We evaluate the performance of the competing indicators in the forecasting exercise using several statistics. The out-of-sample R2 compares the predictive power of the regression with the historical sample mean. It is defined as where is the mean square error of the out-of-sample predictions based on the model and is the mean square error based on the sample mean (assuming no predictability). The adjusted is defined as where k is the number of regressors. The out-of-sample takes positive (negative) values when the model predicts returns with higher (lower) accuracy than the historical mean. We also use the encompassing ENC test statistic proposed by Harvey et al. (1998) and Clark and McCracken (2001), defined as(8)Under the null hypothesis, the forecasts based on the historical mean encompass the forecasts based on the model, meaning that the model does not help to predict future market returns. Because the test statistic has a nonstandard distribution under the null hypothesis in the case of nested models, we rely on the critical values computed by Clark and McCracken (2001).