The Bulls And Bears In The Cross Section Of Stock Returns

Many financial decision-makers seem to regard risk as the variability of returns below some pre-specified target and treat above-target variability as a sweetener. The disutility from losses also appears to be larger than the utility from gains. Using some simple metrics of downside bearishness and upside bullishness constructed from semivariances, this paper tests for the empirical content of this asymmetry. Some of these simple metrics are priced in the U.S. stock market. In particular, exploring a composite metric of asymmetric risk reveals that non-linearity in the covariation of stock returns with bullish and bearish states of the market carries a significant price. Also, market premium for bearishness is larger in magnitude than that for bullishness, lending support to the existence of loss aversion in the aggregate. While small-cap stocks tend to be more bearish than bullish, the asymmetric risk effect is not spuriously driven by the size effect. Finally, some results consistent with an aymmetric-risk-based explanation for the puzzles of return momentum and reversal are presented.