Do good looking managers achieve poorer performance?

In this paper, academics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University study the relationship between stock fund managers’ facial attractiveness and fund outcomes. Utilising a state-of-art deep-learning technique to quantify facial attractiveness, they find that funds with facially unattractive managers outperform funds with attractive managers by over 2% per annum. They also show that good-looking managers attract significant higher fund flow, especially if the funds are available on Fintech platforms where their photos are accessible to investors.