Ray Dalio

Raymond Thomas Dalio (born August 8, 1949) is an American billionaire investor and founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world's largest hedge funds.

Dalio is the author of the 2017 book, Principles: Life & Work, about corporate management and investment philosophy and The Changing World Order on why nations succeed and fail. As of June 2026, he has a net worth of $21.5 billion, which ranks 126th on the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.

Dalio was born in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of New York City's Queens Borough. He is the son of the Italian-American parents, jazz musician Marino Dallolio (1911–2002), and Ann, a homemaker. When he was 8, his family moved from Jackson Heights to Manhasset in Nassau County, Long Island, New York.

He then received a bachelor's degree in finance from C.W. Post College of Long Island University. After graduating from C.W. Post College, Dalio worked as a clerk on the New York Stock Exchange.

He received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1973.

During his time at Harvard, Dalio and his friends created the company that later became Bridgewater Associates. Its goal was to trade commodities, but the venture yielded little fruit. Dalio later used the name "Bridgewater" for his hedge fund.

After graduating from Harvard, Dalio moved to Wilton, Connecticut, where he traded out of a converted barn. He then worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and traded commodity futures. He later worked as the Director of Commodities at Dominick & Dominick LLC. In 1974, he became a futures trader and broker at Shearson Hayden Stone, a securities firm run by Sandy Weill, who later became famous for building up Citigroup. At the firm, Dalio's job was to advise cattle ranchers, grain producers, and other farmers on how to hedge risks, primarily with futures. Dalio was fired from Shearson Hayden Stone after punching his boss in the face while drunk at a New Year's Eve party in 1974.

In 1975, he founded Bridgewater Associates. Bridgewater started out as a wealth advisory firm, which served numerous corporate clients, mostly retained from Dalio's job at Shearson Hayden Stone. The company began publishing a paid subscription research report, Daily Observations, in which it analyzed global market trends. Dalio's big break came when McDonald's signed on as a client of his firm. Bridgewater then began to grow rapidly. The firm signed on larger clients, including the pension funds for the World Bank and Eastman Kodak. In 1981, the firm opened an office in Westport, Connecticut, which was where Ray and his wife wanted to start a family. Dalio started to become well known outside of Wall Street after turning a profit from the 1987 stock market crash. In 1991, he launched Bridgewater's flagship strategy, "Pure Alpha", a reference to the Greek letter that, in Wall Street terminology, represents the excess returns a money manager can create in addition to market returns when adjusted for risk. In 1996, Dalio launched All Weather, a fund that pioneered a steady, low-risk strategy that later became known as risk parity.

Bridgewater Associates became the world's largest hedge fund in 2005. In 2007, Bridgewater predicted the 2008 financial crisis, and in 2008, Dalio published "How the Economic Machine Works: A Template for Understanding What is Happening Now", an essay assessing the potential of various economies by various criteria.

In 2011, Dalio self-published a 123-page volume, Principles, that outlines his philosophy of investment and corporate management. In 2012, he appeared on the annual Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2011 and 2012, Bloomberg Markets listed him as one of the 50 Most Influential people.

According to Dalio, Bridgewater Associates is a "global macro firm", investing around economic trends, such as changes in exchange rates, inflation, and GDP growth. Dalio's strategy mainly focuses on currency and fixed income markets. Dalio also popularized the risk parity approach, which he uses for risk management and diversification within Bridgewater. Dalio began using the term "d-process" in February 2009 to describe the deleveraging and deflationary process of the subprime mortgage industry as distinct from a recession, and subsequently incorporated the term into his investment philosophy.

While Dalio has stated that capitalism is generally the best economic system, he has argued that it needs to be reformed. In July 2019, he again called for the refinement of capitalism and called wealth inequality a national emergency. In May 2020, he stressed the importance of reforming capitalism, not abandoning it.

In October 2020, Dalio cautioned people to not be blind to China's rise, arguing that it had continued to emerge as a superpower.

To follow the 2017 New York Times bestseller Principles: Life & Work, Dalio published an illustrated version in 2019 called Principles for Success. In 2018, Dalio published Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises. In 2021, he published Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order and produced a free online personality assessment called PrinciplesYou. In 2025, Dalio published How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle, which became a New York Times best seller.

Dalio lives with his wife Barbara, a descendant of sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, in Greenwich, Connecticut. They have four sons. Their oldest son, Devon, died in an automobile accident in 2020 at age 42. Their second son, Paul Dalio (born 1979), is a film director.

In 2014, he reportedly earned $1.1 billion, including a share of his firm's management and performance fees, cash compensation and stock and option awards. In 2015, Forbes estimated his net worth at $15.4 billion, making him the second-wealthiest hedge fund manager after George Soros. In 2018, Dalio was estimated to have personally received $2 billion in compensation for the year, after his fund posted a 14.6% return. In March 2019, Forbes named Dalio one of the highest-earning hedge fund managers and traders.

How the Economic Machine Works; A Template for Understanding What is Happening Now is Dalio's first book, published in 2007.

Principles: Life & Work is Dalio's second book, published in 2017 by Simon & Schuster. It was a New York Times #1 bestseller and Amazon's #1 business book of 2017. CNBC listed Principles among the 13 Best Business Books of 2017.

Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises is Dalio's third book, published in 2018.

The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail was published in 2021.

How Countries Go Broke, Principles for Navigating the Big Debt Cycle, Where We Are Headed, and What We Should Do published in 2025. It became a New York Times Best Seller.