Tom Laming
CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER
As a teenager my passion by day was Olympic-style weightlifting, and by night, dragging my telescope outside to gaze at the sky.
Usually when somebody hears you competed in weightlifting, they ask “How much could you bench press?” That’s not Olympic lifting, so I never did that, but I was 16 when I first cleaned and jerked 100 pounds more than my bodyweight, and 17 when I fell just shy of putting double my bodyweight overhead. That was good enough to reach a number one ranking in the nation in my weight class for lifters under age 18, but it did not help my high school GPA.
What I learned from lifting was the value of repetition and hard work. By the time I entered college I realized to succeed I’d have to apply the same discipline to books. This is when my other passion kicked in. I loved astronomy, but quickly realized it was all about physics. So, I decided to study physics at the nearest school, the University of Kansas.
That would lead me to work on Space Shuttle navigation at the Johnson Space Center, and then to graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study Aeronautics and Astronautics. Upon graduation it was off to a career in spacecraft design in Los Angeles and Denver for what are now Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.
While working as an engineer I developed an interest in investments and markets. I ultimately viewed portfolio management like any other engineering problem. I loved the space business, but I thought I could apply my knowledge of technology to investing. What company would have a competitive advantage over another? What portfolio of stocks and bonds yields the best solution? So, I returned to school, this time at Indiana University for an MBA and subsequently took a job as the technology sector analyst for Waddell & Reed in Kansas City.
After a few years I moved on to Buffalo Mutual Funds as a portfolio manager and Chief Equity Strategist. Ten years later I decided to start my own investment management firm, eventually acquired by UMB Financial.
Along the way I met Jeff and we hit it off from the start. Jeff’s commitment to the principles of capitalism, freedom and the Constitution clicked with me. That helped make us friends. His intelligence, the way he treats people, and his aversion to investment products that are unnecessary (and often better for the advisor than the client) has made us business partners.
Now, I’m the Chief Investment Officer at Normandy producing research on investment-related topics, including: strategic and tactical asset allocations, analyzing products and companies for risk and potential return, and searching for long-term trends in industry and the economy that can benefit our clients.