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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

Everything Ray Dalio writes he presents like the prophet come down from high to give us the Sacred Truths.

Dalio is a successful trader and is beyond wealthy. He’s a smart guy who has a true interest in history. But he is just one opinion of many and he is absolutely not saying things that are uniquely known to him.

I read the whole thing and it’s like, “Powerful countries decline! Declining power leads to social strife!” No shit dude.

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It's not just that Dalio is a "successful trader." He runs the world's largest hedge fund and their expertise is in predicting global macroeconomic trends. His experience is directly relevant.

You know successful hedge funds profit more from insider trading than from any kind of analytical wizardry, right?

Could you provide a source on this?

Lol. Dalio is too big to bother with insider trading. With $160bill under management, that leaves like what, ~50 companies he can't just buy outright in the entire world?

Please stop watching Billions and thinking it represents anything close to reality.

Billions is absolutely based on reality. Steve Cohen / SAC Capital.

As if hedge funds only trade stocks. As if LIBOR was the only thing ever fixed.

He can't buy all the companies. That's only 1% of just the NYSE market cap.

What is the max size of asset that can profit 4%/yr alpha from insider trading?

I think he means any of the companies, not all at once. And I'll note again that stock picking is not what their fund does anyway.

I’m just not impressed by what he writes about in regards to “universal principles of world history”. His credentials don’t make me assume everything he writes is true and what he writes is long winded and obvious.

Glad it's not just me. I'm halfway through reading the linked post, and it seems like he hasn't yet gotten to the point.

It's the introductory chapter of a book.

He would be the first to tell you to do your own research. Not sure why you attribute prophecy to Ray's writings; he has repeatedly said to consider all information.

I'd read his books on debt cycles. It's novel thinking. Not necessarily correct, but fairly well-researched and presents data in a different view. Nowhere does he say to take the advice as gospel.

It's a short, introductory LinkedIn article. If you want more depth, start with his recent book on debt cycles. I'm guessing his next book will have more as well.

I agree that no one insight in this essay is especially surprising. But I think the right way to think about this is Paul Graham's framework http://www.paulgraham.com/sun.html. Paul points out that if you are talking about very general topics, even a small delta of novelty is useful.

I think that describes Ray's work here well. He is talking about a very general topic (the narrative arc of history). It's hard to say anything completely new about a topic like that, but something that is only slightly new is still valuable.

I agree. Find me ONE, just ONE commentator, sage, whatever you want to call them - find me one whose grand predictions actually came true.

Sure, there are instances of people being right, but I'm talking about "sage" characters that are going around doing interviews and such.

I agree, but I find his methodology a lot more refreshing than other similar opinion pieces, who barely tries to look at data or give context to their claims (history).

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