Can a P* Trading Strategy Improve REIT Investment Performance?
) (Department of Finance Cleveland State University Cleveland, Ohio 44115) Abstract The ability of a financial or real asset to provide a rate of return above the rate of inflation is crucial to investors. The financial literature on the inflation-hedging effectiveness of various investments suggests that real estate acts as a hedge against inflation on a period-by-period basis, while financial assets do not. Given this, an investor who could accurately forecast changes in inflation, and therefore alter his/her investment portfolio between real estate and financial assets, should be able to significantly improve portfolio returns. Recently, a new method of measuring potential inflation has been developed by the Federal Reserve Board. Dubbed P*, it relates long-run spending in the economy to long- run output and gives an implied value for future inflation. In this study, the accuracy of P* in forecasting prices is compared to conventional forecasts of inflation. The P* variable is then
