The Svengali of Westport, Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, teaches that we must hold people accountable and not let them off the hook. That we should not feel bad about mistakes but love them, getting over “blame” and “credit” and getting on with “accurate” and “inaccurate,” while at the same time recognizing that the responsible party is the person who bears the consequences of what is done. That’s unfortunate, because no lesser a personage than some guy at the Securities and Exchange Commission says that Bridgewater’s 20.6% drop this year is totally not its fault.
Alexei Orlov of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Massimo Guidolin of the Bocconi University in Italy tested 10 investing strategies against 18 unconventional monetary policy announcements from the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank between 2008 and 2016…. hey found monetary policies are directly hitting more than half of the strategies, and indirectly whiplashing virtually the entire industry.
On the other hand, Bridgewater’s been played a little fast and loose with its Principles lately, so maybe it can just take a pass this time. Those actually bearing the consequences of what’s been done—its investors—are less lucky.
Hedge Funds Really Can Blame Fed for Wrecking Their Strategies [Bloomberg]
Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater flagship fund tanks 21% as quants resume slump [FN]