Recently, the Academic Director of Master of China Studies (MCS), Dr. Wenyu Zhou and his collaborators' paper "Macroeconomics matter: Leading economic indicators and the cross-section of global stock returns" was published online in the Journal of Financial Markets. The paper suggests new evidence for the important role of macroeconomic indicators in stock market yield forecasting.

Journal of Financial Markets publishes high-quality theoretical and empirical research in the financial field, including asset pricing, investment, capital and securities markets, and is recognized as an international authoritative journal in the field. Of the 500 manuscripts submitted each year, less than 40 are accepted by JFM. The acceptance rate is less than 10%. This is the third academic paper that Dr. Zhou published in this journal after working in ZJU.

In the paper, the research team used more than six decades of data from 39 countries around the world to investigate the predictive power of the OECD's comprehensive leading economic indicator (CLI) for national stock markets. The article found that changes in the combined leading economic indicators can significantly predict future stock market yields in countries: monthly stock market yields in the top 20% of CLI index growth rates are 1.43% higher than in the bottom 20% countries, and this excess return cannot be explained by existing asset pricing models. Based on this finding, the article designs investment strategies based on open-ended index funds from different countries.

The following is an abstract of the paper:

Leading economic indicators assist in forecasting future business conditions. Can they also predict aggregate stock returns? To answer this question, we examine six decades of data from 39 countries. Short-term changes in the composite leading indicator (CLI) positively correlate with future stock returns in the cross-section. The quintile of markets with the highest CLI increase outperforms the quintile with the lowest CLI change by 1.43% per month. The predictive power of the CLI survives multiple robustness checks and cannot be absorbed by established risk factors. Our findings imply an exploitable investment strategy that can be pursued with exchange-traded funds.

Dear all,

The results of the fourth round of pre-admission interview for the Global Communication and Management (GCM) Program are now available to view online. Please login to the Zhejiang University International Student Portal (http://isinfosys.zju.edu.cn/recruit/login.shtml) to view the list of candidates who have passed the pre-admission interview. Alternatively, you can check your email inbox for the interview result notification email.

Offer-holders must log in to the admissions system before the deadline to pay the first academic year tuition fee in accordance with the requirements set out in the Pre-Admission Notice. If you are unable to make online payment, you will need to pay the tuition fee directly into the designated bank account of our school and upload a scanned copy of the bank slip to the admissions system. Upon confirmation of receipt of prepaid tuition fees and the publication of the new academic year calendar, the School will issue a Letter of Acceptance as well as the JW202 Visa Application Form to students who have been officially admitted. For details, please check your pre-admission letter.

Note that:

1. Please be sure to accurately indicate the application number and name of the applicant student when sending money.

2. Students who give up their place for personal reasons or go through the withdrawal procedures after registration will not be refunded.

3. Applicants who cannot see their admission results in the system should wait for further notices.

If you have any questions, please contact the GCM project team: gcm@intl.zju.edu.cn

ZIBS GCM Project Group