Given the volatile market in the past few months, the Finance Committee felt it was important to report on the investment balances for St. Thomas. The bad news is that investment balances are down for the year. The good news is that our investment balances for the Main Trust Fund and Capital Reserve Fund are only down 11.1% and 8.2% respectively for the year as of October 28, 2008. This is compared to the Standard and Poor’s Market Index of 500 large publicly traded companies in the U.S. which is down 35.9% for the same period.

The main reason our portfolio is down significantly less than the overall market is that a large percentage of our portfolio is in bonds rather than stocks. Thus our exposure to the market decline is much less than the overall stock market. Our investment portfolio is professionally managed by the Investment Management Firm of de Garmo and Kelleher. Our professional advisor is Ellen Fishwick Martin who has been closely monitoring our portfolio during the market turmoil and has assured us that to date we have not been exposed to any significant asset losses due to the failure of financial management firms in the past months. In good times we rely on our investment advisors to maximize our financial returns within the scope of the parish’s financial objectives. But more importantly, we rely on our investment advisors to minimize risk and asset loss in a declining market.

The finance committee and the vestry will continue to monitor St. Thomas’s investments and do our best to act in the best financial interest of the parish. If you have any questions regarding our investments please to not hesitate to ask Dan Costello, Treasurer, or Drew Boatner, Finance Chair for additional information.

Do you have questions about your own personal finances? Drew Boatner and Dan Costello are planning to conduct Personal Finance Workshops for the parish in the near future. Stay tuned for more details.