Forecasting stock market returns has great significance to asset allocation, risk management, and asset pricing, but stock return prediction is notoriously difficult. In this paper, we combine the sum-of-the-parts (SOP) method and three kinds of economic constraint methods: non-negative economic constraint strategy, momentum of return prediction strategy, and three-sigma strategy to improve prediction performance of stock returns, in which the price-earnings ratio growth rate (gm) is predicted by economic constraint methods. Empirical results suggest that the stock return forecasts by proposed...
