Skip to footer

Success is a double-edged sword, even for hedge fund moguls

Ray Dalio, the manager of the world's biggest hedge fund firm, has achieved hedge-fund-mogul status. His success comes with certain trappings and pitfalls, Brown writes.

|
Achmad Ibrahim/AP
A woman walks past an electronic stock board at the Jakarta Stock Exchange in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday. Ray Dalio is more than just a hedge fund manager, Brown writes.

Ray Dalio, with the winship of his hedge fund Bridgewater, has acquired a mystique of mythic proportions over the last year or two.  And with this success, the assets under management have followed.

And that unfortunate thing that happens with all managers who get really big, really quickly, has started to happen to him.

Here's a quick idea from a piece in Forbes about the wealthiest hedge fund managers in America:

The current king of the hedge fund industry, Ray Dalio, can be found in Westport Ct., where he lords over the world’s biggest hedge fund firm, Bridgewater Associates, with about $130 billion in assets. He scored spectacular returns in the 20% range last year at a time when most other hedge funds struggled. Dalio’s net worth is $10 billion. He has not been able to keep his winning streak going so far in 2012, with one of his most prominent funds down by nearly 3% through the first half of the year. Now at age 63, Dalio is ceding more responsibility and selling ownership stakes in his firm to his employees and clients. Also on the drawing board: A new $750 million headquarters that if it gets regulatory approval will be built by 2017 in Stamford, Ct., to accommodate more than 2,000 employees, nearly double the number of people currently working at the firm.

This is not to say that it's time to write Dalio off as an investment manager, but make no mistake - he is now more than just a manager.  He is now a hedge fund mogul, with all the trappings and pitfalls that come along with it.  It is interesting to note how this sort of thing becomes unavoidable, no matter who it happens to. The payrolls get bigger, there are more families depending on him to keep succeeding and obviously more investors.  Life gets harder, not easier, should he continue on in his current role.

Don't get me wrong, I'd trade places with him in a moment 

Source: America's Richest Hedge Fund Managers (Forbes)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Success is a double-edged sword, even for hedge fund moguls
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Reformed-Broker/2012/0921/Success-is-a-double-edged-sword-even-for-hedge-fund-moguls
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe