Ten years after Odds On was first published, Matt received a note from a fellow advisor that felt worth sharing.

Robert DeNovo, a private wealth advisor in Knoxville, wrote to say that he first came across the book through Dimensional, Larry Swedroe, or perhaps a recommendation that followed from both. However he found it, the impact stayed with him.

“Odds On, and later your podcast, was a catalyst to build a better experience for our clients. We, and they, are better for it.”

That says a lot.

Not because it is praise for the book, though we are grateful for that. It matters because it points to something bigger. The right ideas travel. They move from a book to a conversation, from one advisor to another, from a team meeting to a better client experience.

That was always the hope behind Odds On.

The book was written to make evidence-based investing easier to understand and easier to live with. It was never meant to be a technical manual. It was meant to help people see that a disciplined financial life does not have to be complicated. But it does require clarity, patience, and a willingness to let evidence guide the way.

Robert’s note also mentioned that when his team brought on a new associate, one of the first resources he shared was Matt’s podcast, especially the conversation with Danny Meyer. That detail felt fitting.

At Hill, we have always believed that the client experience matters as much as the advice itself. People need more than smart portfolios. They need a sense of calm. They need clear communication. They need a guide who helps them make better decisions when the stakes are high.

Odds On was never just about investing. It is about behavior, trust, and the kind of partnership that helps people stay focused on what matters.

Ten years later, it is meaningful to hear that those ideas still resonate with other advisors, with other teams, for other clients we may never meet. That is one of the best outcomes a book can have.

It keeps working.

It keeps traveling.

And, as Robert put it, people are better for it.

Thanks to Robert for allowing us to share his comments and for his support.

Request a copy of Odds On here.

If you’re a client, we hope you were able to join us on May 14, 2026, for a thoughtful webinar featuring Marilyn Wechter, nationally recognized wealth counselor and psychotherapist who helps families navigate the emotional side of money. Like Carl Richards, Marilyn has the gift of helping families deal with money and emotion; however, she comes at it with an entirely different perspective.

Specifically, Marilyn helped us all explore the question, “Am I really OK (financially)?” where there is sometimes a misalignment between our rational brain (numbers, spreadsheets, and probabilities) and our emotional brain (how we are actually feeling about our situation). Often, our emotional brain “wins” despite “knowing” we’re OK.

To understand the topic in more detail, we’d be happy to send you the full recording. If you’d like to see the highlight reel in 5 minutes, click play on the video above.

In addition, all of our clients know that we’re always available to discuss these issues in more detail.

State pension funds are often viewed as the “smart money” of the investment world.

They employ large internal investment staffs. They hire teams of consultants. They have access to private investments unavailable to most investors. They negotiate lower fees because of their enormous scale. They conduct deep due diligence on hedge funds, private equity managers, venture capital firms, and real estate partnerships.

In theory, if anyone should outperform a simple index portfolio, it should be them.

Yet the evidence tells a very different story.

A well-known paper by Jeffrey Hooke and John Walters, “Wall Street Fees and Investment Returns for 33 State Pension Funds,” examined the results of large public pension systems and compared them to low-cost passive benchmarks. The conclusion was striking: the median pension fund underperformed a basic indexed portfolio by roughly 1.6% annually over the study period.

That gap may not sound large at first glance, but compounded over decades, it becomes enormous.

More Complexity Did Not Lead to Better Results

Over the past two decades, many pension funds have dramatically increased their exposure to:

• Private equity
• Hedge funds
• Venture capital
• Tactical asset allocation
• Alternative credit
• Real assets
• “Opportunistic” strategies

These investments are often marketed as sophisticated tools capable of delivering higher returns, downside protection, or diversification benefits unavailable in public markets.

But despite all of the resources available to these institutions, the end results frequently disappointed.

Importantly, many of these pension portfolios were also taking more risk than a traditional 60/40 stock and bond portfolio. They often had:

• Higher equity exposure
• Significant leverage embedded in private investments
• Illiquid assets
• Increased credit risk
• More aggressive return assumptions

In other words, many pensions were not underperforming because they were conservative. They were underperforming despite taking greater risks and paying substantially higher fees.

The Cost of Chasing “What’s Next”

One of the most persistent themes in investing is the belief that there must always be a better answer somewhere else:

• A smarter manager
• A new asset class
• A more complicated strategy
• A niche product that can unlock hidden returns

But investing evidence has consistently shown that expected returns are driven primarily by exposure to compensated risks, not complexity.

Chasing fashionable investments or attempting to time markets often introduces:

• Higher fees
• Greater taxes
• More operational friction
• Behavioral mistakes
• Lower transparency
• Increased implementation challenges

And those costs compound quietly over time.

The pension fund experience is a powerful reminder that access alone does not create better outcomes.

Simplicity Is Often an Advantage

At Hill Investment Group, we believe investors are generally better served by focusing on:

• Broad diversification
• Evidence-based sources of expected return
• Low costs
• Tax efficiency
• Disciplined implementation
• Long-term behavior

This does not mean investors should avoid innovation or thoughtful portfolio design. But complexity should have a very high burden of proof.

The reality is that many of the world’s largest and most sophisticated institutions have struggled to outperform simple, low-cost indexed approaches, despite having every conceivable advantage.

For most investors, the lesson is not that investing is easy. It is that successful investing often requires resisting the constant pressure to make it unnecessarily complicated.