Bob French, CFA

Occam’s – How Long is the Long Term?

By Bob French, CFA / January 23, 2023 /

Everyone always talks about investing (and planning) for the long term. But they’re usually vague about what the “long term” actually means. Does that mean 5 years? 10 years? More? (Spoiler: the answer is definitely more). And frankly, talking about how you need to focus on the long term can feel like a bit of…

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Why You Make a Profit From Investing

By Bob French, CFA / December 12, 2022 / Comments Off on Why You Make a Profit From Investing

Almost everyone knows that they need to invest their money to help prepare for retirement. It’s one of the keys to getting where you want to go. The markets may (ok, they will) bounce around in the short term, but over the long term, they have done very well for disciplined investors. But why have markets been…

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What Makes the Markets Move

By Bob French, CFA / December 6, 2022 / Comments Off on What Makes the Markets Move

Financial markets are constantly on the move, and those moves can have serious implications for what your retirement will look like. Still, most people don’t really have any clue as to why the markets move the way they do. They see it as some dark alchemy, or at best, essentially random. In the long run, though,…

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Occam’s – Do the Midterm Elections Matter to the Market?

By Bob French, CFA / October 14, 2022 /

The 2022 midterm elections are coming up (remember to vote on November 8th). With every election, there’s always a lot of talk about how important it is to vote (true), and that if the other side wins it means the end of the world (potentially less true). There are always important issues at play, and…

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The Importance of Your Savings Rate

By Bob French, CFA / September 29, 2022 / Comments Off on The Importance of Your Savings Rate

How much you save for retirement goes a long way to determining how much you can spend in retirement. The more you save while you’re working, all else equal, the more you can spend in retirement. It sounds straightforward, but it seems to be something that many people forget, or at the very least, seem…

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A Terrible Way to Protect a Retiree From Inflation

By Bob French, CFA / August 2, 2022 /

People seem to think commodities (especially gold) are suitable guards against inflation. I want to explain why that’s not true – at least over any useful time frame – and then tell you about some of the much better tools available. Commodities are just things. They don’t produce any value in and of themselves. They’re…

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Occam’s – When Does a Separately Managed Account Make Sense?

By Bob French, CFA / October 15, 2021 /

Mass customization is the dream for most industries, and the financial services industry is no different. Everyone’s investing goals are different, so it makes sense that we would want to be able to specifically design the funds that we use to reach our goals. The plethora of mutual funds and ETFs out there give us…

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2021 – Q3 Quarterly Market Review

By Bob French, CFA / October 14, 2021 /

Q1 2020 – Quarterly Market Review

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Occam’s – How Are You Different From the Average Investor?

By Bob French, CFA / April 16, 2021 /

People are a lot like snowflakes. If you don’t look all that closely, we’re all roughly similar. But the closer you start looking, the more different we are. We all have our own unique situations and experiences, and these drive who we are. This also describes who we are as investors. We can make big,…

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