Liang, Zilin Chen, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Unlike traditional asset categories (e.g., industry classifications) that are generally defined clearly, some groups of stocks are tied to certain loosely defined “concepts” (e.g., e-commerce). When investors find it difficult to analyze ambiguous concept-oriented information, information diffuses slowly, creating “concept momentum”. Based on unique concept data in the Chinese stock market, this study constructs a concept-momentum strategy that involves buying stocks from past winning concepts and selling stocks from past losing concepts, which can generate pronounced abnormal returns. Neither risk factors, firm-level momentum, nor industry-level momentum can explain concept momentum. Furthermore, we find that both the underreaction and cross-stock lead-lag …


Joint News, Attention Spillover, And Market Returns Predictability, Li Guo, Lin Peng, Yubo Tao, Jun Tu Nov 2021

Joint News, Attention Spillover, And Market Returns Predictability, Li Guo, Lin Peng, Yubo Tao, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We analyze over 2.6 million news articles and propose a novel measure of joint news coverage of firms. The measure strongly and negatively predicts market returns, with a monthly R-squared of 3.93% in sample and 6.52% out of sample. The relation is causal, robust to existing predictors, and is especially strong when market uncertainty is high or when market frictions are large. At the firm level, joint news coverage is associated with a 20.3% increase in EDGAR downloads by new IPs from the investor bases of the other covered firms. Our evidence suggests that joint news triggers investor attention spillover …


Tracking Retail Investor Activity, Ekkehart Boehmer, Charles M. Jones, Xiaoyan Zhang, Xinran Zhang Oct 2021

Tracking Retail Investor Activity, Ekkehart Boehmer, Charles M. Jones, Xiaoyan Zhang, Xinran Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We provide an easy method to identify marketable retail purchases and sales using recent, publicly available U.S. equity transactions data. Individual stocks with net buying by retail investors outperform stocks with negative imbalances by approximately 10 bps over the following week. Less than half of the predictive power of marketable retail order imbalance is attributable to order flow persistence, while the rest cannot be explained by contrarian trading (proxy for liquidity provision) or public news sentiment. There is suggestive, but only suggestive, evidence that retail marketable orders might contain firm-level information that is not yet incorporated into prices.


The Profitability Of Warrant Issuers: An Empirical Investigation Of Single Stock And Index Warrants, Ichaya Wongnapakarn, Arnat Leemakdej, Chiyachantana N. Chiraphol, Pattarawan Prasarnphanich, Eakapat Manitkajornkit Oct 2021

The Profitability Of Warrant Issuers: An Empirical Investigation Of Single Stock And Index Warrants, Ichaya Wongnapakarn, Arnat Leemakdej, Chiyachantana N. Chiraphol, Pattarawan Prasarnphanich, Eakapat Manitkajornkit

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines the derivative warrant's profit of issuers compensated with the risk from issuing call and put derivative warrants because they have commitments in risk management and managing risk by hedging the underlying exposure. The average profit of issuers is a cumulative profit from the first trading day until the last trading day. Consistent with the imperfect competition for issuing put derivative warrants on single stock from different securities borrowing and lending advantages, the profit margin of a put warrant is higher than the call warrant. However, the profit margin from a put warrant is not necessarily higher than …


Esg And The Market Return, Ran Chang, Liya Chu, Jun Tu, Bohui Zhang, Guofu Zhou Oct 2021

Esg And The Market Return, Ran Chang, Liya Chu, Jun Tu, Bohui Zhang, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) index. We find that it has significant power in predicting the stock market risk premium, both in- and out-of-sample, and delivers sizable economic gains for mean-variance investors in asset allocation. Although the index is extracted by using the PLS method, its predictability is robust to using alternative machine learning tools. We find further that the aggregate of environmental variables captures short-term forecasting power, while that of social or governance captures long-term. The predictive power of the ESG index stems from both cash flow and discount rate channels.