Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Ray Dalio (Part 1): Turning His Investing Principles Into a $150 Billion Hedge Fund
22 May 2025
If you started investing any time within the last five years, it’s probably felt like a steady stream of firsts—between a global pandemic, changing interest rates, inflation, war, and recession fears, it’s been one plot twist after another. But it’s not a new story—it’s the same economic movie on repeat. And if you understand the principles behind it, you can learn to master the markets. That’s where today's guest Ray Dalio comes in. He’s the founder of Bridgewater Associates—the world’s largest hedge fund with over $150 billion under management—and the author of New York Times bestsellers like Principles, that’s become required reading from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Ray literally wrote the book on how to invest through any cycle—and today, he’s here to teach you how. Pre-order Ray's latest book How Countries Go Broke here. Find all of Ray's books here.
Full Episode
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Money rehab.
Well, today's guest is going to teach you how to be a world-class investor, and I'll tell you why. If you started investing anytime within the last five years, you've probably felt like you've been in shark-infested, uncharted waters in a riptide. I mean, as an investor, you've had to adapt to a lot.
a pandemic, ZERP, the zero interest rate policy that kept the economy running during said pandemic, then interest rates climbing back up, inflation, war, elections, supply chain disruptions, recession fears. It has probably felt like you're watching one dramatic TV series with a new plot twist every single week. But you know what?
We're actually just watching one movie and we're watching it over and over again. In other words, economic conditions are never really new. It's all happened before and it will happen again. And if you can master the principles of these conditions, you can master investing. And today's guest wrote the book on these principles. And I don't mean that as a cliche. I mean that literally.
Because today's guest is Ray Dalio. Ray is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world with over $150 billion in assets under management. He built Bridgewater from a two bedroom apartment into the financial powerhouse that it is today. It's managed money for governments, central banks, and some of the wealthiest families on the planet.
He's also the author of Principles, the number one New York Times bestseller that's been translated into 28 languages and is required reading at companies from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. His work has been used by the U.S. Treasury, it's been studied by the Federal Reserve, and it has been bookmarked many, many times by yours truly.
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