Guided by a board of financial academics and a mission to advance the science of investing, Dimensional Fund Advisors might seem like a surprising source for an article promoting the Tao principle of “wei wu-wei,” or a way to “do without doing.”

But it’s not so surprising, once you appreciate how challenging it can be to Take the Long View® approach to patient, persistent investing – instead of continuously indulging in hyperactive bursts of trading activity.

Vice President Jim Parker of DFA Australia explains the difference in his recent article, “The Tao of Wealth Management.”

At Hill Investment Group, we share Dimensional’s perspective, advising our clients on how to build and preserve personal wealth through a “less is more” approach to their investing. Instead of spinning our wheels chasing today’s crisis or predicting tomorrow’s hot trend, we dedicate our energy to substantively improving our clients’ personal and financial well-being.

In short, while it may seem as if our course is a quiet one, we work hard every day to help our clients achieve wei wu-wei.

Anyone who’s been with us for a while knows we’ve long felt that among our greatest roles is to help investors Take the Long View® with their wealth. But did you notice a subtle change? If you’re especially attentive, you may have caught that we’ve now established a Registered Trademark ® to more fully protect our defining tagline.

Until now, we’ve had the sentiment more lightly protected as a service mark. When our marketing team first suggested the mark back in 2005, we felt that “taking the long view” perfectly expressed our passion for changing people’s point of view about their wealth, offering them an improved vantage point – a symbolic Hill – from which they could see past the daily details toward their ultimate goals.

Our belief in the power of the expression hasn’t changed one bit. In fact, we realized we’d achieved an important milestone when people started repeating our tagline back to us, demonstrating how much they, too, valued the sentiment. We decided it was time to beef up our rights to ensure that Take the Long View® would continue to serve us, our clients and our community for a long, long time to come.

Would you like to Take the Long View® along with us? Let us know how we can help!

*PS We cleverly purchased www.takethelongview.com and, if you ever decide to try this address, you’ll notice it takes you straight to our site.

I’m obsessed with tennis, but especially Wimbledon. In 2015, I fulfilled a lifelong dream to attend the event, which I consider to be the greatest tennis tournament in the world. See that white-clad speck on the left? That’s Roger Federer. You can click to enlarge the image, but he’ll still be pretty tiny.

From my perfect vantage point, it was incredibly exciting to watch Federer play in person. It was also fun to watch him from afar this year, as he added another Wimbledon Cup to the pile. Nearing age 36, he’s clearly still achieving “firsts” and “bests” that most of his 20-something competitors can only dream of.

How’s he doing that? Federer seems to be a fellow advocate for our Take the Long View® approach. Consider this Wall Street Journal commentary published just prior to his Wimbledon victory:

“Federer … will play for a grand slam title after doing something none of his top competitors here did ahead of the feature event on the tennis calendar—he took a break from competitive tennis.”

In other words, he won over the long haul by knowing when it was time to compete, and when he’d be better off staying patiently put. In his own words:

“Once you hit 30 you’ve got to look back and think, ‘How much tennis have I played? How much rest did I give my body over the years or how much training have I done? Did I do enough? Did I overdo it or not enough?’ It’s always calibrating the whole thing.”

The WSJ called this a “new playbook” for tennis. New? When it comes to investing, we’ve been running with a similar playbook for years.