We’re big on celebrating milestones here at Hill Investment Group. Along those lines, what better excuse for cake and bubbly than the one-year anniversary of the “Odds On” book launch?

That’s what my HIG colleagues thought when they threw me an April 12th surprise party to celebrate. Our team is truly inspired by the way “Odds On” has allowed us to share a message of evidence-based hope to investment advisors and investors alike.

As I expressed in the first sentence on the first page of the book’s intro: “I want this book to change your life.”

I can’t tell you how exciting it’s been to see it do just that for so many who have been kind enough to let me know what the book has meant to them. I have collected some of my favorites and now have more than 21 pages of feedback and more than 100 reviews on Amazon. Here’s what one reader shared with me recently:

“Matt: I started reading your book this morning and now find myself emailing you after just finishing the entire thing. As a young financial advisor, very new to the business and working for a wire house firm, I too noticed everything you described in the opening chapters. … Until I picked up your book, I was losing hope for our profession. Work was dreaded. The days long. My outlook bleak. But after reading your book, I realize there is hope. There are people out there who understand and care. Your book gave me a much needed breath of fresh air. Now, more than ever, I am excited to help others and build a business centered around evidence based investing.”

To have the opportunity to impact other financial professionals who want to do right by their clients? I don’t know if I could ask for much more out of life.

Beyond leveraging “Odds On” to reach out to readers, we were also delighted to begin donating the profits from all of the sales to charity. We’ve already made our first donation and look forward to making many more as book sales continue.

So, happy first birthday to “Odds On,” and many more!

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.