What I learned after losing $38 million of my clients money

One of my clients told me I had The Midas Touch

Implying that everything I touched turned to gold. This happened in the early part of my career during the timeframe of 1982–2000, when the stock market was experiencing huge growth and was riding high. 

Looking back, I did not have The Midas Touch, I was simply on an elevator, with my clients, which was going up. This changed radically in 2000 when the equities elevator started free-falling and dropped 50% over the next 3 years. My client’s lost more than half of the wealth they had accumulated in their IRAs, 401K’s, Mutual Funds, and Brokerage Accounts.

I went in search of a better way to grow my client’s wealth without the risk of a devastating, free-falling market.

Did we just find the best money manager?

In 2005, one of our Estate Planning Tax Attorneys shared that he found a fund manager in Utah which did not have the same free-fall experience and in fact, made money from 2000 to 2003. He asked for my assistance in doing the proper due diligence before we placed any of our client’s funds with them. 

I went for a personal visit to meet the principals of Thompson Consulting, Inc. (TCI), and in reviewing their history, approach, systems, processes, and solutions, we chose to place a small portion of our largest client’s portfolio under their management.

After six months of tracking the actual performance and outcome, we were comfortable adding additional money to TCI’s Apex Equities Option Fund (a hedge fund).

During the next two years, Apex accounted for about one-third of our managed money and totaled right at $38 million dollars...

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