The predictive power of cyclical consumption for stock market returns in the Nordic countries

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School of Business | Bachelor's thesis

Date

2020

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Mcode

Degree programme

Rahoitus

Language

en

Pages

20 + 5

Series

Abstract

In this paper, I show that cyclical deviations from the long-term growth trend of consumption give useful information on future stock market returns in the Nordic countries. In-sample predictive regressions show significant negative correlations between the cyclical component of consumption and future returns across all Nordic markets. However, one-quarter-ahead out-of-sample tests suggest the cyclical consumption model outperforms a historical average forecast only in Finland. The in-sample results are economically sizable and robust to a number of alternative detrending methods.

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Thesis advisor

Ungeheuer, Michael

Keywords

market returns, cyclical consumption, predictability, business cycle

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