Raymond Thomas Dalio (born August 8, 1949) is an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager, who has served as co-chief investment officer of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, since 1985. He founded Bridgewater in 1975 in New York. Within ten years, it was infused with a $5 million investment from the World Bank's retirement fund. Dalio is regarded as one of the greatest innovators in the finance world, having popularized many commonly used practices, such as risk parity, currency overlay, portable alpha and global inflation-indexed bond management.
Dalio was born in New York City, and attended C.W. Post College of Long Island University before receiving an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1973. Two years later, in his apartment, Dalio launched Bridgewater. In 2013, it was listed as the largest hedge fund in the world. In 2020 Bloomberg ranked him the world's 79th-wealthiest person. Dalio is the author of the 2017 book Principles: Life & Work, about corporate management and investment philosophy. It was featured on The New York Times best seller list, where it was called a "gospel of radical transparency."
Ray Dalio was born in Jackson Heights, in the borough of Queens, New York City. An only child, his mother was a homemaker, his father a jazz musician who played clarinet and saxophone in night clubs such as Manhattan’s Copacabana.
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When Ray was eight, the family moved farther out on Long Island to the suburban community of Manhasset. The young Ray Dalio enjoyed sports such as baseball and playing with his friends, but disliked the routine of school, particularly rote memorization. His mum would encourage him to study before playing outside. He was far from lazy, however. When he was excited about something, he would give it full determination. For earning money, he held down a paper route, mowed his neighbours’ lawns and shovelled snow from their driveways. He would struggle to complete his chores at home, but away from home, he was really keen to do them because it meant earning money.
Dalio grew up in a middle class Long Island neighbourhood and started playing the markets at age 12, getting tips from golfers for whom he caddied. He would hear everyone talking about the stock market because it was doing so well at the time and people were making good returns. He would pick up tips for hot stocks while doing his job.
Dalio began to find out about investing when he was 12 years old when he began caddying at a golf club. He would get $6 a bag while caddying and every time he would get $50, he would buy shares of stocks. He eventually saved up his wages and used $300 to buy shares with North East Airlines. He chose this stock because it was the only company he had heard about which was less than $5 per share. He got very lucky with this position, as he managed to triple his money. However, this win got him hooked; he thought trading in the stock market was an easy way to make money.
Dalio continued to invest in stocks throughout high school and managed to build up thousands of dollars. But he even continued buying more stocks even as they were going down. Once he had lost a lot of money, he realized what was going wrong. He believes to be a successful trader or entrepreneur you need to accept being ‘painfully wrong’ a lot of the time.
Due to not taking much interest in school, Dalio’s grades suffered and he didn’t achieve the grades he needed to get into college, but fortunately managed to get in on probation instead.
College was a very different story to High School for Ray. He loved it because he could learn about subjects he was interested in and he enjoyed the freedom that came with living away from home. It was in college that he took up transcendental meditation, which he still performs to this day. It improved his concentration and allowed him to think more creatively, which assisted him in his college studies. Dalio also learned about commodity futures from an older classmate during College.
Ray majored in finance and got accepted to Harvard Business School. However, before starting at Harvard, he worked as a clerk on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He spent this time learning about the currency market, and the cause-effect relationships that lead to price movements, including how people reacted to different news releases.