Merlin Asset Management

Merlin Asset Management provides discretionary investment management primarily to individuals, high-net-worth clients, trusts, and certain business entities through separately managed accounts. The firm’s offerings center on growth-oriented equity strategies across large-cap, SMID, and small-cap universes, and it also offers an ETF-based option for clients seeking broad-market exposure.

The firm’s investment process blends bottom-up fundamental research, thematic top-down views, and quantitative screening to build concentrated, low-turnover portfolios that are periodically rebalanced to target weights. Merlin supplements its core equity selection with derivative-based approaches — including long-dated option (LEAPS) overlays designed to enhance capital efficiency and asymmetric upside participation — and uses supervised AI tools to support research and operational tasks.

Distinctive aspects highlighted in the brochure include the explicit use of derivatives and borrowing within separately managed accounts and detailed disclosures around leverage- and options-related risks, as well as a performance-based compensation option for qualified clients that uses a dual-condition hurdle and an absolute-gain test. The firm is a small, single-advisor practice with a principal whose prior academic and clinical psychology background is emphasized in the firm’s history and ownership disclosures.