No doubt about it. All of us here at Hill Investment Group are one team, regardless of whether we work out of St. Louis, Houston or wherever our clients want us to be. That said, we’re not without our civic pride. Let’s just say some of us more loudly cheer on the Astros, while others of us favor the Cardinals.

What else makes our home bases special in their own rights? We thought it would be fun to launch a series to share some of our cities’ favorite features and interesting oddities. We’ll start with a few points of historical pride.

History

• St. Louis – Founded in 1764 by Pierre Laclède and Auguste Chouteau, named after the 13^th Century French King Louis IX. Our famed Arch commemorates our reputation as the “Gateway to the West,” from where Lewis & Clark launched their 1804 expedition.
• Houston – Found in 1836 by brothers John and Augustus Allen, named after former General Sam Houston, a commander in the Texas Revolution for independence from Mexico. We’re probably best known for our oil and aerospace industries.

Famous Folk

• Houston – Jeff Bezos, Beyoncé, George H.W. and George W. Bush, A.J. Foyt, Howard Hughes, Dan Rather, Renée Zellweger.
• St. Louis – Maya Angelou, Yogi Berra, George Foreman, Redd Foxx, Ulysses S. Grant, Kevin Kline, Charles Lindbergh.

 Musical Heritage

• St. Louis – An early mecca for St. Louis blues, jazz, R&B and ragtime – Chuck Berry, Sheryl Crow, Miles Davis, Scott Joplin, and Ike & Tina Turner have called St. Louis home.
• Houston – Houston also hosts musicians across every genre – and who often cross multiple styles. Notables include Yolanda Adams, Clint Black, Lyle Lovett, Kenny Rogers and ZZ Top.

On Location (movies filmed or set in our home towns)

• Houston – “Apollo 13,” “Boyhood,” “Independence Day,” “Rushmore,” “Selena,” “Urban Cowboy.”
• St. Louis – “Escape from New York,” “Larger Than Life,” “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “National Lampoon’s Summer Vacation,” “White Palace.”

Want to know more? In a future installment, we’ll share some of our favorite things to see, do, eat and drink in our respective home towns! And, by the way, if you’re ever visiting us in either locale, please let us know. We’d love to give you a grand tour of our favorite hot spots.

When I’m not busy helping people build long-term wealth via evidence-based investing, in my daydreams, I’m a starting pitcher in the major leagues.

Admittedly, if my dreams ever come true, I’ll probably throw out my shoulder on the third pitch, after giving up a couple of home runs. But besides that technicality, there actually are a number of similarities between my real day job and my fantasy career. I know this, because the Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow happens to be a fan of Matt Hall’s Odds On book. He even wrote an endorsement for the book, and he has stayed in touch with us ever since.

As we’ve covered before, author Michael Lewis published his now-iconic book Moneyball in 2003. Both the book and the award-winning motion picture showcase how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane employed empirical evidence over expert opinion, studied patience over rapid reaction, and cost control over splashy spending to take his underdog team in a dramatically new direction on a shoestring budget.

Sounds a lot like what we aim to do for investors, doesn’t it? But a happy Hollywood ending is one thing. Can the strategy really work over time in baseball, or was it a sensational flash in the pan?

That’s where additional data points from Luhnow come in, when he chose to take Beane’s analytical approach one step further with “extreme Moneyball,” as described in this 2014 Bloomberg piece. Similar to the A’s, the Astros were underperforming at the time – big time. They literally had the worst record in baseball EVER during the first two years of Luhnow’s tenure.

Then came his fresh, evidence-based approach. The Astros made the American League playoffs in 2015 and, as I draft this piece, this recent Wall Street Journal piece describes Luhnow’s data-driven shift to maintain the team’s home run averages while reducing its strike-outs. The results so far? The WSJ reports: “More than 40% of the way through the season, the Astros own the best record in the majors, blitzing the competition with a lineup that defies all logic.”

Well, not all logic.  The article also describes Luhnow as the “architect of perhaps the sport’s most data-driven organization.”

If you ask me, that probably explains it. Will the Astros take their first World Series in their 55-year history? Either way, come what may, I look forward to seeing what they have in store for 2017!

As meticulous as we are with our financial advice, we tend to be even more deliberate when adding new members to our Hill Investment Group team. Fortunately, welcoming Nell Swanson as our Chief Operating Officer (COO) was one of our easiest hiring decisions ever.

You might not immediately conclude a natural fit, given her intriguing credentials as a petroleum engineer and, most recently, an operations specialist for an oil & gas private equity firm. But here’s where it gets interesting.

Nell found us after determining that something was missing from her otherwise stellar career. She was content enough and successful enough, but she wasn’t personally connected to it or inspired by it.

So, as any good evidence-based advocate would do, she took a good, hard look around. A voracious reader with a passion for behavioral finance, it was only a matter of time before she ran across Matt Hall’s Odds On. She devoured it at once, and knew she’d found the inspiration she’d been looking for. Reaching out to Matt for career advice, the conversation quickly turned into a job interview. The rest is happy history.

“Nell blew each of us away as we met her,” says Matt. “She has so much energy and initiative, and such a rare combination of technical ability and interpersonal understanding. We soon knew we’d found the right person to be our first COO.”

You’ll find Nell based in our Houston office, where she already is making her mark by exploring new business, operational, human capital, compliance, financial and overall organizational opportunities for us. Most of all, Nell will be instrumental in helping us sustain close personal relationships with our clients even as we grow. This is mission-critical and at least as important as any numbers involved.

In her spare time, Nell is planning a fall wedding to her fiancé and pre-school classmate Walter. She enjoys working out with Walter, putting together puzzles, reading, traveling with friends and family, volunteering in her community, and drinking copious cups of coffee … cold-pressed, lightly creamed.

When she told her family about her career change, she admitted she was nervous. “They’ve always been so supportive of my past plans, I was afraid I might disappoint them by shifting gears so dramatically.” Quite the opposite, her parents felt as she did (and we do) that she should pursue wherever her passions take her. We’re so glad they’ve led her to our HIG family. Welcome, Nell!