Using the news-based measure of Baker et al. [Baker SR, Bloom N, Davis SJ (2013) Measuring economic policy uncertainty. Working paper, Stanford University, Stanford, CA] to capture economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in the United States, we find that EPU positively forecasts log excess market returns. An increase of one standard deviation in EPU is associated with a 1.5% increase in forecasted three-month abnormal returns (6.1% annualized). Furthermore, innovations in EPU earn a significant negative risk premium in the Fama–French 25 size–momentum portfolios. Among the Fama–French 25 portfolios formed on size and momentum returns, the portfolio with the greatest EPU beta underperforms the portfolio with the lowest EPU beta by 5.53% per annum, controlling for exposure to the Carhart four factors as well as implied and realized volatility. These findings suggest that EPU is an economically important risk factor for equities. This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance.

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What predicts returns on assets with “hard‐to‐value” fundamentals such as Bitcoin and stocks in new industries? We are the first to propose an equilibrium model that shows how technical analysis can arise endogenously via rational learning, providing a theoretical foundation for using technical analysis in practice. We document that ratios of prices to their moving averages forecast daily Bitcoin returns in and out of sample. Trading strategies based on these ratios generate an economically significant alpha and Sharpe ratio gains relative to a buy‐and‐hold position. Similar results hold for small‐cap, young‐firm, and low analyst‐coverage stocks as well as NASDAQ stocks during the dotcom era.

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