Last month Hill Investment Group celebrated 11 years of taking the long view! We try to get our entire team together for this annual family celebration. Having our kids and spouses mix and mingle truly enhances the bond we have at the office. This party is certainly one of our best HIG traditions.

We enjoyed a fantastic BBQ dinner and spent a beautiful evening poolside at Matt and Lisa’s new (old) home. It is always a highlight of our year to spend time with of our co-workers’ family members.

*This year Henry and Laurence’s daughters, Julia and Kathryn, were still at summer camp and couldn’t make the party.

Can 90% of people be above average drivers? Certainly not, yet multiple studies have shown that if you gathered 100 random people in a room, more than 80 would rate themselves as above average drivers. This phenomenon is known by several names, but is illustrated quite well in Garrison Keillor’s popular quote in reference to the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, where “all women are strong, all men are good looking and all children above average.”

Would you consider yourself an above average investor? If so, you’d be perfectly aware of your own blind spots and care little about how your neighbor is investing. Many of us care too much about what others think to make a brave choice. In this compelling episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s hugely successful podcast entitled Revisonist History, he discusses this concept in the context of Wilt Chamberlain’s horrendous free-throw shooting.

(Stay tuned for the cameo from behavioral economist Richard Thaler regarding how NFL teams could easily win more football games.)

Alert – This link is only for those of you who like the backstage, technical stuff.

Cliff Asness recently wrote a piece for Bloomberg called Indexing Is Capitalism at Its Best and we tend to agree. This column is in response to an active manager’s “research” report warning of the dangers of too much money moving to index, passive, and evidence-based strategies. Please make sure to read the footnotes, as they are every bit as relevant as the main content.