In March we took a break from our regularly scheduled e-newsletter and blog programming to share an annual Hill Investment Group overview.

Dear Friends,

You’re used to getting the Hill Investment Group newsletter now every month. We put a lot of thought into those newsletters, curating the best stories to help you stay focused and keep the odds of success on your side. I want to do something a little different this time.

The investment industry is in the midst of a major transformation. Independent advisors like Hill Investment Group are growing 15% annually, as investors are becoming smarter than ever and learning to focus on evidence over hype. As our firm evolves alongside the industry, I want you to know that we’re holding on to the core values that have gotten us where we are today—and that we intend to protect, fiercely, for the future.

Since our founding in 2005, we’ve thought of ourselves as a small firm with big ideas. To preserve this mentality even as the firm grows, we’ve worked hard to create a very specific culture that’s rooted in three core areas:

The character of our people – Everyone at Hill Investment Group has authentic passion for our work and our clients. We make new hires very intentionally, looking for people who share that strong desire to serve. Then, we strengthen engagement in many ways throughout the year, such as annual family and team parties and even daily lunches. In fact, lunch here is more than just a meal—it’s a vital work session where we tackle everything from big questions about the future to little details that make our office run better.

[Editor’s note: Speaking of those daily lunches, Matt was pleased to talk about them recently in a BBC Business Daily broadcast exploring today’s business lunch culture. You’ll find his sound bite at (appropriately) around 12:00 in this “Out to Lunch” radio podcast.]

Our dedication to service – We’ve created a client service culture that’s extravagantly thoughtful and detail-oriented. This approach not only ensures a consistent experience for every client, it’s another way to show how much we care. Remember the television show “Cheers” where everybody knows your name and can anticipate what you order? That spirit has been and will always be a part of the fabric of our firm.

Our commitment to the evidence – We are results oriented and data-driven. Everyone on the team—even those with many years of experience—is hungry to learn more. To that end, we strive to be leaders in our community and to forge connections that help us advance our professional development. That way, we can continue offering clients the best possible service.

These values are written into our company mission statement, and more importantly, they underpin every decision we make for our business and our clients. I could reel off hundreds of anecdotes illustrating our culture in action—and actually, I captured a lot of those stories in my book, Odds On. As I was working on this letter in March I headed out to visit Hill Investment Group’s Houston office, which opened in 2014. Sitting in the airport waiting for my flight, I realized that our expansion was another example of how our culture guides our actions.

The challenge of staying true to our values as we grow is both exciting and humbling— it’s why we do what we do. We started Hill Investment Group to help change lives, and we work hard, every day, to live up to that mission. I hope these thoughts on our culture help clarify how we make decisions. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions. I’m always happy to talk.

Take the Long View,

Matt Hall, President
Hill Investment Group

As we explored in our accompanying article, “Going Global: What Does It Really Mean,” we are a huge part of the world when viewed by market cap, as the slide below shows. Thinking only in terms of landmass can distort investment decisions. Directly comparing the markets of nations produces some surprising results. Measures such as population, gross domestic product, or exports do not directly indicate the size or suitability of investments in a market.

This slide (one of our favorites) illustrates the balance of equity investment opportunities around the world. The size of each country has been adjusted to reflect its total relative capitalization.

Of course, the world is in motion—there is no fixed relationship between markets, and their proportion can change over time. Viewing the world this way brings the scope of diversification into new light and helps clarify allocation decisions.

A country’s equity market capitalization, or market cap, reflects the total value of shares issued by all publicly traded companies and is calculated as share price times the number of shares outstanding.

Michael Lewis’ latest book, “The Undoing Project,” weaves together the biographies of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, two Israeli psychologists whose work in the 1970s–1990s launched a new way of combining behavioral academics with practical applications. Their specialty was exploring the ways the human mind makes systematic errors when forced to judge uncertain situations.

At first, you may not think that sounds like gripping entertainment. But in typical Michael Lewis fashion, these pair of academics become a fascinating read.

I and my Hill Investment Group colleagues had the privilege of meeting Lewis and hearing him speak shortly after he published his 2003 book, “Moneyball.” In it, he showed how Major League Baseball teams were making poor decisions on valuing players based on human judgment. Defying convention, Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane evaluated players using data rather than “expert” judgments to successfully compete against teams boasting much higher payrolls.

When Lewis wrote “Moneyball,” he wasn’t aware how powerful his book would become. He was simply intrigued by a real-life illustration of objective evidence beating the pants off of conventional so-called wisdom.

In some respects, “The Undoing Project,” is a prequel to “Moneyball.” Lewis admits, he didn’t realize it at the time how much of what he explored in “Moneyball” came directly from professors Tversky and Kahneman and their earlier work. Once he connected the dots, he decided to write a book about them too. Their story is about how they used their understanding of systematic errors in people’s judgment to improve that judgment, and thus improve their decision-making.

I believe one of their most important findings is this: Knowing you or others have biases (such as relying on overly small samples, anchoring on past assumptions, and mistaking hindsight as being predictive) isn’t sufficient to overcome them. Even when we know we’re being influenced, we often let it happen anyway!

Here’s one example from Lewis’ book:  In 2016, basketball player Jeremy Lin signed a $38 million contract with the Brooklyn Nets – clearly a coveted hire. But back in 2010, no NBA team would draft him. “He lit up our models,” one team manager said … but as a Chinese-American Harvard grad, Lin didn’t fit the stereotype. Even though they had the evidence (the models) in hand, they were unable to overcome their biases and recruit him when he could have been had for far less money.

Back to professors Kahneman and Tversky. In 2002, Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for the work that continues to shape our lives today. Amos Tversky likely would have received the award as well but, sadly, he passed away in 1996, and Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously. In any case, their work has contributed to untold advances in medical diagnosis, military decisions, professional sports and – last but hardly least – financial economics.

Across all of these disciplines and more, the takeaway is that human bias is ever-present, which is why we must remain ever on guard against it. Hint: One of the best ways I know to combat your own biases is to recruit someone who is aware of how prevalent they are, to let you know when it’s happening to you.