Jan.-Feb. 2026 - One from the Archives

President’s Message - One from the Archives!

by - Thomas Twombly

artist - Daisy Lopez

Here’s one from the archives! This was written a little over 20 years ago and originally appeared as the President’s Message for our Quarterly Report of 12/31/2005.

The only things we have changed below are one digit in the years referenced, and the elapsed time in my professional / leadership life. Otherwise, this remains exactly as it was first written.

I hope this conveys an affirming constancy of purpose and conviction to you. It certainly does to me.

Thank you, as always, for your confidence and trust!

Thomas

Happy New Year!  All of us at Lucien, Stirling & Gray hope 2025 was generous to you, and that 2026 brings you health, prosperity, and enough personal challenge and growth to make life interesting and fulfilling. I feel privileged to lead this team of professionals, and to serve such a great and appreciative group of clients. Thanks for everything you have done for us, and for the confidence you continue to show in us.

I have often said that building a successful business in this profession is a lot like the investments and financial plans we ask you, as clients, to make: full of hope and promise in the long-term, but sometimes brutally challenging in the short-term. Our efforts are subject to all kinds of influences and distractions that we cannot control, that try of our patience and ability to stay the course in the face of temporary disappointment or unexpected change. They demand a clear vision, discipline, on-going investment, and faith in the future. Forty-one years in this profession, and thirty-four in the leadership and development of this firm, have done nothing to change that opinion. Success, for all of us, can be a similarly long and challenging road.

Perhaps the biggest challenge we face on that road is in navigating the massive number of choices that we confront on a daily basis. “Is this one the best, or is that one better? If I choose this, what am I missing out on? Is someone else getting ahead of me?” As a nation, we pride ourselves on our freedom to choose for ourselves, and we demand that we be afforded a dizzying array of options to demonstrate our freedom and independence. Yet as individual human beings, our brains become quickly overloaded, stressed to the breaking point, and we long for a sense of security, predictability, and simplicity in our lives.

The media (think of the choice there: TV, radio, satellite radio, cable, millions of websites, streaming video, email, newspapers, magazines, blogs, e-zines, pod casts, etc…) bombard us with “noise”, and we find it difficult to turn it off… because we’re afraid we’re going to miss out. I receive five industry magazines alone every single week, and they often pile up, unread, because I’m afraid to throw out that one overlooked article that contains that one key insight... You have similar experiences. It’s crazy. This “noise” causes the urgent to take the place of the important, while the never-ending search for “the best” makes us discard or overlook “the good”. True wisdom is often lost forever in a vast sea of “information.”

Henry David Thoreau offered this advice: “simplify, simplify, simplify.” As advisors, this notion is at the core of our mission: “to provide thoughtful, deeply personalized financial advice, portfolio design, and asset management services to prudent, long-term investors.” Our goal is to help you simplify, to take off of your shoulders the stress of worrying about things you don’t enjoy or understand fully, and to feel confident that your interests are protected. We hope to give you some solace from the noise that conspires to distract you, and to free you up to focus on the things that make your life most fulfilling.

Like you, we also are called upon to simplify. We also must invest our time and efforts in areas that are most fulfilling and rewarding. We also must avoid distractions that tempt us elsewhere. To that end, we choose not to be all things to all possible clients. We focus on our core strengths, and we purposely limit our clientele only to those whom we truly enjoy. We work only with those whose philosophy is consistent with our own: prudent, long-term stewards, whose sense of “wealth” is far deeper than simple financial assets. We don’t cater to people motivated by greed, and we don’t claim to have a foolproof “system” that can consistently deliver stellar investment returns without commensurate risk. As a team, we work hard to provide our clients with the most honest, up-to-date, and intelligent advice we can for their individual situation. We provide a prudent, consistent, well-researched process for the management of their assets. Most importantly, we take extra effort to discover what truly matters to all of our clients, and to make that important to us.

We will never be perfect, but we promise always to strive for excellence. We seek always to improve, and we sincerely appreciate feedback and advice you offer in order to help us do so. If there is something we could be doing to serve your needs better, please let us know, and we will gladly respond. We depend upon happy clients for the success of our business, and for future growth through introductions and referrals. So if you’re happy with what we do for you, please don’t keep us a secret!

All the best for a great 2026!

Thomas G. Twombly

President