Speaker 1: Of the past several decades, one of the most successful
Speaker 1: hedge fund investors in the world has been Ray Dalio.
Speaker 1: Ray Dalio has built Bridgewater and the largest single hedge
Speaker 1: fund in the world, managing more than a hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 1: He's also an accomplished author. In his most recent book,
Speaker 1: The Changing World Order, talks about the rising China and
Speaker 1: the sinking United States. Had a chance to talk to
Speaker 1: him recently about that book and many other things relating
Speaker 1: to the investment world. Ray, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: coming and uh for writing this book. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about this principally this evening. UM. I wanted to start though,
Speaker 1: by asking you, uh this. You're running the largest hedge
Speaker 1: fund in the world, more than a d fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 1: How do you have time to write books when you
Speaker 1: were and running that hedge fund. I didn't write either
Speaker 1: of those books. Really, what I did was this book
Speaker 1: was UM. In order to understand what was going on today,
Speaker 1: I needed to do a study, right, and what I
Speaker 1: experienced in life many times before is that the surprises
Speaker 1: that happened to me were things that never happened in
Speaker 1: my lifetime, but happened many times in history. When you
Speaker 1: read the book as I have, and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: It took me a couple of sittings to get through
Speaker 1: because it's a lot of detail in here. Um. You
Speaker 1: have a lot of historians that help you because a
Speaker 1: lot of history in here. History. I didn't know you
Speaker 1: have histories. I'm so lucky because I get to speak
Speaker 1: to so many people who are historians, who are practitioners,
Speaker 1: you know, people in different countries, Henry Kissinger, Graham, Alice In,
Speaker 1: you know, just scientists and so on, and then historians.
Speaker 1: So and then I have a fabulous research team. So
Speaker 1: I go into this learning immersion, UM and then UM,
Speaker 1: and I iterate with it. I show them what I've got,
Speaker 1: They come back and that's the process. Okay. So you
Speaker 1: have in here people who have said good things about
Speaker 1: the book, including a number of Treasury secretaries Hank Paulson,
Speaker 1: Tim Geitner. Are Summers hard to get three Treasury secretaries
Speaker 1: agree on anything, but you did. You also have very
Speaker 1: favorable comments about the book from Henry Kissinger and Bill Gates.
Speaker 1: You know both of them, who's smarter? Well, I think, um,
Speaker 1: I think that they would say they each would say
Speaker 1: the other guy, and I think I would say that, um,
Speaker 1: each in their own ways. Okay, so boy, you should
Speaker 1: go into politics or to pose. Okay, your view is
Speaker 1: there are three big cycles in history. It's not fair. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I came with the three things that are happening today,
Speaker 1: and then I found that there are really five, but
Speaker 1: the three three big ones. Yeah, alright, so let's go
Speaker 1: through the first cycle. The first cycle is when economy
Speaker 1: comes together gets wealthy. People are building up the economy
Speaker 1: and eventually they build it up so much they borrow
Speaker 1: more money and maybe they should and they dilute their currency.
Speaker 1: Is that fair? Yeah? I could do it in a
Speaker 1: quicker way. Quicker than that, Well, excuse me, better than that?
Speaker 1: How Now, um, there is um, there's a new water,
Speaker 1: there's a there's usually some fight between the left and
Speaker 1: the right, or it could be foreign countries and whatever
Speaker 1: new water. And then when that begins, it's sort of
Speaker 1: a great equalizer. And capitalism is how fantastic enabler because
Speaker 1: what it does is it gives people who may not
Speaker 1: have anything, who have good ideas capital so they get
Speaker 1: the resources to pursue that. And that's a fabulous thing.
Speaker 1: And then as it rises over a period of time,
Speaker 1: you'll see debt to income ratios rise and so on,
Speaker 1: because everybody gets more funded because debt is buying power
Speaker 1: and everybody wants more buying power. And then also you
Speaker 1: see it naturally UM distributes wealth unequally, and it distributes
Speaker 1: opportunity on equally, so UM as that wealth gaps rise
Speaker 1: and widen. And then also because it's opportunity, parents and
Speaker 1: who have wealthy parents can educate their children in an
Speaker 1: unfair let's say, an unequal way relative to others. And
Speaker 1: so but it over it gets overly indebted. And then
Speaker 1: because all this buying power which comes in the form
Speaker 1: of debt as somebody else's assets, then what happens is
Speaker 1: UM then you lower interest rates. You try to stimulate it.
Speaker 1: So for example, since every cyclical peak and every cyclical
Speaker 1: trough and interest rates was lower than the one before it,
Speaker 1: so that they can stimulate more debt. And then when
Speaker 1: you get to zero interest rates, that doesn't work. So
Speaker 1: they have to print money and they buy money to
Speaker 1: keep get that pile going up, and that creates the cycle. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's part of that cycle, which is a capital
Speaker 1: markets or UH. And then, by the way, this exists
Speaker 1: almost everywhere. And then with that, and then you see
Speaker 1: the monetization of debt and so on, and with that
Speaker 1: there are also conflicts, conflicts that are the wealth conflicts,
Speaker 1: and related to that the political left and the political
Speaker 1: right and there, and that creates the dynamic that we're
Speaker 1: talking about now you're signing your book. Two examples where
Speaker 1: this has happened before. One is in the Netherlands, where
Speaker 1: the Dutch economy ultimately they had the only reserve currency,
Speaker 1: at least in Western Europe, the guilder, and they did
Speaker 1: some of what you now say we're doing. Is that right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the same patterns over and over again. They had in
Speaker 1: the beginning, big education, they want a war. Then they
Speaker 1: became very competitive. They went out in the world taking
Speaker 1: their goods and they built ships that were the best
Speaker 1: ships around the world, so they can go anywhere in
Speaker 1: the world. They brought their arms with them and they
Speaker 1: made a fortune. And with that they brought their currency.
Speaker 1: And as they bring their currency, because it's a world
Speaker 1: currency of reserve currency, others want to own it. And
Speaker 1: because others want to own it, because that's buying power,
Speaker 1: it's the common wamp them. And then because of that um,
Speaker 1: then they lend it to the Dutch. So in other words,
Speaker 1: Americans get lent money because others want a whole dollars,
Speaker 1: and then that allows us, that's the exorbitant privilege, to
Speaker 1: get more and more in debt, and then what happens
Speaker 1: is they lose their competitiveness. The British built came along
Speaker 1: and copied from the Dutch and found oh, they can
Speaker 1: make ships better and cheaper, and then they became the competitors.
Speaker 1: And then as the competitors are operating, they take market
Speaker 1: share away, quite similar to lots of technology companies and
Speaker 1: what's going on now. And then what happens is then
Speaker 1: they get more in debt, and then they have the
Speaker 1: other cycle that's operating, and then you have the challenges
Speaker 1: of that. They had the Dutch, they typified by the
Speaker 1: Dutch tool bulb craze where people were spending a lot
Speaker 1: of guilders buying toil bulbs. Right, So that imploded and
Speaker 1: the British came in and they built a big economy,
Speaker 1: and then they kind of went south a bit. They
Speaker 1: had the same and then we came along the United
Speaker 1: States became the biggest economy world around eighteen seventy and
Speaker 1: since World War Two we've been the dominant economy. So
Speaker 1: now we have a lot of debt. You'd say, yeah, trillion,
Speaker 1: good of that, So how are we going to pay
Speaker 1: off at that? By the way, well is the only way.
Speaker 1: In the end, it's always print the money. You know,
Speaker 1: it's always print the money because you see the one
Speaker 1: man's debts or another man's assets. And so if you're
Speaker 1: holding a bond and you receive a you don't get
Speaker 1: compensated for inflation. Let's say people think cash is a
Speaker 1: low investment, low risk investment. Well, they're earning no interest,
Speaker 1: and when you have a seven percent or five percent inflation,
Speaker 1: you lose five percent of your buying power. Or if
Speaker 1: you're owning a bond, you have the same thing. And
Speaker 1: so what happens is not only is there the debt
Speaker 1: that is coming from the new debt created to run
Speaker 1: the deficits, but there become sellers of that debt because
Speaker 1: the owner as an asset, it's not a good asset.
Speaker 1: And then there's so much selling. And what that means
Speaker 1: is that you either have to interest rates have got
Speaker 1: to go up, or and then that grinds things down
Speaker 1: to a close or what they do is they have
Speaker 1: to print money. And so the history of all of
Speaker 1: these cycles is that the coffers are empty because you
Speaker 1: can't continue to spend more than you earn and give
Speaker 1: it to somebody expect them to like it, and then
Speaker 1: you devalue it and that becomes the cycle. And so
Speaker 1: you see the classic cycle of the ingredient is um
Speaker 1: the cycle I'm talking about in terms of supply to man.
Speaker 1: And so what you want to do is presumably let
Speaker 1: people know this is occurring. So maybe they could take
Speaker 1: action by letting their congressman or governors know something about
Speaker 1: this or not. Well, I think there are two two things.
Speaker 1: What you can do to make a better side in
Speaker 1: your contribution, but also how you can individually take care
Speaker 1: of yourself in a situation that might be difficult. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's finish on the third part of the cycle.
Speaker 1: The third part of the cycle is somebody's rising up.
Speaker 1: And right now you would say China is rising up?
Speaker 1: Is that correct? It there's just numbers and you look
Speaker 1: at it and okay, so if I want to do
Speaker 1: something about it, and I want to live in a
Speaker 1: time when China is not rising up so much, and
Speaker 1: were better off in the US economy. What should I do?
Speaker 1: Should I lobby my members of Congress not to print
Speaker 1: so much money? What should I do about it? If anything? Um, well,
Speaker 1: again it's the cycles. I think. If I think, if
Speaker 1: we go back and we look at history, there are
Speaker 1: three main things that you can do. Okay, first as
Speaker 1: a society individually and then collectively. Um, how do you
Speaker 1: earn more money than you spend? And how do you
Speaker 1: build a balance sheet that has more assets than liabilities.
Speaker 1: That's a healthy and so keeping that in mind, the
Speaker 1: second is um internal conflict or cooperation? Can you have
Speaker 1: internal cooperation because you realize what the consequences are? So
Speaker 1: I think that in the two twenty for elections, there
Speaker 1: is a reasonable chance that neither party will accept losing
Speaker 1: the elections. And that is something that means that democracy
Speaker 1: or a type of civil war of sorts could develop
Speaker 1: in a way. This is realistic. I'm not being um
Speaker 1: exaggerated by that. And when one looks at those types
Speaker 1: of things, there is a worry that one should have
Speaker 1: about the divisiveness and what it means for each other.
Speaker 1: And the same is true internationally. So basically, if you
Speaker 1: anybody who has gone into wars this through history. Um,
Speaker 1: the people who are the most convinced that that's the
Speaker 1: thing to do all regretted going into wars because of
Speaker 1: what wars are like. So the things that I would
Speaker 1: hope to convey is, first of all, what are the arcs?
Speaker 1: Is that right or wrong? In the arcs measured not opinionated.
Speaker 1: Just look at those measurements so that you could see that.
Speaker 1: And then as we think about it, like I have
Speaker 1: a principle, if you worry, you don't have worry, and
Speaker 1: if you don't worry, you need to worry. And what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is if you worry and you
Speaker 1: start to think what this direction could be and what
Speaker 1: it's like, then um, maybe you deal with the things
Speaker 1: that prevent those worries. Where if you don't worry, maybe
Speaker 1: you get into trouble without worrying or with a confidence
Speaker 1: that there are things we can do. The world has
Speaker 1: now more resources than it has ever had, and there
Speaker 1: are things that can be done. Now you're managing a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty billion plus about them? And why is
Speaker 1: it explained this to me? I really don't know the answer.
Speaker 1: Hedge funds seem to come and go sometimes they're hot,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're cold. Sometimes they go out of business. You've
Speaker 1: been in business for almost half a century and you've
Speaker 1: got a hundred fifty billion. What did you do that
Speaker 1: nobody else has been able to do. What we were
Speaker 1: able to do, UM was to be able to structure
Speaker 1: portfolios in a way that we're UM better in terms
Speaker 1: of the returns, risks and correlations of our investors. So
Speaker 1: to give you that an idea, in other words, UM,
Speaker 1: you could balance things in a way. I could take
Speaker 1: different alpha's, different bets in different markets, and I could
Speaker 1: carry that and put that in a fund called pure Alpha.
Speaker 1: Then I could take different asset classes and put that
Speaker 1: in a fund which was called pure beta. And then
Speaker 1: we could engineer it for the customers risk levels. Do
Speaker 1: you want it at twelve percent volve, volatility eight percent involved?
Speaker 1: And then they would whatever benchmark they wanted we could
Speaker 1: put the alpha on top of, so they could say
Speaker 1: I want the SMP five hundred plus a six percent
Speaker 1: ball operating that way. I know it all sounds complicated,
Speaker 1: but we could design and structure things to their liking
Speaker 1: that would produce an attractive, rich risk in return that
Speaker 1: also was not correlated with their other investments. You wrote
Speaker 1: a book a few years ago called Principles that sold
Speaker 1: millions of copies. Usually books in the business world on
Speaker 1: sell millions of copies, and millions of them were sold
Speaker 1: in China as well. Um, what is it that was
Speaker 1: in that book that was so exciting to people? When
Speaker 1: I would make decisions, I would not just make the decisions.
Speaker 1: I would think about, what are the criteria that I
Speaker 1: would use to make the decisions, and I'd write them down,
Speaker 1: those are the principles. And then in our culture, which
Speaker 1: is this idea of meritocracy, we would say that those
Speaker 1: criteria good or bad, and then we would try to
Speaker 1: put them into algorithms and equations. And so I would
Speaker 1: do that almost like a diary kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: I would see the same things happening over and over again,
Speaker 1: and the next time it happened, I would go to
Speaker 1: the principle, and we could together go to our principles.
Speaker 1: And so it accumulated that over a period of time,
Speaker 1: and they were practical, they're not theoretical principles, and people
Speaker 1: seem to find the valuable. Now it is said that
Speaker 1: you use these principles in your firm, and you operate
Speaker 1: the firm and in the principles right more or less,
Speaker 1: but it's very constant self examination. Employees have to be
Speaker 1: self examined by their peers. You're self examined by your peers, right,
Speaker 1: or other people in the firm. It's hard to get
Speaker 1: people to want to do this and where they be
Speaker 1: examined so intently over the years, and it's so logical,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean everybody wants to do it. Um,
Speaker 1: it's um so in one sentence, it's an idea meritocracy.
Speaker 1: You know, the best ideas win out from wherever they
Speaker 1: come from, in which the goals are meaningful work and
Speaker 1: meaningful relationships. That we're in it together through radical truthfulness
Speaker 1: and radical transparency. So if we disagree, that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: It's no reason to have anger and to have the
Speaker 1: art of thoughtful disagreement and examine how do you scientifically
Speaker 1: find out what's true? How do you test things? And
Speaker 1: so on? And that's been essential to our success. So
Speaker 1: you know, you're very intense. You're obviously into the numbers,
Speaker 1: but you're so big into transcendental meditation. Right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: helped me a lot. It's been probably the biggest whatever
Speaker 1: success I've had, maybe more attributable to transcendental How did
Speaker 1: you get into transcendental meditation? The Beatles help you or something? Yeah? Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: it was exactly that. In ninety eight the Beatles went
Speaker 1: to India and they meditated, and then I heard about it.
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen sixty nine in New York you could, Um,
Speaker 1: you can bring some flowers and you could do that
Speaker 1: and you could learn how to meditate, and and wow, um,
Speaker 1: I recommend it's the best thing gift. I could do
Speaker 1: it every day or almost every almost. Yeah, I try
Speaker 1: to do it every day. I try to do it
Speaker 1: about twice a day. And if I could take a
Speaker 1: second to describe it, um um, what it is, um
Speaker 1: is it frees your mind of thought, and it takes
Speaker 1: you from a conscious state into your subconscious, and your
Speaker 1: subconscious is where creativity comes from and equanimity and all
Speaker 1: of that. Like if you're calm and great ideas come
Speaker 1: to you, and when you have that equanimity, then you're
Speaker 1: as you're approaching everything. Things are just the way they
Speaker 1: are and you have to deal with them. And it's
Speaker 1: a little like being you know, in the uh Ninja movies,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit like being the ninja, and everything
Speaker 1: seems slower and you can handle it better. And so
Speaker 1: and you align your subconscious which is where the motions
Speaker 1: and also inspirations come from, with your conscious mind. And
Speaker 1: when they're aligned and you have that equanimity, it's a
Speaker 1: great thing. You're gonna write a book on transitentle meditation.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. The average person watching right
Speaker 1: now probably doesn't have a hundred and fifty billion dollars
Speaker 1: to manage the investment of. So what can the average
Speaker 1: person do to invest reasonably? Well, well, you know, um,
Speaker 1: like I didn't have any money, and I remember the
Speaker 1: cycle and what it was is I would start to think, um,
Speaker 1: how much money do I have to how many weeks,
Speaker 1: months and then years can I take care of myself
Speaker 1: and my family? And I would calculate that I would
Speaker 1: be at okay, fifty two years if no income was
Speaker 1: going to come in, And then I would start to think, um,
Speaker 1: and then if I'm holding a portfolio in something, maybe
Speaker 1: I could lose half, so I better cut that number
Speaker 1: in half. And then I start to think of what
Speaker 1: are my uses of the money, what do I need
Speaker 1: to do? And I would think about how do I
Speaker 1: immunize that? And you start and you build like that,
Speaker 1: and you know how to save and and saving you
Speaker 1: know things like don't put it into cash deposits that
Speaker 1: get eroded by inflation and taxes and so on, and
Speaker 1: you start to develop it. And the thing that you
Speaker 1: can do, the most important thing you could do, is
Speaker 1: not be in cash and and those deposits, particularly now
Speaker 1: when there's such negative real rates. And to have a
Speaker 1: well diversified portfolio. And that well diversified portfolio that's a
Speaker 1: whole subject of what does that mean and how to
Speaker 1: do it, But it's a well diversified portfolio of not
Speaker 1: just asset classes, but of uh countries, of um uh
Speaker 1: you know, of of different thing currencies, diversified. But let's
Speaker 1: let me ask you an average person who isn't you know,
Speaker 1: a billionaire. Should they expect to get a great return
Speaker 1: over on their money of five percent a year? Is
Speaker 1: that a good target? Six eight percent? What do you
Speaker 1: think is a reasonable target for somebody doesn't want to
Speaker 1: take undue risks? Well, nowadays the structure of the markets
Speaker 1: and where everything is priced um if um and done
Speaker 1: the normal way, we'll give you probably a return in
Speaker 1: the vicinity of with a lot of risk around it. Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe in the vicinity of four percent three three and
Speaker 1: three percent three four, Okay, something that might not equal inflation,
Speaker 1: probably would be very close. And then you have to
Speaker 1: pay taxes on it um because there are so many
Speaker 1: financial assets. But one thing you can, they'll send you
Speaker 1: more money. As we talk today, the stock market in
Speaker 1: the last couple of weeks has been correcting, if that's
Speaker 1: the right verb, and a lot of the errors out
Speaker 1: of the so called bubble. Should people be selling everything
Speaker 1: and getting out of the market now because the markets
Speaker 1: are going down? Or is just the time to buy?
Speaker 1: First of all, I'm not here to give a lot
Speaker 1: of advice, but I'll give you the following thoughts. We
Speaker 1: won't tell anybody, just give us, okay, just just on
Speaker 1: our own. Uh. What's happened is the they produced a
Speaker 1: lot of debt and gave out a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and so everybody's got money. And it's also very easy
Speaker 1: to borrow money to buy things. And as a result,
Speaker 1: if you create much more buying power, then you create
Speaker 1: goods and services. You've got a lot much more inflation.
Speaker 1: And the Federal Reserve has been behind the curve slower
Speaker 1: to tighten monetary policy, and as a result, we're now
Speaker 1: starting to see the rise in interest rates to be
Speaker 1: able to deal with that. As that happens, all assets
Speaker 1: compete with each other. So now that free money is
Speaker 1: still going to be cheap money, but it's going to
Speaker 1: be a bit higher, so interest rates. Let's say bond
Speaker 1: yields have gone up about one percent. Now you take
Speaker 1: that and you adjust everything is the present value of
Speaker 1: future cash flows. But it means that that interest rate
Speaker 1: goes up a percent. That means all the other assets
Speaker 1: have to adjust. We're in a process of making that
Speaker 1: kind of adjustment. That means the days that we've had before,
Speaker 1: the easy days where they not money on you and
Speaker 1: you don't have much inflation and you don't have much tightness,
Speaker 1: those are past and now we're in a different kind
Speaker 1: of part of the cycle. How do you foresee crypto
Speaker 1: impacting the world order? Uh? I think it's interesting. I
Speaker 1: have a tiny percentage of my portfolio wanted to to diversify.
Speaker 1: But it is a very vulnerable incident because they can
Speaker 1: track who is operating on it. It can be tracked.
Speaker 1: It will be outlawed, probably by different governments, and in
Speaker 1: terms of its size, it has issues. So I think
Speaker 1: too much attention is spent spent on um crypto or
Speaker 1: somebody might be a gold bug, or somebody might be
Speaker 1: I don't know they hold gems or whatever they do.
Speaker 1: But I think that we're now in an era where
Speaker 1: we're going to have different types of money. We're going
Speaker 1: to question money is a medium of exchange, but it's
Speaker 1: also a store hold of wealth, and we're going to
Speaker 1: be questioning what are the right store holds of wealth
Speaker 1: in in the value And you're going to see around
Speaker 1: the world, not only the digital versions of that take
Speaker 1: place in many forms. You're going to see other forms
Speaker 1: of that competition. I think in the year's at we
Speaker 1: are not investing, and you're not transcendental meditating, and you're
Speaker 1: not writing books and doing philanthropy. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: You have any Outsidember Number one is my grandkids? Okay,
Speaker 1: my my kids, my my family of course, um and
Speaker 1: one of the greatest blessings in life that whenever can
Speaker 1: possibly have his one. How many grandchildren you have? I have? Ford? Now,
Speaker 1: what do they call you? Papa? Not Mr Dahlia or
Speaker 1: something like that. Thanks for listening to hear more of
Speaker 1: my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen