
Ray Dalio AMA - mudil
https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/8nittg/im_ray_dalio_ask_me_anything_answering_questions/
======
Reedx
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
It's a little bit cultish.

~~~
gojomo
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
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
It's a cult around the idea of meritocracy, which isn't necessarily the same
as an actual meritocracy.

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allenleein
__PDFs __

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

Ray Dalio -
Principles([https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/Zen-
Of-...](https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/Zen-Of-
Capital/Bridgewater%20-%20Ray%20Dalio%20-%20Principles\(Full\).pdf))

------
gist
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.

~~~
AJ007
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...](https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b184ggn6dd6090/ray-
dalio’s-book-has-sold-a-million-copies-but-who’s-actually-implementing-his-
ideas)

This is in stark contrast with John Doerr’s recent book, Measure What Matters,
which is only examples of implementation.

~~~
gist
Yeah and actually what I simply noticed was a promotional pattern that
reminded me of things I read as a kid at my Dad's office and to this date.
Generally for real estate investing where someone would send out newsletters
with little actual information just general platitudes praying on people's
lack of sophistication or simply looking for easy answers.

One other important thing is that there are also things that are missing from
a book like this that might matter in terms of why a particular action worked.
(At a particular point in time) Because they might appear to be sleezy (even
if they aren't) and someone might not want to mention them for wide review or
reading or have them known. So honestly you never really know the full story
and without the full story it's hard to nail down exact steps and honestly you
can't do that anyway (for example you can't control luck). [1]

[1] Not a great example but let's take an actress writing a book on how she
got her first gig in Hollywood but she fails to mention how the director had
the hots for her and what she might have done to lead him on into thinking she
would sleep with him. Instead she just talks about things she can and people
reading give that greater weight.

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codezero
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

~~~
tome
> stolen from Googles ... Wikipedia

Stolen from Wikipedia then.

------
ogennadi
> 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
Two corrections. It's "The Lessons _of_ History", and it covers 5000 years,
not 500.

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zuzuleinen
I highly recommend his book Principles.

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

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dominotw
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".

~~~
craftyguy
> 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
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.

~~~
privacypoller
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
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
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.

