Essays on Return Predictability in Financial Markets

My thesis examines return predictability in government bond markets and currency markets. In Chapter 1, I take the term structure model in Cochrane and Piazzesi (2008) and construct currency market prices. The implied currency market prices are then counterfactually volatile and predictable, at least with respect to commonly used predictor variables. Getting the model closer to currency market data means reducing bond risk compensation but doing so nearly eliminates predictability in bond markets. One way to generate sensible time-variation in bond and currency risk-premia allows the volatility of returns to be time-varying.In Chapter 2, I test if alternative forecast rules perform better than the return-forecasting factor of Cochrane and Piazzesi (2008). I compare forecasts assuming all historical data is available to recursively made ones that are revised with the arrival of news. Differences in the two forecast rules systematically move with realized bond risk-premia and forecast mean yield curve levels and short-term interest rates one year ahead not just for the U.S., but also for government bond markets of other industrialized economies. I show that lower long-term rates relative to short-rates in 2004-2005 is consistent with an expected a decline of interest rates by market participants.In Chapter 3, I show that the cross-sectional average spread in the return-forecasting factor of Cochrane and Piazzesi (2005, 2008) can forecast currency risk-premia. However, the return-forecasting factor spread consistent with real-time data does not forecast currency risk-premia. I also find that both currency risk-premia and exchange rate changes have a predictable component that is detected by the information gap, what I call the hidden FX market factor, between forecasts that take as given the full sample of data and those consistent with real-time availability. Controlling for large and transitory exchange rate changes using this information gap make interest rate differentials between the average foreign country and the U.S. positively correlated with dollar appreciation rates, delivering the right sign predicted by uncovered interest parity