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Journal of Finance Vol. 63 No. 6 2008

Average Returns, B/M, and Share Issues

Eugene F. Fama; Kenneth R. French1

1 Reykjavík University

open access

Abstract

The book‐to‐market ratio (B/M) is a noisy measure of expected stock returns because it also varies with expected cashflows. Our hypothesis is that the evolution of B/M, in terms of past changes in book equity and price, contains independent information about expected cashflows that can be used to improve estimates of expected returns. The tests support this hypothesis, with results that are largely but not entirely similar for Microcap stocks (below the 20 th NYSE market capitalization percentile) and All but Micro stocks (ABM).

DOI
10.1111/j.1540-6261.2008.01418.x
Volume
63
Issue
6
Pages
2971-2995
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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