Richard Blosser
Executive Director, Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management, Los Angeles
Age:
43
Education:
B.A., economics, Princeton University; M.B.A., UCLA Anderson School of Management
Team Assets:
$2.5 billion
Typical Account:
$25 million-$50 million
Years in Business:
15
Quote:
“I would not get too caught up in this up-to-the-minute mentality where people feel like they have to watch these business shows and become day traders.”
Richard Blosser is caught in a wonderful cycle.
When Barron’s magazine ranked him among the nation’s top 100 wealth advisers in 2004, his clients gained new confidence in him and Blosser even grew his client base, which in turn moved him up on later lists.
“It was really rewarding, really fulfilling. It’s also been an additive to my business,” he said. “I would say that’s a seminal moment in my career.”
But if you ask the 43-year-old money manager with Morgan Stanley what earned him that first ranking, his answer is simple: diligence.
“I’m very diligent about the level of service I provide for clients and very diligent and tenacious about developing relationships,” he said. “Clients know their importance and they know that they come first.”
Blosser worked as an investment banker in New York for five years before he decided to come West. After getting his M.B.A at UCLA, he started at Morgan Stanley in 1992 and has since been developing a relatively small but steady client base of high and ultra-high net worth investors. As the head of a five-person team that manages the portfolios of some 50 families, Blosser oversees total assets exceeding $2 billion.
His average client has between $25 million and $50 million in investment assets. With such large amounts of money, Blosser said he focuses on retaining wealth both for his clients and their kids and grandchildren. In order to do that consistently, he chose to keep his client base limited.
“Our approach is a high-touch, high-service approach,” he said. “We focus on a small number of families and we look at each situation separately and provide very customized solutions.”
Like many of the top wealth advisors, Blosser said he does not like to use generic formulas when investing his clients’ money. Blosser and his team provide customized solutions by creating an asset allocation model for each individual investor. They then determine an appropriate mix of different sectors.
He said some of the more successful investment sectors recently have been energy and international equities. And he also said all of his clients have investments in gold.
In order to provide consistent returns, Blosser takes a long-term approach a five- to 10-year horizon and reviews the portfolios every six months. This helps him avoid the pitfalls of a constantly fluctuating economy and to “generate absolute return versus relative return” that is, bring positive returns regardless of the state of the markets.
“It’s very difficult to time the market,” he said. “We start out with a longer-term approach. We haven’t made any big allocation changes recently.”
A successful long-term approach, he said, means looking at the future and not at the past. Looking at the past is inconsequential and tends to cloud your outlook, he said. And moreover, the emerging opportunities cannot be found by looking backward.
“We’re very forward-thinking about what we do,” he said. “We’re willing to explore international markets, emerging markets, non dollar strategies, things like that.”
Right now, Blosser said he is “constructive” on the markets. “We’re in an environment where we’ve had moderate inflation, reasonable growth and I think that’s supportive of the markets,” he said. “I think fundamentals internationally are doing very well much, much better than they were back in the ’90s.”
But as the international markets continue to do well, Blosser said he and his team are becoming more cautious, especially about domestic investments amid the slowdown in housing.
“I think that where the housing market ends up here is a key,” he said. “That’s a huge driver of the economy.”
