Mark Hulbert takes a look at a fascinating study that points to a communication gap between the sexes. While men and women seem to be, on average, equally adept at managing mutual funds, funds with a man and a woman co-managing seem to provide sub-par performance.

Stefan Ruenzi, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Cologne in Germany and visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Michäela Baer and Alexandra Niessen, Ph.D. students at the Center for Financial Research in Cologne, have made the study available here.

The performance gap is not a small one: A fund managed by four men tends to outperform a fund managed by three men and one women by an average of 1.22% per year.

The study found an inverse correlation between gender diversity and performance. Mark Hulbert has written a good piece outlining the study in Sunday's New York Times

Men and women can't manage mutual funds together? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 07 Oct 2007 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.