Professors John Graham and Campbell Harvey consistently put out great research. One of their innovations in financial research is their annual CFO survey (we’ve covered this research here, here, and here, if interested).

In their recent piece, the authors describe what a broad cross-section of U.S. CFOs think about the expected equity risk premium.

Bottom line? 4.42% real (Expected 10-Year S&P 500 total return minus the 10-Year Treasury Yield). This is pretty similar to what everyone thought on Tadas’ informal Abnormal Returns survey.(1)

That’s a pretty beefy premium and would suggest a large allocation to the stock market if one is a long-horizon investor (…and trusts the intuition from a bunch of CFOs!).

Below is the time series chart from the paper:


Not sure what the takeaway is on the estimates because 1) everyone is predicting the same thing and 2) the CFOs were predicting a low premium a few years back and the S&P 500 and has rocketed. Go figure.(2)


The Equity Risk Premium in 2018

Abstract:

We analyze the history of the equity risk premium from surveys of U.S. Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) conducted every quarter from June 2000 to December 2017. The risk premium is the expected 10-year S&P 500 return relative to a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield. The average risk premium is 4.42% and is somewhat higher than the average observed over the past 18 years. We also provide results on the risk premium disagreement among respondents as well as asymmetry or skewness of risk premium estimates. We also link our risk premium results to survey-based measures of the weighted average cost of capital and investment hurdle rates. The hurdle rates are significantly higher than the cost of capital implied by the market risk premium estimates.

References[+]

About the Author: Wesley Gray, PhD

Wesley Gray, PhD
After serving as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps, Dr. Gray earned an MBA and a PhD in finance from the University of Chicago where he studied under Nobel Prize Winner Eugene Fama. Next, Wes took an academic job in his wife’s hometown of Philadelphia and worked as a finance professor at Drexel University. Dr. Gray’s interest in bridging the research gap between academia and industry led him to found Alpha Architect, an asset management firm dedicated to an impact mission of empowering investors through education. He is a contributor to multiple industry publications and regularly speaks to professional investor groups across the country. Wes has published multiple academic papers and four books, including Embedded (Naval Institute Press, 2009), Quantitative Value (Wiley, 2012), DIY Financial Advisor (Wiley, 2015), and Quantitative Momentum (Wiley, 2016). Dr. Gray currently resides in Palmas Del Mar Puerto Rico with his wife and three children. He recently finished the Leadville 100 ultramarathon race and promises to make better life decisions in the future.

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