Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook

by Anthony Robbins

So never forget about these two ferocious foes of stock market success: fear and fees.

invest in index funds.

Compounded over that time frame, the high costs of investing can confiscate an astounding 70% of your lifetime returns!

By buying low-cost, broad-market index funds (and holding them “forever”), you can guarantee that you will receive your fair share of whatever returns the financial markets provide over the long term.

In short, we all dream of being unshakeable. But what does it really mean to be unshakeable? It’s not just a matter of money. It’s a state of mind. When you’re truly unshakeable, you have unwavering confidence even amidst the storm

To be one of the few who do, not one of the many who merely talk!

“If you’re not confused, you don’t understand what’s going on.”

And I’ll tell you this: one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned from these money masters is that you don’t have to predict the future to win this game.

Here’s what you do have to do: you have to focus on what you can control, not on what you can’t.

Control what you can control. That’s the trick. And this book will show you exactly how to do it.

Decisions equal destiny.

immediately—because execution trumps knowledge every day of the week.

We all know that winter is coming, that the stock market will fall again. But none of us knows when winter is coming or how severe it will be.

The problem is, most funds do a terrific job of charging high fees but a terrible job of picking successful investments. One study showed that 96% of mutual funds failed to beat the market over a 15-year period.I The result? You overpay for underperformance.

“Emotions get ahold of us, and we, as investors, tend to do very stupid things.” For example, “we tend to put money into the market and take it out at exactly the wrong time.”

Along the way, we also learned a vitally important lesson: we’re not rewarded when we do the right thing at the wrong time. If

That’s the awesome power of compounding. Over time this force can turn a modest sum of money into a massive fortune.

The real route to riches is to set aside a portion of your money and invest it, so that it compounds over many years. That’s how you become wealthy while you sleep.

you’ll need fifteen times. In other words, if you’re making $100,000, you’ll need $1.5 million. If

In reality, the number you should really aim for is 20 times your income. So, if you currently earn $100,000, you’ll need $2 million.

But I’ve got news for you: we do know when winter will arrive. How? Because when we look back at the stock market over an entire century, we discover this extraordinary fact: financial winter comes, on average, every year.

Of course, nothing is ever entirely certain in farming, financial markets, or life! Some

the most important fact of all: the biggest danger isn’t a correction or a bear market, it’s being out of the market.

Freedom Fact 1: On Average, Corrections Have Occurred About Once a Year Since 1900

Freedom Fact 2: Less Than 20% of All Corrections Turn Into a Bear Market

Freedom Fact 3: Nobody Can Predict Consistently Whether the Market Will Rise or Fall

Many of them make the same dire predictions every year until they’re occasionally right, as anyone would be.

After all, even a man with a broken watch can tell you the correct time twice a day.

It’s delusional to think that you or I could successfully “time the market” by jumping in and out at the right moments.

Freedom Fact 4: The Stock Market Rises over Time Despite Many Short-Term Setbacks

In his 2015 annual report, Warren Buffett addressed this subject at length, explaining how population growth and extraordinary gains in productivity will create an enormous increase in wealth for the next generation of Americans. “This all-powerful trend is certain to continue: America’s economic magic remains alive and well,” he wrote. “For 240 years, it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start.”

Freedom Fact 5: Historically, Bear Markets Have Happened Every Three to Five Years

Well, historically, the S&P 500 has dropped by an average of 33% during bear markets. In more than a third of bear markets, the index plunged by more than 40%.

“The best opportunities come in times of maximum pessimism.”

Freedom Fact 6: Bear Markets Become Bull Markets, and Pessimism Becomes Optimism

rock bottom on March 9, 2009. And do you know what happened next? The S&P 500 index surged by 69.5% over the next 12 months.

As I write this in late 2016, the S&P 500 has risen by an astonishing 266%

The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient. —WARREN BUFFETT

Freedom Fact 7: The Greatest Danger Is Being out of the Market

The message is clear: the greatest danger to your financial health isn’t a market crash; it’s being out of the market.

This mythical investor, who perfectly timed the market for 20 years running, ended up with $87,004. The investor with the worst timing—let’s call him Mr. Hapless—invested all of his money on the worst possible day each year: the day when the market hit its exact high point for that year. The result? He ended up with $72,487.

What most people really want, regardless of how much money they have today, is freedom. Freedom to do more of what they want, whenever they want, with whomever they want.

most successful people in any field aren’t just lucky. They have a different set of beliefs. They have a different strategy. They do things differently than everyone else.

Paul Tudor Jones is a trader who makes huge bets based on his macroeconomic view of the world. Warren Buffett makes long-term investments in public and private companies that possess a durable competitive advantage. Carl Icahn targets businesses that are underperforming, and then cajoles (or bludgeons) management to change its strategy in ways that can benefit shareholders. Clearly, there are many different paths to victory.

Execution is everything.

CORE PRINCIPLE 1: DON’T LOSE

That, my friend, is an insight that you and I should never forget: we have to design an asset allocation that ensures we’ll “still be okay,” even when we’re wrong.

‘Protect the downside.’ ”

As you’ll learn in the next chapter, corrections and bear markets can be among the greatest financial gifts of your life.

They know that it’s not what they earn that counts. It’s what they keep. That’s real money, which they can spend, reinvest, or give away to improve the lives of others.