Are Ray Dalio's Principles the Secret to His Success?
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Published 2023-11-07
Since founding Bridgewater nearly 50 years ago, Ray Dalio has become one of the world’s richest investors. He is widely credited with having predicted and profited from both the 1987 crash and the 2008 financial crisis. He is the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund and is one of the most successful businessmen alive, yet he professes to be seeking something more meaningful than just money or business success.
According to Dalio, his main interest, over the last twenty years is to lead others toward “meaningful lives” and “meaningful relationships” through the application of his principles. He has written a number of books and given a Ted Talk on this topic.
Rob Copeland is a journalist at the New York Times and was previously the longtime hedge fund beat reporter at The Wall Street Journal. In his new book “The Fund” he smashes through some of the mystique built up around Ray Dalio in recent years. He argues that very little of Dalio’s success is due to his widely promoted “Principles” and can be better explained by his ability to befriend influential people and impress them with his broad knowledge of the world, his skill at getting good publicity, and his early investment success.
Rob interviewed hundreds of Bridgewater employees in order to write this unauthorized biography that shows Ray Dalio in a very different light.
Dalio declined to be interviewed for the book and has threatened a lawsuit against Rob and his publisher. In today's video I interview Rob to hear his account of life at Bridgewater and whether he believes Ray Dalio’s principles are worth following.
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All Comments (21)
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I worked for Bridgewater in 2013-2014. Attrition rate was around 30-40% a year. 60-80% of time was spent on rating and open examination of other people’s actions and behavior. Everyone was forced to memorize principles and their numbers.
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39:44 I was awfully confused about all this financial talk on my favourite rap channel, but finally we're getting to the point.
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Ray Dalio's Principles: Where the only constant principle is that he constantly has principles!
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Unintentional poetry at 1:00:36 "The asset management industry is a great place to be/ When you're the asset manager collecting the fee." (The meter's a little off, but that's what editing is for.) Silliness aside, I am so glad that Patrick is able to get people for these long-form interviews.
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His principles always seemed like “water is wet, don’t touch it to stay dry” type stuff to me
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On a very different note. You know what's the most impressive quality of Rob - he is true professional journalist / interviewer - he doesn't interrupt, he does listen, he shares his carefully well thought point. Rare skill in today's journalism - way too many hype journalist who wouldn't even let to speak their counterpart.
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Fascinating video Patrick. I was not at all convinced by Dalio's principles for a changing global order. But, I didn't see this one coming.
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The argument that ex-employees will always have a bias in an interview about their former boss, can be easily answered: If they independently give the same specific descriptions of certain behaviours, it's unlikely they are all making up the same thing. Or to stay in the ex-wife comparison: If one man's 5 ex-wives tell you independent of each other, that their former husband used to eat his boogers, it's probably true.
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This guy has definitely had training on what he can say to mitigate the likely future attacks. This’ll be one of the first actual paper books I’ve bought in a long time!
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Dalio's principles predicted his own rise and fall. Truly inspirational.
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It’s amazing how a guy makes a ton of money and then suddenly he’s a genius we need to listen to about all sorts of things. Dalio was good at making money…doesn’t mean he’s good at anything else. The self importance people of wealth ascribe to themselves is amazing.
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It’s interesting how having great wealth probably makes it mostly possible to be able to tell any story you want about yourself and your creations without anyone daring to contradict you for fear of being sued.
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I talked to MANY former Bridgewater Associates, and it is ALWAYS negative from a variety of roles . . since the 1990s. Be skeptical of Ray’s Principles.
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Your author interviews are awesome. The one with Zeke Faux was so entertaining and made me buy the book!
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"Everyone is watching video tapes of who didn’t wash their hands at the bathroom and no real work is being done." 😂👏👏
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My biggest respect for journalists like this. Thank you both!
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So, not being a finance guy I first head about Ray, not in the context of him being a mega successfull trader, but just some guy that had some principles on a podcast. I immediately thought "this guy is selling me something I don't want to buy". I guess I was right about that.
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Institutional investors putting money with founders that they like and believe in is the most insightful quote from this interview.
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A case of "fooled by randomness"? The author has skin in the game, he is risking litigation to get the book out there. I like people who have skin in the game, these people are heroes.
