A PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM JEFF LYDY
During my career as co-manager of Lakeside Fund, my goal has been to provide up-to-date, conservative financial advice. Investing today can be and often is a frightening experience for individuals. Financial markets are extremely volatile. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended year 2001 at 10,259. At the end of 2011, ten years later, the Dow was at 12,217, just 1,958 points, or 19% higher. It increased, on average, less than two percent per year. And just three months before the end of year 2011, the Dow was at 10,771, just 512 points above the close 10 years before. Had September 19, 2011 been the end of the year, the Dow would have averaged an increase of one-half of one percent per year. In the intervening years the Dow declined to 6,626 (on March 9, 2009). Investors lost billions of dollars. Most investors have not yet made up their losses since that dreadful period.
Banks pay less than one-quarter of one percent per annum, and that is on a thirty day CD. Inflation is currently over three percent per year, which means savers are losing almost three percent value on their savings each year. Savings rates do not come close to keeping up with inflation. And so the typical person with any cash constantly debates whether he or she should enter the stock market to try to at least keep even with the declining value of the dollar and the ever increasing cost of living.
And almost every day we read about financial managers ripping off their clients. It seems that every day a financial planner has been sentenced to prison. Investors discover that the financial planner whom they first heard of in a television or radio ad, and with whom they have entrusted their life savings, has been issuing bogus monthly statements and he has spent their money on fancy sports cars, expensive homes, vacations and parties. The trust factor in the investment business should outweigh everything else. We cannot improve upon the investment advice given by Warren Buffett when he said: “When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.”
I’m a lifelong Toledoan, a graduate of the University of Toledo with a chemistry degree (1968) and also a law degree (1971) from UT. I was a full time lawyer with Lydy & Moan, Ltd. for 40 years while at the same time, beginning in 2006 I created, with Anne Getz, Lakeside Fund, Ltd., an investment partnership. Lakeside Fund is registered with the State of Ohio and is audited annually by the state as well as by an independent auditor. Anne Getz and I are licensed with the Ohio Division of Securities as investment advisors.
I can be contacted at 419-283-4586 by phone or jefflydy@gmail.com by email. Lakeside Fund’s address is 4930 Holland-Sylvania Rd., Sylvania, Oh 43560.
March 15, 2012
Sincerely,
Jeff Lydy