Do return prediction models add economic value?

We compare statistical and economic measures of forecasting performance across a large set of stock return prediction models with time-varying mean and volatility. We find that it is very common for models to produce higher out-of-sample mean squared forecast errors than a model assuming a constant equity premium, yet simultaneously add economic value when their forecasts are used to guide portfolio decisions. While there is generally a positive correlation between a return prediction model’s out-of-sample statistical performance and its ability to add economic value, the relation tends to be weak and only explains a small part of the cross-sectional variation in different models’ economic value.