Ray Dalio

Who He Is

Ray Dalio is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, and one of the most widely followed investors and financial thinkers of his generation. Born in 1949 in Queens, New York, Dalio grew up in a middle-class family and became fascinated with the stock market as a young caddy at a golf club, where he overheard investors talking about the market. He used his tips to buy his first stock at age 12. He founded Bridgewater out of his two-bedroom apartment in 1975 and built it into a firm that manages money for some of the world's largest pension funds, universities, and governments. Dalio is also known for making his ideas about investing and decision-making freely available to the public through his books, YouTube videos, and the website www.Principles.com, believing that understanding how economies and markets work is something everyone deserves access to.

Why He Matters

Ray Dalio has done something rare for someone at his level of success: he has worked hard to explain how financial systems work in plain language that anyone can understand. His animated video "How the Economic Machine Works" has been viewed tens of millions of times and is used in classrooms around the world to teach students how economies grow and contract. For young people, Dalio's story is compelling because he started with no special advantages, made serious mistakes early in his career (including losing nearly everything in his late 20s), and used those failures as a foundation for building a smarter, more disciplined approach to investing. His message that radical transparency and learning from mistakes are the keys to long-term success resonates well beyond finance.