Ray Dalio: ” How to be a successful investor”

If you are going to take investing advice from anybody, Ray Dalio is a good bet.

Dalio founded investment firm Bridgewater Associates out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City in 1975. Currently, Bridgewater Associates has $160 billion in assets under management, making it the largest hedge fund in the world.

According to Dalio, “diversifying well is the most important thing you need to do in order to invest well.”

By diversifying, Dalio means spreading out your money into different kinds of investments, such as stocks, bonds, commodities, real estate, etc.

Dalio said in the 2016 book “Money Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom” by Tony Robbins that a well-diversified portfolio might include 30 percent allocated to stocks, 40 percent to long-term U.S. bonds, 15 percent to intermediate U.S. bonds, 7.5 percent to gold and 7.5 percent to other commodities. A typical portfolio split of half stocks and half bonds is not really diversified, according to Dalio.

Diversification is important because there is so much you don’t know when you are putting your money in an investment, Dalio said.

So “while you can’t know which of the items you are betting on will provide better results,” Dalio said, if you diversify properly, “you do know that they will behave differently, and by mixing them appropriately you can reduce risk.

Source: CNBC