April 2012
Article
Journal of Finance

Share Issuance and Factor Timing

By: Robin Greenwood and Samuel G. Hanson

Format:Print

Abstract

We show that characteristics of stock issuers can be used to forecast important common factors in stocks' returns such as those associated with book-to-market, size, and industry. Specifically, we use differences between the attributes of stock issuers and repurchasers to forecast characteristic-related factor returns. For example, we show that large firms underperform following years when issuing firms are large relative to repurchasing firms. While our strongest results are for portfolios based on book-to-market, size (i.e., we forecast the HML and SMB factors), and industry, our approach is also useful for forecasting factor returns associated with distress, payout policy, and profitability.

Keywords

Investment Portfolio; Stock Shares; Forecasting and Prediction; Investment Return; Policy; Profit

Citation

Greenwood, Robin, and Samuel G. Hanson. "Share Issuance and Factor Timing." Journal of Finance 67, no. 2 (April 2012): 761–798. (Internet Appendix Here.)