Andy Tanner Review: Investing in Stocks, Options, & More (4 Pillars, Course Strategies, & Alternatives)
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Andy Tanner is a renowned paper assets expert and successful business owner and investor. He is known for his ability to teach key techniques for stock options investing. Andy is probably even better known for being the right hand man of Rich Dad Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki.
In 2008, Andy was key in helping develop and launch Rich Dad’s Stock Success System. This System teaches investors advanced technical trading techniques to profit from bull and bear markets.
He is the author of two books:
- 401(k)aos For Early Financial Freedom.
- Stock Market Cash Flow, a Rich Dad Advisor book on paper asset investing.

Andy’s clear style made this last book a bestseller.
That’s when Andy created his Cashflow Academy, and the weekly podcast of the same name:
- His aim is to give power and confidence to individual investors to manage their own money instead of turning it over to money managers.
- His Four Pillars of Investing theory has become so popular that it has been converted into a course.
- The course has been around for almost 10 years, but Andy keeps it fresh by updating it often.

In a YouTube video hosted by Del Denney on The Rich Dad Channel, Andy Tanner said: “When I sell options, I care a lot about technical analysis and standard deviations. I care about the price chart. Understanding the whims of the market and the fear and degree of the market is technical analysis.” And in my opinion, this is why investing in stocks, options, and other paper assets is like fishing in the St. Lawrence River. Seeing the fish bite feels thrilling, but if you never reel it in, it’s not dinner. Paper gains are the same. Watching your portfolio grow feels amazing until the market dips and you lose it all on paper. Many investors freeze, hoping it’ll rebound, then panic-sell at the bottom. Stocks hook you with dopamine hits from price changes. You start refreshing charts like crazy. The constant alerts, news, and fear of missing out can drain your mental energy faster than any job. Plus, every win comes with capital gains, transaction costs, and hidden ETF management fees.
In this article, we dive into who Andy Tanner is and his connection with Robert Kiyosaki. We also discuss his Stock Market Cash Flow book, The 4 Pillars of Investing course, and Cashflow Academy program and podcast. Finally, we determine whether investing in paper assets like stocks and options is more sustainable than local lead generation.
Who is Andy Tanner?
Andy Tanner is a renowned entrepreneur, investor, and financial educator, best recognized as one of Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Advisors under the Rich Dad Company. As the creator of The 4 Pillars of Investing course, he focuses on teaching investors how to build sustainable wealth through cash-flow investing, stock market education, and risk management. Tanner has also authored the book 401(k)aos, where he exposes the flaws of traditional retirement plans and promotes financial independence through knowledge and control. With appearances on platforms like Cashflow Academy and Rich Dad Radio Show, Andy Tanner continues to empower individuals to become confident, educated investors worldwide.
What are The 4 Pillars of Investing Pros & Cons?
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| If you're completely green when it comes to investing in stocks, then this is the perfect course for you. Andy really spoon feeds you, and there are no concepts that are too complicated for an average adult to understand. Once you get the 4 Pillars, you really are good to go to start investing. | For $ 1997 I was expecting a bit more from this course: I don't mean content-wise, that is just fine. But graphically, extra material, bonuses, the things that just make the offer that bit more tasty. What you get are webinars where you don't even see Andy's face, an mp3 of each module, and a pdf transcript. And that's it. |
| A really good move by Andy is that of adapting his theories to Kiyosaki's famous money flowchart, with the income, expenses, assets and liability slots: this makes it so much easier for all those people who have read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and who hasn't read that book? | Keep in mind this is a course for complete newcomers. If you already have your basics covered, know what shorting and going long mean, don't bother spending $ 1997 on this course. You're better off investing those $2k. |
| Throughout the course, it's like having a friend explain the basics of trading to you: Andy is as friendly as they come, he really excels at teaching his stuff, and you can tell how excited he is to pull more people into making money trading. That's the right attitude to have in these kinds of courses: down to earth and passionate. | To be honest, there isn't much that you can't get already for free from Andy's YT channel: sure, here it's structured and laid out for this purpose, but if you follow Andy's podcast and his videos, he's already explained this 10 times over. |
| The fact that the book from which the course was devised belongs to the Rich Dad book series is synonymous with high quality. Say what you will about Kiyosaki's classic, but it has been a gateway for loads of entrepreneurs, and this course could do exactly the same. | In 2021 you don't really need to have all these investing skills to make a difference in your income and your life: there are models, such as the local lead generation one that I have been following for almost 7 years, that almost work automatically. Carry on reading for more! |
What is The 4 Pillars of Investing Course?
The 4 Pillars of Investing Course by Andy Tanner is an educational program that teaches investors how to create consistent cash flow, gain control over their assets, use leverage wisely, and build financial confidence through education. It’s designed to help people move from risky, speculative investing to a stable, cash-flow-driven wealth strategy.
The 4 Pillars of Investing is divided into, you guessed it, four main areas:
- Fundamentals Analysis.
- Technical Analysis.
- Cash Flow.
- Risk Management.
There are also some resources for the Japanese and the Chinese markets.
But the meat and potatoes of the course are learning the 4 core principles by heart.
There are some special bonuses that will get your investing juices flowing, though!
- Free 2-hour bonus Beginner Investor Bootcamp.
- 4 Pillars Checklist before investing.
- Access to Andy’s Provate Mentoring Club
1 - Fundamentals Analysis
First things first, right?
You gotta cover your fundamentals before you can go spend that hard-earned cash!
So what exactly are you going to be learning in this module?
- You will understand valuation (good deal vs bad deal).
- You will analyze current stocks and practice w/o $$$ first.
- You will learn fundamentals vocabulary essentials.
- You will learn how it all relates to debt, inflation and currency.
- You will set fundamental analysis criteria.
Not a bad set of skills to kick off with, right?
To make things even easier, Andy breaks down the various stages you will be going through:
- Ignorance.
- Awareness.
- Competence.
- Proficiency.

This course aims to take you from the first stage to the second.
By the end of it you’ll have a basic understanding of the fundamentals.
The fundamentals explanation has been adapted to fit with Kiyosaki’s fourfold diagram of Cash Flow and Equity.
If you’re familiar with that, life will be much easier, I tell you.
The main concepts to take into account when calculating fundamentals are:
- Income.
- Expenses.
- Asset.
- Liability.

This is pure Robert Kiyosaki theories, but Andy has done a good job in adapting to them.
But just so that you can be absolutely clear on these concepts, Andy applies them to:
- The US government, showing how printing money increases inflation.
- Other foreign countries with high debt to GDP ratios.
- Large corporations and why they failed.
All of this can be easily translated back to your position as a private citizen.
Andy’s comparison between Apple and Blockbuster utilizing Kiyosaki’s Income Statement and Balance Sheet was also a good way to explain things:
- Apple uses their liabilities to reinvest money.
- Blockbuster is obsolescent and will go bust.
- Apple understand the difference between Price and Value.
- Apple has played on its Value and Fund. Analysis will teach you to find it.

The last three suggestions that Andy gives, when checking the fundamentals of a company and deciding whether to invest in it are:
- Checking out how it did in the past years.
- Check out the competition. Why is your choice the best?
- Is this company about to boom? Do you know why?
I love Andy’s teaching style, there is much to be learned from his no-nonsense approach.
2 - Technical Analysis
With the Second Pillar, Technical Analysis, you are now able to get your hands dirty:
- You’ll learn basic chart reading.
- You will understand how your stocks are doing.
- You’ll learn the jargon often tied to technical analysis.
- You’ll learn how to use specific tools for the task.
- You’ll learn technical analysis criteria.
While fundamental analysis shows you what could happen in the future, technical will more or less tell you when it is going to happen.
That is why knowing both is going to make or break your investing career.
A balance of both is going to be paramount in knowing when to buy or sell!

Andy is super clear in explaining what it is that drives prices of stocks up or down:
- Supply.
- Demand.
So the study of price action will give you charts, and by that you can learn a lot.
A share going up means people didn’t want to sell, so the price had to go up in order to convince people to get rid of that share.
Viceversa, if the price is real low, that means many people were willing to sell, so people outbid themselves low to be able to sell their stock.
This is how support prices and resistance prices have to be read:
People don’t want to sell beneath a certain price, nor buy above a certain other price.

The way Andy looks at technical analysis is not by learning to read the charts in a perfect way and having a 100% answer.
That may lead to disaster.
What you should do is learn to understand the feeling of certain charts, not unlike the weather forecast predicts the weather!
Andy then goes into patterns and teaches us the meaning of:
- The Uptrend.
- The Double Top.
- The Kiss Goodbye.
- Downtrends.
Patterns don’t predict the future, but they make it easier to make informed decisions.
That’s where Alert and Confirmations come into play.

Follow the stock very closely now:
If it carries on behaving the way you had predicted, that’s the time to make a move, and you are ready to go for the buy or the sell!
Always remember though:
- An uptrend translates to bullish strategies.
- A double top alerts you to the end of the uptrend.
- A kiss goodbye signals the beginning of bearish trend.
It’s all a case of testing resistances and leveraging support, and creating stop exits, which Andy explains in perfect detail.
I swear learning trading has never been easier!
3 - Basic Cash Flow
This is probably my favorite module in the whole course.
There is so much to learn from Andy about cash flow, and he’s laying it all out:
- You’ll learn strategies for the market going up, down and sideways.
- The difference between investing for capital gains and cash flow.
- Automating decisions so you can trade even when you sleep.
- You’ll learn cash flow vocabulary and criteria like a pro.
- Most of all, Andy teaches one of Warren Buffet’s favorite techniques.
If this isn’t an insane amount of quality topics, I don’t know what is.
What’s more is that Andy also shows some of his personal trades.
So he can teach you from real experience.
The basic road to financial independence can be found in the equation below:

The cash flow coming in every month has to be higher than your expenses.
It’s that simple.
Travel, leisure, family time are all luxuries that you can afford not by hoarding cash in a bank.
All of that is determined by the cash flow you have left over monthly after expenses.
Building a solid cash flow means taking control of your future.
Andy suggests not just tying yourself to the Dow or S&P 500 with your 401(k).
To do so is to put your life in the hands of others.
You want to be actively building towards your controlled success.

Control is fundamental in knowing how you are using your money to make more.
With fundamental and technical analysis, you just read and interpret the data.
You have no control over what you are surveying.
With cash flow and risk management, pillars 3 & 4, you have all the control you need.
You can’t choose what the data says, but you can choose what to do with that data.
And the beauty of the stock market is that it is virtually always there for you.
So any moment can be a good moment to make a profit.

When going long, which means you follow an upward movement, there are 5 things to do:
- Evaluate entry point.
- Set a target that is likely to be achieved.
- Plan an exit before you go in.
- Have a clear reward,which is the difference between target and entry price.
- Calculate risk, which is the difference between entry and exit.
The theory is to have two dollars in the target for every dollar in the risk.
Shorting is a bit more abstract to get, but Andy has taught it to thousands of people.
With shorting, you are basically borrowing stocks while they go down.
You then sell x amount of stocks at a higher price than they will be when they go down.
You give the stocks back, and keep the difference in price.
Easy, huh?

4 - Risk Management
So we’re at the fourth pillar!
This module will teach you all about:
- Several kinds of common risks you have to know about.
- How to control risk via your laptop.
- Different risk management techniques.
- How diversification can actually be bad for you.
- The links between risk and education.
This module will really teach you to expect the unexpected and deal with it!
Still unsure about what this is all about?
Let’s go through some vocabulary!

First, what is non-systemic risk?
This is when certain events affect one stock only, while the rest of the market is good.
This is why most people advocate for diversifying investments, right?
Wrong.
Non-systemic risk is only one of many risks you run while trading.
Diversification does not protect you from systemic risks,though!
Systemic risk is when the whole market goes down altogether.
It’s like what happened in the .com bubble burst in 2001 or in the subprime 2008 crash.
There are all kinds of systemic risks.

So how can a beginner manage all these potential risks?
In order to manage risk, you have to stop hoping.
Hoping the stock recovers, hoping you shorted at the right time, etc. etc..
You must focus on what you can control, eliminating hope!
You can control:
- Your cash flow strategy.
- Your insurance policies.
- Your personal fiscal policy.
- Your exit strategy (fundamental!).
- Position size.
- Asset allocation.
- Financial education.
You can’t really know when lightning is going to strike, but for everything else, you really need to have as much control as possible.
What are Other Trading Courses Out There?
- Elite Signals by Elie Abou Faissal is a signal-based trading program that provides real-time trade alerts across Forex, crypto, and indices. The course focuses more on copy-and-paste execution than strategy-building, making it ideal for beginners. You get access to their trading community, live sessions, and ongoing market analysis.
- VIP Trading Program by Maurice Kenny teaches high-level day trading and options strategies while focusing heavily on trader psychology, risk management, and wealth-building principles. Rather than quick wins, Maurice coaches you to think long-term with trading as a vehicle for financial freedom. The course includes 1-on-1 calls, live sessions, and weekly mentorship.
- Bulls on Wall Street by Kunal Desai offers an immersive experience into momentum trading and technical analysis, including live trading rooms, bootcamps, and community access. The course is very hands-on and designed for people who want to learn how to read charts, time entries, and trade intraday like a pro.
Final Verdict: Is Andy Tanner’s Investing Methods Worth the Investment?
Andy Tanner’s investing methods are worth the investment if you want a long-term, education-first approach to building wealth through paper assets. His teachings focus on understanding the fundamentals, technicals, cash flow, and risk management that drive smart investing. He helps you make informed, independent financial decisions rather than relying on advisors or speculation. Unlike “get-rich-quick” stock courses, Tanner’s system prioritizes control, patience, and financial literacy.
If you’re disciplined, willing to study market cycles, and committed to managing your own portfolio, his strategies can absolutely help you grow wealth sustainably. However, if you prefer consistent, low-risk income streams without the volatility of markets, local lead generation offers a more stable, compounding business model. Ranked websites generate passive cash flow month after month without needing to watch charts or time trades.
Is Digital Assets More Sustainable Than Investing in Paper Assets?
In my experience, digital assets such as local lead gen sites are more sustainable than investing in paper assets because your income is cash, not theory, much like owning a winning Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament deck. It earns you prize money for every match you win. When your ranked site brings a client, you get paid in real dollars each month. There’s no waiting for “the right time to sell.” Each closed deal or rented site provides steady, tangible income you can actually use or reinvest. In contrast, investing in paper assets is like hoarding shiny rare cards. They look valuable, but only matter if someone’s willing to buy.
Local lead gen puts you in charge. You build and own digital properties that produce leads consistently. Once your site ranks, leads flow while you work, sleep, or travel. There’s no need to monitor every minute. You gain peace of mind knowing your assets earn automatically instead of demanding constant attention.
Why Local Lead Generation is the Best Investment
Local lead generation is the best investment because it gives you control, stability, and consistent returns that paper assets can’t match. Instead of relying on unpredictable markets or brokers, you build digital properties that generate recurring income from real businesses. It’s a hands-on, low-risk way to create cash flow and long-term wealth you truly own. I’ve been making lead gen sites for over 10 years. My site, Riverside Elite Roofing 10098 Magnolia Avenue Riverside, California 92503 951-633-8880 https://riversideeliteroofing.com/ generated 19 high-intent leads worth $74,780 in revenue to my client. Since I get a 5% commission for sending leads, I got paid $3,739 even without checking my sites daily.
Local lead generation isn’t just a business, it’s digital real estate that pays you monthly. While others are glued to their screens or gamble on stocks, you build assets that grow in value and work while you do what you want. If freedom, stability, and real results matter to you, it’s time to stop chasing and start owning. Local lead generation is, hands down, the best side hustle in 2025.

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