Back to the Roots: Ancestral Origin and Mutual Fund Manager Portfolio Choice

Abstract

We exploit variation in the ancestries of U.S. equity mutual fund managers and show that ancestry affects portfolio decisions. Controlling for fund firm location, we find that funds overweight stocks from their managers' ancestral home countries in their non-U.S. portfolio by 132 bps or 20.34% compared with their peers. Similarly, funds overweight industries that are comparatively large in their manager's ancestral home countries. The documented ancestral biases are pervasive across fund styles and across different manager ancestries. The effect is more pronounced for funds that are less resource-constrained and for managers whose connection to their ancestral home country is more recent. Stocks linked to managers' ancestry do not outperform stocks in the same countries and industries but held by managers of other ancestry, confirming that ancestry-linked investments are not informed.