Page 33 - Ray Dalio - Principles

continued to trade my own account. Pursuing a mission with
friends to help clients beat the markets was much more fun
than having a real job. As long as my basic living expenses

were covered, I knew I’d be happy.

In 1977, Barbara and I decided to have a child, so we got
married. We moved into a rented brownstone in Manhattan
and I moved the company there too. The Russians were buying
lots of grain at the time and wanted my advice, so I took
Barbara on a combined honeymoon–business trip to the
USSR. We arrived in Moscow on New Year’s Eve and rode by

bus from the drab airport through a dusting of snow, past St.
Basil’s Cathedral to a big party with a lot of incredibly
friendly, fun-loving Russians.

My business has always been a way to get me into exotic
places and allow me to meet interesting people. If I make any
money from those trips, that’s just icing on the cake.

MODELING MARKETS AS

MACHINES

I was really getting my head into the livestock, meat, grain,

and oilseed markets. I loved them because they were concrete
and less subject than stocks to distorted perceptions of value.
While stocks could stay too high or too low because “greater
fools” kept buying or selling them, livestock ended up on the
meat counter where it would be priced based on what
consumers were willing to pay. I could visualize the processes
that led to those sales and see the relationships underlying

them. Since livestock eat grain (mostly corn) and soymeal, and
since corn and soybeans compete for acreage, those markets
are closely related. I learned just about everything imaginable
about them—what the planted acreage and typical yields were
in each of the major growing areas; how to convert rainfall

levels in different weeks of the growing season into yield
estimates; how to project harvest sizes, carrying costs, and
livestock inventories by weight group, location, and rates of
weight gain; and how to project dressing yields, retailer