Bar keeps a close eye on its investments
Jeff Rynor
While it’s been a rocky six months on Wall Street, The Florida Bar’s long-term financial investments are up more than $2 million since the beginning of the new Bar fiscal year in July, according to Investment Committee Chair Jeffrey Rynor.
Reporting to the Board of Governors at its July 29 meeting in Palm Beach, Rynor gave a brief history of the Bar’s investments, noting that since the Bar began a long-term investment strategy 20 years ago, the fund is up more than $38 million, not counting the initial capital outlay.
“If you would have asked at the end of June how much our investments had gone down [this year], I will tell you it was approximately 15%,” Rynor said. “However, just in the last few weeks that number has changed to approximately 12%.”
Rynor said that reduction should be understood in the context that bond and stock performance for the first two quarters of this 2022 “has gone down lower than any other time in the past 40 years.”
The good news, he said, is that long-term investments can be held until the market recovers.
“We don’t go after our long-term investments and grab them and use them to take care of operating expenses, so we haven’t realized any of these losses,” Rynor said, noting the Bar long-term fund contains approximately $60 million.
