Ray Dalio – NET WORTH $16.8 BILLION
Ray Dalio started his trading career with a $300 trade in Northeast Airlines and because there was a merger talk, Dalio tripled his investment very quickly.
This one successful trade hooked the young Dalio and a trading legend was born.
Dalio graduated from high school with a portfolio in the thousands, not a lot of money today but for teens back in the 1960’s, it was a good chunk of change.
The big problem was that he was not a stellar student and really had a hard time finding a college to attend.
Once he finally found a college, C.W. Post college in New York and although he continued to buy and sell stocks (a little more difficult today with the PDT), Ray also got hooked on commodity futures for the same reason many of us do: low margins.
As time went on, Ray excelled in college and eventually won admission into the Harvard Business School.
There is a lot we can add to a biography about Ray Dalio but I really want to keep it focused on a certain image for you – that you do not have to be the smartest or most capitalized trader to get on the road to success.
The Birth of Bridgewater And Associates
Ray eventually obtained an MBA and was proficient in trading commodities. Ray and some Harvard friends launched Bridgewater in 1975 and it never took off as anticipated. Ray held onto the company name as he clearly had bigger visions ahead.
Shearson Hayden Stone was where Ray was trading but disagreements with the higher ups forced Ray out. For some, this may have made them give up but for Ray, it was a different story. He reopened Bridgewater in his 2 bedroom apartment and had a handful of clients that he traded for.
1985 was a bright light in the career of Ray Dalio as he signed on to manage the World Bank retirement fund. Four years later, Ray added the Kodak’s retirement fund to his roster.
Growth continued and in 2016, assets under management was $150 billion. Not bad for a guy who was a below average high school student.
When you think that it’s too hard, remember that in the long run, doing the things that will make you successful is a lot easier than being unsuccessful
How The Economic Machine Works
Ray Dalio is an extraordinary thinker, a driven man, and somebody whose always pushing for first place. I don’t think there are many people who can trump Ray when it comes to the intricate details about how the economic machine – what drives the economy – works.
Ray Dalio Is About Goal Setting
I think another thing that sets Ray Dailo apart is that he does not think the way most people do and operates on a sound base of principles. He takes a more critical eye and with a never say die attitude like Ray, more people could start to attain goals that they see in their mind.
I believe that life consists of an enormous number of choices that come at us and that each decision we make has consequences, so the quality of our lives depends on the quality of the decisions we make.
I think most of us look back at some of the choices we have made and can see a direct relationship between where we are and the choice we made.
People who worry about looking good typically hide what they don’t know and hide their weaknesses, so they never learn how to properly deal with them and these weaknesses remain impediments in the future
I think we can learn a lot from Ray Dalio and other trader success stories and here is a quote that speaks about learning from others.
I believe that you can probably get what you want out of life if you can suspend your ego and take a no-excuses approach to achieving your goals with open-mindedness, determination, and courage, especially if you rely on the help of people who are strong in areas that you are weak.
In a nutshell, here are 5 steps to success that Ray Dalio would tell you if you were sitting next to him:
- Have clear goals.
- Identify and don’t tolerate the problems that stand in the way of achieving your goals.
- Accurately diagnose these problems.
- Design plans that explicitly lay out tasks that will get you around your problems and on to your goals.
- Implement these plans—i.e., do these tasks.
My Favorite Ray Dalio Quotes
You may find that you can learn a lot simply by listening to a few key statements from successful people like Ray.
The biggest mistake most people make is to not see themselves and others objectively.
Avoid setting goals based on what you think you can achieve.
Never say anything about a person you wouldn’t say to them directly, and don’t try people without accusing them to their face.
People without records of success who are nonetheless confident about how things should be done are either naïve or arrogant. In either case, they’re potentially dangerous to themselves and others.
By and large, life will give you what you deserve and it doesn’t give a damn what you like. So it is up to you to take full responsibility to connect what you want with what you need to do to get it, and then to do those things.
I believe that for the most part, achieving success — whatever that is for you — is mostly a matter of personal choice and that, initially, making the right choices can be difficult.
It is a law of nature that you must do difficult things to gain strength and power. As with working out, after a while you make the connection between doing difficult things and the benefits you get from doing them, and you come to look forward to doing these difficult things
Ask yourself whether you have earned the right to have an opinion. Opinions are easy to produce, so bad ones abound. Knowing that you don’t know something is nearly as valuable as knowing it. The worst situation is thinking you know something when you don’t.
Be wary of the arrogant intellectual who comments from the stands without having played on the field.
Unlike in school, in life you don’t have to come up with all the right answers. You can ask the people around you for help — or even ask them to do the things you don’t do well. In other words, there is almost no reason not to succeed if you take the attitude of One: total flexibility — good answers can come from anyone or anywhere. Two: Total accountability. Regardless of where the good answers come from, it’s your job to find them.
There are far more good answers “out there” than there are in you.
People tend to think that my success, or whatever you want to call it, has been because I’m a really good decision-maker. I think it is actually because I’m less confident in making decisions. So in other words, I never know anything really. Everything is a probability.
That wraps it up about Ray Dalio.
Posted in