As you may know, Katie Trout joined our firm in February and we’ve been the better for it. Don’t be surprised in email or phone conversations when you notice her new name – Katie Ackerman. Katie just returned from her spectacular October 13th wedding at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. We’re thrilled to welcome Katie home and to have her back in the office. She is pictured on the left with her husband, Doug Ackerman, and the rest of our team snapped the picture on the right at the St. Louis reception this past weekend. Congrats Katie!

Remember the movie Catch Me If You Can? We were lucky to hear the man who was inspiration for the story at this year’s BAM Alliance National Conference. After spending time in French, Swedish, and American prisons, Frank Abagnale was ultimately offered a job with the FBI where he still works today…over 40 years later. He’s turned down pardons from 3 Presidents because he knows no single piece of paper can possibly wash aways the sins of his past.

Frank offered his perspective on keeping your personal identity safe from fraud, including these items below:

• Shred all mail with a micro cut shredder (Even department store catalogs may contain enough information to be dangerous)
• Don’t use ATM/Debit cards; Only true credit cards from Visa, Mastercard, Amex, etc.
• Never pay by check at any retail merchant
• Use credit monitoring services, and only those that do so in real time from all 3 credit bureaus
• Be careful with pictures on social media. Readily available facial recognition software can help fraudsters find your facebook (and other) accounts in just minutes. Make sure several faces appear in any one picture, or avoid sharing pictures of your face altogether.

40 years ago, Charley Ellis published a paper in The Financial Analysts Journal that was decades ahead of its time. He wrote:

“The investment management business (it should be a profession but is not) is built upon a simple and basic belief: Professional money managers can beat the market. That premise appears to be false.”

He’s a legend in the investment world, a hero to Hill Investment Group, and recently participated in a podcast with Bloomberg that we’ve shared below. It’s one of our favorite interviews to date. Please consider listening to this gem of an interview.

https://soundcloud.com/bloombergview/cfa-charley-ellis-masters-in