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We analyze the predictive power of several macroeconomic and financial indicators in forecasting quarterly realized betas of 30 industry and 25 size and book‐to‐market portfolios. We model realized betas as autoregressive processes of order 1 and include lagged values of macroeconomic and financial indicators as exogenous predictor variables. In out‐of‐sample forecasting exercises, forecasts using bond market variables as exogenous predictors statistically outperform forecasts from a benchmark model without any exogenous predictors. These forecasts based on bond market variables also economically outperform benchmark forecasts by providing better performance in hedging the market risk of portfolios.

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We analyze the decomposition of the conditional, rather than the unconditional, variance of market returns based on an extension of the standard Campbell–Shiller approach. The relative importance of cash flow and discount rate news in determining the conditional variance of market returns exhibits significant variation over time and relates to economic conditions. The components of the conditional market variance outperform several benchmark variables, including the conditional market variance itself, in forecasting future market returns and realized variance across different horizons. The forecasts based on the conditional market variance components also provide sizable economic benefits compared with benchmark forecasts in an out-of-sample portfolio exercise where a myopic investor allocates her wealth between the market portfolio and a risk-free asset across different holding periods.

We analyze the relationship between the negative tone in news releases issued by the WHO and industry returns during the Covid-19 pandemic. We construct our news tone measure as the ratio of negative words to the total number of words present in news releases of WHO. The news tone shows to be significantly associated with returns for the majority of industries. Bad news announced by the WHO translates into good news for consumer nondurables, telecommunications, and healthcare sectors. Negative tone in news releases of WHO is on average bad news for consumer durables, manufacturing, energy, and other industries. Our findings suggest that the news tone-return relation varies significantly throughout our Covid-19 sample.