Dalio uses real historical data to reveal a disturbing fact: in the past century, the wealth of seven out of ten major powers was nearly wiped out at least once—and most investors have never studied this history. At a time of increasing friction in the global order, the reference value of this analytical framework far exceeds that of typical macro commentary.
Full text follows:Last week, I shared a chapter from my 2021 book *Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order*, detailing the classic signals and evolutionary processes to watch for during the breakdown of the world’s geopolitical order in what I call the “Big Cycle.” The article was very popular, receiving over 75 million views, with many asking what this means for investing.
Due to the high volume of inquiries, I am now sharing the next chapter from the book—*Investing in the Big Cycle*—with everyone. I believe it is helpful for the current investment perspective. You can read the full chapter below.
Additionally, since many are interested in my investment principles, I will be sharing them over the coming weeks. If you wish to receive notifications for these releases, please subscribe to my newsletter *Principles Perspectives* or sign up for email alerts.
My strategy for dealing with life and my career is to try to figure out how the world works, develop principles for dealing with it accordingly, and then position myself. The research I share in this book was done for that purpose.
Naturally, when I review everything covered up to this point, I think about how to apply it to investing. To feel confident that I’m doing well, I need to know how my approach would have performed in history. If I can’t confidently explain what happened in the past, or at least don’t have a strategy for dealing with what I don’t know, I consider that a dangerous oversight.
As my research from the past 500 years to the present reveals, there have been big cycles of wealth and power accumulation and loss throughout history, with the biggest contributing factor being the debt and capital market cycles. From an investor’s perspective, this can be called the “Big Investment Cycle.” I believe it’s necessary to fully understand these cycles to tactically move or diversify a portfolio to protect against them or profit from them. By understanding these cycles and ideally judging where countries are within their cycles, I can do that.
In my roughly 50-year career as a global macro investor, I have discovered many universal truths across time and geography that form my investment principles. While I won’t delve into all of them here—I’ll discuss most in my next book, *Principles for the Economy and Investing*—I want to convey one important principle.
All markets are primarily driven by four factors: growth, inflation, risk premiums, and discount rates.
This is because all investments are essentially an exchange between a one-time payment today and future payments. Future cash payments are determined by growth and inflation; how much risk investors are willing to take relative to holding cash is the risk premium; and what those future payments are worth today—their “present value”—is determined by the discount rate.
Changes in these four determinants drive changes in investment returns. Tell me how each of these four factors will evolve, and I can tell you how investments will perform. Understanding this allows me to know how to connect what’s happening in the world with what’s happening in the markets, and vice versa. It also shows me how to balance my investments so that the portfolio is not biased toward any particular environment, which is precisely the method for achieving good diversification.
Governments influence these factors through fiscal and monetary policies. Therefore, the interaction between what governments want to happen and what actually happens is what drives the cycles. For example, when growth and inflation are too low, central banks create more money and credit growth, generating purchasing power, first leading to faster economic growth, and then, with a lag, inflation also rises. When central banks restrict money and credit growth, the opposite happens: both economic growth and inflation slow down.
There is a difference between what central governments and central banks do to drive market returns and economic conditions. Central governments decide where the money they use comes from and where it goes because they can tax and spend, but they cannot create money and credit. Central banks can create money and credit but cannot decide where in the real economy that money and credit go. The actions of central governments and central banks affect the buying and selling of goods, services, and investment assets, pushing their prices up or down.
For me, each investment asset reflects these drivers in its own way, consistent with the logic of its impact on future cash flows. Each investment asset is a building block of a portfolio; the challenge is to combine them rationally considering these factors.
For example, when growth is stronger than expected, all else being equal, stock prices may rise; when both growth and inflation are higher than expected, bond prices may fall.
My goal is to combine these building blocks into a well-diversified portfolio that is tactically tilted based on world events that are happening or will happen, affecting these four drivers. These building blocks can be broken down by country, by environmental preference, all the way down to the industry and individual company level. When this concept is applied to a balanced portfolio, the effect is as shown in the chart below. It is through this lens that I examine historical events, market history, and portfolio behavior.
I know my approach differs from that of most investors for two reasons. First, most investors don’t look for analogous periods in history because they believe history and past investment returns are largely irrelevant to them. Second, they don’t view investment returns through the lens I just described. I believe these perspectives give me and Bridgewater a competitive advantage, but whether to adopt them is up to you.
Most investors set expectations based on their own lifetime experiences; a smaller, more diligent group looks back in history to see how their decision rules would have worked in the 1950s or 1960s. Not a single investor I know, nor a single senior economic policymaker I know—and I know many, including the best—has an excellent understanding of what happened in the past and why. Most investors who look at longer-term returns view the returns of the US and UK (the countries that won World War I and World War II) as representative data.
That’s because not many stock and bond markets survived after World War II. But these countries and periods are not representative because they suffer from survivorship bias. Looking at US and UK returns is looking at uniquely fortunate countries during the best part of the Big Cycle. Not examining what happened in other countries and earlier periods creates a distorted perspective.
Reasoning logically from what is known about the Big Cycle, when we extend our view forward a few decades and examine what happened in different places, we get a startlingly different perspective. I will show this because I think you should be aware of it.
In the 35 years before 1945, nearly all wealth in most countries was destroyed or confiscated; in some countries, when capital markets and capitalism collapsed along with other aspects of the old order, many capitalists were killed or imprisoned, stemming from anger towards them.
If we look back over the past few centuries, we see such extreme boom/bust cycles occurring regularly—periods of capital and capitalist prosperity (like the Second Industrial Revolution and Gilded Age in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) followed by transition periods (like the 1900-1910s with increased internal conflict and intensified international competition for wealth and power), leading to periods of great conflict and economic depression (similar to those that occurred between 1910 and 1945).
We can also see that the causal relationships behind those boom and bust periods are more similar today to the depression and restructuring periods at the end of the cycle than to the early prosperity and building periods.
My goal is simply to see and understand what happened in the past and then do my best to show it to you. That’s what I will now try to do. I will start from around 1350, although the story begins long before that.
The Big Cycle of Capitalism and سوقسBefore around 1350, interest-bearing loans were prohibited by Christianity and Islam—and within Jewish communities by Judaism—because they caused serious problems: human nature led people to borrow more than they could repay, creating tension between borrowers and lenders, often leading to violence. Due to the lack of lending, money was “hard money” (gold and silver). About a century later, during the Age of Exploration, explorers traveled the world, collecting gold, silver, and other hard assets to accumulate more wealth. This was how the greatest wealth was accumulated at the time. Explorers and their financiers split the profits, an effective incentive-based system for getting rich.
The alchemy of lending as we know it today was first created around 1350 in Italy. Lending rules changed, and new types of money were created: cash deposits, bonds, and stocks, in forms very similar to what we know today. Wealth became promises to pay money—what I call “financial wealth.”
Think about the enormous impact of the invention and development of bond and stock markets. Before that, all wealth was tangible. Think about how much more “financial wealth” creating these markets created. To imagine the difference, consider: how much “wealth” would you have now if promises of future payments from your cash deposits, stocks, and bonds didn’t exist? You would have almost nothing, you would feel bankrupt, and you would behave differently—for example, you would accumulate more savings in tangible wealth. That’s roughly what it was like before cash deposits, bonds, and stocks were created.
With the invention and growth of financial wealth, money was no longer constrained by its link to gold and silver. With fewer constraints on money, credit, and purchasing power, it became common practice for entrepreneurs with good ideas to start companies, borrow, and/or sell shares in their companies to get the funding they needed. They were able to do this because promises to pay became money in the form of ledger entries.
Around 1350, those who could do this—most famously the Medici family in Florence—could create money. If you could create credit—say, five times the actual money (which banks could do)—you could generate a lot of purchasing power, so you no longer needed as much of other types of money (gold and silver). The creation of new types of money was, and still is, a form of alchemy. Those who could create and use it—bankers, entrepreneurs, and capitalists—became very wealthy and powerful.
This process of expanding financial wealth has continued to the present day, with financial wealth becoming so large that hard money (gold and silver) and other tangible wealth (like real estate) have become relatively unimportant. But of course, the more promises exist in the form of financial wealth, the greater the risk that these promises cannot be kept. This is the cause of the classic big debt/money/economic cycle. Think about how much financial wealth exists relative to real wealth, and imagine you and others holding financial wealth actually trying to convert it into real wealth—i.e., sell it and buy something. It’s like a bank run. It can’t happen. The value of bonds and stocks is too large relative to what they can buy. But remember, under a fiat money system, central banks can print money to provide the currency needed to meet demand. This is a universal truth across time and geography.
Also remember that paper money and financial assets (like stocks and bonds), which are essentially promises to pay, aren’t very useful in themselves; what’s useful is only what they can buy.
As discussed in detail in Chapter 3, when credit is created, purchasing power is created along with the promise to pay, so it is stimulative in the short term and depressive in the long term. This creates cycles. Throughout history, the desire to obtain money (by borrowing or selling stock) has existed in a symbiotic relationship with the desire to store money (by lending or buying stock as an investment). This leads to growth in the form of purchasing power, eventually producing far more promises of payment than can be delivered, and crises of broken promises in the form of debt-default depressions and stock market crashes.
At such times, bankers and capitalists were literally and figuratively hanged, vast amounts of wealth and lives were destroyed, and large amounts of fiat money (money that can be printed and has no intrinsic value) were printed to try to alleviate the crises.
The Complete Picture of the Big Cycle from an Investor’s PerspectiveWhile it would be too burdensome for me and you to review all relevant history from 1350 to the present, I will show you what it would have been like if you had invested starting in 1900. But before that, I want to explain how I view risk, as I will emphasize these risks in what follows.
In my view, investment risk is the inability to earn enough money to meet your needs, not volatility as measured by standard deviation—though the latter is almost exclusively used as the measure of risk.
For me, the three biggest risks most investors face are: the portfolio failing to provide the returns needed to meet spending needs, the portfolio being destroyed, and most wealth being confiscated (e.g., through high taxes).
While the first two risks sound similar, they are actually different because it’s possible to have an average return higher than needed while simultaneously experiencing one or more devastating large losses.
To gain perspective, I imagine being dropped into 1900 and seeing how my investments would have fared in each decade since then. I chose to examine the 10 most powerful countries in 1900, skipping less developed countries that were more prone to bad outcomes. In reality, any of these countries was or could have become a great wealthy empire; they were all reasonable places to invest, especially when one wanted a diversified portfolio.
Seven of these 10 countries experienced at least one episode where wealth was almost completely destroyed, and even those that didn’t see wealth destroyed experienced decades of terrible asset returns that nearly led to financial ruin. Two great developed countries—Germany and Japan, which one might easily have bet on to be winners at times—saw almost all their wealth destroyed in the two world wars, with many lives lost. I have seen many other countries with similar outcomes. The US and UK (and a few other countries) were particularly successful cases, but even they experienced periods of massive wealth destruction.
If I hadn’t examined returns from the period before the new world order began in 1945, I wouldn’t have seen these destruction periods. If I hadn’t looked back at 500 years of global history, I wouldn’t have seen this happen repeatedly almost everywhere.
The numbers shown in the following table are the annualized real returns for each decade, meaning losses over the entire decade are roughly eight times the shown number, and gains are roughly 15 times the shown number.
Perhaps the following chart provides a clearer picture, showing the proportion of major countries with a 60/40 stock/bond portfolio that suffered losses over five-year periods.
The following table details the worst-case scenarios for investing in major countries. You’ll notice the US does not appear on this table because it is not among the worst cases. The US, Canada, and Australia were the only countries that did not experience sustained loss periods.
Naturally, I think about how I would have coped if I were living through those periods. I can say with certainty that even if I had seen the signs of what was coming that I convey in this book, I would never have had the confidence to predict such terrible outcomes—as mentioned, seven out of ten countries saw their wealth wiped out. At the beginning of the 20th century, even those looking back at the past few decades would never have foreseen this, because based
هذا المقال مصدره من الانترنت: Ray Dalio: The Light of the Grand Investment Cycle Related: Prediction Market Competition Heats Up, Hyperliquid Enters Strongly with “Outcomes” Hyperliquid, which firmly holds the top position in the crypto derivatives track, is now attempting to extend its reach into another trillion-dollar market on the cusp of explosive growth: prediction markets. Today, Hyperliquid officially announced the testing of a new feature called “Outcomes.” This news directly ignited excitement in the secondary market, with its native token HYPE recording a gain of over 10% within 24 hours, breaking through the $30 mark. At a time when Polymarket dominates on-chain traffic and Kalshi, in partnership with Coinbase, is capturing the compliant market, Hyperliquid’s entry is far from a simple “bandwagon” move. Instead, it leverages its absolute advantage in native underlying performance to redefine the rules of the game. What is Outcomes According to the official HIP-4 proposal, Outcomes (Result Contracts) are not… تحليل #تبادل ## السوق© 版权声明المصفوفة 上一篇 Why Do 85% of Token Launches Ultimately Become Expensive "Funerals"? 下一篇 BTC Starts the Year on a Sour Note, Plunging and Then Drifting Lower; Is the Market Bottoming? 相关文章 In-depth research report on AI+ encrypted payment: Building a value transfer engine in the era of intelligent finance 6086cf14eb90bc67ca4fc62b 28٬036 1 KOGE and ZKJ closed overnight, and Binance Alpha was forced to grow 6086cf14eb90bc67ca4fc62b 26٬560 3 Aethir unveils its 12-month strategic roadmap to accelerate the construction of global AI enterprise computing infrastructure. Aethir’s 12-month roadmap 6086cf14eb90bc67ca4fc62b 19٬922 5 Behind 27,000 Transactions: The Survival Algorithm and Illusion of High Win Rates of Polymarket Whales 6086cf14eb90bc67ca4fc62b 12٬045 1 Conversation with Cathie Wood: Eight Insights on the 2026 Grand Plan 6086cf14eb90bc67ca4fc62b 7٬786 1 Arkstream Capital: When Crypto Assets Return to “Financial Logic” in 2025 6086cf14eb90bc67ca4fc62b 17٬709 بدون تعليقات يجب عليك تسجيل الدخول لتترك تعليق! تسجيل الدخول على الفور بدون تعليقات... Bee.com أكبر بوابة Web3 في العالم الشركاء كوين كارب بينانس CoinMarketCap كوين جيكو كوين لايف الدروع قم بتنزيل تطبيق Bee Network وابدأ رحلة web3 ورق ابيض الأدوار التعليمات © 2021-2026. جميع الحقوق محفوظة. سياسة الخصوصية | شروط الخدمة تحميل تطبيق Bee Network وابدأ رحلة web3 أكبر بوابة Web3 في العالم الشركاء CoinCarp Binance CoinMarketCap CoinGecko Coinlive Armors ورق ابيض الأدوار التعليمات © 2021-2026. جميع الحقوق محفوظة. سياسة الخصوصية | شروط الخدمة يبحث يبحثفي الموقععلى تشيناجتماعيأخبار العنوان: صيادو الإنزال الجوي تحليل البيانات مشاهير التشفير كاشف الفخ العربية English 繁體中文 简体中文 日本語 Tiếng Việt 한국어 Bahasa Indonesia हिन्दी اردو Русский العربية智能索引记录
-
2026-03-02 16:24:58
游戏娱乐
成功
标题:琼斯上尉的私藏_琼斯上尉的私藏html5游戏_4399h5游戏-4399小游戏
简介:琼斯上尉的私藏在线玩,琼斯上尉的私藏下载, 琼斯上尉的私藏攻略秘籍.更多琼斯上尉的私藏游戏尽在4399小游戏,好玩记得告
-
2026-03-02 06:32:36
教育培训
成功
标题:书呆子作文500字
简介:在平平淡淡的学习、工作、生活中,大家都接触过作文吧,作文可分为小学作文、中学作文、大学作文(论文)。怎么写作文才能避免踩
-
2026-03-02 09:46:21
游戏娱乐
成功
标题:游戏图片_纵览出彩的游戏世界_3DM图片
简介:游戏世界给我们带来了一幅又一幅精彩的画面,3DM游戏图片频道将这些出彩的画面进行收集整理,让每一位来3DM的玩家都能够找
-
2026-03-02 10:29:50
综合导航
成功
标题:Leath v. World English Historical Dictionary
简介:Leath v. World English Historical Dictionary
-
2026-03-02 09:59:33
综合导航
成功
标题:ECJ defines database right - 5RB Barristers
简介:ECJ defines database right - News
-
2026-03-02 13:41:06
综合导航
成功
标题:AI智能索引 - AI智能索引
简介:AI智能索引 - 提供全网公开链接智能索引服务,快速访问目标内容,支持分类筛选和智能导航
-
2026-03-02 14:19:11
综合导航
成功
标题:快乐的夏天作文集锦
简介:摘要:夏天,在许多人眼里除了炎热还是炎热,但是在我的眼里,夏天却是一个快乐的季节早上起来,就可以看到万里 如果觉得写得不
-
2026-03-02 14:55:03
综合导航
成功
标题:General Meetings & Shareholder Information TP
简介:General meeting. The annual general meeting is a key moment
-
2026-03-02 16:55:15
综合导航
成功
标题:Flavius Honorius (384-423). The Reader's Biographical Encyclopaedia. 1922
简介:Flavius Honorius (384-423). The Reader
-
2026-03-02 10:02:15
新闻资讯
成功
标题:34楼 - 优质资源分享
简介:34楼是一家资源网站,主要为用户提供赚钱资源,谈天说地,小吃美食,历史相关,游戏资讯,信用卡,站长资讯,社交电商,积分,
-
2026-03-02 17:13:19
游戏娱乐
成功
标题:武器:掠食者弓-日之印_ 刺客信条英灵殿攻略_全支线任务全收集攻略_图文全攻略_3DM单机
简介:《刺客信条:英灵殿》图文全攻略,全支线任务全收集攻略(含“通关剧情流程”“全支线任务/全结局”“全收集攻略”)。《刺客信
-
2026-03-02 11:34:17
综合导航
成功
标题:征文大赛_作文网
简介:作文网征文大赛频道提供大量征文大赛精选小学生、初中生、高中生征文作品,包含各种征文大赛精选,欢迎投稿发表您的作文。
-
2026-03-02 12:02:37
新闻资讯
成功
标题:【45平米全包装修预算】_别墅设计网
简介:45平米全包装修预算:为您提供最好的45平米全包装修预算相关资讯及内容!了解45平米全包装修预算怎么样知识,尽在别墅设计
-
2026-03-02 16:38:13
综合导航
成功
标题:ç½åªçæ¼é³_ç½åªçææ_ç½åªçç¹ä½_è¯ç»ç½
简介:è¯ç»ç½ç½åªé¢é,ä»ç»ç½åª,ç½åªçæ¼é³,ç½åªæ¯
-
2026-03-02 12:16:29
教育培训
成功
标题:人间真情作文600字汇编(3篇)
简介:在日复一日的学习、工作或生活中,大家一定都接触过作文吧,通过作文可以把我们那些零零散散的思想,聚集在一块。那么你知道一篇
-
2026-03-02 15:58:38
综合导航
成功
标题:笔趣阁_书友最值得收藏的免费小说阅读网
简介:笔趣阁是广大书友最值得收藏的免费小说阅读网,网站收录了当前最火热的免费小说,免费提供高质量的小说最新章节,是广大免费小说
-
2026-03-02 11:46:03
教育培训
成功
标题:与人的作文300字[优选10篇]
简介:在学习、工作、生活中,说到作文,大家肯定都不陌生吧,作文是人们把记忆中所存储的有关知识、经验和思想用书面形式表达出来的记
-
2026-03-02 12:12:56
图片素材
成功
标题:商大的作文450字 描写商大的作文 关于商大的作文-作文网
简介:作文网精选关于商大的450字作文,包含商大的作文素材,关于商大的作文题目,以商大为话题的450字作文大全,作文网原创名师
-
2026-03-02 16:59:28
游戏娱乐
成功
标题:充值中心 - 浙江传奇游戏平台
简介:浙江传奇游戏充值中心为玩家提供最专业的充值方式,便捷的充值操作流程,保护玩家充值安全
-
2026-03-02 12:18:59
综合导航
成功
标题:长沙职工医保门诊可以报销吗-门诊报销流程-果果圈模板
简介:长沙市实施职工医保门诊共济保障,并正式开展职工医保普通门诊统筹,这意味着,职工医保在医院看门诊的费用可以享受医保报销了。
-
2026-03-02 16:25:35
综合导航
成功
标题:è¾å¸çæ¼é³_è¾å¸çææ_è¾å¸çç¹ä½_è¯ç»ç½
简介:è¯ç»ç½è¾å¸é¢é,ä»ç»è¾å¸,è¾å¸çæ¼é³,è¾å¸æ¯
-
2026-03-02 17:06:08
综合导航
成功
标题:äºæ¦çæ¼é³_äºæ¦çææ_äºæ¦çç¹ä½_è¯ç»ç½
简介:è¯ç»ç½äºæ¦é¢é,ä»ç»äºæ¦,äºæ¦çæ¼é³,äºæ¦æ¯
-
2026-03-02 10:29:53
游戏娱乐
成功
标题:绚彩俄罗斯方块,绚彩俄罗斯方块小游戏,4399小游戏 www.4399.com
简介:绚彩俄罗斯方块在线玩,绚彩俄罗斯方块下载, 绚彩俄罗斯方块攻略秘籍.更多绚彩俄罗斯方块游戏尽在4399小游戏,好玩记得告
-
2026-03-02 15:33:15
图片素材
成功
标题:哭过的作文2000字 描写哭过的作文 关于哭过的作文-作文网
简介:作文网精选关于哭过的2000字作文,包含哭过的作文素材,关于哭过的作文题目,以哭过为话题的2000字作文大全,作文网原创
-
2026-03-02 14:23:22
金融理财
成功
标题:诺信理财投资(诺信理财的钱还能回来吗)_火必 Huobi交易所
简介:本篇文章给大家谈谈诺信理财投资,以及诺信理财的钱还能回来吗对应的知识点,希望对各位有所帮助,不要忘了收藏本站喔。 本文目
-
2026-03-02 17:29:49
综合导航
成功
标题:Studio Display - Technical Specifications - Apple (IN)
简介:View all technical specifications for the 68.29-centimetre (
-
2026-03-02 10:23:21
图片素材
成功
标题:场景的作文900字 描写场景的作文 关于场景的作文-作文网
简介:作文网精选关于场景的900字作文,包含场景的作文素材,关于场景的作文题目,以场景为话题的900字作文大全,作文网原创名师
-
2026-03-02 13:56:37
实用工具
成功
标题:实用的初中的作文【共3篇】
简介:无论是身处学校还是步入社会,大家总少不了接触作文吧,作文是通过文字来表达一个主题意义的记叙方法。你知道作文怎样写才规范吗
-
2026-03-02 16:37:41
游戏娱乐
成功
标题:阿sue做巧克力棒H5_阿sue做巧克力棒H5html5游戏_4399h5游戏-4399小游戏
简介:阿sue做巧克力棒H5在线玩,阿sue做巧克力棒H5下载, 阿sue做巧克力棒H5攻略秘籍.更多阿sue做巧克力棒H5游
-
2026-03-02 11:34:13
教育培训
成功
标题:母爱的力量作文600字(精选40篇)
简介:在平平淡淡的学习、工作、生活中,大家对作文都再熟悉不过了吧,作文是由文字组成,经过人的思想考虑,通过语言组织来表达一个主