This $5 Billion Boston Duo Takes An Endowment Approach With Wealthy Families

Team Name: Livingstone/Condron Team

Firm: Morgan Stanley
MS
Private Wealth Management

Senior Members: Devin Condron, Victor Livingstone

Location: Boston, MA

Team Custodied Assets: $5.1 billion

Forbes Rankings: Top Wealth Management Teams Private Wealth, Best-In-State Wealth Management Teams

Background: Both natives of the Boston area, Condron and Livingstone each had trading backgrounds on Wall Street before becoming financial advisors. The two separately moved to Morgan Stanley in the early 2000s, gradually getting to know each other while building their respective businesses. They teamed up officially in 2020 after realizing that they had non-overlapping but complementary skills—Condron specialized in working with high net worth families in areas like estate planning, while Livingstone had vast experience working with institutions like endowments and foundations. That dual approach from the top down has formed the bedrock of their team today, which now numbers nine people in total and works with clients that include entrepreneurs as well as public and private company executives. “We’ve found that thanks to our capital markets expertise and experience managing endowments, this type of client has gravitated to us,” says Livingstone. “We’re both Boston guys with similar DNA—it feels like we’ve been working together for over a decade.”

Competitive Edge: Having had a fair number of endowments or foundations as clients, which means working with a lot of investment committees, the team has over time applied this disciplined process to working with families as well. “It’s a proven process that works for large pools of money that families are happy to have applied to them as well,” says Livingstone.

Investment Philosophy/Strategy: The two partners cite the team’s bottom-up fundamental process that starts with deep discovery to understand client balance sheets and risk tolerances. “Once we understand what a client is trying to achieve, we distill expertise from Morgan Stanley into a product that makes sense for each individual client, populated with some of the world’s best asset managers,” says Condron. “At the core, we are value guys—our job is to protect the wealth many of our clients have already created,” adds Livingstone, who recalls studying Harvard and Yale’s endowments early in his career. “We really do take a long term view and believe in the endowment model, which means thinking about each asset class and trying to take advantage of any mispricing.” One of the best opportunities they currently see in the market is in fixed income, where investors can get equity-like returns in credit markets: Not only does it generate a yield today but it also sets up for some attractive returns in a few years, the partners describe. The team are also big believers in alternative investments, which make up anywhere between 10% and 30% of client portfolios, with their favorite strategies today including private credit and private equity secondary funds.

Investment Outlook: “The massive move in rates has been nothing less than a sea change over the last three years and will have big ramifications for market valuations,” says Condron. “It’s funny, we didn’t have yields for so long and now that we do, clients are still hesitant because they feel good about cash, but it’s our job to remind them that over a cycle these rates are attractive and need to be locked in.” The team has been focused on moving some liquidity into Treasuries and bonds as they try to take advantage of higher rates, he explains. In terms of equity markets, the two partners are somewhat cautious and point to the narrow nature of the current market rally, with just a handful of big company stocks generating the majority of gains this year. Still, they remain opportunistic about the rest of the market eventually catching up: “When you see these extreme readings, it probably makes sense to take advantage of companies that have not participated in this rally,” says Livingstone. “

Biggest Challenge: Both partners cite the great financial crisis as a pivotal learning experience. “One of the challenges during periods of market volatility for us as advisors is to always make sure clients have enough liquidity so they can ride through the storm,” says Livingstone. “That’s one thing we came away from 2008 with and really keep as part of our investment strategy today.” More generally, another challenge is helping clients to filter out the noise and avoid any fear of missing out when it comes to markets. An avid student of financial history, Livingstone likes to remind clients that if you look at past market cycles, staying the course over the long term always pays off.