TY - JOUR AU - Lamont,Owen TI - Investment Plans and Stock Returns JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 6973 PY - 1999 Y2 - February 1999 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6973 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6973.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Owen Lamont Department of Economics Harvard University Cambridge MA 02138 E-Mail: owen.lamont@yale.edu AB - Capital expenditure plans at the beginning of the year, from a US government survey of firms, explain more than three quarters of the variation in real annual aggregate investment growth between 1948 and 1993. The negative correlation of contemporaneous investment and stock returns is explained by the negative correlation of planned investment and subsequent stock returns. Unexpected revisions to aggregate investment (actual minus plan) within a year are essentially unrelated to current stock returns, and positively related to current profits. Revisions to industry investment are positively related to industry-specific stock returns and to aggregate profits. ER -