Introduction
After his early career success as an investment trader and broker, Ray
Dalio started his own brokerage firm, Bridgewater, in 1975. His
achievements led him to become overconfident of his ability to predict the
financial market. After suffering several major setbacks—including losing
everything in the 1980s’ market crash—he humbled himself, learned from
his failures, and consistently documented and tested his decision-making
criteria to gain powerful insights about work and life.
Dalio stopped running Bridgewater top-down as the sole expert and
authority, and shifted to an idea meritocracy where the wisdom of