Relying on the Stambaugh, Yu, and Yuan (2015) mispricing score and on 45 countries between 1994 and 2013, I document economically meaningful and statistically significant cross-sectional stock return predictability around the globe. In contrast to the widely held belief, mispricing associated with the 11 long/short anomalies underlying the composite ranking measure appears to be at least as prevalent in developed markets as in emerging markets. Additional support for this conjecture is obtained, among others, from tests for biased expectations based on the behavior of anomaly spreads surrounding earnings announcements as well as from within-country variation in development.

Extensive research has revealed that alphabetical name ordering tends to provide an advantage to those positioned in the beginning of an alphabetical listing. This article is the first to explore the implications of this alphabetic bias in financial markets. We find that US stocks that appear near the top of an alphabetical listing have about 5–15% higher trading activity and liquidity than stocks that appear toward the bottom. The magnitude of these results is negatively related to firm visibility and investor sophistication. International evidence and fund flows further indicate that ordering effects can affect trading activity and liquidity.