Is Ray Dalio The Steve Jobs Of Investing?
BUSINESS as usual ends at the gates of Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates. Inside the $125 billion hedge fund’s Westport, Connecticut-based headquarters, radically different behavior at an individual and corporate level rarely ceases to astonish. Cameras rest in every cranny; almost all meetings are recorded. Meetings are nasty, brutish, and long. One individual casts a long shadow over every decision, large or small. The question of the day is—always—What Would Ray Do?
This question is now asked outside Westport as well. Dalio has willed into existence an asset manager that has changed the industry, radically altering the way assets are managed for the world’s most sophisticated institutional investors. From client service to asset allocation to economic research to client communication to returning capital, Bridgewater has set a new bar. It is a safe bet to assume that the asset managers that dominate the institutional scene going forward are going to resemble Bridgewater more than the behemoth asset-gatherers that have reigned since the passage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act—ERISA—almost four decades ago.
It is all too reminiscent of another company on the opposite end of America—Apple.