Ray Dalio is a monster, suggests a new book. Is it fair? | 商论双语
这本书一开头就是瑞·达利欧（Ray Dalio）在大骂一名他显然知道已经怀孕的员工。他一遍又一遍地骂她“白痴”，直到她抽泣着跑出房间。据说，这位全球最大对冲基金桥水基金（Bridgewater Associates）的创始人非常“高兴”。他对这位女士的“试探”证明了他不惜代价“寻求真相”的决心。这位员工崩溃的场面被录了下来，上传到公司的会议资料库。他让人把录像剪辑成一个片段，用来向未来的员工展示。
THE TOME opens with Ray Dalio laying into an employee he apparently knew to be pregnant. He calls her an “idiot” over and over, until she runs from the room sobbing. The founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, was supposedly “delighted”. His “probing” of this woman was evidence of his commitment to “truth-seeking” at any cost. The meltdown, which had been recorded, was uploaded to a library of firm meetings. He had it edited into a clip to be shown to future employees.
这只是《纽约时报》记者罗布·科普兰（Rob Copeland）所著关于达利欧的新书《桥水基金》（The Fund）中众多骇人轶事中的第一件。该书的叙述可以归结为两点。一是达利欧的“原则”（他所谓以“极端透明”为核心的一套理念）实际上不过是他用来欺压员工且浪费时间的工具。这套体系要求对会议进行录像，要求员工互评名次，把抱怨上传到一个平台上。这初衷是为促进“创意择优”，但最好的结果也只是让员工能抱怨自助餐厅的豌豆太“皱巴巴”，而最糟糕的是导致了一种恐惧文化。达利欧被指操纵了这套体系，让他的个人意见凌驾于一切之上。
This is just the first of many damaging titbits in “The Fund”, a new book about Mr Dalio by Rob Copeland, a reporter at the New York Times. The book’s narrative builds to two points. One is that Mr Dalio’s “principles”, a philosophy he described as being centred on “radical transparency”, are really little more than time-wasting tools which he uses to bully employees. The system requires meetings to be recorded, for employees to rank one another and for them to upload complaints onto a platform. This is supposed to foster an “ideas meritocracy” but instead leads, at best, to petty gripes about how the peas in the cafeteria are too “wrinkled” and, at worst, to a culture of fear. Mr Dalio is supposed to have manipulated this system so that his opinion always mattered most.
第二，桥水的成功“没有秘密”。达利欧手下数百名研究人员撰写的报告他甚至看也不看。科普兰称，达利欧的所有投资决策都是自己独断，或者是听了副手的一些意见后做的。他并不像对客户声称的那样有一套规范的行事法则，而是运用直觉和简单的“如果-就”思维，比如如果某个国家的利率下降，那么你就应该卖出该国的货币。事实上，这些方法曾一度行之有效，但高频交易员和量化基金（往往追随市场“大势”）的崛起削弱了他的优势。桥水公司的旗舰基金“纯阿尔法”（Pure Alpha）在过去10年或15年的回报就很糟糕/可怜。
The second is that there is “no secret” to Bridgewater’s success. Mr Dalio’s hundreds of research staff write reports he does not even read. Mr Copeland claims Mr Dalio made all the investing decisions himself, or with some input from lieutenants. Far from having a codified set of rules, as he tells clients, he uses hunches and simple “if then” statements such as: if interest rates fall in a country then you should sell its currency. These worked, the story goes, for a while, but the rise of high-frequency traders and quantitative funds, which often follow market “momentum”, eroded his edge. Returns for Bridgewater’s flagship “Pure Alpha” fund have been pretty paltry for the past 10 or 15 years.... ...【想要继续阅读付费文章？】欢迎订阅《经济学人·商论》继续读完本文双语版。
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