The Fund

Copeland, a New York Times reporter who covered Bridgewater, wrote an investigative account of Ray Dalio and the firm, based on interviews with a large number of former employees and on internal materials.

His central claim is that the radical transparency system Dalio describes in Principles operated differently in practice from its description. Copeland reports that the dot collector ratings, the recorded meetings and the believability weightings functioned as instruments of control rather than as a meritocracy, that Dalio's own ratings were effectively unchallengeable, that senior people who disputed him left, and that the elaborate apparatus of principles and systems occupied enormous employee time without producing the decision quality claimed.

On the investment side, Copeland reports that Bridgewater's returns after the firm's early success were substantially lower than its reputation suggested, that the investment process was less systematic than described and depended heavily on Dalio personally, and that the firm's asset gathering and fee income mattered more to its economics than its performance.

Bridgewater disputes the book comprehensively and has published detailed rebuttals, and readers should know that. The account rests substantially on former employees, who are a selected population.

The reference has not independently verified the specific claims. The book is worth reading as the most detailed available counterweight to the firm's own account of itself, and the general question it raises, about whether an elaborate stated system describes what an organisation actually does, applies well beyond this case.