If a mutual fund manager is married to a big-shot executive, they make way more money—but only when they're trading in their spouse’s industry.
March 25, 2026
Original Paper
Dinner Table Alphas
SSRN · 6338918
The Takeaway
The 'dinner table' effect allows fund managers to gain a deep, informal comprehension of specific industries through their spouses. These managers outperform their peers by over 4% per quarter specifically in the sectors where their spouses work, identifying a massive, hidden channel of information flow in asset management.
From the abstract
We show that household linkages, formed primarily of spousal employment ties, are important in explaining asset managers' skills and their portfolio choices. Mutual fund managers with spouses that work at the executive and C-suite levels obtain monthly gross returns of up to 0.32% above asset managers with non-executive spouses. This effect is driven largely by managers' quarterly stock trades in the industries where their spouses are employed. The spouse-industry stocks bought by executive-spou