Thomas J. Feeney
Contrarian · Valuation-Based · What's Always Worked

Markets chase price.
He's chased value
since 1969.

Thomas J. Feeney spent more than five decades building and leading financial organizations, including serving as Chief Investment Officer of Marathon Asset Management Co. and Mission Management & Trust Co. Freed from a firm's business interests, he's now revealing what a century of market history teaches, and why it often runs contrary to what Wall Street tells clients to believe.

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Thomas J. Feeney
Many Settings. Consistent Underlying Investment Discipline.

Matching his expertise to your objectives.

For Colleges & Universities

A living case study in going against consensus.

Tom has guest-lectured at the University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University and the University of Arizona. Earlier in his career he held faculty positions at the University of Santa Clara, St. Joseph's College and Guadalupe College. He describes the history and process of contrarian investing — not as theory, but as a career of decisions made against common wisdom.

  • Long-term strong and weak market cycles
  • Why crowded trades frequently fail
  • Prudent stewardship for endowments & nonprofits
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For Financial Firms

A three-time founder's judgment, with no firm's book to protect.

Throughout a career spanning more than five decades, he has provided investment advice to governments, large enterprises, nonprofit endowments, and high-net-worth individuals. Following the sale of Mission, Tom continues to bring his investment discipline to portfolio strategy, CIO-level advisory, and counsel to investment committees and boards — unfiltered by a house view he has to defend.

  • Valuation-based portfolio strategy & review
  • Investment committee & board advisory
  • Institutional, government & HNW client advisory
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Buy discomfort.
Sell consensus.

Seen in real time, markets look like hundreds of different stories. From historical perspective they look like a series of cycles with common investor mistakes at virtually all peaks and troughs. Tom's framework is built on researching more than a hundred years of market history and recognizing how often cycles rhyme — and how often the lesson points in the opposite direction from where the crowd is looking.

Valuation, not narrative, sets the price he's willing to pay. When an industry's assets are growing fastest and the story is most convincing, that's usually a signal to evaluate a sale. Conversely, when capital has fled a sector and consensus has stopped bothering to look, that's often a signal to buy.

No longer managing any firm's assets, nor protecting anyone's house view, Tom offers the wisdom itself — not secret, never was, but persistently unfashionable, because it requires looking in the direction almost no one else is looking.

A Career, In Order

Fifty-seven years, one consistent thesis.

1969

Enters the investment industry

Begins his career as a stockbroker with Bache & Co. in San Francisco, providing investment advice for religious and charitable institutions, as well as individual investors.

1974

Co-founds Stewardship Services, Inc.

Serves as Executive Director of a national not-for-profit financial consulting office based in Washington, D.C. for religious and charitable organizations.

1978

Founds Thomas J. Feeney & Co.

Establishes an independent financial consultancy in San Diego serving a similar religious and charitable clientele.

1983-85

Joins Atalanta/Sosnoff Capital Corp.

While maintaining Feeney & Co., accepts a position as Senior Vice President of Atalanta/Sosnoff Capital Corp., New York City, offering investment advice to cities, states, corporations, and nonprofits.

1985-87

Launches investment management under Marathon

In late-1985, Feeney & Co. introduces investment management services for clients that asked Tom to provide the investment services he had been recommending. To separate investment management from Feeney & Co.'s consulting services, Marathon Asset Management Co. is incorporated in La Jolla, California, continuing to serve religious and charitable organizations along with corporations and individual investors.

1997

Marathon relocates and ultimately merges with Mission

To keep the family together, Tom moves to Tucson, Arizona, and serves as Chief Investment Officer of both Marathon and Mission Management & Trust Co., which was then owned by his wife, Carmen Bermudez.

2022

Mission sold

Tom remains as CIO following the sale.

Publicity over the decades

Over the years, Tom was interviewed by CNBC multiple times and frequently appeared on local Tucson TV. Beginning in the 1990s, he was published in Barron's and interviewed and quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, Wall Street Transcript and local papers throughout the country.

Present

Independent

Today, Tom remains actively involved managing personal assets and is available to share his experience and knowledge as a professor, lecturer, consultant or investment adviser.

Beyond the Office

Personal

Born the son of a father who was a college basketball player and a Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig New York Yankees baseball fan, Tom inherited a lifelong interest in sports. Over the decades, he enjoyed playing baseball, basketball, tennis and golf, finding his greatest success in distance running.

A veteran of well over 100 road races, including a couple of dozen marathons, with three New York City Marathons and three Boston Marathons among them, he had his greatest success as a coach of young runners. As head of the San Diego Track Club Juniors program, he coached multiple individual and team national championship winners in track and field and cross-country. His greatest pride came from coaching his son Robert to the fastest 12-year-old marathon time in the country in 1982 (3 hours and 5 minutes).

Although unable to take any coaching credit for two of the three triathlon disciplines — swimming and cycling — Tom was proud to have coached his wife Carmen in running and thrilled to see her finish eighth and tenth in the country in her age group at the National Triathlon Championships in successive years.

He attributes much of the discipline necessary for investment success to a lifetime of applying diligent self-discipline to achieve personal or coaching success in athletics.

Education & Faculty

  • B.A., Economics — Boston College
  • M.B.A. — University of Santa Clara
  • Graduate study — Stanford Law School
  • Postgraduate work — University of San Francisco
  • Early faculty positions — University of Santa Clara, St. Joseph's College, and Guadalupe College

Press & Broadcast

The Wall Street JournalProfile & commentary
Barron'sProfile & commentary
Investor's Business DailyProfile & commentary
CNBC and Tucson TVBroadcast interviews
Wall Street TranscriptInterview
Investment Perspective

Market Commentary

Caution Demands Investors’ Attention

July 30, 2026

Tom examines recent volatility in equity and fixed-income markets, interest-rate and credit risks, elevated valuations, and the investment implications of enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence.

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