Noise trading and asset pricing factors

Abstract

We demonstrate that a broad set of asset pricing factors/anomalies are significantly exposed to “noise trader risk,” and the noise trader risk is priced in factor premia. We first confirm that mutual funds’ flow-induced trading of factors are uninformed, as they generate a large price impact on factor returns, followed by a complete reversal. We then show that asset pricing factors are subject to flow-driven noise trader risk in that expected variation (covariation) of flow-induced noise trading strongly forecasts variance (covariance) of factor returns. Importantly, factor premia are higher when flow-driven noise trader risk is expected to be more salient.