At Hill Investment Group, we are always looking to add quality individuals to the team. We get extra enjoyment when we are able to “rescue” them from what we refer to as the dark side of the financial industry … as Matt Hall describes here.

In that context, please join me in welcoming Abby Crimmins as our new client service associate. Abby comes to us from a wirehouse. In her own words, “After an unsettling start to my career, I was eager to find a financial firm that emphasized exemplary client service and aligned with my core values.”

Fortunately, a family friend introduced Abby to HIG, and to Matt’s book, Odds On.  After reading the book, she knew where she was meant to be. As good timing would have it, we too were seeking an individual with Abby’s talents to build on our client service team.

Augmenting her wirehouse experience (where she was selected to participate in an executive leadership development program), Abby is a University of Missouri-Columbia “Mizzou” graduate, with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, finance and real estate. Her attention to detail, process-oriented mind, and can-do enthusiasm will also be valuable assets to us and our clients, as she covers tasks that are perhaps best described as “a little bit of everything.”

During her Mizzou days, Abby traveled to New Zealand and Australia as part of an international business program. She also used the opportunity to try sky diving! When she’s not jumping out of airplanes (just the once … so far), she enjoys spending time with family and friends, trying new restaurants, attending concerts and working up a good sweat at the fitness center.

Abby also loves meeting new people and can’t wait to be helpful to you.

What’s 100 years old, a member of the Hill Investment Group family, and the first and largest of its kind?

If you’re a St. Louisan, you may already know the answer is The St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre – or, The Muny, to its many friends. Founded in 1918, the Muny is the oldest and largest outdoor musical theatre in the nation. The HIG connection comes from the fact that its long-tenured President and CEO Dennis Reagan is our own John Reagan’s dad. (Reagan Senior has been a fixture at the theatre since he joined their ranks more than 50 years ago!)

To commemorate its centennial, we hosted a birthday bash for this beloved venue on August 12, including a pre-show dinner and backstage theatre tour, followed by the season’s closing production of (what else?) “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

 

We were pleased to put on the event, enjoyed by a good number of our local friends. What a night it was. Because pictures will capture the event far better than words can, we invite you to stroll over to HIG’s Instagram page, where we’ve posted several other photos of the fun.

Here’s to the Muny’s next season … 101 and counting!

There are a myriad of financial talking heads crowding the airwaves with baseless predictions. How do we find the few worth heeding? We look for intellectual curiosity – a thirst for understanding what is right and true, regardless of where it may lead. Inside of Hill Investment Group, we savor the voices who stand out in this way. We point you, our tribe who are committed to Take the Long View®, to AQR Capital Management’s new podcast channel “The Curious Investor.” We are especially impressed by its third episode, “Active versus Passive,” featuring a conversation between Vanguard founder John “Jack” Bogle and AQR managing and founding principal Cliff Asness. As the father of the world’s first publicly available index fund, Bogle personifies passive investing like nobody else can. In contrast, Asness has structured AQR on the premise that he and his team can add value to investors’ portfolios by identifying opportunities to apply evidence-based methodology. He’s our modern “active” aficionado, as we’ve described in earlier posts. You’d think the podcast would be a vigorous debate between these two legends. Instead, it exemplifies the considerable common ground and respect they share. Bogle explains:

“We do things very differently from an investment standpoint – to which I would say: So what? … [W]hat I’ve always admired about Cliff is his intellectual soundness. … I’ve always admired that in anybody. And it doesn’t matter whether their intellectual ideas align with my own or not.”

See what I mean? Especially when it comes to the science of investing, nobody has everything figured out. Even if we did, markets evolve over time, generating new insights, possibilities and questions – new subjects to debate. That’s one of the reasons I love what we do. PS: Here’s the iTunes Podcast channel link, if you’d like to “App it.”