Welcome to Thomas Meyer Investment Management, LLC (TMIM).
Does it seem as if the investment industry just looks down their noses at you from high up in their ivory towers? When things are going bad with your investments, do they pat your hand and condescendingly tell you “don’t worry, the markets always come back”?
Guess what… that’s exactly what they’ve been taught to tell you. Most investment “advisors” have no idea how to exit a trade. They don’t have a system and even if they did, they don’t have the discipline to even apply it. They’re big proponents of buying and holding no matter what’s happening to your portfolio value.
I learned this lesson more than 20 years ago during the dot com crash. I was working for one of the big Wall Street firms at the time and they just left everyone hanging, clients and their brokers. Nobody advised us to move to cash. Nobody told us to sell the terrible dot com companies with little revenues and no hopes of generating any profits.
It was heartbreaking to see families about to retire who had done what Wall Street told them to do, to “hold on because the market always comes back”. Those families had two choices. They could go back to work for five years to make back the losses or they would have to live the rest of their lives with half the income they had counted on. It was devastating.
My clients lost a lot of money and I also lost a lot of money. I also lost clients who blamed me for the crash. That’s when I knew there had to be another way.
Instead of focusing on returns, I began to focus on risk. If I could help my clients minimize the risk they were taking, the returns would come. Wall Street wisdom says the best way to make money in the stock market is to not lose money. Warren Buffett said it even more succinctly.
Rule #1: Never lose money.
Rule #2: Never forget Rule #1.
At TMIM, our goal is to help control your risk through various investments and strategies. Our investment strategies include trend-following the major averages. We also work with investments such as structured notes that allow you to get a portion of the return of the stock market with your principal being fully protected against any downturn. These are probably new terms for you. Be sure to click on the “Strategies” tab and learn more about these and other investments.
If you want to learn more about working with us, either email or call and we’ll answer your questions. We’re sure when you realize that you can control the amount of risk you take, you’ll be a more confident and successful investor.
