I develop a theory of optimal trading by an institutional trader who receives a parent order (i.e., an overall trading request) from a fund manager to buy a specific quantity of a particular stock over a specified time horizon. The trader selects child orders to be submitted each period over the...

We establish that the labor market helps discipline asset managers via the impact of fund liquidations on their careers. Using hand-collected data on 1,948 professionals, we find that top managers working for funds liquidated after persistently poor relative performance su er demotion coupled...