Bridgewater Associates has a reputation for being something of a cult. I do not have direct experience with Bridgewater or its founder Ray Dalio other than reading some of their research and thought pieces. So I’m not really qualified to weigh in on the cult aspect. What I do appreciate about Bridgewater’s culture is that it is fanatically process-oriented, to the point of resembling a spiritual quest. Check out these snips:

Now, this post is not meant as Bridgewater commercial. Bridgewater is simply a real-life example of firm that seeks to understand Truth, and has reaped the benefits of the process. If you understand the Truth of how the world operates, making money using that knowledge is trivial.

This might seem like a banal observation. I promise it is not. In my view a majority of investment organizations have it backward. They are focused on outcomes. The Truth of what caused those outcomes is irrelevant. It is easier from a business perspective to simply rationalize things in ways that appeal to clients. It is clients who pay the bills, after all.

The result is that investing becomes an endless performance chase. This is the finance equivalent of Buddhist samsara. It is an endless cycle of birth, suffering and death.

By now you might think I am off the deep end. Yet I am not the first person to connect practical issues in asset management to broader philosophical concepts. Patrick O’Shaughnessy has written an excellent post covering related subject matter, “Two Star Managers and the Wheel of Fortune.” In it he shares this Taoist story:

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit.

“Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“We’ll see,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses.

“How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“We’ll see,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

“We’ll see,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

“We’ll see” said the farmer.

As I was writing this I read an excellent piece by Morgan Housel discussing the impact of lived experience on investors’ views of financial markets and investment strategy. It includes this chart:

Here is a bridge from the Taoist story to our lived experience as investors. It illustrates how something as simple as the year we were born can have a dramatic impact on our lived experiences, and by implication our worldview. If we only ever filter the world and the markets through the lens of our personal experiences (and biases), we will see things as we would like to see them rather than how they truly are.

This may blind us to opportunity. It may also blind us to risk. Even thinking of “opportunity” and “risk” as discrete concepts can be reductive and limiting. Typically where there is risk there is also opportunity, and vice versa. This is especially true of investments that are out of favor or misunderstood. To this day, skilled structured credit investors are making good money off toxic mortgage-backed securities originated prior to the financial crisis. Since they have deep, objective knowledge of the securities and the market, they are able to see past the label of “toxic” to the underlying value.

If you can understand the Truth, making money is trivial.