Wickedly good review of new book on Ray Dalio

[Kevin K]

Today's New York Times features a well-written review of "The Fund." I'll post a link to it as a gift article. Here's a quote from the introduction:

"Ray Dalio is the titan behind the world’s biggest hedge fund — a deep thinker and confidant of some of Earth’s most powerful people. Now 74, he has worked diligently over the past few years to publicize his “Principles,” perhaps in the hope that his name will live on.

In “The Fund,” Rob Copeland has done him the favor of assuring that it will — attached to one of the pettiest bullies you’ll ever meet on the page. This is a terrific dagger of a book packed with cringey detail, just long enough to efficiently disembowel its subject.

Most of “The Fund” doesn’t feel like a book about finance. Instead, it is about how a man of surpassing mediocrity used money to control and humiliate, and how much people abased themselves for it. Which, come to think of it, makes it one of the better books ever written about Wall Street."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/book ... =url-share

[TomatoTomahto]

I ordered the book based on the review. I had formed a negative view of Dalio from acquaintances, but always happy to reinforce my views

[cmr86]

I bought the audiobook as soon as I heard it came out. I never really bought into the Dalio mythos. I can't say that I was entirely familiar with Bridgewater and it's legendary founder, but whenever I saw him saying something or listened to clips of his view point, I just thought something smelled off.

The book is confirming it.

[bendix]

I´ve always been deeply confused by Dalio. What he writes is a philosophy of history being cyclic and basically a repeat of itself all over, all the time. He´s basically warming up folks like Spengler or Toynbee. And I loved to read these, and I love to read Dalio´s rants on LinkedIn, even though I do not claim to grasp everything they wrote and write. How this interesting hobby then translates into business and investments, that´s the part where I am deeply lost. Sure, the American Century could be over tomorrow or in a thousand years but I cant see how this leads to anything tangible or me having a reliable edge in others as far as market knowledge is concerned, unfortunatly. But it´s exciting to read and think about anyways.

[Cannibly]

There's a review of the book on the online version of The New Yorker published November 16: https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-r ... orytelling. I assume it will appear in an upcoming print edition.

It's a very thorough overview without spoiling your reader/listener experience should you choose to dive in. I just finished listening to it (done by a very good reader) and I highly recommend it.

[vnatale]

I ordered the book based on the review. I had formed a negative view of Dalio from acquaintances, but always happy to reinforce my views

As are most of us!

[trustquestioner]

Know more than a few people who worked at Bridgewater and none who have anything positive to say about it. Shame on the institutional investors who keep their money there.

[vnatale]

Know more than a few people who worked at Bridgewater and none who have anything positive to say about it. Shame on the institutional investors who keep their money there.

What was the range of years that they they worked there?

[Caduceus]

I would someday love to read a good history of Bridgewater because Ray Dalio strikes me as a complete idiot every time he opens his mouth. I cannot imagine anyone being successful investing based on the type of things he says. He likes to talk about history in very general terms, which would be alright if he didn't keep getting basic stuff completely wrong, and which is made worse by the fact that Bridgewater's portfolios often have little semblance to the investment advice he gives, so he's not eating his own cooking.

[GP813]

I will never understand how hedgefunds are still a thing.

[rockstar]

I will never understand how hedgefunds are still a thing.

I’ll read it eventually.

A lot of people have a lot of money and are really insecure about their intelligence due to our ridiculous education system. Of course, some hedge funds will outperform the market before fees. But most will not.

[alpenglow]

I ordered the book based on the review. I had formed a negative view of Dalio from acquaintances, but always happy to reinforce my views

Thanks for a good laugh. I'm not a fan either.

[GP813]

I will never understand how hedgefunds are still a thing.

I’ll read it eventually.

A lot of people have a lot of money and are really insecure about their intelligence due to our ridiculous education system. Of course, some hedge funds will outperform the market before fees. But most will not.

Most hedgefunds end up effectively getting at least 50% of your profits, do you know how much they would have to outperform to justify that? But on average they don't do that either, it's madness.

This asymmetric contract creates severe distortions. In our new working paper, we analyze the performance of investor capital flows of nearly 6,000 hedge funds from 1995 to 2016. In our sample, the average incentive fee is 19 percent, yet over a 22-year period fund managers collected nearly 50 percent of the profits made by investors above the hurdle rate and after management fees.

Further, when management fees are considered, hedge fund managers received 64 percent of the dollar returns above the hurdle rate before all fees. These results are not due to a particular episode in financial markets. Instead, they reflect a long-term phenomenon.

[Dave55]

The first sentence of the inside liner cover of the book reads: "Ray Dalio does not want you to read this book". I think it will be a very interesting read.

Dave

[gavinsiu]

You can get a review with the author at

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bb5kngSrrsw

My knowledge of Dalio comes from his various commentary about the rise of China and the decline of USA. The interview did not give me a good impression of him personally or professionally.