Finance
Ray Dalio reveals the surprising ‘single most important reason’ he’s succeeded in investing—and it has nothing to do with finance | Fortune
Ray Dalio built the world’s largest hedge fund on cold market logic and macro trendspotting. But when asked what really powered his rise to the top of global finance, he didn’t cite any model or macro insight at all. Instead, he credited meditation.
“[It’s] maybe the single most important reason for whatever success I’ve had,” he told the renowned Odd Lots podcast this week. “Meaning, it has given me an equanimity to step back, to see the arc, to accept there’s a life cycle.”
Dalio often describes major crises and events in terms of cycles, and he referenced meditation as the thing that lets him step outside himself long enough to see reality clearly, rather than get caught up in headlines. But in the Odd Lots interview, he also made clear what he does with that clarity: He uses it to map out cause-and-effect relationships.
For Dalio, meditation creates the mental distance he needs to see events—markets, politics, human conflict—as linked chains rather than emotional shocks. That lens is so central to his worldview that he referenced it over and over:
“If you understand the cause-effect relationships … you can be ahead of the game. The causes happen before the effects.”
He talks about politics this way, too. Instead of seeing polarization as chaos, he thinks about the “mechanics” that produce it: incentives, cycles, interest groups, constraints. He isn’t judging them morally; he’s trying to understand how each variable begets the others.
Meditation, he says, is what lets him make that shift away from the instinct to react.
“You align the subliminal and the intellectual mind … while still feeling the emotions, but being able to look down on them and ask: How does reality work?”
Dalio’s perspective echoes core Buddhist ideas far more than the conventional Wall Street training. In much of Buddhist thought, the world is a web of causes and conditions: pratītyasamutpāda, or dependent origination. Everything arises from something else, and clinging to how we wish things were is what creates suffering, rather than the event itself. Dalio doesn’t use Buddhist language, but he describes almost the same process: Don’t impose your preferences, don’t treat incidents as isolated, and don’t get trapped in your immediate emotional reaction.
On investors who meditate
Dalio isn’t the only investor who sees meditation as part of the job. Ivan Feinseth, another longtime research analyst, has practiced Transcendental Meditation since 1978, when Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—the leader of the movement—visited his New Jersey high school.
The routine Feinseth describes is simple: You sit, breathe, and repeat a mantra until your thoughts stop becoming intrusions and instead flow naturally, to the extent that you can observe them. The effect he describes is almost identical to Dalio’s.
“It does center you and relax you and calm you,” Feinseth told Fortune. “I get answers to questions … Many times I’m thinking about something and, after I meditate, I’ve found a solution.”
Sometimes it’s trivial, like realizing his neighbor could fix a garage door with a side-mounted motor that he remembered seeing years ago (“We do have an incredibly accurate memory”). Other times, it’s the structure of a major research report or the right way into a thorny market call.
“Once you start to relax, things become clearer,” he said. “Sometimes the best way to think about something is not thinking about something.”
Few professions blur emotion and logic like investing, Feinseth argued.
“People act emotionally and then use logic to justify an emotional reaction,” he said. Meditation doesn’t remove that dynamic, but it can help keep you from participating in it, especially during selloffs that are obviously out of step with fundamentals.
Research on mindfulness has shown mixed but meaningful effects on investor decision-making. A 2020 thesis on mindfulness and trading found no reduction in overconfidence and even higher anchoring among more mindful traders. However, a research brief from investment firm Addepar argues that mindfulness can interrupt biased, stress-driven reactions by shifting cognition from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex, creating a pause before acting.
In practice, mindfulness means noticing a fear response during a selloff without immediately selling; recognizing when a familiar narrative is shaping an investment thesis; or stepping back from recency-driven overconfidence. Meditation doesn’t eliminate biases, but it provides a structure for identifying and disrupting them, the authors argue.
Dalio, it appears, would agree.
“Whatever success in life I’ve had,” Dalio said, “is more because I know how to deal with what I don’t know, than anything.”
Why did you choose to attend Bentley?
I wanted to find a school that allowed me to combine both business and language.
I grew up working in my family’s restaurants in Western Mass., so I have been surrounded by business from an early age. As I got older and started working more intensely in this environment, I developed a real passion for the ins-and-outs of business.
On top of that, my grandparents are Chinese immigrants, so the Chinese culture has always played a big role in my life. Since I studied Mandarin Chinese starting in kindergarten, the ability to continue that at college was non-negotiable. When I toured Bentley, it all clicked and felt as though I’d be able to pursue all my interests to their fullest extent.
What stood out about the Language, Culture and Business major, and Finance minor?
What really drew me to Bentley’s Language, Culture and Business major was that it wasn’t just language studies — it also highlighted global perspectives and how to adapt to a highly globally connected business environment. At the same time, I was interested in the analytical and strategic side of business, which led me to the Finance minor.
Together, I believe they allow me to approach business problems and solutions from both a quantitative and human-centered perspective. My finance background gives me the technical foundation to analyze performance and then make strategic decisions, while Language, Culture and Business has helped me understand the people and environment that those decisions impact.
Are there specific Bentley professors or classes that helped you connect the dots between finance and culture?
Yes, several of the required courses for my Language, Culture and Business major really helped me understand how cultural context influences economic behavior, negotiation styles and decision-making. Pairing these skills with my finance courses allowed me to think more critically about how financial strategies play out in global markets and where cultural nuances can directly impact outcomes.
If I were to choose what course has impacted my choices the most, I would say Chinese for Business I (MLCH 201) and Chinese for Business II (MLCH 208) taught by Fei Yu, assistant professor of Modern Languages. I thoroughly enjoyed taking these courses because they made me realize that language can be applied to so many industries and made my aspirations to work internationally seem possible and within reach. I also gained important skills such as interview skills and resume skills.
At Bentley, there’s a strong culture of encouraging students to explore multiple interests and see how they connect for future careers.
Were there other campus experiences that helped blend your cultural and business interests?
Yes — being involved in organizations such as the Women’s Leadership Program and the Bentley Dance Team helped me work with diverse groups of people and develop strong interpersonal skills. Additionally, studying abroad in Florence, Italy, made me comfortable with change and sparked a new fire to continue learning about cultures other than my own.
It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, does it? Someone decides to go to war, the oil stops flowing, prices go up and our economy starts shutting down.
The best response we can come up with is to raise interest rates, to dampen demand a little more. As if doubling the price of petrol won’t do that enough.
Problem is, raising interest rates only hurts people with mortgages and renters, typically not high on the wealth ladder. People with no debt get more money, and will spend it. And the rising interest rates hurt the businesses that have already been hit. Just when we want to raise supply.
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Besides interest rates, standard macroeconomic thinking is there’s only one other lever. We could reduce net government spending, which is hard to do when you’ve just cut taxes on diesel and petrol, which will fuel demand just when you don’t want that to happen.
But there may be a third way. To our collective credit, Australia has set up what many regard as the world’s best superannuation system. As at December 2025, we had close to $4.5 trillion set aside for our futures. And, every hour of every day, 12% of our income is added to the pile.
It’s been suggested that the super guarantee levy might be used as the third ‘lever’ to modulate the economy, in addition to fiscal and monetary policy.
This was actually one of the arguments used when the levy was introduced back in 1992. Instead of giving workers a wage rise, which might trigger wage-inflation, Bill Kelty and Paul Keating negotiated a compulsory savings scheme. Workers would benefit, but not immediately.
Perhaps it’s worth revisiting that negotiation. Say you want to set the levy at 12% over the long term. When times are tough you might put the 12% rate down a little to stimulate the economy. Instead of a $100 wage and $12 in super, people get $102 for now and $10 for later. We get through.
Or, when inflation is running you might nudge the 12% up a little to constrain demand. The extra isn’t paid by business. Instead of the $100 wage and $12 in super, people get $98 for now and $14 for later. Given the cost of living crisis, maybe the lever only cuts in above a certain income.
This would arguably be fairer, easier and more effective than the interest rate sledgehammer. It would inject or remove the same amount of money from the economy. But the pain is spread, people keep their own money rather than paying it to the banks, and businesses aren’t hit by higher interest rates just when you want them to invest in their capacity.
Finance
Stress in private credit could spark ‘psychological contagion,’ Fed’s Barr tells Bloomberg News
May 3 (Reuters) – U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr said stress in private credit could spark “psychological contagion” leading to a broader credit crunch, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.
While direct links between banks and private credit do not yet appear “super worrisome,” there were other areas of concern such as the insurance sector’s overlaps with private lenders, Barr said in an interview with Bloomberg News.
“People might look at private credit, and instead of saying, ‘This is an idiosyncratic problem, these were high-risk loans, the rest of the corporate sector is different,’ they might say, ‘Wow, there seem to be cracks in our corporate sector. Maybe over here in the corporate bond market, there are also cracks,’” Barr said.
Barr also added that “then you could have a credit pullback, and that could lead to more financial strain.”
Private credit firms have been under stress because of the market’s recent downturn with some investors retreating from these investments due to worries about valuations and lending standards following a handful of high-profile bankruptcies.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in March central bank officials are watching developments in the private credit sector for signs of trouble, but do not currently see issues there bringing down the financial system as a whole.
(Reporting by Angela Christy in Bengaluru; Editing by Will Dunham)
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