$1.2 Billion Morgan Stanley Team Thinks Dividend Investing Could Be Myopic

Team Name: The Chen Group

Firm: Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management

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Senior Members: Robert Chen, James Ferrante, Libby Miller, Talal Bazzi

Location: New York, NY

Team Custodied Assets: $1.2 billion

Background: The son of Chinese immigrants, Robert Chen grew up in South Carolina and was originally a pre-med student at Brown before majoring in economics. He then did stints at Credit Suisse working on leverage buyout deals before going to work at several different hedge funds. After his father passed away in a car accident, he moved home for six months to redo all of the family’s finances and estate planning. “We were clients of other advisors at the time that did not do comprehensive planning,” he recalls. “It gave me a pretty good understanding of what real advisors should be doing for clients.” Chen later joined Merrill as an advisor in 2012 before moving to Morgan Stanley as a sole proprietor two years later. Four years ago, he formed the Chen Group, which specializes in multigenerational tax and estate planning. The team has eight people in total today and at 41 years old, Chen is the oldest. Many of their clients are those who have sold a business as well as a number of partners at private equity and venture capital firms.

Competitive Edge: “We are extremely integrated in our clients’ lives at a granular level and are very thoughtful about their blindspots,” says Chen.

Strategy: Chen describes himself as a relative value investor who is agnostic of asset classes and leverages everything under the sun. “I feel the strategy of sticking to dividends or one thing is a bit myopic,” he says. “Products and solutions that deliver value to your clients are evolving at such a fast rate that if you’re stuck in your ways and not keeping your eyes open you’ll miss what’s best.” The fastest growing strategy that his team has implemented in client portfolios recently is direct indexing, which will systematically tax loss harvest throughout the year for clients. “In the fixed income world we live in, we’ve had to use private credit in order to generate income for clients,” says Chen. On the equity side, the team makes use of both ETFs and single stock investments while remaining disciplined on price. Many clients also have significant exposure to alternatives as well.

Investment Outlook: “It’s hard for me to imagine this year will be a repeat of the returns in 2023 and 2024,” says Chen. “We always look at history—and we’re definitely due for some more volatility and I’ve prepared our clients for that.” That means making sure none of the team’s clients are overly correlated to the S&P 500 and portfolios are positioned to take advantage of any opportunities that may arise from heightened market volatility. Chen predicts the impact of AI across various industries will also likely increase earnings for many publicly traded companies going forward.