Isn't his strategy just a mix of various asset classes? Bonds have done really well for the past 2 decades, save for 2022. I think it shows the dangers of overcrowded strategies like what happened last year.
In Principles, he describes some high-level decision making processes. Bridgewater is split into groups of about 300 people. Within those groups, smaller groups are formed to discuss particular strategies. Everybody has "baseball cards" of their coworkers with stats showing peer-rated talent in various sub-domains. When a decision is made, there are two rounds of voting: a raw vote, and a vote weighted by stats (e.g. somebody whose peers have rated them as knowledgeable about agricultural trades would have more votes in this phase). If the two rounds of voting don't align, they try to keep discussing the issue until they do align (though there are tie-breaker rules if deadlock is reached). I'm not saying this system is perfect, but it's interesting to me as a meta-strategy for evaluating potential strategies.
Absolutely loved Principles so much that I bought copies for my team members and some leadership. I implemented small measures of radical transparency with the teams I managed where it made business sense as well. Wasn't always popular with fellow managers but my people absolutely trusted me (and produced accordingly).
The book is highly recommended even if you don't implement half of what he's suggesting as it's based on hard-won experience. His Principles tweets are largely expounding on what's in the Principles book if you don't want to buy it, with some regurgitation which I felt was kind of marketing driven to promote book sales. Definitely worth the read.
Not a finance guy, but from what I read and listened to, yes: "The fund combined multiple uncorrelated return strategies that are leveraged appropriately to maximize returns, while lowering risk." (from CNBC). I think this was a novel approach at the time, finetuning those gains specifically due to lack of correlation, further to specific assets within each class. Side-note, cool asset coorelation (or lack thereof) map: https://www.guggenheiminvestments.com/mutual-funds/resources...
The comparison would be more accurate with the relative sizes of each industry. Pretty sure there are more software engineers than people working in similarly skilled finance jobs.
> Since the beginning of 2012, Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha II has posted an annualized return of 2.5 percent, according to a document reviewed by Bloomberg Markets, a far cry from its historic average of 12 percent. It’s down 2.8 percent this year through July. (A smaller Bridgewater hedge fund, Pure Alpha Major Markets, has fared better, as has the company’s long-only product.)