Page 25 - Ray Dalio - Principles

in, both inside and outside class. I learned a lot about
commodity futures from a very interesting classmate, a
Vietnam veteran quite a bit older than me. Commodities were

attractive because they could be traded with very low margin
requirements, meaning I could leverage the limited amount of
money I had to invest. If I could make winning decisions,
which I planned to do, I could borrow more to make more.
Stock, bond, and currency futures didn’t exist back then.
Commodity futures were strictly real commodities like corn,
soybeans, cattle, and hogs. So those were the markets I started

to trade and learn about.

My college years coincided with the era of free love, mind-
expanding drug experimentation, and rejection of traditional
authority. Living through it had a lasting effect on me and
many other members of my generation. For example, it deeply
impacted Steve Jobs, whom I came to empathize with and
admire. Like me, he took up meditation and wasn’t interested

in being taught as much as he loved visualizing and building
out amazing new things. The times we lived in taught us both
to question established ways of doing things—an attitude he
demonstrated superbly in Apple’s iconic “1984” and “Here’s
to the Crazy Ones,” which were ad campaigns that spoke to
me.

For the country as a whole, those were difficult years. As

the draft expanded and the numbers of young men coming
home in body bags soared, the Vietnam War split the country.
There was a lottery based on birthdates to determine the order
of those who would be drafted. I remember listening to the
lottery on the radio while playing pool with my friends. It was

estimated that the first 160 or so birthdays called would be
drafted, though they read off all 366 dates. My birthday was
forty-eighth.

I wasn’t smart enough to be afraid of going to war because
I naively thought nothing bad could happen to me, but I didn’t
want to go because I was charging forward with my life and to
put it on hold for two years seemed like an eternity. My dad,

though, was adamantly against the war and hell-bent against
me going, even though he had believed in and fought in the
prior two wars. He had me examined by a doctor who