Profile

Meet Ray Dalio, the corporate contrarian who’s ‘shorting Europe’

The founder of Bridgewater is the archetypal hedge fund creator: white, well-educated and idiosyncratic. Right now, the firm is shorting on some of Europe’s biggest companies, among them Adidas and Siemens, Bayer, BNP Paribas and Sanofi. But why?

Ray Dalio: his hedge fund Bridgewater is taking a huge, multibillion-euro bet against Europe. Illustration: Peter Hanan

When you’re one of the world’s biggest hedge fund managers, as Ray Dalio is, you’ll be as famous for the big bets you got right as the ones you got wrong. He reflected on one of each last month in an interview with The Hustle, an American finance news and podcast site.

He told the host about how he had started Bridgewater, now one of the world’s largest hedge funds, in 1975, and how in ...