To estimate the future common stock risk premium, how might individual investors extrapolate from the past? - Personal Inves... To estimate the future common stock risk premium, how might individual investors extrapolate from the past? - Personal Investment Management > Investment Returns and Securities Market Risk Premiums Articles - Financial Articles, The past is the only source of guidance on how securities markets might perform in the future. Investors face critical choices about which method to use when extrapolating from the past. A study by Professors Fama and French provides individual investors with important guidance on which scientific methods to use. With these methods, a real or non inflationary equity premium of between 3.8% and 4.8% could be a rationally derived estimate of the real forward equity premium. in Public bookmarkswith estimateextrapolatefutureindividualinvestorspremiumriskstock