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Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis Vol. 56 No. 8 2021

Where Does the Predictability from Sorting on Returns of Economically Linked Firms Come From?

Aaron Burt1; Christopher M. Hrdlicka2

1 University of Oklahoma · 2 University of Washington

open access

Abstract

Cross-firm predictability among economically linked firms can arise when both firms exhibit their own momentum and their returns are contemporaneously correlated. We show that cross-firm predictability can last up to 10 years, which is hard to reconcile with an interpretation of slow information diffusion. However, it is consistent with the economically linked firms’ commonality in momentum. The contribution of each source can be found by decomposing leaders’ returns into the predictable (momentum) and news components. Sorting on each, we find that both sources contribute almost equally to 1-month predictability, whereas commonality in momentum is solely responsible for longer-horizon cross-firm predictability.

DOI
10.1017/s0022109020000885
Volume
56
Issue
8
Pages
2634-2658
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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