You are a team of professional researchers from a prestigious fund management company. Your task is to identify the factors that may be crucial in forecasting stock returns of public listed companies.

ntroduction: State what are the issues considered by your team. Critically discuss at least 5 journal research papers that empirically tested different factors (macro or micro- economically or global influences) that have systematically influencing the returns of selected companies. Cite and critically discuss the influencing factors that these researchers have selected, their methodology and findings regarding the countries researched.