Imagine you’re buying a new home and need $1 million to complete the purchase. You have the money, but it’s invested in a portfolio you’d rather not sell. Liquidating investments could trigger a substantial tax bill, while borrowing from a bank could mean paying more in interest than necessary.

What if there were a better option?

At Hill Investment Group, we believe great investment management extends well beyond selecting investments. It’s also about finding ways to reduce costs, manage taxes, and make our clients’ wealth work more efficiently. Sometimes, that means identifying opportunities in places most investors wouldn’t think to look.

One example is the Hill Internal Lending Program (HILP), a financing strategy developed and executed by our investment team that allows clients to access cash without selling their investments.

HILP uses an established financial market strategy called a box spread to obtain financing through the options market. The mechanics are sophisticated, but the concept is straightforward: a client receives cash today and agrees to repay a predetermined amount at a future date. The difference represents the cost of financing.

Why go to this trouble? Because the savings can be substantial.

We’ve historically seen financing rates 2 to 5 percentage points below certain traditional borrowing alternatives, including pledged asset lines and mortgage loans. To put that in perspective, a 2% difference on $1 million represents $20,000 in annual savings.

There can also be meaningful tax advantages. Depending on how a transaction is structured and a client’s individual tax circumstances, box spread financing costs may generate capital losses that can offset taxable capital gains. That’s another potential benefit worth evaluating alongside the financing rate.

Of course, the economics depend on market conditions, financing terms, and each client’s circumstances. But the opportunity to borrow more efficiently can be significant.

We’ve identified several situations where this approach can be particularly valuable:

• Buying a home before selling another. HILP can provide bridge financing without requiring clients to liquidate investments or arrange a conventional short-term loan.
• Financing a home purchase. In some circumstances, HILP may offer an attractive alternative to a traditional mortgage, particularly for clients with substantial investment portfolios.
• Managing long-term wealth and estate planning. Borrowing against appreciated investments can allow clients to fund spending needs without immediately realizing capital gains. In certain estate plans, retaining appreciated assets until death may also provide tax advantages through a step-up in cost basis under current law.

These opportunities don’t come without risks. Borrowing against an investment portfolio introduces leverage, and significant market declines can create additional collateral requirements or potentially force asset sales. Financing maturities and refinancing needs also require careful planning.

That’s why HILP isn’t appropriate for everyone. The goal isn’t to encourage borrowing. It’s to give our advisors another tool to consider when helping clients make thoughtful financial decisions.

Here’s something we’re particularly proud of: our investment team handles these transactions directly.

Many wealth management firms don’t offer this type of financing. Others rely on outside specialists who may charge additional fees to structure and execute the transactions.

By developing this expertise internally, we can avoid an additional layer of fees, maintain control over execution, and integrate financing decisions directly into each client’s broader investment and financial plan.

This reflects something fundamental about how we approach our work at Hill. We don’t believe investment management begins and ends with building a portfolio. We continually look for opportunities to improve the details surrounding it, whether through better trading, smarter tax management, or more efficient financing.

Sometimes those improvements are small. Sometimes they can save a client tens of thousands of dollars.

HILP is one more example of what happens when a dedicated investment team combines technical expertise with a genuine commitment to improving client outcomes.

Great investment management isn’t just about what you own. It’s about how intelligently you manage everything surrounding it.

That’s what it means to Take the Long View.

On June 11th, Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX (SPCX), began trading on Nasdaq. The headlines were everywhere: A $1.75 trillion valuation. The largest IPO in stock market history. The media is suggesting that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

The noise around IPOs is likely to continue throughout 2026, with more large IPOs planned this year, including OpenAI (known for ChatGPT) and Anthropic (known for Claude.ai).

These companies may change the world as we know it. Maybe not. As investors, we can be excited about these companies, but the evidence tells a clear story about IPOs and how we should treat them in our portfolio.

What the Evidence Shows on IPOs

Based on research from Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), we can examine IPO performance across two timeframes: short and medium-term.

Over the short term (first trading day), IPOs typically perform well. This phenomenon is often referred to as the “IPO Pop.” Insiders and some large institutions can buy shares at the IPO price (unavailable to the public) and sell them at higher prices on the open market. Thus, the positive return from the IPO Pop is reserved for insiders and unavailable to the average investor. Individuals can only access shares on the open market meaning after the shares start trading. Often, investors may have to pay higher prices, thereby decreasing (or eliminating) the day-one returns that we see in the data and which the media loves to hype.

After the IPO Pop, over the next six to twelve months after listing, IPOs tend to lag the broader US stock market by 2-3% per year. Please reread the last sentence.

Obviously, these trends may not happen every time. Any individual IPO stock may be different. But the point is that, on average, IPOs tend not to be great investments, particularly when they have high valuations and negative profits, like SpaceX.

An Evidence-Based Alternative

There is good news here. As always, we can leverage this data and evidence to build better portfolios. The funds that we use at HIG typically wait for the IPO hype to fade and for insiders’ lock-up periods to end (increasing the supply of shares) before buying newly listed companies. What does this mean? We expect that, over time, all of our clients will have an appropriate allocation to many of these newly listed companies in the six to twelve-month timeframe as they meet the evidence-based criteria for inclusion in the portfolio.

The Temptation Is Real

We understand the emotional pull. When something feels “historic,” sitting on the sidelines can feel like missing out.

As advisors, our job is to keep clients focused on what the evidence says, not what the moment feels like. The same discipline that keeps you from panic-selling in a downturn is the same discipline that keeps you from buying into a frenzy.

A great company is worth rooting for. It is not always worth buying.

If you’d like to continue this discussion, please reach out to me at ryan@hillinvestmentgroup.com.

Welcome to our next article in our “Signal vs. Noise” series, which examines popular claims circulating online or in print. Our goal is to help you separate the signal from the noise. At Hill Investment Group, we believe good advice should be simple, clear, and grounded in evidence — not hype.

“The biggest risk is not having exposure to this transformational technology.” — JPMorgan Wealth Management, January 2026

The story feels so obvious: transformative technology, dominant companies, get in now. But a compelling technology story and a compelling investment are two totally different things. Thus far in 2026, three of the largest AI companies on the planet reported some of their best quarters ever – and watched their stock prices drop. Here’s why that’s not as surprising as it sounds.

A stock’s price is the market’s collective best guess at everything a company will ever earn, discounted to today. It’s like how you can’t get a bargain on a house in a neighborhood that everyone knows is great – that desirability is in the asking price. In general, AI companies’ stocks trade at steep premiums compared to the broader market. That’s not necessarily right or wrong; it’s the market saying, “We expect extraordinary things.”

Exhibits A, B, and C

NVIDIA Corp – the designer of the AI chips that power the data centers behind virtually every major AI application in use today

• February 2026 – beat all earnings estimates and set all-time records for revenue, profits, and future earnings guidance – the stock fell 5.5%

Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) – the company that physically manufactures chips for NVIDIA, Apple, and virtually every major AI company

• April 2026 – beat all earnings estimates and set all-time records for profits for the fourth consecutive quarter – the stock fell 3%

ASML Holdings – the Dutch company that makes specialized machines used to produce TSMC’s chips; without ASML, there is no modern semiconductor industry

• April 2026 – beat revenue and profits estimates, while increasing their full-year guidance for 2026 – the stock fell 6%

These three companies are worth ~$5.5 trillion combined and are critical parts of the global AI backbone. They delivered, but the market said, “We already knew.”

These examples aren’t a reason to avoid AI investments entirely. Instead, they serve as a timely reminder that stock prices already reflect the market’s expectations, and that expecting a great company to keep being great isn’t the same as expecting a great return.

The more useful question for your financial future isn’t “will AI change the world?” It probably will. The better question is: “Is my portfolio built to succeed regardless of whether these companies meet the market’s sky-high expectations for them?”

Your portfolio already owns AI. At Hill, we invest in global capitalism, which means that you already own NVIDIA, TSMC, ASML, and every other company driving or benefiting from this technology as part of a diversified portfolio. Put simply, you get to participate in the upside if AI exceeds expectations, but you’re also not overexposed if these companies fall short.

Decades of financial research show that the most reliable path to investment success is owning the whole market, staying diversified, and tilting toward companies that are attractively priced with strong profits. Instead of taking a bet on (or against) AI, you have a strategy built to succeed whether or not AI stocks live up to the hype.

Our job is simple but critically important: put the odds of investment success in your favor by sticking to the evidence, not the headlines.

Disclosure