When I first heard Tony Robbins in an interview promoting his book, the idea of a self-help guru selling investment advice sounded fishy. However, he sounded unusually knowledgeable on the subject during the interview, and being a master of self-promotion was very quick to argue that none of the investment knowledge came from him: he used his reputation to meet with many of the world’s best investors and ask them “If you had nothing to give to your children except a portfolio and a set of investment principles, what would it be?” This book claims to distill the advice from the best investors in the world, explained in an easy way that only Tony Robbins can do.
T.R. did not disappoint.
His first chapter is dedicated to clearly showing the power of compounding investments, and to prove that it is possible, even for an average person, to build a lifetime source of income and amass significant wealth. The book goes into great detail, comparing index funds to mutual funds (and showing for many reasons why index funds are superior), showing the power of annuities, explaining different asset classes and the importance of a diversified portfolio. I finally know what “re-balancing your portfolio” actually means! In chapter 5 he lays out a portfolio from Ray Dalio which is titled the All Seasons strategy. The interviews with the investors was good, but the bulk of the meat was laid out earlier in the book.
My favourite chapter would be the one about asset allocation. Diversification was not something I fully understood until reading it, and the explanations of different asset classes “and re-balancing your portfolio!” are an extremely useful foundation that will help me understand other tools more easily (such as the mortgages and securities markets that I am tangentially involved with at my job). In fact, understanding the principles of asset allocation is necessary to following the explanations of the “All Seasons Strategy” and the interviews with several of the expert investors. Other chapters worthy of mention are the ones that explain the principles behind the All Seasons Strategy and explanation of annuities as a means of getting your money out of the market safely.
Because this book is intended for laypeople, many of the chapters are given compelling, mysterious titles that do not explain their contents. Even though the book is 600 pages and has a ton of useful knowledge, it is not very dense. Given a thorough inspectional reading, you can quickly find the parts to speed-read through and will probably finish the book more quickly than I did.