Lessons Learned From Student Managed Portfolios

We study asset management decisions of three competing student managed funds in Vienna Austria for a 10 year period. This real-world experience allows us to precisely test the tournament effect of fund management, the disposition effect and managerial team size. We find support for risk taking by the trailing funds in an annual tournament, and risk reductions by leading funds. The disposition effect usually observed in the case of retail investors is reversed. Finally, we find that smaller management teams outperform larger ones. Using a partly controlled setting, we relate the results to practice in the areas of institutional client evaluation of managers and the social and organizational structure of asset
management companies.