ARTICLE | Financial Analysts Journal | Vol.79, 2023

Abstract

Managerial multitasking has become a common practice in the mutual fund industry. Although multitasking may have certain benefits for fund companies and portfolio managers, these arrangements have significant drawbacks for fund investors. We find that multitasking is associated with worse fund performance. Moreover, we find significant performance deterioration when a single-tasking manager switches to multitasking. We further demonstrate evidence that suggests that multitasking reduces the attention or limits the investment options a manager can allocate to their funds. Our study prescribes caution when assigning a portfolio manager a greater workload, as doing so adversely affects fund performance and, at some point, the ability of the fund family to attract capital.