The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend

Nutty doctrine and cutthroat office politics prevailed at the world’s largest hedge fund, according to this searing debut exposé. New York Times reporter Copeland follows the career of Ray Dalio, founder of the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund, finding that contrary to the billionaire’s claims to have instituted a strictly rational trading system, decisions were often directed by Dalio’s haphazard guesses. (Dalio’s habit of seeing recessions around every corner often led to losing bets, Copeland argues.) Investigating the fund’s bizarre office politics, Copeland explains that Dalio implemented a “radical transparency” regime under which employees were compelled to rate each other on fuzzy metrics like “believability,” and new hires confessed their weaknesses while facing a totem pole. Surveillance was extensive; meetings were recorded and replayed to find expressions of wrong-think, and in one particularly egregious instance staffers were enlisted to monitor company urinals after Dalio spotted pee on the bathroom floor. Writing with droll aplomb, Copeland takes a torch to Dalio’s reputation as a Wall Street savant, instead finding him an egotistical billionaire with a penchant for cruelty (he once publicly reduced to tears an employee whose work he was dissatisfied with, shouting “You’re a dumb shit!... You don’t even know what you don’t know”). The result is a hugely entertaining depiction of unbridled wealth colliding with unhinged folly. (Nov.)