President's Message - October 2025

Be Great Stewards & Serve Great Stewards

by - Thomas Twombly

artist - Daisy Lopez

For me to say that we are all living through an incredibly turbulent period of breathtaking change, profound ambiguity, and unnerving societal disruption shouldn’t strike anyone reading this as a uniquely insightful comment.

Nonetheless, I think it’s worth saying. And I think it’s worth repeating, so we don’t fall into the trap of trying to normalize the environment we’re in now, and therefore conclude that we ourselves should know, or that someone, somewhere, has enough experience (or access to privileged information) to know exactly how all this will eventually turn out. Nobody does. And I certainly don’t. There are way too many variables.

An admission of that truth doesn’t stop any of us from trying, however. As human beings we all crave certainty and a sense of safety and stability. We strive to create order in our lives and in our surroundings, and we feel compelled to remain vigilant and alert to spotting even the smallest clue of what’s to come. As I have said in previous missives, we are not likely to have descended from ancient ancestors who were blissfully unobservant, or who were slow to react to a sudden rustle in the deep grass of the neolithic savannah.

As fiduciaries, and as trusted stewards of other people’s precious investments, in addition to our own, we here at Lucien, Stirling & Gray feel the weight of that responsibility on a daily basis. We’re profoundly aware that we will never have all the information we’d like to have before making any major decision, and yet we know we have to move forward anyway.

Because of that, we focus relentlessly on identifying the things we have the ability to control, and then we do our best to spend as little time and energy as possible worrying or obsessing about things that aren’t up to us. If we can affect it, great, then it becomes our job to figure out how best to do so. But if it’s not in our power to affect it, we must simply resolve to endure it as best we can. I believe that’s the situation we all find ourselves in right now, so I’d encourage you to ponder those decision points for yourself.

One decision we have made recently, which I am very happy to announce, is that as of September 30, 2025  we have revised and expanded our fee schedule to better serve a growing number of loyal, long-term, multi-generational clients we have been privileged to serve for many, many years, and to better reflect the changing needs and desires of the majority of new clients we are now attracting.

If you are reading this as part of our quarterly reporting to you individually, please find enclosed or attached a new copy of Part 2A of our Form ADV, which describes and defines these revisions in great detail. If you are reading this on our website, please find the same documentation under “Important Disclosures” at the bottom of every page.

We are very grateful for all of the introductions and referrals we have received from enthusiastic clients and friends in recent years, and we are determined to do everything in our power to continue to deserve the deep trust and confidence those introductions represent and convey. Thank you very much.

The core focus of this team – our reason for being, and the deep motivation behind everything we do, and every decision we make - is to be great stewards and serve great stewards.

We derive a profound sense of satisfaction and well-being from the many on-going, life-long relationships of confidence, trust, and responsibility that have been entrusted to our care. Nothing is more precious.

We love working closely with people who think in terms of decades and generations rather than immediate gratification.

We love serving people whose underlying motivations are guided by a gritty, long-term optimism, and by a sense of obligation and responsibility towards achieving or perpetuating some important greater good, rather than by a self-centered, short-term, sense of greed or scarcity.

We love coming alongside like-minded souls who understand the value of being guided by a meaningful, long-range plan that clearly defines what’s most important to them, and why it’s so important to them.

We love teaming up with people who take those responsibilities very seriously, but who possess a warm sense of humor and refuse to take themselves too seriously.

And we love receiving feedback and advice about how we can improve from people who care about us.

Thank you again for all your confidence and trust.

Thomas G. Twombly

President