Is machine learning a necessity? A regression-based approach for stock return prediction

We propose a simple, linear-regression-based method for prediction of the time series of stock returns. The method achieves out-of-sample performances comparable to machine learning methods while having ignorable computational costs. The key component of the method is to integrate a straightforward cross-market factor screening into the iterated combination method proposed by Lin et al., (2018). Our empirical results on the U.S. stock market show that the method outperforms many state-of-the-art machine learning methods in certain periods. The method also exhibits greater utility gain and investment profits in most periods after considering transaction costs. © 2025 Elsevier B.V.