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Ray Dalio

Founder and Mentor, Bridgewater Associates · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investorfounderauthor@raydalio ↗LinkedIn ↗principles.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

In 1975, Ray Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates out of his apartment, eventually building it into one of the world's largest hedge funds and pioneering investment strategies such as the "All Weather" risk parity portfolio. He is also a prominent macroeconomic commentator and bestselling author of books including Principles: Life and Work.

17statements → 7claims → 3claims resolved → 33%fully supported → 3.94/5average certainty → 2.18/5average debate potential → 4said about them ↓

1 supported 2 partly supported 0 contradicted 4 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 5 assertions · 10 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Ray argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Dalio: Designed the commodity hedging strategy behind McDonald's Chicken McNugget launch
“I contributed to the economic risk of being able to come out with a Chicken McNugget. Because it came out at a time when there was a lot of commodity price volatility, and McDonald's wanted to come out with a chicken McNugget, but they couldn't lock in a price…”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:49 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
50% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

249 words/min while actually speaking · 1.9 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Ray Dalio: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to 5,363 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Ray Dalio is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

Everything Ray Dalio said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Dalio: Diversification provides far more benefit than picking winning assets
“And if you really look at that, the marginal benefit of diversification is much more powerful than the marginal benefit of goodness.”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 21:32 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dalio: Visionary leaders like Jobs and Musk prioritize mission over feelings
“The one that you're referring to is there's a test call in workplace inventory, which is called concern for others, and it doesn't really mean concern for others. What it means is that when faced with the choice of whether the mission is Or the individual's fe…”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 39:20 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Assertion Partly supported
Dalio: The bottom 60 percent of Americans have seen no income growth
“There is the top 40% and the bottom 60%. And if you just carve out and you say, what is the economy and life like of the bottom 60%? There hasn't been income growth, prospects of having a better life than your parents.”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 46:08 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Insight
Dalio: Overlaying historical data archetypes is key to investment rule-making
“So, in other words, Let's take all of those cases and put them together, and if they're, if they have data associated with them, let's say a bubble, then you just plot the data on top of each other so you could see each one unfold, and then you can then say, w…”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:28 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Insight
Dalio: 15 uncorrelated bets cut portfolio risk by 80 percent
“The key in embedding, I believe, is to find 15 good, they don't have to be great, Uncorrelated or low-correlated return streams, because if you have, let's say, a 60% correlation between those items that you're about, and you could have a thousand, and you're …”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 21:54 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Insight
Dalio: Adults can improve psychological weaknesses by at most one standard deviation
“I've examined that at length, both in terms of our populations, and then I've really enjoyed working with psychologists to try to figure out, they're the pros, and doing that, and generally speaking, with a lot of hard work, you can change by about one standar…”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 31:53 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Insight
Ray Dalio: Most people who think they are open-minded are prejudiced
“Most people who think that they're open-minded have formed an opinion. That prejudices them, and that they have to get knocked off on. They're not reaching out with the worry that they might be wrong.”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 43:08 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Dalio: Society will collapse into conflict without shared principles
“If you don't have those principles and those ways of getting through that, we will be at each other's throats.”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 47:11 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Assertion Supported
Dalio: Designed the commodity hedging strategy behind McDonald's Chicken McNugget launch
“I contributed to the economic risk of being able to come out with a Chicken McNugget. Because it came out at a time when there was a lot of commodity price volatility, and McDonald's wanted to come out with a chicken McNugget, but they couldn't lock in a price…”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:49 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Insight
Dalio: People are routinely surprised by events outside their lifetime
“One of the things that I've observed over and over again is that everybody gets surprised about the thing that hasn't happened before their lifetime.”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:27 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Insight
Dalio: Evaluate employees on decision process rather than outcome
“If you're looking at a baseball player or a golfer, and you see how their swing is, you should be able to say that's a good swing. So if you just look at the shot, that's a different thing. So you have to know how to look at the swing rather than the shot, rig…”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 24:28 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Insight
Dalio: Collective decision-making outperforms individual choices when ego barriers are removed
“And if you can get that radical open-mindedness collective decision making is so much better than individual decision making, but you've got to get over those two barriers.”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 30:46 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dalio: One-third of Bridgewater employees fail to overcome cognitive barriers
“About a third of the people can't get through it, something like that. Over 18 months, you can pretty well find out where you are.”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 31:02 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Insight
Ray Dalio: Consult three disagreeing experts when making major decisions
“What I recommend you do in that case, in almost all cases of making decisions, is find three really great experts who will disagree with each other, openly disagree with each other to try to find the right path.”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 35:04 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Insight
Dalio: Framing yourself as teacher, peer, or student resolves disagreements
“And so if you have a differences in the understanding by kind of saying, Am I a teacher, a peer, or a student? What should I be helps me navigate the best way to approach that.”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 37:43 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dalio: Documenting decision criteria enabled converting principles into software algorithms
“By writing it down, I was able to communicate with others, so it got us in sync, and then I was able to convert a lot of these two algorithms so that I was able to build a decision-making system.”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:45 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life
Prediction Partly held up
Dalio: Planning an app to crowdsource and vote on decision-making principles
“What I'm planning to do is to get the best principles from everybody and then make that all available on an app in which then people can then vote up what are the best principles for that particular thing that they're encountering, and so then when that thing …”
Ray Dalio Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 49:20 a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life

The other half of the tape: Ray Dalio's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 3 episodes on the a16z Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Tony Robbins 2Justin Kan 1Angela Strange 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00112220192020202120222023episodesmentions
01220192020202120222023episodes it came up in
00112220192020202120222023episodesmentions per episode
2023 2 mentions in 1 episode
2019 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | Principles and Algorithms for Work and Life Jan 2, 2019 25m
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