Ian Berry IT Blog

Tony’s passion to bring the complex, often unknown area of finance, investment, wealth generation and make available so the ordinary person can consume shines through in Money Master The Game. A fantastic book filled with knowledge, wisdom and insight into the financial industry, what it takes to generate wealth, earn from assets, key financial instrument strengths & pitfalls, hidden fees & taxes (which eat away at your earnings), debunks common financial myths and provides key insights & investment strategies from some of the most successful investors around the world – including Ray Dalio, John Bogle, Mary Erdoes, Carl Icahn, Steve Forbes, Marc Benioff, David Swensen, Paul Jones, Marc Faber, John Templeton etc. Tony ties in his coaching and motivational background, including detailed insights into human emotional needs, driving motivations, market psychology and impacts on investments.

Principles

• No one can predict the market successfully & consistently over time. Markets go up and down over time and most opportunities exist in bear markets when everyone else is exiting/selling and confidence is at its lowest
• Develop a deep understanding of the concept and benefit of compounding savings / investments, save & invest for the long run to generate wealth
• Avoid mutual funds and excessive fees, look to low cost broad index funds (like S&P 200) which will likely outperform mutual funds at a much lower cost
• Create a diversified portfolio with a Risk/Growth bucket & Security bucket with approximately 60/40 asset allocation, invest using the dollar-cost averaging strategy and regularly rebalance your portfolio; have your portfolio diversified across markets, assets and time.
• Develop financial goals; create a financial plan leading to retirement / financial independence and execute.

Key insights from the book

Understand that financial markets / investment is a zero sum game – in order to gain, someone must lose. If you don’t know what you’re doing, someone will eventually take your money. Nobody can predict what the markets will do – sometimes people get lucky, other times get overconfident and end up loosing big.

Look for investments which provide asymmetric risk / reward – A big return for little exposure.

Give back, show gratitude, chose the abundance mindset over the scarcity mindset. Give so you shall receive, help others and the benefits will come.

It’s not what you earn, it’s what you keep. The only certainty in life is death & taxes!

Taxes, if not legally minimised can have a significant impact on your compounding investment, see example in figure 1 with one dollar invested, doubling each year for 20 years (i.e. compounding). Wealth generated with no taxes or fees after 20 years is a staggering $1,048,576. Running the same numbers with a 33% tax each year after 20 years, wealth generated is a miserly $28,466. A good illustration on why we should try to minimise taxes and fees on our wealth, in this example a $1,020,110 difference in wealth after 20 years.

Figure 1. Starting with one dollar, doubling each year without tax and with tax

You’ll never become wealthy by simple working for a pay check, or working harder, smarter or longer –  a mistake millions of people make. Every working person is already a financial trader – trading their time for money – about the worst trade you can make as you can never get back time.

Create a money machine – get money working for you (rather than you working for money) which generates wealth as you work, sleep and have fun. Create a Freedom Fund – regularly save money to invest and generate wealth. Put a select percentage of each pay check into your Freedom Fund before you spend any if it (i.e. pay yourself first) – i.e put 10%, 15% or 20% e.t.c. (whatever number make sense for your situation) of each pay-check in, don’t miss a payment and don’t raid this account for anything other than to investment. Even better if you can automate the Freedom Fund transfer with each pay.

Sir John Templeton – “you find the bargains at the point of maximum pessimism – there’s nothing — nothing — that will make the price of a share go down except the pressure of selling”.

Financial markets are like Earth’s seasons – after a financial winter (negative outlooks, loses, decreasing valuations, bear markets), comes the financial spring (positive outlooks, profits, increasing valuations, bull markets) and markets go in cycles – however no one can successfully and consistently predict these cycles. As Jack Bogle said “Don’t do something, just stand there!”, like waves in an ocean, become the market and move with it, rather than trying to beat it – see Ray Dalio’s All Weather Investment Portfolio below on how to achieve.

Develop a deep understanding of compounding. Compounding investment is one of the great wonders of the financial world, see figure 2 – would you rather receive one million dollars up front or start with one cent and double each day for a month?
Most people chose $1m up front, however choosing the second option of a cent doubling for 30 days leaves you with a massive $10,737,418.24.

Figure 2. Shows the value of compounding investment, starting with one cent, doubling each day after 30 days leaves you with $10,737, 418.24.

Be very careful of financial brokers and mutual funds – both likely have large fees and will put a significant drain when building your financial wealth. The most basic deal is you put up all the capital (i.e. for investment in a mutual fund), take on all the risk, incur 100% of any loses, yet the financial brokers & mutual funds still take fees regardless of the investment outcome. It’s a dud deal, hyped up with a lot of marketing and public relations. Often they can take 2-3% of your investment returns, which over a lifetime add up to many $100,000’s of dollars as seen in figure 3, over a 6o year lifespan, with an initial investment of $10K (returning 7%) shows no fees and with a 2.5% fee – difference between retiring with $579K or $140K (a whopping $439,190 of fees).

Figure 3. Shows the impact of 2.5% fee on an initial investment of $10K with a 7% return over a 60 year lifespan

There are two phases of your wealth generation and investment lifespan:

• The accumulation phase where you build up enough assets and re-invest all earnings (i.e. climb the mountain)
• The decumulation phase where you withdraw income from asset earnings (i.e over the mountain pinnacle and down) – retirement or financial independence

In the past 100 years, the stock market was up approx. 70% of the time, and down 30% of the time, hence the need to build an investment strategy / asset allocation with more than just stocks (high risk / reward). Stocks have been the best place for growth over time, however stocks are volatile.

Financial Myths

The 9 financial myths to be aware of:

Myth 1: The $13T lie: “Invest with us. We’ll beat the market!”

• Investment brokers and mutual funds fail to beat the market and simple index funds – “An incredible 96% of actively managed mutual funds fail to beat the market over any sustained period of time!”. Not only will the charge excessive fees (2-3%) reducing your return on investment, but will likely not outperform the market.
• An index fund is a simple list of stocks – i.e. the S&P 500, which track closely (mimics) to the performance of the markets its tracking. When investing in an index fund, you own part of the fund, not the underlying companies which the index fund has invested in – a very simple, low fee way to diversify.
• Warren Buffets won a $1 million wager (for charity) in which he bet professional stock picker Protege Partners couldn’t outperform the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund over a 10 year period. The bet ended early with the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund returning 7.1% per year, whilst Protege Partners could only return 2.2% per year.

Myth 2: “Our Fees? They’re a small price to pay!”

• The average cost of owning a mutual fund is 3.71% per year i.e. if you had a return on investment of 8% per year, with mutual funds fee would only be 4.29% return!
• As a counter to mutual funds, you could own an index fund for as little as 0.14% per year i.e. if you had a return on investment of 8% per year, with an the index fee would be 7.86% return!

Myth 3: “Our Returns? What you see is what you get”

• Be careful with when mutual funds & investment brokers quote rate of returns. Depending on time of investment, ongoing contributions & withdrawals and how easy it is to mislead with statistics, look for dollar-weighted returns which is what you actually get, rather than time-weighted returns which are used for fund marketing and promotion.

Myth 4: “I’m your Broker, and I’m here to help”

• Brokers often don’t have your best interests in mind (often working for their company needs or select financial products), potentially conflicted and they only have to provide a suitable product. Look for a financial fiduciary who is legally bound to provide the best advice and disclose any conflicts of interest
• A 2009 Morningstar study found 49% of brokers don’t own any portion of the funds they manage

Myth 5: “Your Retirement is just a 401(k) away”

• “You can’t save just three percent of your income for thirty years and expect to live another thirty years in retirement with the same income you had when you were working” – John Shoven, professor of economics at Stanford.
• A lot of 401(k) plans are actively managed mutual funds – which are high in fees, significantly reducing returns
• 401(k) plans have some tax benefits, however are often loaded up with as much as 17 additional fees
• Look for low fee 401(k) plans and research the Roth 401(k) to reduce future tax shocks

Myth 6: Target-date funds: “Just set it and forget it”

• Target-date funds allows you to pick a date when you’ll retire and have the fund manager invest and reduce risk over time (i.e. reduce stocks, increase bonds) as you get closer to retirement
• There are risk and pitfalls with Target-date funds – they do not guarantee your assets / wealth (common misunderstanding), they can drop in value when you’re ready to retire and be aware of fees

Myth 7: “I hate annuities and you should too”

• Income guaranteed annuities are offered by financial companies who take an initial lump sum deposit, invest it and at a later time when it matures, will pay you a stream of income at regular intervals. Some annuity products can be setup for payments for the lifetime of the investor (or dependent), or for a fixed period (i.e. 20 years of payments) and can offer a good, principle protected, guaranteed retirement plan.
• Stay away from variable annuity products – which are tied to market performance (i.e. can reduce your payments if the market tanks) – prefer fixed annuity products.
• Be aware of annuity fees, especially those who invest in mutual funds (fees on top of fees) – can upwards of 4.7% in fees.

Myth 8: “You gotta take huge risks to get big rewards!”

• Beware of speculation – any investment which doesn’t promise safety of principle and an adequate return are speculative.
• Look for opportunities “which provide asymmetric risk/reward” i.e. great returns for little risk.
• Some financial products which offer good returns for low risks are:
  • Structured Notes – a loan to a bank
  • Market Linked Certificates of Deposit (CDs) – Similar to structured notes, but are linked to market performance (so if the market goes up, you get a piece of the action) and guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
  • Fixed Indexed Annuities – 100% principle protection, create a fixed income stream with an initial lump sum deposit maturing after a select period

Myth 9: “The lies we tell ourselves

• “The ultimate thing that stops most of us from making significant progress in our lives is not somebody else’s limitations, but rather our own limiting perceptions or beliefs”
• “If you want to change your life you have to change your strategy, you have to change your story, and you have to change your state”

Financial Independence

The 5 different levels of financial dreams:

1. Financial Security – how much do you need to cover your basic needs such as mortgage / rent, utilities, food, transportation and insurance per year?
2. Financial Vitality – a goal marker representing 50% (half) of the little extras / luxuries such as clothes, entertainment, dining out, music, gym membership – life goodies!
3. Financial Independence – The ultimate goal – having the lifestyle you do today, funded entirely by the income generated from your assets. You don’t need to work for money at this point!
4. Financial Freedom – Having more than you have today, a two to three additional luxuries such as a holiday house, long vacations, bigger home, donations etc without having to work to pay for them
5. Absolute Financial Freedom – Having and doing anything you want, without having to work for it.

Everyone will have different ambitions, some will be happy with Financial Security, whilst others may aim for Absolute Financial Freedom. I believe there are only two very clear and realistic financial goals from the above list; Financial Security & Financial Independence that will lead to a life of sustainable abundance and happiness. To achieve the above financial dreams, there are three key steps:

1. Unleash your hunger and desire, and awaken laser-like focus – “you become inspired by something that excites you so much that your desire is completely unleashed”, obsessed!
2. You take massive and effective action – “and adapting your approach whenever it doesn’t work and trying something new, you will move toward your dream”
3. Grace – “Gratitude connects you to grace, and when you’re grateful, there is no anger. When you are grateful, there is no fear”. Good things will happen. The universe will help you achieve your goals.

Create a plan that works for you, and stick to it. Don’t follow another persons plan or goals; you’ll lose, follow your own. “The race of life is a marathon, not a sprint” and “it doesn’t matter where we start. It’s how we finish that counts”. From Jim Rohn – “What you get will never make you happy; who you become will make you very happy or very sad”. “The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday”.

Accelerating Wealth Generation – Speed It Up

1. Save more and invest the difference

• Every time you get a pay rise, save the difference (from your old wage i.e don’t just spend it)
• Pay your home loan off faster to reduce total interest payment (by paying next months principle with each repayment).
• Look to drive older cars and avoid car-loans, save up repayments and buy a new (see Dave Ramsey video).
• Weight up the cost / benefit of those little, constant expenditures each day (i.e. take-away coffee’s, lunches out etc) – are they really worth it over the long run?
• Create a budget and brainstorm how you can reduce your expenses

2. Earn more and invest the difference

• Work out a way to do more for others, to be creative, invest in yourself and work out how to become more valuable
• Find a side hustle and make money, turn a hobby / passion into profit, find a problem to solve and solve it

3. Reduce fees and taxes (and invest the difference)

• It’s not how much you make, it’s how much to get to keep (after taxes). Look to legally minimise your tax burden, talk to a professional tax accountant

4. Get better returns and speed your way to victory

• Look for asymmetric risk/reward investments
• Learn the power of asset allocation and diversify your portfolio to reduce risk & increase returns
• At 4% return on investment your money doubles every 18 years; At a 10% return on investment, your money doubles every 7.2 years – see figure 4. Rule 72 is an easy way to quickly workout how long it will take (compounding) for your investment to double.

Figure 4. Years it takes for your wealth to double based on different return on investment rates

5. Change your life – and lifestyle – for the better

• Can you move to a cheaper location, house prices and cost of living whilst maintaining a decent income?
• Can you move to a state with less taxes?

Investment Strategy

Asset Allocation

“Asset allocation is the most important investment decision of your lifetime, more important than any single investment you’re going to make in stocks, bonds, real estate, or anything else”. “Anybody can become wealthy; asset allocation is how you stay wealthy”. Asset allocation is dividing up your money and investing in different types of investments (such as stocks, bonds, commodities, cash, real estate etc) including the portion you invest in each of these areas. Each of these different assets have different risk levels, returns, liquidity, investment horizons and diversification through asset allocation doesn’t cost you anything, but can significantly reduce your investment risk. Ideally you should diversify across securities, across asset types, across markets (domestic, international) and across time. One of the best way to diversify equities (stocks) are through index funds or exchange traded funds (ETF) as then you own a piece of the whole market – 100’s of companies combined.

According to David Swensen, there are only three tools for reducing risk and increasing returns:

1. Security selection – stock picking
2. Market timing – short-term bets on the direction of the market
3. Asset allocation  – long term strategy for diversified investing

Broadly speaking, its best to have two asset allocation buckets and a spend bucket:

1. Security Bucket – where you keep low risk investments to protect your money and prevent loss. This is the money you don’t want to lose and slowly grow for peace of mind. Very low risk assets below in this bucket such as cash, cash equivalents, bonds, certificate of deposit, your home, your pension, annuities, your life insurance policy, structured notes (secure types)
2. Risk / Growth Bucket – where you play to win, where you aim for high returns, however the investment risks and potential loses are much higher. Any of your investments which carry higher risk belong in this bucket such as equities (stocks), high yield bonds (junk bonds), real estate (including REITs), commodities, currencies, collectables, structured notes (riskier types)
3. Dream Bucket – Put some of your income, investment wins, bonus / savings into this bucket to spend now, to reward yourself and enjoy life in the present

For this post we’ll assume a portfolio allocation of 60% in the Risk / Growth bucket, and 40% in the Security bucket, with your dream bucket being filled from the spoils of your investments and other income streams.

Figure 5. Different financial buckets to diversify your wealth

Market Timing

Many say timing the market is critical, however nobody can consistently and successfully predict the market; it fluctuates up and down like waves in the ocean. We often invest money into the market when everybody is – when the market is high and at exactly the wrong time. The best time to invest in markets, the best opportunity is at the time of maximum pessimism – when everyone is selling. “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful” – Warren Buffett. Rather than trying to time the market, you can use a technique called dollar-cost averaging, which helps you diversify investment across time. To dollar-cost average, simply make equal investments on a set time schedule (i.e. weekly, monthly, quarterly) into each of your buckets which will protect you against market fluctuations (high, low, flat). The volatility in the market helps this strategy and its best suited for regular contributions over a longer time period. It may not be the best approach if you have a lump-sum to invest.

Portfolio Rebalancing

The pattern you want to avoid is fixing your portfolio / buckets and not changing them over time. In order to maximise returns, protect your capital and keep some of your growth, you should regularly review and rebalance your portfolio to ensure it sticks to the Security and Risk/Growth ratio you’ve implemented. Over time your Risk / Growth bucket may take off and grow in value disproportionally and throw out your balance, as an example in figure 6, assuming a 60/40 split between Risk / Growth & Security buckets. If your initial portfolio worth was $1000 with $600 (60%) in Risk/Growth bucket and $400 (40%) in Security bucket, and all of a sudden the sharemarket grows, your Risk/Growth bucket is now worth $810 (67%), and your Security Bucket still at $400 (33%) throwing out your portfolio ratio.

In order to rebalance your portfolio, you can divert your regular contributions into your Security bucket (i.e $140 invested in Security bucket to bring back up to 40%), redirect the profits from Risk/Growth bucket or even sell some of the Risk/Growth bucket assets to put back into the Security bucket. You can rebalance your portfolio quarterly, half-yearly or yearly, but be aware of any tax implications (such as owning equities for less than a year and potentially benefiting from tax-loss harvesting). The concept of portfolio rebalancing is to reduce risk, protect assets and ensure when the market rises (in your favour), you secure some of the gains in your Security bucket (sell high, buy low), more details on portfolio rebalancing can be found on Investopedia.

Figure 6. Portfolio rebalancing after Risk/Growth assets increase in value

All the investment experts interviewed in the book explained the importance of never losing money, it is much harder to gain back loses to break even.

Figure 7. Gains required to break even if you lose on investments.

Ray Dalio All Weather Portfolio

A must watch video by Ray Dalio is How The Economic Machine Works by which explains the economics of the All Weather Portfolio. The All Weather Portfolio has been back tested over the last 100 years of financial history and has show a great returns at minimised risk. Ray suggests its very hard to time the market, so the average investor should not try to time the market (its just like playing poker), as professional investors with millions of dollars of resources, working around the clock are also trying to time the market – don’t try to out compete.

Figure 8. How The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio

Stocks / shares are 3 times more risky (aka volatile) than bonds

Portfolio balance should consider two dimensions:

• Investment amount & growth potential
• Risk

Understand the market and individual investments have good times, and bad times and generally there are only four things which move the price of assets:

1. Inflation
2. Deflation
3. Rising economic growth
4. Declining economic growth

These makes up the different financial seasons and ideally you should have 25% of your risk spread across them.

Figure 9. The four seasons and which investment type will do well

Ray Dalio’s All Weather Portfolio (also known as All Seasons) Recommendation

• 40% long-term bonds
• 30% stocks
• 15% intermediate-term bonds
• 7.5% gold
• 7.5% commodities

Rebalance portfolio at least annually.

Figure 10. Ray Dalio All Weather Portfolio split

Tony Robbins back tested from 1927 the All Weather Portfolio and found since then had lost money only 14 times with an average loss of 3.65% compared with S&P at 24 times with an average lose of 13.66%. When the All Weather Portfolio was tested during the 30 years from 1984 to 2013 it returned an averaged annualised return of 9.72%, making money 86% of the time and the average loss was only 1.9% with a standard deviation of only 7.63% (meaning low risk and low volatility).

All Weather Portfolio links

• All Weather Portfolio investment advice
• All Weather Portfolio performance analysis
• All Weather Portfolio Australia investment commentary

Creating Your Lifetime Income Plan

Once you’ve built up enough wealth and looking towards retirement, you need to consider how to generate income from your assets – “you can’t spend assets, only cash”. The goal of financial independence is being able to generate sustainable income from your assets, without significantly diminishing your wealth and with low risk/volatility.

The 4% rule on retirement withdrawals from portfolio is dead, developed in the early 90’s however did not perform well in the 2000’s in which you would have lost 33% of your wealth and have only a 29% chance that your money would last your lifetime.

• 4% rule suggests how much you should withdraw from your portfolio once retired (including adjusting for inflation)
• 25 times rule estimates how much you’ll need to retire

See some links below explaining the rules, potential flaws and a part about inflation adjusted retirement figure:

• 4% rule detailed information
• 4% rule and 25 times rule comparison and analysis

You must be careful when getting close to retirement and what impacts the current market conditions could have on it – you could be a “happy camper”, or a “homeless camper”. The risk facing retirees and their wealth is called sequence of returns – in essence, market conditions & ROI during the earliest years of your retirement will define your later years. You could effectively do everything right during your wealth generation phase, and right as you retire things could go pear shaped and impact your retirement and wealth longevity. More details on sequence of returns can be found here.

Annuities To Provide Secure Income

Annuities are a financial product that pays out a fixed stream of payments to an individual and can be used as an income stream for retirees. Annuities are generally sold by financial institutions which can accept a lump sum investment, or a slower, gradual investment into the annuity during the accumulation phase. Upon annuitisation (annuitisation phase), payouts begin to the individual. The financial institutions will take your money and invest it (at their risk), whilst guaranteeing you a return on investment / income stream for the term of the annuity (and sometimes for life). There are two main types of annuities: immediate annuities and deferred annuities. Deferred annuities come in a few forms:

1. Fixed annuity – you get a fixed, guaranteed rate of rate every year
2. Indexed annuity – your rate of return is tied to how the stock market performance (you often get a % of upside, with no downside)
3. Hybrid indexed annuity – similar to indexed annuity, except with a lifetime income (literally until death)
4. Variable annuity – not recommended, very expensive and often include mutual fund fees and insurance company fees

Annuities:

• Protect your wealth
• Provide higher earnings than CDs or bonds
• Provide 100% guarantee of your principle
• Can provide income insurance / guaranteed income for life (if annuity product allows)

“Annuities in many ways are the antidote to the problem of sequence of returns”. More detail on annuities including types, conditions, payments, principle, income riders, insurance, death, inheritance etc can be found here:

• Investopedia Annuity information
• Annuity FAQ
• Annuity product configurations

Meet The Masters

All experts interviewed shared at least four common obsessions:

• Don’t Lose Money; defence is more important than offence
• Risk a Little to Make a Lot; seek opportunities with asymmetric risk/reward
• Anticipate and Diversify
• You’re Never Done

David Swensen Individual Portfolio Recommendation

• 20% in Domestic stock index funds (Risk/Growth bucket)
• 20% in International stock index funds (Risk/Growth bucket)
• 10% in Emerging stock market index funds (Risk/Growth bucket)
• 20% in Real Estate Investment Trust index funds – REITs (Risk/Growth bucket)
• 15% in Long-term US Treasuries (Security bucket)
• 15% in Treasury Inflation Protected Securities -TIPS ( Security bucket)

The above portfolio has two security bucket investments, the long-term US treasuries will protect against deflation scenarios and the treasury inflation protected securities (TIPS) protect against inflation scenarios. The portfolio is heavily weighted in the Risk/Growth bucket (70%) compared to the Security bucket (30%) and is aimed for the long term horizon (given performance of equities over the long run far out weighs other investment types).

Jack Bogle’s Portfolio Principles & Portfolio

1. Asset allocation in accordance with your risk tolerance and your objectives
2. Diversify through low-cost index funds
3. Have as much in bond funds as your age

Jacks Portfolio

• 60% in stocks (mostly Vanguard stock index funds)
• 40% in bonds (mostly Vanguard Total Bond Market Index and tax-exempt municipal bond funds)

Warren Buffett

Looks for undervalued companies, looks to buy companies with the expectation it will rise in price over time

Value investing – invest in things that are useful and serve some purpose and that supply some practical need that people have

Active fund investment management is a losing bet

Prefer assets which create wealth and generate a return

Invest in index funds that give exposure to the broad market and hold them for the long term

Paul Tudor Jones

Defence is ten times more important than offence

You always want to be with whatever is the prominent trend is; don’t be a contrarian investor.

The metric for everything Paul looks at is the 200 day moving average of closing prices. One principle is to get out of anything that falls below the 200 day moving average.

Work on a five to one asymmetric risk reward ratio for investment i.e. I’m risking one dollar to make five dollars. Paul can be wrong 80% of the time and still not lose (be even) with this investment strategy.

Marc Faber

“The most money made is by doing nothing, sitting tight. If you don’t see really good opportunities, why take big risks? Some great opportunities will occur every three, four or five years, and then you want to have money”.

You have to be very careful about buying things are a high price, because they can drop. You have to keep your cool and have money when your neighbours and everybody else is depressed.

You don’t want to have money when everyone else has money, because then everyone else competes for assets, and they are expensive

Marc Faber’s previous asset allocation

• 25% in stocks
• 25% in gold
• 25% in  cash & bonds
• 25% in real estate

Marc Faber’s current (rough) asset allocation

• 20% in stocks
• 25% in gold
• 35% in  cash & bonds
• 30% in real estate

(More than 100%)

Figure 11. Compounding investment calculator, showing an initial $10K investment, ongoing 12K investment per year compounding for 15 years with a 7.5% ROI

You can download my MoneyMasterTheGame-09-07-2019-v1.xlsx Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with all figures, tables, calculations and compound investment calculator here.

You can view more great content from Tony Robbins on his youtube channel.