For the third year in a row, Schwab Institutional is running a series of TV commercials in support of independent Registered Investment Advisor firms. That’s us! The commercials are an extension of Schwab’s long-running advertising campaign, focused on helping the public understand why terms like “independent,” “fiduciary,” and “Registered Investment Advisor” matter – or at least should matter – to anyone seeking solid financial advice.

You can see the TV ads now through mid-May on CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg TV and Golf Channel. They stand out to us for their emphasis on the right kinds of questions to ask when assessing a financial advisor. While most financial services advertising is aimed at products and sales, we’d say Schwab gets it right. Here’s our favorite:

Schwab’s ad campaign is hardly the reason we do business with them. But it’s one more way their thinking aligns with ours, as we turn to them for holding our own, and our clients’ personal investments.

The St. Louis members of Hill Investment Group are so excited to be back in our freshly remodeled offices that we bought a special t-shirt to celebrate the occasion! See the image below and, seriously, ask us about our ceilings the next time you’re in the new space. We’ve got a story to tell you.

The purpose of the remodel is to make room for new team members and to update many of the features inherent to a 1964 building like the one we inhabit in St. Louis. The construction phase of the project started January 14th and wrapped up on April 26th. We are grateful to our partners in this project – CBRE, Chouteau Building Group, and Amie Corley Interiors – and are thrilled to be back in a space that suits our creative energy. We’ve been tenants of the Pierre Laclede Building since our very early days, and our new lease will take us into the next era of HIG’s growth.

We’ve said it before and we’ll likely say it again: Investment risks and expected rewards are related, but disciplined diversification helps us reduce the risks.

Our friends at Dimensional Fund Advisors recently released an important report supporting this point.

In their report, they took a look at four sources of expected returns found in many evidence-based investment portfolios (market, size, value, and profitability).

Using U.S. stock market data stretching back more than 50 years, they found that, about half the time, one of the four premiums delivered negative returns for any rolling ten-year period across that time frame.

That sounds risky, doesn’t it? But consider this: Across the same time frame, at least one of the premiums delivered positive returns during every single 10-year rolling period. In fact, far more often than not, two of them delivered positive returns during each 10-year period. The premiums existed, they observed, but they “do not move in lockstep.”

Check out Dimensional’s report to see the data for yourself. It offers a strong, continued vote for depending on steadfast diversification across multiple risk premiums to help you manage your risks in pursuit of your expected rewards.