The Flexible Investing Playbook: Asset Allocation Strategies for Long-Term Success

Introduction: Replacing Your Old Investment Playbook

When a football player is cut from his team or traded to another team, his former team immediately asks him to turn in his "playbook," which shows diagrams of all the different ways his team will try to move the ball forward to score (if on offense) or how to defend when the other team has the ball. When the player arrives at his new team, one of the first things they give him is his new playbook. They ask him to go learn it. One reason why many rookie quarterbacks don't play very much is that they play the position responsible for leading the execution of that playbook on the field. That is a huge undertaking, and the training process can last months or years until the coaches feel he is ready to take on that role.

Whether you are an investor or a financial advisor helping investors, I am asking you right now to turn in your old playbook. In other words, I want you to put aside any preconceived ideas you have about how to protect and grow wealth inside an investment portfolio. By reading this book, you have been traded to a new team. This new team does not run the same, typical plays that most of the other teams run. In investor terms, that means that I will show you the weaknesses in traditional approaches to allocating and managing assets, and introduce you to a genre of investing I created. Your new "team" (investment strategy) realizes that success starts with a solid defense (i.e., a plan to limit losses when the financial ...