6 ms·

Ray Dalio AMA

78 points by mudil 8y ago

codezero 8y ago
In case anyone else hasn't heard of this person, stolen from Googles: Raymond Dalio is an American billionaire investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. Dalio is the founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, one of the world's largest hedge funds. Wikipedia
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Thanks. My first question was going to be: Who are you?
- tome 8y ago
  > stolen from Googles ... Wikipedia Stolen from Wikipedia then.
dominotw 8y ago
seems to be responding with Rampart-esq canned generic answers without any real substance to them. Q: Seeing as we are almost 10 years into a bull market, would you be willing to share some of your big Economic and Investment Principles so that average folks can be protected during the inevitable bear market? A: Think about how to rotate your portfolio to buy that which is cheap and sell that which is expensive. Q: o you have any rules for segmenting your schedule (is there a specific allocated amount of time for personal, family, or business) and if so, what does that look like? A: If you have my book Principles, there’s one about this idea, Prioritize: While you can have virtually anything you want, you can’t have everything you want. Q: What is the number 1 thing a young investor can do to improve their investing abilities? A: Dive into the markets, have the shit kicked out of you, and learn how to do things differently. Yea no shit, great "advice".
- klenwell 8y ago
  > A: If you have my book Principles, there’s one about this idea, Prioritize: While you can have virtually anything you want, you can’t have everything you want. Sounds obvious but if you've ever worked for an organization or with an individual that prioritizes by buckets or labels ('Urgent', 'Extremely Urgent') versus a queue (a Trello column)†, then you've seen how non-obvious and pervasive this can be. Agreed, a more detailed answer may have been more useful. †Full disclosure: I have.
- perfmode 8y ago
  dalio’s best advice has nothing to do with financial investment. it’s organizational dynamics
- craftyguy 8y ago
  > A: Think about how to rotate your portfolio to buy that which is cheap and sell that which is expensive. Buy low, sell high. How enlightening this guy is...
  - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
    It's a little more subtle than that. He's saying that if you have an existing portfolio and you're worried about a market correction you should start selling off your expensive assets that have already appreciated and buy ones that are currently cheap. Obvious? Probably. But still something most people don't do.
    - dominotw 8y ago
      > assets that have already appreciated There in lies the rub.
    - privacypoller 8y ago
      Except knowing this is not the hard part - even professional investors sell too early on the upside and hold on to the losers too long. What does "already appreciated" mean? Is it Amazon today? or stock you bought for $60 and sold for $300? Is Walmart "cheap" today because they're well positioned for distribution from digital sales, or expensive because their bricks&mortar stores are dinosaurs? So, yeah, we can mine his answers for subtle nuance, but it seems we quickly return to the crux, which is "but how?"
      - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
        Sure, I'm not arguing with that. I was just saying that the OP's criticism is a bit misguided. Yours is more reasonable.
        craftyguy 8y ago
        Eh, the answer to "but how" needs to be understood before you can "buy low, sell high." I don't think my criticism was misguided at all.
- chimmy_chonga 8y ago
  A: I’d just dive in and place bets know how to learn from my experiences. I wrote about how to do that in my book, which is largely about how to convert mistakes into learned principles that work, and how to save these principles and use them in computers so that your thinking is not constrained by your brain’s capacity to juggle a lot of things at the same time. There is no better learning than that which comes from experiences and quality reflections on those experiences. It doesn’t matter whether you do it at a hedge fund, or any other place, but I would recommend that you do it around other smart people who help you brainstorm on the best answer.
- freyir 8y ago
  You've selectively trimmed down his responses to the most generic-sounding lines. The general theme in the AMA is to jump in, accept you'll make mistakes, think critically about what succeeds and fails, and leverage technology to automatically apply what you learn. Or, from another article, "working for what he wants, not what others want him to do, coming up with independent opinions and testing them on intelligent people, being wary about overconfidence, and reflecting on his mistakes." This is the antithesis of "expect a billionaire hedge fund manager to spoon feed you specific investing strategies on a Reddit AMA."
- paulsutter 8y ago
  I'm sorry but this is superb advice, all three. It took me most of my life to learn to prioritize. He might have expanded a bit (focus is always about saying no, not about what you elevate), but he's right in all three cases.
gist 8y ago
Just yesterday I saw an ad for Ray's book in the print WSJ. Full page. It was filled with quotes from people you've heard of giving 1 line compliments of essentially no substance in particular. Some of them are on this page: https://www.principles.com/ https://www.principles.com/ The first one (was on the middle of the print ad page) was from Bill Gates who said "Ray Dalio HAS PROVIDED ME WITH INVALUABLE GUIDANCE". Ray was someone who has agree to Bill's Billionaire Pledge idea and no doubt they rub elbows. So honestly he isn't even referring to what is in the book and why would Bill Gates even need advice from Ray? I am sure he gave him private investment ideas ... great. Most are really lame (with no creativity or specificity) like Mark Benioff who says "PRINCIPLES BY RAY DALIO IS A MASTERPIECE IT'S A MUST READ!" Actually all of the quotes are all caps. Here is what I'd like to see. Not quotes from people who have made it who have (obviously) been asked to submit a quote (they all trade quotes with each other, right). But by real people who have read a book and can document something they learned and how it helped them in their life in a specific nature. Also I always wonder why a billionaire seems to need to write a book like this to begin with.
- oculusthrift 8y ago
  I’m a real person and I read the book and I enjoyed it. I will say any “self-help” style book like his just has quotes like that and you can never tell if they are legit. If you’ve read the “hard thing about hard things”, i found it pretty similar. It’s a mix of an autobiography as well as listing out his main life principles. It gets repetitive sometimes and I wish he’d get more specific in the details but overall I recommend it. Especially if you are in some sort of leadership or management position
- AJ007 8y ago
  Principles no one is actually using - “In the end, my search failed to produce a single organization that adopted the principles in a Bridgewater-like manner” https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b184ggn6dd6090/ray-dalio’s-book-has-sold-a-million-copies-but-who’s-actually-implementing-his-ideas https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b184ggn6dd6090... This is in stark contrast with John Doerr’s recent book, Measure What Matters, which is only examples of implementation.
Reedx 8y ago
If you haven't seen his video, How the Economic Machine Works, I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0 Also the way he runs Bridgewater is really interesting. It's structured with the goal to surface the best ideas and figure out which opinions are most likely to be correct. It's an "idea meritocracy" and a culture of radical transparency. Everything is recorded and made available to everyone else in the company. Employees are very candid, brutally honest, even with the CEO (Ray). He says a lot of people churn out in the first year or so, but those that get used to it love it and can't imagine working another way. His Ted Talk goes into quite a bit of detail about how it all works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXbsVbFAczg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXbsVbFAczg His book Principles lays out the foundation. Excerpt: https://inside.bwater.com/publications/principles_excerpt https://inside.bwater.com/publications/principles_excerpt Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/Bridgewater https://www.youtube.com/user/Bridgewater
- xapata 8y ago
  It's a little bit cultish.
  - gojomo 8y ago
    Nearly everything that successfully coordinates large groups of people has 'cultish' aspects. The trick is to recognize when such patterns of intense synchronization are beneficial, and when they are abusive.
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      And a "cult" around an idea meritocracy means that most of the problems of cults won't happen, because decisions will get made on the merits, rather than on ideology.
      - xapata 8y ago
        It's a cult around the idea of meritocracy, which isn't necessarily the same as an actual meritocracy.
ogennadi 8y ago
> What book or books have had the biggest impact on your life and world view and why? > RayTDalio: > Three great books were: > Lessons from History by Will and Ariel Durant, which is a 104-page distillation of the themes of history by great historians who covered 500 years of history in all countries. > A River From Eden by Richard Dawkins, which in a little over 100 pages covers all evolution of all life through time. > Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces, which looks at the archetypical life evolutions of all heroes through different civilizations through time.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Two corrections. It's "The Lessons of History", and it covers 5000 years, not 500.
weliketocode 8y ago
I'm surprised reddit didn't have more critical questions.
zuzuleinen 8y ago
I highly recommend his book Principles.
allenleein 8y ago
PDFs Ray Dalio - How the Economic Machine Works - Leveragings and Deleveragings(https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/Zen-Of-Capital/Ray%20Dalio%20-%20How%20the%20Economic%20Machine%20Works%20-%20Leveragings%20and%20Deleveragings(Full).pdf https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/Zen-Of-...) Ray Dalio - Principles(https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/Zen-Of-Capital/Bridgewater%20-%20Ray%20Dalio%20-%20Principles(Full).pdf https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/Zen-Of-...)

78 points by mudil 8y ago

In case anyone else hasn't heard of this person, stolen from Googles: Raymond Dalio is an American billionaire investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. Dalio is the founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, one of the world's largest hedge funds. Wikipedia

craftyguy 8y ago
Thanks. My first question was going to be: Who are you?
tome 8y ago
> stolen from Googles ... Wikipedia Stolen from Wikipedia then.

dominotw 8y ago

seems to be responding with Rampart-esq canned generic answers without any real substance to them. Q: Seeing as we are almost 10 years into a bull market, would you be willing to share some of your big Economic and Investment Principles so that average folks can be protected during the inevitable bear market? A: Think about how to rotate your portfolio to buy that which is cheap and sell that which is expensive. Q: o you have any rules for segmenting your schedule (is there a specific allocated amount of time for personal, family, or business) and if so, what does that look like? A: If you have my book Principles, there’s one about this idea, Prioritize: While you can have virtually anything you want, you can’t have everything you want. Q: What is the number 1 thing a young investor can do to improve their investing abilities? A: Dive into the markets, have the shit kicked out of you, and learn how to do things differently. Yea no shit, great "advice".

klenwell 8y ago
> A: If you have my book Principles, there’s one about this idea, Prioritize: While you can have virtually anything you want, you can’t have everything you want. Sounds obvious but if you've ever worked for an organization or with an individual that prioritizes by buckets or labels ('Urgent', 'Extremely Urgent') versus a queue (a Trello column)†, then you've seen how non-obvious and pervasive this can be. Agreed, a more detailed answer may have been more useful. †Full disclosure: I have.
perfmode 8y ago
dalio’s best advice has nothing to do with financial investment. it’s organizational dynamics
craftyguy 8y ago
> A: Think about how to rotate your portfolio to buy that which is cheap and sell that which is expensive. Buy low, sell high. How enlightening this guy is...
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  It's a little more subtle than that. He's saying that if you have an existing portfolio and you're worried about a market correction you should start selling off your expensive assets that have already appreciated and buy ones that are currently cheap. Obvious? Probably. But still something most people don't do.
  - dominotw 8y ago
    > assets that have already appreciated There in lies the rub.
  - privacypoller 8y ago
    Except knowing this is not the hard part - even professional investors sell too early on the upside and hold on to the losers too long. What does "already appreciated" mean? Is it Amazon today? or stock you bought for $60 and sold for $300? Is Walmart "cheap" today because they're well positioned for distribution from digital sales, or expensive because their bricks&mortar stores are dinosaurs? So, yeah, we can mine his answers for subtle nuance, but it seems we quickly return to the crux, which is "but how?"
    - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
      Sure, I'm not arguing with that. I was just saying that the OP's criticism is a bit misguided. Yours is more reasonable.
      - craftyguy 8y ago
        Eh, the answer to "but how" needs to be understood before you can "buy low, sell high." I don't think my criticism was misguided at all.
chimmy_chonga 8y ago
A: I’d just dive in and place bets know how to learn from my experiences. I wrote about how to do that in my book, which is largely about how to convert mistakes into learned principles that work, and how to save these principles and use them in computers so that your thinking is not constrained by your brain’s capacity to juggle a lot of things at the same time. There is no better learning than that which comes from experiences and quality reflections on those experiences. It doesn’t matter whether you do it at a hedge fund, or any other place, but I would recommend that you do it around other smart people who help you brainstorm on the best answer.
freyir 8y ago
You've selectively trimmed down his responses to the most generic-sounding lines. The general theme in the AMA is to jump in, accept you'll make mistakes, think critically about what succeeds and fails, and leverage technology to automatically apply what you learn. Or, from another article, "working for what he wants, not what others want him to do, coming up with independent opinions and testing them on intelligent people, being wary about overconfidence, and reflecting on his mistakes." This is the antithesis of "expect a billionaire hedge fund manager to spoon feed you specific investing strategies on a Reddit AMA."
paulsutter 8y ago
I'm sorry but this is superb advice, all three. It took me most of my life to learn to prioritize. He might have expanded a bit (focus is always about saying no, not about what you elevate), but he's right in all three cases.

gist 8y ago

Just yesterday I saw an ad for Ray's book in the print WSJ. Full page. It was filled with quotes from people you've heard of giving 1 line compliments of essentially no substance in particular. Some of them are on this page: https://www.principles.com/ https://www.principles.com/ The first one (was on the middle of the print ad page) was from Bill Gates who said "Ray Dalio HAS PROVIDED ME WITH INVALUABLE GUIDANCE". Ray was someone who has agree to Bill's Billionaire Pledge idea and no doubt they rub elbows. So honestly he isn't even referring to what is in the book and why would Bill Gates even need advice from Ray? I am sure he gave him private investment ideas ... great. Most are really lame (with no creativity or specificity) like Mark Benioff who says "PRINCIPLES BY RAY DALIO IS A MASTERPIECE IT'S A MUST READ!" Actually all of the quotes are all caps. Here is what I'd like to see. Not quotes from people who have made it who have (obviously) been asked to submit a quote (they all trade quotes with each other, right). But by real people who have read a book and can document something they learned and how it helped them in their life in a specific nature. Also I always wonder why a billionaire seems to need to write a book like this to begin with.

oculusthrift 8y ago
I’m a real person and I read the book and I enjoyed it. I will say any “self-help” style book like his just has quotes like that and you can never tell if they are legit. If you’ve read the “hard thing about hard things”, i found it pretty similar. It’s a mix of an autobiography as well as listing out his main life principles. It gets repetitive sometimes and I wish he’d get more specific in the details but overall I recommend it. Especially if you are in some sort of leadership or management position
AJ007 8y ago
Principles no one is actually using - “In the end, my search failed to produce a single organization that adopted the principles in a Bridgewater-like manner” https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b184ggn6dd6090/ray-dalio’s-book-has-sold-a-million-copies-but-who’s-actually-implementing-his-ideas https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b184ggn6dd6090... This is in stark contrast with John Doerr’s recent book, Measure What Matters, which is only examples of implementation.

Reedx 8y ago

If you haven't seen his video, How the Economic Machine Works, I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0 Also the way he runs Bridgewater is really interesting. It's structured with the goal to surface the best ideas and figure out which opinions are most likely to be correct. It's an "idea meritocracy" and a culture of radical transparency. Everything is recorded and made available to everyone else in the company. Employees are very candid, brutally honest, even with the CEO (Ray). He says a lot of people churn out in the first year or so, but those that get used to it love it and can't imagine working another way. His Ted Talk goes into quite a bit of detail about how it all works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXbsVbFAczg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXbsVbFAczg His book Principles lays out the foundation. Excerpt: https://inside.bwater.com/publications/principles_excerpt https://inside.bwater.com/publications/principles_excerpt Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/Bridgewater https://www.youtube.com/user/Bridgewater

xapata 8y ago
It's a little bit cultish.
- gojomo 8y ago
  Nearly everything that successfully coordinates large groups of people has 'cultish' aspects. The trick is to recognize when such patterns of intense synchronization are beneficial, and when they are abusive.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    And a "cult" around an idea meritocracy means that most of the problems of cults won't happen, because decisions will get made on the merits, rather than on ideology.
    - xapata 8y ago
      It's a cult around the idea of meritocracy, which isn't necessarily the same as an actual meritocracy.

ogennadi 8y ago

> What book or books have had the biggest impact on your life and world view and why? > RayTDalio: > Three great books were: > Lessons from History by Will and Ariel Durant, which is a 104-page distillation of the themes of history by great historians who covered 500 years of history in all countries. > A River From Eden by Richard Dawkins, which in a little over 100 pages covers all evolution of all life through time. > Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces, which looks at the archetypical life evolutions of all heroes through different civilizations through time.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Two corrections. It's "The Lessons of History", and it covers 5000 years, not 500.

weliketocode 8y ago

I'm surprised reddit didn't have more critical questions.

zuzuleinen 8y ago

I highly recommend his book Principles.

allenleein 8y ago

PDFs Ray Dalio - How the Economic Machine Works - Leveragings and Deleveragings(https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/Zen-Of-Capital/Ray%20Dalio%20-%20How%20the%20Economic%20Machine%20Works%20-%20Leveragings%20and%20Deleveragings(Full).pdf https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/Zen-Of-...) Ray Dalio - Principles(https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/Zen-Of-Capital/Bridgewater%20-%20Ray%20Dalio%20-%20Principles(Full).pdf https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/Zen-Of-...)