Name: Alyssa Moeder
Firm: Merrill Private Wealth Management
Location: New York, NY
Team Custodied Assets: $5.9 billion
Background: Alyssa Moeder, a native New Yorker, began her career in public accounting after studying at Marist College. Her early exposure to financial services clients led her to private banking and capital markets before she eventually moved from the product side and joined Merrill 23 years ago. “I’ve always been a numbers person,” she says, crediting her love of precision for shaping her career. Today her team of eight people work with some 100 client households, many of whom are women and first-generation wealth creators, either business owners or corporate executives. “We work with families and also their extended members, so we find clients tend to be multi-jurisdictional,” adds Moeder.
Competitive Edge: “Being that quarterback and coordinating with all their other advisors—estate planners, attorneys—is one of our advantages,” says Moeder. Her emphasis is on managing risk and avoiding unnecessary complexity. “We don’t do a lot of complicated things, which our clients appreciate,” she adds. “Our clients are comfortable giving up some potential upside returns in order to limit drawdowns over time.”
Investment Approach: “Many clients are looking to us to preserve the wealth they have accumulated—not hit home runs,” says Moeder. Her strategies prioritize customized portfolios tailored to client goals. “First and foremost, we are believers in asset allocation as drivers of risk and return,” she says. “On the equity side we try—where it makes sense—to use separately managed accounts because we can do some tax loss harvesting but they also tend to be more cost effective.” For fixed income, her team blends Treasuries, mutual funds, and separately managed accounts to ensure diversification. Alternatives are used to access long-term themes such as AI and infrastructure, with an emphasis on disciplined portfolio rebalancing.
Investment Outlook: “If we take a non day-to-day view, we think overall, the equity market still has the ability to provide positive returns in 2025,” says Moeder. “We expect strong U.S. corporate earnings to continue, as well as a broadening out of the market in terms of the companies that are participating and driving performance.” She is also optimistic about the early impact of AI innovation and expects to see a shift away from reliance on a few dominant stocks, which have driven much of the market’s performance in recent years. “The past few years have been the first time in a long time that we can say clients are getting compensated to have fixed income in their portfolios,” says Moeder.
Best Advice: “Not reacting too quickly to news and making sure you are focused on the longer term is very important, especially in this social media, easy-to-get Information Age,” says Moeder.
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