Can an executor be removed specifically for making risky or imprudent investments with estate funds?

Yes, this is a recognized ground for removal, because an estate trustee's fiduciary duty includes managing and investing estate assets prudently, not just distributing them eventually. Where an executor makes genuinely reckless, speculative, or self-interested investment decisions with estate funds, and the estate suffers real losses as a result, that conduct can support both a removal application and a claim to hold the trustee personally responsible for the losses caused.

The bar isn't simply that an investment lost money — investments can decline for reasons outside anyone's control, and a court isn't going to remove a trustee just because a reasonable decision didn't pan out. What matters is whether the decision itself was imprudent given what a careful trustee should have known and done at the time: concentrating estate funds in a single risky venture, ignoring obvious red flags, or investing in something that benefited the trustee personally are the kinds of facts that tend to support removal rather than an ordinary market downturn.

Because distinguishing a genuinely imprudent decision from an unlucky but reasonable one requires a close look at the specific facts, beneficiaries concerned about how estate funds are being invested should gather details of the actual decisions made and get legal advice on whether the conduct meets the bar for removal.