When you invest your hard-earned money, of course you hope to end up with more than when you started. Better yet, you would prefer to NOT give up returns you could have had by investing optimally.

But what is “optimal” investing? It’s not about pursuing an active investment strategy – i.e., trying to consistently pick winners, dodge losers, and accurately forecast when to be in and out of up and down markets. Nor is it about hiring an active manager who thinks they can do the same. The evidence is clear: The challenges of active investing are more likely to set you back than advance your interests.

For the past several years, Dimensional Fund Advisors has been tracking mutual fund track records in “The Mutual Fund Landscape.” If anything, the terrain keeps getting  tougher. This year’s report found that, across 15 years ending December 2017, only half of the stock funds in existence at the beginning were even around at the end, and only 14% were able to survive and outperform their Morningstar benchmarks.

The moral of the story: To run a successful marathon it’s better to pace yourself than chase the wind. Same thing for your wealth. Take the Long View®.

Before you do business with an advisor or fund manager, it can be telling to ask this powerful question: How do you invest your money? At Hill Investment Group, we believe in our approach to the core. We take for granted that our stance is rare in financial services, where most advisors invest one way for themselves and another for their clients.

Why don’t they eat their own cooking? Their precise portfolio allocations might vary based on individual goals and risk tolerances. But if your advisor is not investing the bulk of their personal assets according to the same strategy and within the same investments they’ve recommended to you … why not?

At Hill Investment Group, our own money makes up about 11 percent of the total assets we manage as a firm; and we use the same fund families, portfolio builds, and evidence-based investment approach we recommend to our clients. When we’re advising a client to stay the course during a down market or to avoid chasing a hot trend, we’re doing the same thing with our personal assets. We feel the same fluctuations, and stay the same course toward the same expected returns. Alignment in this way feels right to us.

We’ve all been there, done that: When the markets grow volatile, they can literally make your stomach churn. As a team member of Hill Investment Group, I know better than to get too hung up on the never-ending breaking news in the popular financial press, but I do still find it helpful to read the perspectives of other thought leaders who are as committed as we are to evidence-based investing.

Here are two such pieces published during the recent jolts of market volatility. I found them helpful; I hope you do too:

“When Investing in Stocks Makes You Feel Like Throwing Up and You Do It Anyway,” by Jason Zweig of The Wall Street Journal

Zweig reflects on how awful it felt to stay invested during the Great Recession, but how glad he is now that he overcame his deepest doubts: “A happy few investors, among them Warren Buffett, his business partner Charles Munger and their mentor Benjamin Graham, may have long-term thinking built into them by nature. The rest of us have to cultivate it by nurture.”

“Some alternatives to Evidence-Based Investing,” by Josh Brown, the Reformed Broker

Satire can be a great healer. Here, Brown lists some of the “better” tactics people use instead of evidence-based investing and concludes: “The harvestable errors of emotionally unaware people in the marketplace are a bumper crop for the patient, the sane and the disciplined.” Tough but true love about the wisdom of evidence-based investing.