Be Careful Who You Turn to for Investing Advice
Jan. 14 2011 - 9:15 am
Posted by Tom Reese
Today I’d like to re-visit a video that was published by world famous motivational speaker Tony Robbins. Nobody does their job better when it comes to motivational speaking than Tony, but back in August of 2010, he published a video warning people about another impending downturn in the stock markets.
I remember the video well from when it came out, and because of his influence in many circles, I decided to watch it. Did I run to remove stocks from our Dividend.com “Recommended” list after hearing his warning? Not a chance.
You see, the markets are what I do for a living. I listen to what my analysis tells me, and Mr. Robbins was quite clearly out of his element when it came to playing market prognosticator. Too often, investors will look to the wrong sources for investing advice, instead of experts that specialize in that particular field. I want you to listen to the video very closely when it comes to the 3:00 minute mark, where he says that back in April of 2008, he was made aware that problems were happening in the financial system. As a result, he says he gathered some of his closest associates to share what he was hearing. Many of his friends apparently made the appropriate moves prior to the market meltdown, shifting their funds out of the markets. Some of them even MADE money off the bad news, Robbins says.
The question is, why didn’t he tell the public then (back in 2008) about what he was hearing? Instead, he kept quiet as the market dove. A couple years later, after the market had already clearly bottomed, he made the video and shares his insight. Despite the signals that the markets had stabilized, he then tells everyone to consider staying out of the markets.
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The S&P index is up more than 20% since Tony’s video in August 2010 (stocks have had a little help from the Federal Reserve no doubt), but the point is that investors should only pay attention to trusted market experts for investing advice. That’s what we here at Dividend.com specialize in — unbiased investing recommendations that people can trust. We don’t handle client assets or trade for people here at Dividend.com. We’re not brokers, and we don’t answer to anyone. We don’t do anything else but cover the markets each and every single day, and we call it as we see it.In fact, when the market was diving and hitting its historical lows in March of 2009, we had just six stocks on our Best Dividend Stocks list. Six! That’s it! And we didn’t get bullish again until we saw the market bounce sustain itself for a few months afterward.
We also didn’t go around bragging that we “caught the bottom” exactly, as other pundits would love to exaggerate they did. What those pundits didn’t tell you was that many of them had misfired on multiple bottom calls for months, before finally getting it right. Point being, we know our success as a business comes down to results. If our recommended dividend stocks don’t perform well, no one will subscribe, or renew their subscription, or tell their friends and family about us. Our service is based on trust and investing for the long haul, avoiding the sometimes manic nature of the markets while building your nest egg.
So the next time someone offers you advice about the markets — good or bad — check their qualifications first. Again, I think Tony Robbins is a master at what he does, but I wish everyone would stick to their own niche. We live, breathe, and eat the markets at Dividend.com and we are going to do the best darned job we can possibly do.
