Money: Master The Game - Tony Robbins

[TorontoRaptorsFan]

[amazonsearch]Money:  Master The Game[/amazonsearch]

 

Tony Robbins has coached and inspired more than 50 million people from over 100 countries. More than 4 million people have attended his live events. Oprah Winfrey calls him “super-human.” Now for the first time—in his first book in two decades—he’s turned to the topic that vexes us all: How to secure financial freedom for ourselves and our families.

 

Based on extensive research and one-on-one interviews with more than 50 of the most legendary financial experts in the world—from Carl Icahn and Warren Buffett, John Templeton, Ray Dalio and Steve Forbes—Tony Robbins has created a simple 7-step blueprint that anyone can use for financial freedom.

 

Robbins has a brilliant way of using metaphor and story to illustrate even the most complex financial concepts—making them simple and actionable. With expert advice on our most important financial decisions, Robbins is an advocate for the reader, dispelling the myths that often rob people of their financial dreams.

 

Tony Robbins walks readers of every income level through the steps to become financially free by creating a lifetime income plan. This book delivers invaluable information and essential practices for getting your financial house in order.

[innerscorecard]

It might be more helpful if you write even a few lines of your own thoughts on the book, rather than just copying the PR summary.

[CorpRaider]

Tony...robbins.

[peter1234]

Here is an interesting short interview

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/embed/jfSjsdp8TcWyZ_LBBtmc2A

 

 

[TorontoRaptorsFan]

It might be more helpful if you write even a few lines of your own thoughts on the book, rather than just copying the PR summary.

 

It just came out today. In my brief time reading it there's a lot of Ray Dalio mentioned in the book and his investing philosophy.

[Aberhound]

Tim Ferris had a interesting podcast with Tony which discussed the book. He tells the story how he got Ray Dalio to explain to him Ray's allocation model. I read everything I can find about Ray Dalio but I never have read an explanation of the model. Tony took that model to his financial advisors and says that they back-tested it and it produced high rates of returns in all markets. It works by re-allocating to different asset classes according to some formula. The model was not disclosed in the interview but Tony promised it is in the book. When you listen to Tony you can understand how he might get more out of an interview than others.

 

http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/

 

I have it on my reading list.

[jay21]

Are you referring to this: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tony-robbins--ray-dalio-s--all-weather--portfolio-161619133.html

 

First, Ray said, we need 30% in Stocks (for instance, the S&P 500 or other indexes for further diversification in this basket). Initially that sounded low to me but remember, stocks are three times more risky than bonds. And who am I to second guess the Yoda of asset allocation!?

 

“Then you need long-term government bonds. 15% in intermediate term (7- to 10-year Treasuries) and 40% in long-term bonds [20- to 25-year Treasuries].”

 

“Why such a large percentage?” I asked.

 

“Because this counters the volatility of the stocks.” I quickly remembered it’s about balancing risk, not the dollar amounts. And by going out to longer-term (duration) bonds this allocation will bring a potential for higher returns.

 

He rounded out the portfolio with 7.5% in gold and 7.5% in commodities. “You need to have a piece of that portfolio that will do well with accelerated inflation so you would want a percentage in gold and commodities. These have high volatility. Because there are environments where rapid inflation can hurt both stocks and bonds.”

 

Lastly, the portfolio must be regularly rebalanced. Meaning, when one segment does well, you must sell a portion and reallocate back to the original allocation. This should be done at least annually and if done properly, can actually increase the tax efficiency. This is part of the reason why I recommend having a fiduciary implement and manage this crucial ongoing process.

 

When my own investment team showed me the “back-tested” performance numbers of this All Seasons portfolio I was astonished. I will never forget it. I was sitting with my wife at dinner and received a text message from my personal advisor, Ajay Gupta, that read, “Did you see the email with the back tested numbers on the portfolio that Ray Dalio shared with you? Unbelievable!” Ajay normally doesn’t text me at night, so I knew he couldn’t wait to share. As soon as our dinner date was over I grabbed my phone and opened the email.

 

During what I call the “modern period,” 30 years from 1984 through 2013, the portfolio was rock solid:

 

1. Just under 10% (precisely 9.72%, net of fees) average annualized return. (It’s important to note that this is the actual return, not an inflated average return.)

 

2. You would have made money just over 86% of the time. That’s only four down/negative years. The average loss was just 1.9% and one of the four losses were just 0.03% (essentially a break-even year)—so effectively you would have lost money only three out of thirty years.

 

3. The worst down year was -3.93% in 2008 (when the S&P 500 was down 37%!)

 

4. Investor Nerd Alert: Standard deviation was just 7.63% (This means extremely low risk and low volatility.)

[peter1234]

Assessing the Ray Dalio/Tony Robbins Portfolio

 

Third, this portfolio is just a bond heavy portfolio.  Robbins mentions how “astonished” he was by the “back-tested” results of the portfolio.  Well, of course a bond heavy portfolio will perform well during the greatest bond bull market of the last 100 years.  And as I often mention, this is one of the dangers of back-testing.  The idea that that future will necessarily look like the past is ludicrously misleading.  And yes, bonds will not come close to generating the types of returns in the coming 30 years that they have in the past 30 years.  You just need an ounce of common sense to know that.

 

http://pragcap.com/assessing-the-ray-daliotony-robbins-portfolio

[CorpRaider]

Yeah, run that back to about 1965 and I might be more interested.

 

Another thought:  Tony Robbins investing book; a bigger red flag than the Pets.com IPO?

[Uccmal]

Yeah, run that back to about 1965 and I might be more interested.

 

Another thought:  Tony Robbins investing book; a bigger red flag than the Pets.com IPO?

 

No kidding! 

 

One of my best friends bought Tony's tapes and made me and his Dad go to a seminar (sales job) with one of his franchisees.  I am immune to Tony's  BS, but my buddy has always been a seeker. 

 

I have heard from friends that Robbins is one of the best public speakers in existence. 

 

The reviews on the book on amazon seem pretty good.  It should hit my office at Chapters any day now, for a free review. 

[west]

Yeah, run that back to about 1965 and I might be more interested.

 

Another thought:  Tony Robbins investing book; a bigger red flag than the Pets.com IPO?

 

No kidding! 

 

One of my best friends bought Tony's tapes and made me and his Dad go to a seminar (sales job) with one of his franchisees.  I am immune to Tony's  BS, but my buddy has always been a seeker. 

 

I have heard from friends that Robbins is one of the best public speakers in existence. 

 

The reviews on the book on amazon seem pretty good.  It should hit my office at Chapters any day now, for a free review.

 

Reviews can be manipulated.  And marketing types aren't above doing this.  At least while the hype is first starting to build.

 

That being said, I'm not immediately discounting Robbins's books or his work.  Even Guy Spier said Robbins has had a big effect on him.  I'm sure there are some solid nuggets of wisdom in all the fluff.

[Guest]

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-19/trade-against-a-selfhelp-genius

 

An entertain read.

 

"Some of his other statements were odd or simply false: Perhaps the strangest statement of the video was “Most investors over a 10-year period -- 95 percent -- lose money.” (There are plenty of other odd and inaccurate things in the 21-minute video)."

[cobafdek]

Reviews can be manipulated.  And marketing types aren't above doing this.  At least while the hype is first starting to build.

 

Bingo. 

 

I love the "Look Inside!" feature on amazon.com.  I found 4 full pages containing 21 blurbs by prominent and influential people.  Some of the early ones listed were top-notch and perhaps surprising (Bill Clinton, Paul Tudor Jones, John Bogle, Carl Icahn, Marc Faber), but then you get to the end of the list (Oprah, Serena Williams, Melissa Etheridge, Hugh Jackman, Usher), and I can't help but ROTFLMAO.  It's a case study in the semi-corrupt world of blurb writing.  And I really wonder how serious some of those blurbs really are, since they sounded very similar to the classic faux blurbs on Harvard Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings" spoof of the Tolkien classic. 

 

Buffett is interviewed by Robbins for a chapter in this book, but no blurb by Buffett?  I don't have the hard copy, and maybe not all the blurbs are shown by amazon.com?  If Robbins asked WEB for a blurb but was turned down, is that a telling point?

 

That being said, I'm not immediately discounting Robbins's books or his work.  Even Guy Spier said Robbins has had a big effect on him.  I'm sure there are some solid nuggets of wisdom in all the fluff.

 

Bingo again.

 

Some of the solid stuff is interestingly summarized by James Altucher, who posted a very lengthy but fascinating review on amazon.com.  I used to read Altucher's stockpickr blog back in the day, and his book Trade Like Warren Buffett is pretty decent.  (The amazon.com review is a paste of his latest blog post:  http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2014/11/10-things-i-learned-while-interviewing-tony-robbins-about-his-new-book-money/)

 

 

[ni-co]

I really don't understand why Ray Dalio embraces volatility as a risk measure.

Jim O'Shaughnessy calculated the stock/bond part of the portfolio back to 1926:

[moody202]

Still waiting to hear from someone on the board to post their assessment after reading the book.

 

 

[UNF2007]

I read through it, it is quite lengthy, mostly because he spends so much time alluding to things, rather then just getting to the point. I mostly read it to see what the pro's he interviewed would say. As far as the interview with WEB goes, Buffett basically told him to index his money, that was it. Tudor Jones told him to look at 200 moving day averages, and sell anything that crosses it. Dalio gave him the model portfolio, and told him to not bother to try and beat the pros at their own game. I don't remember anything else memorable as far as investing advice goes. He did spend some time talking about building wealth, savings, creating a mindset that you can be happy with achievable financial results. Overall I would say good motivational book for the person who is living beyond their means, with basic investment advice. But lacking of any useful information to anyone who has spent meaningful time reading the investment literature.

[peter1234]

I read through it, it is quite lengthy, mostly because he spends so much time alluding to things, rather then just getting to the point. I mostly read it to see what the pro's he interviewed would say. As far as the interview with WEB goes, Buffett basically told him to index his money, that was it. Tudor Jones told him to look at 200 moving day averages, and sell anything that crosses it. Dalio gave him the model portfolio, and told him to not bother to try and beat the pros at their own game. I don't remember anything else memorable as far as investing advice goes. He did spend some time talking about building wealth, savings, creating a mindset that you can be happy with achievable financial results. Overall I would say good motivational book for the person who is living beyond their means, with basic investment advice. But lacking of any useful information to anyone who has spent meaningful time reading the investment literature.

 

Thanks for the review! 700 pages summarized into 7 lines.

;)

[jawn619]

I read this and i didn't think he told me anything i didn't know. Index funds are good, fees are bad.

One thing i did get from it was that Ray Dalio thinks portfolios should be risk weighted. meaning most people should have a lot more in bonds.

[berkshire101]

The thing that stood out to me was how the top investors think about risks.  They're always thinking about how much could they lose before how much they could make.  It's nothing new, but it's a good reminder.  And they're always thinking about risking $1 to make $10.  The average investor is hoping to make 7 to 10 cents on the dollar.

[Guest notorious546]

I'm still reading it right now. its good information for a new investor or someone who hasn't put much time into reading other investing books.

 

I enjoy his writing and his mindset in how you can achieve whatever financial goal you have. his non-financial concepts are probably more of a value add in my opinion.

[Peregrino]

If the guy can get people to save more he'll have done the world a big favor.

 

I agree with those who say that the best parts of the book were the very basic lessons in personal finance (keep fees low, make sure to start early because compounding matters) as well as the internal motivation stuff, not surprisingly as that is kind of his shtick. 

 

The investor profiles were very weak, and the main recommendation to use an insurance policy to get all the downside protection of a bond without sacrificing the upside of the equity markets struck me as a bit naive and too much in the vein of "all you really need is this one thing, it's that simple". 

 

What I found particularly helpful were some of the ways he got me to think about money on a personal level.  Sometimes we all have this vague feeling that it'd be really great to have billions on billions of dollars because then it would allow us to do all this cool and maybe even meaningful stuff only then to get a bit sad that the numbers are so big it seems unachievable so there goes the cool stuff and there goes the meaningfulness. 

 

What he did was get me to actually calculate how much I would need to do some of those things that mattered to me, and that made it much more realistic as a goal.

[Kuhndan]

This book is a stinker. Tony should stick to his motivational speeches.

[Guest]

I'm going through this now. There is some decent information for new people but a lot of it is him bragging about his Fiji island (multiples times- which as won a bunch of awards if you'd like to visit)) a lot (a lot) of name dropping - he is friends with everyone famous it seems, and about how great his seminars are.