Robert Kiyosaki is a financial author with some solid advice when it comes to personal finance basics. His book “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” is a bestselling how-to guide on topics like saving and investing.
But when it comes to predicting market crashes, following his advice instead of sticking to long-term strategies would have made you miss out on major gains.
As recently as August 2, 2024, Kiyosaki said this on X: “As many have warned….the stock market crash has arrived. Losses are substantial.”
Since August, the S&P 500 has risen about 15%.
Here are 5 other times Kiyosaki has missed the mark in calling for a market crash.
1. Stocks, gold, silver, crypto will crash: 2021
On Sept. 26, 2021, Kiyosaki tweeted that a “giant” stock market crash was coming that October. He recommended gold, silver and crypto.
Here’s how those market sectors performed over the following 12 months after Kiyosaki’s predictions:
| Investment sector | 12-month overall return |
| S&P 500 | -17.6% |
| Gold | -7.6% |
| Silver | -19.1% |
| Bitcoin | -55.5% |
No crash happened in October 2021. The stock market did go down over the next year, but silver and bitcoin went down a lot more.
2. All markets will crash: 2022
In a Sept. 27, 2022, tweet, Kiyosaki returned to his idea of an impending “everything crash.” In it, everything — stocks, real estate, crypto — will drop in value.
Those sectors saw positive returns by the following 12 months after Kiyosaki’s prediction. In general, the markets grew during this time.
| Investment sector | 12-month overall return |
| S&P 500 | 16.99% |
| Gold | 16.6% |
| Silver | 23.9% |
| Bitcoin | 36.4% |
Kiyosaki’s tweet — roughly a year before Israel and Hamas started fighting again — warns that foreign wars would trigger the upcoming crash. His other warning signs include spiking interest rates and avoiding risky assets solely because they’re hurting the U.S. dollar.
3. Stocks will crash: 2020
Kiyosaki predicted that a stock market crash tied to the COVID-19 pandemic was still growing at the time of an April 17, 2020, tweet.
Stock market values were actually about to improve — the S&P 500 gained 53.3% in the 12 months after his negative prediction. Here’s how other sectors performed at the same time in 2020 and 2021:
| Investment sector | 12-month overall return |
| S&P 500 | 53.3% |
| Gold | 7.8% |
| Silver | 67.6% |
| Bitcoin | 798.1% |
Kiyosaki didn’t recommend an alternative to stocks at the time.
4. Real estate will crash: 2017
Southern California real estate had been gaining value for five years, so maybe Kiyosaki thought that meant the Housing Select Sector (XLRE) would crash, too.
Parroting a tweet from ZeroHedge, a financial blog, Kiyosaki tweeted on July 30, 2017, that there would soon be “another” real estate crash. This isn’t a direct reference to 2008’s subprime mortgage crisis, but it’s clearly a veiled one.
Evidence that the tweet was way off came in the form of rising prices in the markets and throughout Southern California:
| Investment sector | 12-month overall return |
| S&P 500 | 14.0% |
| Real estate | 4.9% |
| National Case-Shiller Home Price Index | 5.7% |
Home prices in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale area actually rose steadily each quarter after Kiyosaki’s tweet. Right before the COVID-19 pandemic, this slice of Southern California sat at 329.29 on a Federal Reserve home price index. The area exceeded this mark every quarter since.
5. Stocks will crash: 2015
1, 2015, that he had predicted as early as 2002 that the stock market would crash sometime in 2016.
He never mentioned a percentage, but the S&P 500 dropping from around 2,050 to nearly as low as 1,800 looks like a crash. But it wasn’t really that significant. A drop within 15% of recent highs is a fairly typical market correction. In fact, 2016 saw the S&P 500 rise 9.5% during that time.
These are 5 times Kiyosaki has called for a crash that never happened. But they’re not the only times. See this article from US News for more examples.
Bottom line? You may look to this guy as a solid source of basic financial advice, but he certainly hasn’t earned high marks as a market timer.
