Critical Finance Review > Vol 10 > Issue 3

Treasury Rates No Longer Predict Returns: A Reappraisal of Breen, Glosten and Jagannathan (1989)

Philip Gray, Department of Banking and Finance, Monash Business School, Monash University, Australia, philip.gray@monash.edu , Thanh Huynh, Department of Banking and Finance, Monash Business School, Monash University, Australia, thanh.huynh@monash.edu
 
Suggested Citation
Philip Gray and Thanh Huynh (2021), "Treasury Rates No Longer Predict Returns: A Reappraisal of Breen, Glosten and Jagannathan (1989)", Critical Finance Review: Vol. 10: No. 3, pp 429-444. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/104.00000096

Publication Date: 02 Aug 2021
© 2021 Philip Gray and Thanh Huynh
 
Subjects
 
Keywords
G11G12G14
Return predictabilityTreasury bill ratesTrading strategyOut-of-sample forecasts
 

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In this article:
1. Introduction 
2. In-Sample Replication 
3. Out-of-Sample Extension and Global Analysis 
4. Conclusion 
References 

Abstract

Breen et al. (1989) show that the negative relation between excess stock returns and Treasury bill rates is economically important. From 1954 to 1986, the predictive ability of interest rates facilitated a trading strategy that generated average returns at least on par with a buy-and-hold market investment but with significantly lower risk. The services of a portfolio manager using this predictive model to invest justified a management fee of nearly 2% per annum. Using currently-available data, we can nearly perfectly replicate Breen et al.’s (1989) key findings in sample. However, the success of Treasury bill rates as a predictor of equity returns appears to be specific to the time period studied. When the same methodology is applied out of sample from 1987 to 2018, there is little statistical or economic evidence of predictability. Additional out-of-sample analysis of G20 countries shows only sporadic support for the notion that interest rates predict equity returns.

DOI:10.1561/104.00000096