Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook

by Anthony Robbins

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one. —MARCUS AURELIUS

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. —AYN RAND

Never have we had such a long bull market that has been accompanied from the beginning by such caution and outright pessimism about the durability of the rise.

Enemy number two is fees.

“the purpose of business is to produce happiness, not to pile up money.”

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

commerce and philanthropy are not polar opposites; they are two sides of the same coin.

In free markets, you succeed only by providing a product or service that others want—that is, you prosper by meeting the needs and wants of others. Philanthropy is about meeting the needs of others.

That said, history, as the British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, is but “a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us,” and not on where we are headed.

Control what you can control. That’s the trick.

any decision made in a state of fear is likely to be wrong.

People love to say that knowledge is power. But the truth is that knowledge is only potential power. You and I both know that it’s useless if you don’t act on it.

The key to making money in equities is not to get scared out of them. —PETER LYNCH,

The majority of investors fail to take full advantage of the incredible power of compounding—the multiplying power of growth times growth. —BURTON MALKIEL

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

And Warren Buffett has said, “The only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good.”

Despite a 14.2% average drop within each year, the US market ended up with a positive return in 27 of the last 36 years.

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

In fact, when the mood in the market is overwhelmingly bleak, superinvestors such as Buffett tend to view it as a positive sign that better times lie ahead.

What matters most isn’t where the economy is right now but where it’s headed.

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

In fact, the US market hits an all-time high on approximately 5% of all trading days. On average, that’s once a month.II

Meanwhile, a study by JPMorgan found that 6 of the 10 best days in the market over the last 20 years occurred within two weeks of the 10 worst days.

Let’s say you invest in a fund in December. Then, the next day, the manager sells a stock that’s shot up over the past 10 months. Since you’re now an owner of the fund, you’ll be getting a tax bill for those gains, even though you didn’t benefit one bit from the stock’s meteoric rise!