The fund Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the unraveling of a Wall Street legend

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.)

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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.