[We relate the performance of mutual fund trades to their motivation. A fund manager who buys stocks when there are heavy investor outflows is likely to be motivated by the belief that the stocks are significantly undervalued. In contrast, when there are heavy inflows, the manager is likely to be motivated to work off excess liquidity by buying stocks. Our analysis reveals that managers making purely valuation-motivated purchases substantially beat the market but are unable to do so when compelled to invest excess cash from investor inflows. A similar, but weaker, pattern is found for stocks that are sold.]

We relate the performance of mutual fund trades to their motivation. A fund manager who buys stocks when there are heavy investor outflows is likely to be motivated by the belief that the stocks are significantly undervalued. In contrast, when there are heavy inflows, the manager is likely to be motivated to work off excess liquidity by buying stocks. Our analysis reveals that managers making purely valuation-motivated purchases substantially beat the market but are unable to do so when compelled to invest excess cash from investor inflows. A similar, but weaker, pattern is found for stocks that are sold.

Human capital acquired while working in other industries before joining fund management provides fund managers with an information advantage. Fund managers exploit this advantage by overweighting their experience industries and by picking outperforming stocks from these industries. These managers’ superior information is impounded into stock prices slowly, suggesting that their information is unique and takes a while to be discovered by the markets. Families exploit their manager’s industry-specific human capital by broadly employing their investment ideas in other funds. The investment value of industry experience is unaffected by whether or not the manager with such experience is in a team. Received August 25, 2016; editorial decision December 24, 2017 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.