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

by Rob Copeland

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The kind of story that opens a lot of people’s eyes, The Fund exposes Ray Dalio for who he really is, pulling no punches as it points the finger at not just him, but all the guilty parties that allowed any of this to happen. It’s a biting narrative of corruption, greed and power, and it’s all true.

The unauthorized, unvarnished story of famed Wall Street hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio. An instant New York Times bestseller!

Ray Dalio does not want you to read this book.

Late last year, when the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund on the planet, announced that he was stepping down from the company he started out of his apartment nearly 50 years ago, the news made headlines around the world. Dalio cultivated an aura of international admiration and fame thanks to his company’s eye-popping success, coupled with a mystique he encouraged with frequent media appearances, celebrity hobnobbing, and his bestselling book, Principles. In The Fund, award-winning New York Times journalist Rob Copeland punctures this carefully-constructed narrative of the benevolent business titan, exposing his much-promoted “principles” as one of the great feats of hubris in modern memory—in practice, they encouraged a toxic culture of paranoia and backstabbing.

The Fund is a page-turning, stranger-than-fiction journey into a rarefied world of wealth and power. It offers an unflinching look at the pain so often caused by the “radical transparency” Dalio has described as a core tenet of his recipe for business success and a meaningful life. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with those inside and around the firm, Copeland takes readers into the room as former FBI director Jim Comey kisses Dalio's ring, recent Pennsylvania Senate candidate David McCormick drinks the Kool-Aid, and a rotating cast of memorable characters grapple with their personal psychological and moral limits—all under the watchful eye of their charismatic leader.

This is a cautionary tale for anyone convinced that the ability to make lots of money has anything at all to do with unlocking the principles of human nature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250276933
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/07/2023
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	11,022
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Rob Copeland is a finance reporter for the New York Times. He was previously the longtime hedge-fund beat reporter at the Wall Street Journal, and his reporting has also covered Silicon Valley and the hidden worlds of the wealthy and powerful. His front-page investigations into Bridgewater Associates won a New York Press Club award; he was also awarded an honorable mention twice by the Society of American Business Writers (SABEW) and was named a News Media Alliance "Rising Star" (formerly "Top 30 Under 30"). He has appeared on ABC’s "Good Morning America," NPR and other major news networks.

Editorial Reviews

12/11/2023

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.)

Publishers Weekly

“This is a terrific dagger of a book packed with cringey detail...one of the better books ever written about Wall Street.…The Fund is the perfect rage-read.”
—New York Times Book Review

“At last, the era of the billionaire philosopher-king has a defining book. The Fund is a taut, nonfiction thriller."
—Bryan Burrough, author of Barbarians at the Gate

“A classic American story about the most famous man on Wall Street—or the person he seems to be. The Fund manages to both shock and entertain at the same time.”
—Philipp Meyer, bestselling author of American Rust and The Son

"The most explosive, mind-blowing business book I've ever read—and the most fun, too."
—Bradley Hope, co-author of the New York Times bestseller Billion Dollar Whale and Pulitzer Prize finalist

“Devastating…full of delectably awful anecdotes.”
—Bethany McLean, bestselling author of The Smartest Guys in the Room

“Writing with droll aplomb, Copeland takes a torch to Dalio’s reputation as a Wall Street savant…the result is a hugely entertaining depiction of unbridled wealth colliding with unhinged folly.”
—Publishers Weekly

"A closely observed investigation...Copeland's history of the firm benefits from deep sourcing, drawing on new on-the-record interviews, internal documents, and multiple leaked e-mails...[offering] a vivid snapshot of Dalio's psyche."
—The New Yorker

“An unsettling exposé of a leading investment fund.…A vivid portrait of soul-killing micromanagement in a ruthless corporate setting.”
—Kirkus

"A jaw-dropping narrative...Financial reporter Rob Copeland has written a book that blows apart the mystique of Bridgewater and the man at its center. The Fund manages the improbable task of living up to its strapline of 'unravelling' a Wall Street legend."
—Financial Times

“Weird.”
—Fortune

"Copeland's gripping book exposes the cult-like culture at Ray Dalio's Bridgewater Associates."
—Spear's

"An epic page-turner...reads like the slimmest of thrillers."
—The Messenger

“A hedge fund horror story.”
—The Australian

"A page-turning portrait of a bully and bullshit artist—and, more fundamentally, a damning indictment of the elite compulsion to conflate wealth with genius."
—The Lever

From the Publisher

2023-11-07
An unsettling exposé of a leading investment fund.

As Copeland writes, during his time at the company’s helm, Ray Dalio (b. 1949), founder of Bridgewater Associates, “was said to have prodigious skill at spotting, and making money from, big-picture global economic or political changes, such as when a country would raise its interest rate or cut taxes.” The dominant ethos was a near-religious belief in Dalio’s brilliance, a sentiment he reinforced by developing a series of edicts called “The Principles” and assorted mantras, such as “Pain + Reflection = Progress.” He was not at all shy, reportedly, of using abusive language (“You’re a dumb shit!”) with employees not sufficiently steeped in these tenets or who otherwise displeased him. Bridgewater became a revolving door for hundreds of would-be brokers and traders who couldn’t stand the abuse, while its corporate culture spawned a system of accusation and self-criticism that Mao’s Red Guards might have admired: “When employees identified imperfections, they were directed to memorialize the moment in the ‘issue log,’ an internal registry visible to all that tracked all complaints large and small.” Employees, in the words of one manager, “have been speaking to me directly about being insecure in their jobs and a fear that any day they could be fired.” Interestingly, James Comey, later to become director of the FBI, was one of Dalio’s chief enforcers (for $7 million per year), even as employees were required to keep iPads containing The Principles with them at all times. In the end, the cultic distractions seem to have overcome the fundamentals, for, Copeland charges, Dalio’s chief legacy has been a “long streak of shaky investment performance” and a steady decline in his own prominence—even if he is still worth more than $15 billion.

A vivid portrait of soul-killing micromanagement in a ruthless corporate setting.

Kirkus Reviews