Invest Like Billy Beane: Pay Attention to the Right Things
July 15, 2026 • By Carl Lachman, MBA, CFP®
Baseball Scouts Loved “Five-Tool” Players
The baseball scouts wanted to find five-tool players. They wanted players who could hit consistently, hit with power, run fast, field well, and throw accurately. They wanted the whole package in a player. They liked tall, muscular, impressive-looking players that fit their image of a Major League Baseball player. They focused on batting averages, RBIs, stolen bases, pitcher wins, and fielding percentages.
Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, wanted them to ignore all of those traditional metrics and subjective judgments because they were not good predictors of actual run-scoring and winning. Instead, he wanted players who got on base a lot and had a high slugging percentage, meaning each of their hits got more bases on average than other players. He didn’t care what they looked like, how they threw, how fast they ran, or how tall they were.
He had been the perfect five-tool player when he was recruited and played Major League Baseball, but he had not been a successful player. He knew from personal experience that the traditional way of evaluating players was not the best way.
Moneyball, both the book by Michael Lewis and the film it inspired, tells the story of how Billy Beane led the Oakland A’s to impressive wins in the early 2000s while ignoring conventional wisdom and with one of the smallest MLB team budgets. His insights are now accepted by most teams in the major leagues, but at the time, everyone thought he was nuts.
As you consider how to best invest for retirement, you might follow Billy Beane’s example of ignoring a lot of conventional wisdom and focusing on the things that actually matter.
What to Ignore
You might find financial news interesting, and you might think keeping up on what is happening in the financial markets makes you a better investor. For the average investor, though, the news is a big distraction and probably leads you astray more often than not. Most of the time, you will be better off ignoring the financial news and doing the opposite of the advice you hear on the financial programs.
The financial news commentators don’t know your financial situation, and they don’t know your financial goals. They are in the business of providing financial entertainment and selling advertising. The only way they can be successful at their work is to keep viewers glued to their screens, which is easiest if they focus on unusual, interesting, and extreme views that have nothing to do with your investing success. Ignore the commentators.
A common topic of financial commentators is telling viewers what is going to happen in the future based on the forecasts of “experts.” But how often do they go back and evaluate the long-term success of those experts and their predictions about economic growth, interest rates, inflation, and unemployment? Almost never, because their track record is so often pitiful.
Can anyone consistently tell us what the future holds? No, they cannot. The average investor needs a portfolio of investments that they can count on for long-term success regardless of what happens with GDP, interest rates, inflation, and unemployment. Ignore the forecasts.
Another daily aspect of financial shows is how the financial markets did today and why the markets were positive or negative. Again, studies often show that what actually moved the markets and investments on a particular day had nothing to do with what the shows indicated. Yet how often do the shows go back and let you know they were totally wrong?
Markets often move because of random events that cannot be seen until later. Daily market movements are about as predictive of long-term success as a junior high popularity contest — and about as scientific. How often has a winner in junior high become president, become a billionaire, entered the NFL, or won the Nobel Prize? Ignore daily market movements.
What to Watch
Just like Billy Beane, you will need to pay attention to those things that can actually lead to your long-term investing success. Here is a short list of the major ones.
Pay Attention to Portfolio Allocation
At the top level, what is your percentage exposure to stocks, bonds, alternatives, and cash? Over the long term, the allocation of your portfolio is one of the best predictors of your expected returns. If you have a large allocation of your portfolio in stocks, then over the long term, you will have higher returns — but you will need to ignore the volatility of your portfolio, the up-and-down movements that happen in the short term.
Pay Attention to Diversification
If you have a diversified portfolio, then it has a lot of investments in different areas, and you are protecting yourself from single-asset failures. Diversification does not necessarily predict returns, but the better the diversification, the lower the chance of a catastrophe.
Pay Attention to Fees and Expenses
There is no free lunch in the financial industry, but sometimes investment fees and expenses are hidden. You can find out what an investment costs, but it takes work to find out what you are actually being charged.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your financial advisor doesn’t charge you anything. If you don’t get a bill from your financial advisor and they don’t explain how much the investments charge in fees, then you are probably paying a lot. The advisors and investments that have competitive fees want you to know what a good deal you are getting, so they are the ones that tell you.
These fees happen every year, so over the long term, a seemingly small difference in fees can often be a million-dollar difference in your assets at retirement.
Pay Attention to Taxes
Taxes can erode your investments the way termites can weaken a house. You want investments that are tax efficient, and you want investment accounts that allow you to avoid taxes on investments for as long as possible. A tax-efficient investment is one that has low turnover (buying and selling), favors long-term capital gains, avoids short-term gains, and minimizes income distributions.
Put as much as you can into retirement accounts like IRAs and 401(k)s, which defer taxes until you take money out. And use Roth retirement accounts if you can afford to put in as much money after taxes as you would if you used a tax-deferred retirement account.
Pay Attention to Discipline
There are thousands and thousands of ways to invest your money. Hundreds of them are appropriate for you and will probably give you long-term investment success, but only if you are disciplined in your approach. If you hop between different investment approaches every year, always seeking the newest and hottest tactic, you will not be successful.
Long-term investment success usually comes for the average investor by making a handful of boring investment decisions and then sticking with those decisions for a very long time. It won’t make for fun stories to tell your friends now, but you will have a more secure retirement than your friends in the future.
Get Some Help
Billy Beane didn’t win baseball games by himself as the Oakland A’s general manager. He had the players, the coaching staff, the on-field team manager, the scouts, the administrative staff, and the team executives. He led the team and made the big decisions, but he also relied on the expertise of the many other people who were part of the Oakland A’s.
Who else is on your financial team that can help you reach long-term investment success? You will most likely need a skilled tax preparer, a capable estate planning attorney, a competitive insurance agent, and an excellent financial advisor. All of these professionals should have long experience, deep expertise, and a successful track record.
At Eclectic Associates, we have a 42-year track record of effectively guiding our clients to long-term investment success and financial security. We are upfront about our competitive fees; we have a team of professionals with advanced knowledge; and we follow a disciplined investment approach. Plus, we are well-known for our relationships with some of the best tax preparers, estate planning attorneys, and insurance experts. We concentrate on the things that actually matter for our clients’ financial success, and we purposefully ignore the distractions.
Like Major League Baseball, a few in the financial industry are starting to learn that they have focused on the wrong things and are now following the approach we have had from the beginning. But the majority are still looking for investments like old-school baseball scouts. Contact us if you’d like to put your retirement plans and financial goals on the path that can help lead to more wins.